Who are we and who can
we be in the Lord? Our world
is changing, very rapidly. People have moved
away from denominational loyalty toward churches
driven by programs and outside activities. We
have moved away a society where people had
porches and sat outside,
they talked to their
neighbors. We are now a society where we build
back decks and privacy fences. We've moved away
from a society where where our family doctor
would come to our house with a little black bag.
Now we go to a "doc in a box" where the doctor
doesn't even know us.
We've moved away from
the time when people have an inter-relationship
with one another to one where there's email
instead of postal mail. We can shop without
talking to anyone else. We are in an economy
where people may be forced to work during church
activities. We are a generation that can have a
meal in under 60 sec. We have media and
technological advances, yet
all of this made us
think we would have more time for family.
And more time for friends, faith and fun, yet
this has given us less time. There are more
gadgets for us to put our hands on and less
people to talk to.
We are in such a
media-generated age that it is unusual to go sit
and listen to a man speak in person. Visions of
a utopian society are all around us. We had a
pre-election promise from our current president;
he told us there was going to be change - real
change. This promise has fallen flat on America today.
Unemployment is actually
in double digits. One in three homes are
foreclosed or walked away from today. The
national debt is $14.3 Trillion. Can we actually
wrap our minds around this? America is in big
trouble, our world is in big trouble.
Our grandchildren have
no chance of recovery at this pace. We are being
lied to, day in and day out. We don't need more
spending, we need someone to put the brakes on.
The change we have been handed is convoluted and
takes away hope, takes away chances of recovery.
Your government will not give you good news.
A dictator is a country
with one ruler. We have two: the Democratic or
the Republican Party. Government is not going to
save us. No one can give us a vision for our
family or for our future. We have to find our
vision from someone else. Only God can point us
to a powerful exciting beneficial future only He
can give us a vision of life. I wish we had some
politicians who had the guts to stand up and say
I've got the answer and it is Jesus! He is the
ONLY one who can
give us vision, who can
give us life. He can give us life and give it
more abundantly. He promised us this.
We are living in the
last days. You would have to be a mouse in
church in a closet not to to know we are living
in the last days. It doesn't take a genius to
realize what Jesus said in Matthew 24. All one
must to do is go back and read the records of
the number of earthquakes in our lifetime and
the increase in them. We see wars and rumors of
wars, look at what is happening in in NE Africa,
the Middle East. Nations are literally tumbling. We have a
type of antichrist in Ahmadinejad
what he does is he
believes the 12th Imam is coming. He takes his
budgets where he believes the Imam is (a well)
and he actually
throws his budget in the
well.
You have to have vision
and you must know that God has a purpose for us
in life. Our careers will not give us our
purpose in life. Having a big
house is not going to give you a purpose in
life, having a 100k car is not going to give you
a purpose in life, if that was the truth then
everybody with a big house would be satisfied
and they are not. We are watching things crumble
around us.
In Matthew Chapter 24,
Jesus gives us the signs of the end. In verse 32
He tells us, "Now learn a parable of the fig
tree; When his branch is yet tender, and putteth
forth leaves, ye know that summer is nigh."
You don't have to wait until 2012 when
the plants are to align and the earth is
supposed to go through some cosmic adjustment.
Jesus Christ can come back at any time!
It is the imminent
return of Christ, it is the last promise for the
church. Paul said "wherefore
comfort one another with these words." I Thess
4:18. Be comforted in this, there is a vision
coming to you .Jesus said
"And when these things begin to come to pass,
then look up, and lift your heads for your
redemption draweth nigh." Luke 21:28
But what will you do
today and tomorrow? This is the church's finest
hour. Our hearts should be burning with
anticipation. We as Christians today need a
sustained vision: for our spouses, our children,
loved ones, our families, our communities. We as
a nation need a vision, a hope for our marriages
and for our personal lives. We need to press
forward as never before. We are living in a time
when God is about to fulfill a vision of His
people.
About 350 years ago,
a ship load of people; after traveling
3,000 miles at sea, landed at the Northeastern
coast of America. That
first year they cut huge swaths of forest, built
houses and a small town. The
next year they elected a town government, the
next year the government
tried to build a road
five miles into the wilderness, the fourth year
the people tried to impeach their town
government because they
thought it was a waste of their government funds
to build a road five miles westward. Who needed
to go there anyway? Here are the very same
people who had the vision to see 3,000 miles
across the ocean, and overcome great hardships;
but in just a few years, but they were not even
able to see five miles down the road.
We're living in a nation
that was founded upon the backs of those that
would cross the oceans, of men and women who
wanted to live in freedom and faced great perils
to get here and to survive. And whether you know
it or not, whether you believe it or not, this
country was founded upon Godly principles. We
are a Judeo-Christian Nation. You never hear it
anymore, but God has a manifest destiny for America. He has
a manifest destiny for you and we must take our
vision and extend it down the road. We have to
believe that God has us here for a purpose.
Then there's the story
of David Livingston. Livingston single-handedly
explored almost all of Africa. A missionary society wrote and asked if he had
found any good roads. They said, if he had, they
wanted to send some missionaries.
Livingston wrote back and said that
if they “... had men who would come only if
there's a good road, I don't
want them. I want men who will come if they know
there is no road at all.”