the Commission

"Go! And make disciples of all men. Go, and be unashamed of My Gospel and preach it! Go! Rescue the least in the power of My Name! For is not the Lamb that was slain worthy to receive the reward of His suffering?!"

Mothers with HIV/Aids having to give up their little babies because they are to poor and too sick to care for them, even though that is all they have left in this world.

HIV/Aids crisis in Southern Africa. 

Orphaned and vulnerable children in Russia who are prime targets for human trafficking.

Little girls in slavery, who are treated worse than animals in the Brothels in Thailand and Cambodia.

Orphans in our own “back yard”, those who have no advocate right here in America, those under the banner of foster care. Who have been taken from their homes and the familiar (even if what was familiar was destruction it was, in allot of cases, all they knew).

Kids who are “aging out” of the Foster Care system, with no family and no stability, suddenly loosing the only thread of stability.

Babies in orphanages all across the world who have no one to hold them. Who have lost almost all emotion from lack of love and connection.

Special needs babies in China who are scorned by society and abandoned by parents.

Boys and girls kidnapped and forced to fight in the LRA (“Lords Resistance Army”) in Liberia. 

[From Kourtney's blog]

Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? As it is written, For thy sake we are killed all the day long; we are accounted as sheep for the slaughter. Nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him that loved us. For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, Nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord. ~Romans 8:35-39 (KJV)

This is my story, my song, but what about those who have never heard of the Lord Jesus?

“How deaf must be the deafness of the ear which has never heard the story; how blind the eye that has not looked on Christ for light; how pressed the soul that has no hope of glory; how hideous the fate of man who knoweth only night! God arouse us to care, to feel as He Himself does for their welfare.” - Jim Elliot

There is an Enemy who wants to keep people damned.

“Could a mariner sit idle if he heard the drowning cry? Could a doctor sit in comfort and just let his patients die? Could a fireman sit idle, let men burn and give no hand? Can you sit at ease in Zion with the world around you DAMNED?” (Leonard Ravenhill) 

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The great paradox today is that Christians could believe in hell and have not a tear in their eyes nor the slightest anguish in their hearts over the lost and perishing world around them. 

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One cannot disregard the prophetic song written by brother Keith Green: “Do you see, do you see all the people sinking down? Don’t you care, don’t you care, are you gonna let them drown? How can you be so numb not to care if they come? You close your eyes and pretend the job’s done. ‘Oh bless me Lord, bless me Lord,’ you know it’s all I ever hear. No one aches, no one hurts, no one even sheds one tear.”

A story I read yesterday afternoon has haunted me ever since. Read and weep.

“Charlie Peace was a criminal. Laws of God or man curbed him not. Finally the law caught up with him, and he was condemned to death. On the fatal morning in Armley Jail, Leeds, England, he was taken on the death-walk. Before him went the prison chaplain, routinely and sleepily reading Bible verses. The criminal touched the preacher and asked what he was reading. ‘The Consolations of Religion,’ was the reply. Charlie Peace was shocked at the way he professionally read about hell. Could a man be so unmoved under the very shadow of the scaffold as to lead a fellow-human there and yet, dry-eyed, read of a pit that has no bottom into which this fellow must fall? Could this preacher believe the words that there is an eternal fire that never consumes its victims, and yet slide over the phrase without a tremor? Is a man human at all who can say with no tears, ‘You will be eternally dying and yet never know the relief that death brings’? All this was too much for Charlie Peace. So he preached. Listen to his on-the-eve-of-hell sermon.

‘Sir,’ addressing the preacher, ‘if I believed what you and the church of God say that you believe, even if England were covered with broken glass from coast to coast, I would walk over it, if need be, on hands and knees and think it worthwhile living, just to save one soul from an eternal hell like that!’”

I weep as I write for I fear that I am no different than this chaplain. Oh, Jesus have mercy. How can I be so numb, so cold, so indifferent to those who I know are running to an everlasting sentence of unceasing burning in hell? How can a hardened, godless criminal have more love for a soul than a professing Christian?

We must awaken from our slumber of temporal, worldly thinking and begin to see things from an eternal perspective. We must pray along with Jonathan Edwards, “O God! Stamp eternity on my eyeballs!” For there are millions of souls perishing as we speak without hope and without Christ who will spend forever in the most horrible of torment.

[From Nick's blog]

Once freed from damnation and brought near by the blood of Christ we're made inseparable from the love of Christ. The bands of wickedness, heavy burdens and yokes that oppress that we are commissioned to loose from others are the ones found first and foremost on their souls. 

How can we free them from the Enemy's hold? We have been deceived in the church to think that the best we can hope to do for the Kingdom is good works, meeting the physical needs of those around us along with the humanitarians. The Enemy has blinded us to the truth of the Exchanged Life and the power of the Holy Spirit. The Devil has convinced us to be content in our shallow "faith" because as long as we remain deceived we take none of his territory and do not advance the kingdom here on earth. Before we can hope to do anything for the King and His Kingdom we need to be freed, redeemed and made new.

Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me. How often have we read, sung, prayed, and proclaimed these words? But more than fodder for lyrical fanciness or a great statement of supplication, has these words become the reality of your life? 

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Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me. Do not cast me away from Your presence, and do not take Your Holy Spirit from me. Restore to me the joy of Your salvation, and uphold me by Your generous Spirit. Then I will teach transgressors Your ways, and sinners shall be converted to You. (Psalm 51.10-13) 

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It is not that we need a new blood-pumping organ; but we do need a new “heart” (our seat of emotions – our mind, will, understanding, inner man). David has gone overboard in verses 1-9 talking about how corrupt he is (we are too), but he realizes that God desires to cleanse his heart. The word “clean” is the same word in verse two denoting a ceremonial cleansing to make pure and righteous. Amy Carmichael said it well when she wrote: “A pure heart is one in which all that is not of God is strange and jarring.”

Is that the case in your life? Has the things NOT of God become repulsive and shocking? Have you become so in tune with Jesus that anything that is not of His character and nature seems odd and foreign and grotesque? I would go so far as to say that if the world seems attractive and its vices appealing (all of which are not of God), then you do not have a pure heart and a right spirit. Will you allow Jesus to have full access in your life to CREATE and correct so that your crooked spirit is righted and your wicked-cold heart becomes pure? 

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Have you become so accustomed with sin in your life that you haven’t noticed a lack of intimacy with Jesus? Not that you don’t think about Him, go to church and hear about Him, even read your Bible … but there is no passionate oneness, intimacy, and deep communion with Him on a daily basis. Sin blinds and separates you from having relationship with God. 

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ure, I may have a lot of joy when I receive salvation but God’s joy makes mine look like a drop in the ocean. It is this immense joy that David wants deposited within his soul. Interestingly it is the very thing God wants to put there.

In Galatians, Paul says that the fruits of the spirit are: love, JOY, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. When you get into the passage, you find that each of these fruits are merely the outflow of Jesus being in your life. If you have Jesus, you can’t help but have all these fruits start to blossom forth. In other words, Jesus becomes each of these fruits in our life. He IS our love. He IS our joy. He IS our patience and peace and kindness and and and. He is EVERYTHING we need for life and Godliness (2 Peter 1.3).

[From Nathan's blog]

How is it that the world couldn’t get on with the holiest Man that every lived and can get on with you and me? Are we compromised? Have we no spiritual stature? Have we no righteousness that reflects their corruption? Is the world crucified to you…or does it fascinate you? -Leonard Ravenhill

"The Spirit indwelt life is not a special deluxe edition of Christianity to be enjoyed by a certain rare and privileged few who happen to be made of finer and more sensitive stuff than the rest. Rather, it is the normal state for every redeemed man and women the world over." - A.W. Tozer

With a clean heart and steadfast spirit, with the Indwelling Life of Christ, we have the power needed to intercede.

Intercessory prayer is the weapon of our spiritual battle and it is not a kids toy, it is MIGHTY to the pulling down of strong holds -- not small tents, huts or sheds, but fortresses and garrisons of the Enemy's forces. 

[From an older post]

For I am not ashamed of the Gospel (good news) of Christ, for it is God's power working unto salvation [for deliverance from eternal death] to everyone who believes with a personal trust and a confident surrender and firm reliance, to the Jew first and also to the Greek, For in the Gospel a righteousness which God ascribes is revealed, both springing from faith and leading to faith [disclosed through the way of faith that arouses to more faith]. As it is written, The man who through faith is just and upright shall live and shall live by faith. ~ Romans 1:16-17 (Amplified Version)

I APPEAL to you therefore, brethren, and beg of you in view of [all] the mercies of God, to make a decisive dedication of your bodies [presenting all your members and faculties] as a living sacrifice, holy (devoted, consecrated) and well pleasing to God, which is your reasonable (rational, intelligent) service and spiritual worship. Do not be conformed to this world (this age), [fashioned after and adapted to its external, superficial customs], but be transformed (changed) by the [entire] renewal of your mind [by its new ideals and its new attitude], so that you may prove [for yourselves] what is the good and acceptable and perfect will of God, even the thing which is good and acceptable and perfect [in His sight for you]. For by the grace (unmerited favor of God) given to me I warn everyone among you not to estimate and think of himself more highly than he ought [not to have an exaggerated opinion of his own importance], but to rate his ability with sober judgment, each according to the degree of faith apportioned by God to him. ~Romans 12:1-3 (Amplified version)


Faith. Its so much richer than modern "Christianity" makes it out to be. Once we are saved through it we are then able to live by it at which point the Lord works through us and through faith we are able to do greater things than even our Lord did while on the earth (remember that it is Him doing it through us).

And what shall I more say? for the time would fail me to tell of Gedeon, and of Barak, and of Samson, and of Jephthae; of David also, and Samuel, and of the prophets: Who through faith subdued kingdoms, wrought righteousness, obtained promises, stopped the mouths of lions. Quenched the violence of fire, escaped the edge of the sword, out of weakness were made strong, waxed valiant in fight, turned to flight the armies of the aliens. ~Hebrews 11:32-34 (KJV) 

Living by faith, reckoning true the promise, of Romans 8 -- For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, Nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord. -- leaves us free from the burdens and afflictions of this life that come as a result of loving and living for Christ. Ponder these truths...

"Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?" Romans 8:35

God does not keep a man immune from trouble; He says - "I will be with him in trouble." It does not matter what actual troubles in the most extreme form get hold of a man's life, not one of them can separate him from his relationship to God. We are "more than conquerors in all these things." Paul is not talking of imaginary things, but of things that are desperately actual; and he says we are super-victors in the midst of them, not by our ingenuity, or by our courage, or by anything other than the fact that not one of them affects our relationship to God in Jesus Christ. Rightly or wrongly, we are where we are, exactly in the condition we are in. I am sorry for the Christian who has not something in his circumstances he wishes was not there.

"Shall tribulation . . . ?" Tribulation is never a noble thing; but let tribulation be what it may - exhausting, galling, fatiguing, it is not able to separate us from the love of God. Never let cares or tribulations separate you from the fact that God loves you.

"Shall anguish . . . ?" - can God's love hold when everything says that His love is a lie, and that there is no such thing as justice?

"Shall famine . . . ?" - can we not only believe in the love of God but be more than conquerors, even while we are being starved?

Either Jesus Christ is a deceiver and Paul is deluded, or some extraordinary thing happens to a man who holds on to the love of God when the odds are all against God's character. Logic is silenced in the face of every one of these things. Only one thing can account for it - the love of God in Christ Jesus. "Out of the wreck I rise" every time. 

[From 'My Utmost for His Highest', May 19]

 “This momentary, light affliction is producing for us an eternal weight of glory far beyond all comparison, while we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen; for the things which are seen are temporal, but the things which are not seen are eternal” (2 Corinthians 4:17-18).

What a statement! Paul looked at all the unbearable pain and suffering he endured for the Gospel and he called it “momentary, light affliction” as if it were no big deal at all. His eyes were not fixed upon his present situation, they were fixed upon eternity. This man was driven by eternity. He knew the earthy, visible things would soon pass away, but the eternal, unseen things would be from everlasting to everlasting.  He knew his present hardships would be swept away shortly and he would be caught up in the presence of his God forever in the heavenlies. He could sing for joy even in the darkest nights because his eyes were on something all together lovely and not on his present adversity. And therefore, he could gladly “share in suffering as a good soldier of Christ Jesus” (2 Timothy 2:3).

Can the same be said of you, Christian? Or are you so earthy minded that you wallow and mourn when hardships come your way? Are you driven by the things of eternity or by the passing things of this broken world?

Oh, if we could see the grand privilege it is to bleed, suffer, and die for the glory of our King; if we could see what an honor it is to bear the name of our mighty God and fight for Him and the expansion of His Kingdom; if we could catch even the slightest glimpse of His majesty and glory then we would find the greatest joy and delight in suffering for His name’s sake.

We must get our eyes off of ourselves and our present, soon-to-be-passing situation and plead with God to fix our eyes upon Himself and the things of eternity. For “what is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little time and then VANISHES” (James 4:14).

You will soon be departing from this earth, friend. Your earthly life will evaporate swiftly. Does this not bring comfort to your soul? How glorious that day will be!

May we live with eternity in sight and in light of eternity call the distress of this passing hour easy and light. “For here we have no lasting city, but we seek the city that is to come” (Hebrews 13:14). Therefore, do not lose heart. Give no place to discouragement and despair. Give yourself for the things of the Lord that are glorious and without end. Allow Him to spend you and waste you and pour you out for His glory and do it with joyous songs of adoration spilling forth from your heart as you fix your eyes on that which is everlasting! 

[From Nick's blog] 

And I will close this declaration (courtesy of the pithy words of one of my favorite hymns):

Jesus, I my cross have taken,

All to leave and follow Thee.

Destitute, despised, forsaken,

Thou from hence my all shall be.

Perish every fond ambition,

All I've sought or hoped or known.

Yet how rich is my condition!

God and heaven are still my own.

Let the world despise and leave me,

They have left my Savior, too.

Human hearts and looks deceive me;

Thou art not, like them, untrue.

O while Thou dost smile upon me,

God of wisdom, love, and might,

Foes may hate and friends disown me,

Show Thy face and all is bright.

Man may trouble and distress me,

Twill but drive me to Thy breast.

Life with trials hard may press me;

Heaven will bring me sweeter rest.

Oh, tis not in grief to harm me

While Thy love is left to me;

Oh, twere not in joy to charm me,

Were that joy unmixed with Thee.

Go, then, earthly fame and treasure,

Come disaster, scorn and pain

In Thy service, pain is pleasure,

With Thy favor, loss is gain

I have called Thee Abba Father,

I have stayed my heart on Thee

Storms may howl, and clouds may gather;

All must work for good to me.

Soul, then know thy full salvation

Rise oer sin and fear and care

Joy to find in every station,

Something still to do or bear.

Think what Spirit dwells within thee,

Think what Fathers smiles are thine,

Think that Jesus died to win thee,

Child of heaven, canst thou repine.

Haste thee on from grace to glory,

Armed by faith, and winged by prayer.

Heavens eternal days before thee,

Gods own hand shall guide us there.

Soon shall close thy earthly mission,

Soon shall pass thy pilgrim days,

Hope shall change to glad fruition,

Faith to sight, and prayer to praise.

[Jesus, I my cross have taken]

This was long and it was probably rough, so thank you for sticking with me to the end. It is what the Lord has been working in my own heart the past few days: repentance, faith, obedience, prayer, joy... 
the commission.