PRAYER EMAIL - JUNE; "RESPOND - REPENT - RETURN"

Greetings,

"RESPOND - REPENT - RETURN"
"Gird yourselves, and lament, ye priests:  howl, ye ministers of the altar: come, lie all night in sackcloth, ye ministers of my God:  for the meat offering and the drink offering is withholden from the house of your God.  Sanctify ye a fast, call a solemn assembly, gather the elders and all the inhabitants of the land into the house of the Lord your God, and cry unto the Lord."  Joel 1:13-14

When such days come upon a nation, a church, or an individual, there is a needed moment to stop, understand and respond.   In Joel, it is a national moment, 'the day of the Lord is come' and God is telling them what to do in their response.  No doubt, the worst response, is no response.  We see God's response to our response as a nation and as a church and as an individual.  This is my process of prayer of these 3 areas that are directly linked together before the Lord.  My response impacts the church and my nation;  the nation and churches response impact me.   And from these responses, God responds; for righteousness, He blesses;  for wickedness, He curses.    And this is how I come before the Lord for these circumstances unfolding and happening upon us. 

In Jeremiah 32, I see a revealing of these 3 "R's" of God's response to our response and the call to repent and the return of His people to Him.   Allow for me to share this with you in brevity, with the hopes of preaching this out in fullness and perhaps writing it out later more fully.

1.  RESPOND - 2 things to consider in regards to our prayer lives and the impacts of God and man; God's response and our response.  God's response is generally and directly related to our response.   If we respond rightly, He responds in kindness.  But if we respond wrongly, He reciprocates.   Within Jeremiah 32 God declares the wrong responses by Israel and Judah that they provoked Him to anger and wrath with their choices.  And due to that wrong response, God will judge them severely.

In our current plight God's response of historic judgement on our land, reaching Epidemic proportions is due directly to our response as a nation, as the church and as inidivudals.  We have walked contrary to Him, legalized abominations and pursue evil and now God walks contrary to us.  And unless our response matches Joel 1 & 2, and we return to Him with repentance, there will no return of God to us as His church.  And the response begins with the church; for as the church goes, so goes the nation.  "If we return to Him, He will return to us."  This is our immediate response right now, to repent and return to Him.

2.  REPENT - 


3.  RETURN - 


PRAYER TARGETS:
EPIDEMICS - 
1.  Drugs/Alcohol - continued rampage across society, homes, and generation;

2.  Natural Disasters - earthquake over 7.0; still no 8; floods, fires in AZ;

3.  Great Evil - suicides top 11,000; mass shootings continue to escalate;  homicides have leveled off; murder-suicides continue impacts;

4.  LGBT - Supreme Court rules in favor, adding sexual perversion to Civil Rights Law for hiring/firing over sex, race, age, etc.

5.  Children - continued prayers for protection, deliverance due to neglect, abuse, sex traffic; 

6.  Plagues - corona virus reaches 120,000 death; closing in on 500,000 world wide;  huge spikes in multiple places;


Until,
Dan

Started:  June 18, 2020

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PRAYER EMAIL - JUNE 13

Greetings,

"Set your affections on things above, not on things on this earth."  Colossians 3:2

"Depart from evil, and do good; seek peace, and pursue it."  Psalm 34:14

Crisis Hour!!  

One of my, "Dan-isms", as my church folks call them is, "Do not let your circumstances dictate to you, but you dictate to your circumstances."  This is not a humanistic, positive thinking phrase; but it is based upon faith in Christ and the power of God:  He is able to dictate to our circumstances through yielded men and women of God.  You may remember Hudson Taylor's phrase, "Is it possible to move men through God by prayer alone?"  And the answer is, "Yes"!   This is happens by 'setting our affections upon God"; and by departing from evil and cleaving to that which is good in Him and through Him.  

For so long I have communicated to you that our days were like God looking down upon the Egyptians chasing Israel in the Red Sea and God caused their chariot wheels to come off.  God is causing the fabric of our society to implode right before our eyes.  And He is not done!   All of this is because of our failure to respond rightly before the Lord, as a nation and as the church.   We are reaping what we have been been doing for decades in provoking the Lord God to anger, wrath and judgement.  All along, for 20 years He has been sending us remedial judgements to wake us up, to cause us to see our plight and respond to Him.   Remedial Judgements from Columbine - to 9/11 - Hurricane Katrina - to financial banking collapse - to our present day EPIDEMICS.   In all this God was warning us to see His wrath and repent before Him.  We failed!

Have you ever seen so many of the church setting their affections on the things of this earth?  Have you ever seen so little of the church seeking the things of heaven?  Have you ever seen so much of our nation 'doing evil and departing from good'?   Have you seen men not seeking peace, nor pursuing it?   We are doing the exact opposite across the board from what the Lord has commanded.   And because of this, there is no direction of what we are to do.   So long as the church has its eyes on the earth, they will not see what God is up to, nor what He desires.   Oh, yes, there is a very small remnant that is seeking and asking of the Lord's kingdom come and His will be done; but it is faint to hear them.   Most are caught up in politics, seeking their old ways of sports and entertainments, all of which comes from self rather than setting our affections on things above.

We have missed our two month sabbatical moment of getting before God and repenting as a nation and as the church.  A clear call that God was stopping everything and giving us time to seek Him; to be 'still before Him and know Him'.   We missed our moment.  and it turned it into a conspiracy theory, political momentum venue.   Have we stopped during all these happenings of our nation to seek Him and to ask? "Lord, what are you up to?"   "Lord, what is Your will?"   I hear a lot of earthly will, but not much heavenly will.   I see alot of self will, but not much of the Savior's will.   Ravenhill used to quote the song, 'Turn Your Eyes Upon Jesus" and the things of earth will grow largely dim; and he would say, 'and the things of earth will turn largely grim".    How true it is of today!  

I thank God that He is not done with us yet!   After God sends a remedial judgement He usually allows time for the people to respond.  Depending upon their response, it is either judgement or reprieve.   Our response over these next few weeks will determine God's response.   I thank God that He is working within me, and many of you to reveal these evils and to continue to call a lost world and His church to 'depart from evil and cleave to that which is good'.   And for the church it is to 'set your affections on things above'; to seek holiness and the very face of God.   He is giving us another moment in time, I pray a Divine moment to repent and return to Him as we should.   A right response of:

--cause them to know their abominations;

--to confess and repent of all sin;

--to set our priorities upon Him and His holiness;

--to be ready to pay the price for His Name sake, no matter what;

Are you willing?  Are you ready to live unto Christ? or die for Christ?   For persecution to the American church is coming and we will know what it is that so many other martyrs have known.   We are to finish the task.  Satan knows this and is working venomously to distract and keep us from that.  For he knows that when we finish the task, his time is up.   An assault on our freedoms; an assault on us as Christians, an assault on our way of life all of which to keep us from the heavenly will.   but yield yourselves afresh to Him and to His kingdom and His will and His ways.   Yield yourself afresh to be filled with His Holy Ghost.  Yield yourselves to pray and seek His face.   

Because of the worldliness,carnality and sin in the church we have lost our saltiness and our light has dimmed.   Many have become of no earthly or heavenly value; few stand as light and salt in this most needful time for it.   

"Seek ye the Lord while He may be found, call ye upon Him while He is near:  Let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts:  and let him return unto the Lord and He will have mercy upon hi; and to our God, for He will abundantly pardon."  Isaiah 55:6 - 7

Brethren, set your affections on things above! and depart from evil and cling to that which is good in God.    

The hour is late, the need is great; pray so as to prevail!

God is speaking again about another call to prayer, much like the 'Call for a Solemn Assembly'.   I have no details as of yet, but ask of you to pray towards that end for His voice, and leading.  It is so needful to prevail before Him.   

PRAYER TARGETS:

EPIDEMICS

1.  Drugs/Alcohol -  continued overdoses, increase and deaths; a hold like no other chain upon our nation;  "Kill, maim and destroy";

2.  LGBT - WV elected first transgender for city council in Wheeling;  continued advancement to erode society and mind sets on what is good and evil;

3.  Natural Disasters - wildfires in Arizona;  hurricanes, tropical storms and typhoon seasons to watch - destruction and death;  earthquakes are unusually low, still waiting for 7 or 8.0;  

4.  Children - neglect, abuse, raised without fear of God, raised without respect (a part of this society unrest, no respect);  sex trade and assaults;  

5.  Great Evil - 2nd mass murder in a week (may be a record); death of 6 by a mother, who killed her 4 children, a neighbor and herself;   

6.   Plagues - corona virus flaring back up in states of US, deaths still continue to decrease;   other nations seeing huge swell of cases and deaths - Russia, India, South America; far east;  cancer; dengue fever globally; STD's in US at record numbers; 

UPDATES:

--bible reading - up through Psalm 70; right at 1/2 way;  should be done in August;  word study - all words that begin with "R";  noticed that in Psalms huge use of "righteousness" and "rejoice";

--The Activity of God - Jeremiah 31;   missed several days this week;

--A Word - Isaiah 65;   only able to do on weekends now, slow going at this rate to finish Isaiah and catch up on unfinished started devotions;

--live streams - 2 sermons on Sunday for Keyser and Fox's Hollow;  Monday night bible study - Exodus 18; Hour of Prayer - Thursday and Saturday;   I really have loved these 2 and 1/2 months of doing this;  

--God is preparing me for next moment for church to respond;   don't know what that looks like, but please pray as I discern and hear Him for addressing leadership;

Until,

Dan

Started:  June 13, 2020

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