It seems like just yesterday that I sat down to write the report last month. September flew by! Truly, our live is but a vapor that appears for a little while, and soon vanishes. And, nonetheless, every moment that we live has its echo in eternity. How this ought to propel us to live for the glory of our God!
This month, we celebrated the baptism four new believers. It was a day filled with great joy and it was also an opportunity to evangelize to family members and relatives that had been invited by those who were to be baptized. Each person that was baptized bravely shared his or her testimony of faith in Christ. Also, it was edifying to talk with some of their family members and hear from them the testimony that those that were being baptized, “Are no longer the same as before.” The wife of one of the men that was baptized, a man who had been a professing Christian for many years but had never experienced true conversion, told us, “He always went to church, but there was never anything different in him; he was always the same person. But for some time now, he is not the same any longer; he is not the person that I knew.” The only possible explanation is the power of the Gospel!
Personally, the Lord has been working in me in different ways. Through some recent trials that we have gone through as a church, my eyes were opened more fully to the reality that we live in a bloody, fierce, and relentless war. Our adversary never rests. To the extent that the hand of God is extended before us, so also the hand of our enemy is stretched out violently against us trying to destroy what grace has built up. All of this has caused me to see that if the Lord grants us our request to see a revival in our country, then the great joys of revival will also bring their amount of pains and trials. Really, a revival could be very difficult for us in many ways and could even cause us to collapse under the weight of the trials that would come through it. Why, then, do we continue pleading with the Lord to send a revival? The only answer is the glory of God; the glory of God! Why ask that the Almighty speak with thunder from the skies, when we know that if we hear His voice we would fall down dead? We ask that His voice might thunder forth because He is worthy of His voice being heard! How I desire it, even if it means that I might be cast down under the weight of such glory!
When I think about the years to come, my heart sighs desiring to see the work of God in our day. This country, and our city, is a dark land, sad and violent, that has never once known even the fringes of the ways of God. I know that the day revival comes, if the Lord is so pleased, the weight of the work might crush us. Who will be sufficient to minister in such a day? And, nonetheless, I desire revival to come, and the glory of Christ to shine brightly in every corner of this dark city, because He is worthy.