There is Always Hope

Two young girls walked the darkening streets, looking for whoever God would have them pray for.  Revival was spilling out of the doors of the church and no one could stop it.

We were drawn to not just kneel and pray, but to carry God to our work, and school, and to our neighborhoods.  After all, no matter how we tried, true revival could never be contained.

Even though, often times God moves and man wants to put up walls, or grab the reigns of a move of the Spirit.  Yet, God won’t be manipulated.  Who is man that He is even mindful of us?

To a God who the earth is His footstool, I almost laugh at the thought that we, as Christians, try to think that we can control Him.  It is like saying we can control a hurricane, or a thunderstorm.  

When God moves and He chooses to touch us by His Spirit, no man can stop Him.

The streets were dark that day.  The hearts of two had grown cold.  Both homeless,
sitting near a dumpster in the early evening.

The girl makes the decision to kill herself.  Her husband, willingly joins her.  There had been drugs, children taken, a future so uncertain that sorrow gripped them fiercely, until they said…

Why live?  Have you ever felt like this?

Little did they know, at that exact moment, God was leading two girls in their direction.  They were full of faith, obediently walking down the exact same alley these two married ones were treading towards death on.

The two girls stopped this couple, and simply led by the Holy Spirit, asked these strangers if they could lay hands on them and pray for them, not knowing they were seconds from committing suicide. 

And isn’t it when life has left you filled with disappointment, empty, and at the end of contemplating your own worthlessness…when God often meets us most?  

The two girls prayed.  The married couple just seconds away from suicide cried out in desperation.  How did God know?  How did God find them just in the nick  of time?

And in that moment of emptiness, those moments of helplessness, those dead-ends of our own lives where there seems to be no other road to tread upon.  Isn’t that when God glories to reveals himself?

Isn’t that when revival stirs most inside of us, when we have found the dead ends and are all out of self?  When God moves and we know it is only grace that somehow He found us?

And doesn’t God bring revival for more than conversation….more than emotional experiences….but to heal, redeem, restore?  For the purpose to spread love, hope, joy to those He has put around us?

In fact I wonder….Is revival even for us?  Or is it that we might “thin ourselves”?  That we might fall at His feet in repentance and at last willingly be led by the Spirit, giving our lives away for many…like He did?

I remember another.  He came, not content to just sit blankly, in a temple on Sundays. He walked the hills, encountered the destitute, touched people with words that penetrated hearts, turned people from hopelessness towards heaven.

I remember His death, the resurrection that came as He loved His life not unto death.  I remember the miraculous story of grace, and how He sacrificed His life as a drink offering.  Oh how I can hear Him call us to do the same…

How He challenges me, “tare down the walls, live outside the vicinity of comfortable Christianity”.  He prompts me to be like those girls, letting His Spirit lead me to those who are most broken….those most needy.  

It has been many years.  The couple saved that day on the streets are still married. They are still praising Jesus.  They are clean, happy, healthy and have two beautiful little children.  I look at their pictures on Facebook and get teary.  

These two once, oh so broken ones, are a testimony.  A faith builder and a reminder of the power found in a life lived boldly, His Word which is revival flowing freely through us.  

I don’t want to say, “well that was then”, I don’t want to chalk it up as a once in a life time “coincidence”.  I don’t want to write off His wonders, or the fact that Jesus picked me up too….when I was a mess.  When I was hopeless, helpless, lost without a living God inside me.

I don’t want my faith to stop at the four walls of the church.  I want His Word to be alive and for revival to continue to stir inside me too…

So that others will be plucked from death, so that the world might know the redemption power in a life lived abandoned to a God who does more than save us….

But died so that we might be redeemed.