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On December 24, 1993, I was a divorcee living with a friend in a small Iowa town. Like most mornings, I arose early to spend time with the Lord before enjoying Christmas with my family. My spiritual attitude was, “Okay, let’s get this over so we can eat turkey.”

Yet, even with my low level spirituality, heaven brought me a life-changing vision.

In it, I saw thousands and thousands of starving children in Africa. They were screaming at the top of their lungs from painful hunger. Their mothers held the children and the fathers stood next to them. All of the parents stared at me with pleading eyes…would I help them? Please!

The screams echoed in my ears and pierced my heart. I fell to the carpet and wept so much I thought the anguish would swallow me up right there on the spot.

Then, the screams stopped, and the vision disappeared into a deep blackness. As I caught my breath, the Holy Spirit said, “They don’t cry much after three days.”

After that, I wept even more.

I later learned that when starving children quit crying, the process is almost irreversible. They just slowly die.

When the vision ended, the Holy Spirit directed me to start a paint contracting company so I could help the poor and hungry children. I agreed to do it.

Now, let’s fast forward to today. How well have I succeeded to date?

The paint contracting company ended up totally destroying my finances, all of my friendships, my goals, and every particle of my reputation. There were times when I begged the Lord to throw me under a Greyhound Bus and put me out of my misery.

Paint contracting: Failure.

As far as helping the poor and needy children, I have sent a few dribbles of dollars here and there, but not enough to stop the echoes of the crying babies in my ears.  Yes, I’ve fasted and prayed, but even that has been sporadic over the last  nineteen years.

Helping Poor and Needy Children: Failure.

So, if I’m a total failure in all what the Holy Spirit directed me to do, why do I even keep trying, right?

During the horrendous years with my paint contracting company, I spent most of my mornings in earnest prayer. I had no other options because it was all I could do to put one foot in front of the other, just to survive. I needed God’s grace each day.

Then, one morning I had another vision.

In the vision, I saw myself in heaven. It was a glorious place, filled with peace and love. As I stood there, enjoying myself, a long line of young black children assembled themselves to greet me. The line looked like it wound itself through heaven for miles and miles.

Not knowing what else to do, I walked over to the first child. His face radiated love, joy, and peace.  There was something about his manner that let me understand he wanted to tell me something. I stood there, awaiting his words.

“I died and didn’t make it into my divine destiny because you failed to fully accomplish your calling,” he said without bitterness. Every word was backed with love.

I stood there, crushed by his words as he left and disappeared.

The next young black child spoke the same words to me. And so did the next. And the next. And the next. On and on. It seemed to be a never ending line of black children who died because I failed to make it into my calling.

There will be those who will scoff at this vision and declare, “God’s grace will cover all of our mistakes on earth.”

My answer to scoffers: “Yes, His grace will eventually cover us, but what about 2 Corinthians 5:10?”

For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each one may be recompensed for his deeds in the body, according to what he has done, whether good or bad

My greatest fear is at the Judgment Seat of Christ I might be faced with a line of children like I saw in that vision. Each child telling me how I failed them.

So, what am I doing to keep my calling alive?

(Continued in Part 2)

Was Jesus a redneck? Well, He probably spoke like one.

A little later the bystanders came up and said to Peter, “Surely you too are one of them; for even the way you talk gives you away.” (Matthew 26:73)

Philip Yancey in his book, The Jesus I Never Knew, wrote how Galileans had backwoods accents, which turned off the educated elite in Jerusalem. The accents were so disliked that Galileans were seldom allowed to read Hebrew in the Temple. Then, to top it off, Nazareth (Jesus’ hometown) was the boondocks of Galilee, sort of a trailer court with cars on cinder blocks type of town.

Wow! This blew my mind thinking about Jesus speaking like a redneck, and not like a Harvard educated Jew. This adds even more oomph to Paul’s words:

For since, in the wisdom of God, the world through wisdom did not know God, it pleased God through the foolishness of the message preached to save those who believe. (1 Corinthians 1:21)

This in no way subtracts from Jesus’ gospel message or that His words had spiritual life in them. But it does confront our love for image over substance in our leaders, especially Christian ones.

Now, this post today came about because I had an eye-opening disagreement with a few believers on Facebook yesterday. A man who is a great guy and writes from a strong theological background about America’s political problems, wrote his views on the Supreme Court’s decision on Obamacare:

What to say? What to do? It is a time to despair for the future of our republic…I only know what the church must do now. It must join the fight…A new group of leaders must come to represent the public face of biblical faith..All of this is part of the mission of the twenty-first century church…We have a nation, a culture, a civilization to pull back from the abyss. This will take generations. It will not be done with light, half believers with their casual creeds. It is time to get serious.

The 900-word article was well-written and made many good points, but a heavy emphasis was placed on America’s need for new Christian leaders. I commented:

I do agree we need new leaders, but the ones I think we need are those who have spent days in prayer and fasting and have heard the word of the Lord for our generation. I don’t care if they’re young, old, literate, or illiterate, but what is God saying now?

Because I’m so naive, I just assumed everyone would agree with me and punch the “Like” button, but none did. They were polite and kind with their disagreements.  Yet I could tell they thought I was one of those weird guys walking down the street in a long robe, barefoot, and carrying a sign which read, “Repent. The world ends tomorrow.”

Their ideas leaned toward higher standards for our church leaders. Better education. Better training. Better speakers. Better grounded in conservative theology. Better this. And better that.

It’s not necessarily that I agreed with their thoughts on Obamacare or disagreed with their ideas on leadership. That actually had nothing to do with my final thinking. Not at all.

You see, this eye-opening revelation dawned on me: there is a wide chasm between what we American believers think Christian leaders should be and what the Bible shows them to be.

And it so saddened me to think believers might not hear what God is saying to them through His new leaders. Because after all, the new leaders might be a bunch of hicks and nobodies from Hootersville.

“Why do you call Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ and do not do what I say? (Luke 6:46)

A great conflict loomed on the national horizon in 1857 because of slavery issues. Yet, unlike other times when America faced dangers, people did not flock to churches. God no longer seemed relevant, especially to businessmen.

But then, without warning and almost overnight, an unexplained financial panic hit America. Banks closed. Railroads declared bankruptcy. Thousands of workers were laid off. Many families faced starvation.

In New York City, where 30,000 men were out of work, Jeremiah Lamphier felt God wanted him to begin a noon-time prayer meeting for businessmen. The forty-six year old businessman printed a pamphlet entitled, How Often Shall I Pray, handed them out to the local businessmen, and invited them to prayer meetings.

The first meeting was held on September 23, 1857. Lamphier prayed alone for the first half hour, but six men joined him for the second thirty minutes. On the following Wednesday, twenty men showed up for prayer. One week later, forty showed up. By October 14, 1857, more than one hundred attended the meetings.

It was soon decided that weekly assemblages were not enough. So, they met on a daily basis. Pastors who visited the gatherings opened their own churches for prayer times. Before long, young, old, rich, and poor crowded into prayer meetings.

Within six months, ten thousand businessmen attended over one hundred and fifty different prayer meetings in New York City on a daily basis. Across the nation, similar gatherings sprang up in Boston, Baltimore, Washington, D.C., Richmond, Louisville, Charleston, Savannah, New Orleans, Memphis,  St. Louis, Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, Chicago, and countless other cities.

The prayer meetings were quite simple in structure. A leader started the hour by announcing a hymn. All stood and sang one or two verses. Then, the leader said a brief prayer, and the service was then turned over to the assembled members. Any person was free to speak or pray for no longer than five minutes. The leader rang a bell if any man overextended his time so that others  could have a turn.

Prayer requests were made for family members and others. Many just asked prayer for themselves. Still others exhorted the men to pray more fervently and to live holy lives. Over the weeks, testimonies were given on answered prayers and all praised the Lord for them.

Promptly, at the end of one hour, the leader rose and ended the meeting with a closing prayer. The members filed quietly out of the buildings.

This move of the Holy Spirit is known as the Businessman’s Prayer Revival,  the Prayer Revival of 1857, or the Third Great Awakening. Few have heard of it today because there were no famous preachers or great preaching involved with it. It was strictly filled with earnest prayer by nameless men.

Yet, the results were greater than those of the First Great Awakening with John Wesley, George Whitefield, and Johnathan Edwards or the Second Great Awakening with Charles Finney and Lyman Beecher.

It is estimated that 6.6% of America converted to Christianity in the wake of this revival. Dwight L. Moody, the noted evangelist, and Fanny Crosby, the blind hymn composer, were two of the more notable converts.

A powerful revival, right? Somewhere between 1.5 million and 2 million were saved.

But yet this great revival did not detour America from plunging itself into a bloody Civil War which began in April, 1861. Total casualties of the war: 1,030,000 with 620, 000 dead soldiers. Based on 1860 census: 8% of all white males between the ages of 13 and 43 died in the war.

Did the war stop the revival?

Actually, no. The revival continued in army camps, especially in the Confederate Army where it was estimated that 150,000 soldiers were converted. They fought during the day and held prayer meetings at night.

If you check other revivals, you will soon discover that revivals seldom settled a nation’s problems. It changed people and they were enthused about God once again, but the nation’s problems still had to be worked out in one way or another.

So, if revival is not the total answer for America, what is?

(Continued in Part 2)

Two wars in the 1900’s transformed San Francisco into what it has become today.

During World War II, San Francisco was the main  port for the war in the Pacific. Supplies and hundreds of thousands of servicemen were loaded onto vessels heading overseas. Thousands of other men worked on the docks and in administration to keep the war machine well oiled and moving.

But because of the era, San Francisco was also the port where homosexuals were dishonorably discharged from the armed forces, with more than 9,000 gay servicemen processed out during 1941 – 1945. Most of these gays, and others not pinpointed by authorities, stayed in San Francisco after the war and quietly thrived in the city’s liberal atmosphere.

John Brokaw labeled the Americans who fought in World War II as the “Greatest Generation” because of their patriotism and determination to do what was right for our nation. This generation then returned from war and built America into a Superpower nation.

Yet, the next generation was handed the Vietnam War. Unlike World War II, this conflict spawned anti-war groups and political activism, of which San Francisco and it’s sister city across the bay, Berkeley, ended up at the forefront.

One of the anti-war hippie slogans of the era – “Make Love Not War” – caused two events to take place in San Francisco.

The Human Be-In was held on January 14, 1967, at Golden Gate Park. Thirty thousand hippies, counterculture and drug advocates, anti-war and political activists gathered together for the first time on that day. Before that day, each group thought little of the other groups and each believed its views were the most important ones at the time.

But as they listened to Jefferson Airplane, The Grateful Dead, The Quicksilver Messenger Service, and numerous speakers, such as Timothy Leary, Dick Gregory, and Jerry Rubin, the groups melted together as one.

This successful one day gathering gave rise to the phenomenon which is now called the Summer of Love (1967) where one hundred thousand young people converged on the Haight-Ashbury neighborhood of San Francisco. These high school and college kids almost instantly changed the dynamics of the city with their attitudes on sexual freedom, creative expressions, and their political activism.

Among the hundred thousand young people were thousands of gays and lesbians who were radical activists. These were not willing to “go along to get along” as the World War II gays had done before them. Instead, these young people wanted to change America’s social system and they had learned how to achieve it from their anti-Vietnam War activism.

At first, these young gays lived in Haight-Asbury, but drugs and violence caused them to move into the Castro District. There they fixed up homes and opened businesses. The Castro District, also called the Gay Mecca, has  the highest per capita gay population in the world and is the center for the city’s gay politics.

One of the events birthed by the Castro District is  San Francisco Pride, a two day celebration for gays and their culture. This year’s event will be held on June 23-24, 2012, and attendance is expected to be more than 1 million people.

San Francisco’s gay, lesbian, and transsexual population is estimated at 15% of the city’s total, but its influence on politics is many times more than that. In fact, nothing really happens in California politics, and also in much of America, without San Francisco’s gay community’s endorsement.

So, what’s the big deal about San Francisco’s evolutionary change toward a tolerance of gay life styles? Who really cares?

(Continued in Part 4)

Working with frustration is a key factor in turning our potential into something actual. I like frustrated people. They are one of the hopes of the Church. Most people are frustrated because they care about something. However, they have a distinct responsibility to the Holy Spirit to use their frustration for the correct purpose. It is sent to provoke them into intercession. They must allow the Holy Spirit to direct their frustration into meaningful prayer and waiting on God. In this way, by the Spirit, frustration is turned into passion, which releases the prophetic to empower people before God.

If people abuse their relationship with the Holy Spirit, their frustration is used by the flesh to sow discord, strife and division. They become a dissenting voice rather than a positive prophetic utterance. Frustration will reveal our true heart and release an impartation that is either negative and destructive, or positive and empowering.

…Frustration is sent to change us, to make us into the image of Jesus; that is cause and effect, stage one. Stage two occurs when we allow frustration to cause us to stand in the gap and intercede for others, the effect of which is a release of impartation that empowers and inspires. Stage three occurs only through the success of the first two stages. That is, we arrive at a place of trustworthy servanthood after having passed the test of unselfishness.

…Part of our frustration too is that we cannot see where our lives fit into the current circumstances unless they change…Be assured that the significant test in frustration is to determine whether we will sacrifice what is close to our own heart in order to serve God. Can we lay our desire and our hope for significance on the altar of God and trust in Him alone to fulfill it? (Permission Granted by Graham Cooke and Gary Goodell, Destiny Image Publishers, 2006, pp. 160-161)

I have been so frustrated the last two days and no matter what I have tried  through prayer or study has helped me one bit in writing.

But what’s really frustrating is that I know there is a prophetic stirring within me to write. Yet, I can’t write.

So, tonight, the Holy Spirit reminded me of Graham Cooke’s words about frustration. They help a little…but I’m still frustrated.