Good News in the Morning - Broadcasts: Sept. 25th - Nov. 6th, 2011

BROADCAST     DATE -2011	TITLE		LINK
November 6, 2011	The Lord’s Prayer-Pt.4- ‘Give us... our daily bread’	DC	Play / Download
October 30, 2011	The Lord’s Prayer – Pt.3- ‘Your Kingdom Come’	DC	Play / Download
October 23, 2011	The Lord’s Prayer – Pt.2- ‘Holy is Your Name’	DC	Play / Download
October 16, 2011	The Lord’s Prayer – Pt.1- ‘Father”	DC	Play / Download
October 9, 2011	An Attitude of Gratitude	DC	Play / Download
October 2, 2011	Revivals-Pt.5- ‘The Book of the Law’	DC	Play / Download
September 25, 2011	Revivals-Pt.4- ‘Lessons from Asa’	DC	Play / Download

Revivals – Part 3 - ‘If My People’ – Aired Sun. Sept. 18th, 2011

Revivals – Part 3 - ‘If My People’ – by Rev. Don Crisp

The Key verse in each of these three messages on REVIVAL is from Zechariah 1:3 - “Return to Me declares the Lord Almighty and I will return to you.” 

Someone said:

“Revival is God stepping into His relationship with you and filling it with His presence and power in a fresh way.”

When God steps in He is looking for me to talk to Him and listen to Him:

First Message:

·         Gilgal

Ø  Home base

Ø  Remember

Ø  Renounce

Ø  Restored

Ø  Renewed/Refreshed

Second Message:

·         Mizpah

Ø  Commitment

Ø  Confession

Ø  Consecretion

Third message, today, is entitled “If My People” – It’s found in 2 Chronicles 7:14  “if My people who are called by My name will humble themselves, and pray and seek My face, and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin and heal their land.”

God Speaks - ‘if My people who are called by My name will humble themselves, and pray.’

Real life story:

In 1857 there was a 46 year old man named Jeremiah Lamphere who lived in New York City.

Jeremiah loved the Lord tremendously, but he didn’t feel that he could do much for the Lord until he began to feel a burden for the lost and accepted an invitation from his church to be an inner city missionary.

So in July of 1857 he started walking up and down the streets of New York passing out tracts and talking to people about Jesus, but he wasn’t having any success.

Then God put it on his heart to try prayer. So he printed up a bunch of tracts, and he passed them

out to anyone and everyone met.

He invited anyone who wanted to to come to the 3rd floor of the Old North Dutch Reform Church on Fulton St. in New York City from 12 to 1 on Wednesday to pray.

He passed out hundreds and hundreds of fliers and put up posters everywhere he could.

·         Wednesday day came and at Noon nobody showed up.

So Jeremiah got on his knees and started praying. For 30 minutes he prayed by himself when finally five other people walked in.

·         The next week 20 people came.

·         The next week between 30 and 40 people came.

They then decided to meet every day from 12:00 to 1:00 to pray for the city.

·         Before long a few ministers started coming and they said, "We need to start this at our churches".

·         Within six months there were over 5000 prayer groups meeting everyday in N.Y.

·         Soon the word spread all over the country. Prayer meetings were started in Philadelphia, Detroit, and Washington D.C.

·         In fact President Franklin Pierce started going almost every day to a noonday prayer meeting.

·         By 1859 some 15,000 cities in America were having downtown prayer meetings everyday at noon and thousands were brought to Christ.

·         The great thing about this revival is that there is not a famous preacher associated with it. It was all started by one man wanting to pray.

Our Part:

If My People, who are called by My Name will:

·         Humble themselves

·         Pray

·         Seek My face

·         Turn from their wicked ways

A picture of a church people who need to be Re-Vived

1   They have lost their first love

2   They don’t meditate daily on God’s Word.                                                                              

      God’s Word has become a recipe book

3   They only pray ‘911’ prayers

4   They don’t take sin seriously

5   They tolerate bad theology and immoral behavior

6   They are too comfortable with their history/tradition               

     and good  name.

7   They have stopped depending on God and His Word.

The Church constitution has replaced the Bible.

These people have become too Comfortable. (Their prayer might be...)

“Dear Lord,

Please leave me alone!

Just let me sit here in my pew.

And Lord, please guard my seat.

Lord, you know that it’s my seat.

Please don’t let anyone else sit in it.

Please get me out of here quickly when the Service ends before these church fanatics try to recruit me to do something.

Lord, help them to accept me and understand that I am happy just the way I am. 

I’m happy just to show up each Sunday.

Well Lord, until next week…..

Nice talking to you.

Amen”

This is a picture of people who are:

·         Lethargic

·         Apathetic

·         Pathetic

These are people who want only 'Sermonettes for Christianettes'.

God asks for more in 2 Chronicles 7:14

God’s Part:

·         I will hear from heaven

·         Forgive their sin

·         Heal their land

Do you believe in prayer?

Do you pray like you believe God is listening?

Listen to this story:

Dwight L. Moody, a famous evangelist from Chicago went  on vacation to England. He wasn’t planning to do any preaching; he was on a sabbatical. But he met a preacher  there who said,

"Mr. Moody you’re so well know, would you come and speak at our church?"

So he went to preach the next Sunday morning.

That afternoon Moody wrote in his journal that they were the deadest crowd he had ever seen and that the only thing worse than preaching to those people was that he had promised to go back that night and preach again. But he went back that night, and about halfway through the sermon something happened.

The people started to come to life, and he felt compelled to ask if anyone there would like to become a Christian and a lot of people stood up.

He didn’t know what to do. So he said, "Maybe you don’t understand what I am asking. So when we are dismissed if you want to become a Christian come over to this little room and meet with me."

When the service was over, he went to the room it was packed. Moody said to the minister, "What does this mean?" He said, "I don’t know. But I think you need to preach again tomorrow night."

The next day Moody got on a train and went to Ireland to continue his vacation. But when he got off the train there was a memo that said, "Come back. Revival has broken out."

So Moody got back on the train, went back to that church and preached 10 straight nights. And 400 responded to the invitation.

Moody couldn’t understand. Those people were dead, and something changed it.

Come to find out that an 80 something year old invalid widow named Mary Ann Adelard had read one of his sermons in the newspaper and had started praying every day that God will bring D. L. Moody to her church.

That is revival praying!

Mary Ann Adelard had humbled herself and prayed and God heard and answered her prayer

Let me close with a great story the great prayer revival of 1857.

It moved from New York to Detroit, Buffalo, Washington D.C. and it moved to Philadelphia in a powerful way.

One of the leaders in Philadelphia was a young man named Dudley Ting.

He started a noonday prayer meeting at the YMCA, and some days 5000 people would come at noon and pray.

One day Dudley stood up and he read Exodus 10:11, "Go ye that are men and serve the Lord."

He then said, "I had rather my right arm cut off than not give you that word."

Later that week Dudley went out into the country to see some friends. While in a barn at his friend’s place he got his arm caught in a corn threshing machine and the main artery in his arm was severed.

They took him to a bed and tried to save his life but he had lost too much blood. So his friends gathered around him and asked him what he would like to say.

He said, " Tell them to stand up for Jesus."

So the next Sunday his good friend George Duffield stood up at church and preached in memory of his friend.

He said, "I just finished writing a poem in honor of Dudley and I want to read it to you."

“Stand up, Stand up for Jesus, ye solders of the cross.

Lift high His royal banner, it must not suffer loss.

From victory unto victory His army shall He lead,

till every foe is vanquished, for Christ is Lord in deed.

Stand up, Stand up for Jesus, the trumpet call obey.

Forth to the mighty conflict in this His glorious day.

Ye that are men now serve Him, against unnumbered foes.

Let courage rise with danger and strength to strength oppose.

Stand up stand up for Jesus, the strife will not be long.

This day the noise of battle, the next the victor’s song.

To him that over-cometh a crown of life shall be,

he with the king of glory shall reign eternally.”

All across America, city after city people would meet for one day and pray for their country, and sing Stand up Stand up for Jesus.

Revival  - God said: “Return to Me … and I will return to you.”

If My People will ...

Ø  humble themselves and

Ø  pray

Ø  seek

Ø  turn

Then I will ...

Ø  hear

Ø  forgive

Ø  heal

           

Prayer:

“Gracious, Loving Heavenly Father, We thank You for such a powerful verse as they were building that temple, and ready to dedicate it to the honour and glory of God, and Solomon was ready, and I’m sure so excited. Then You stopped, and You spoke to him. You said, “You tell your people and you tell My people, if they will humble themselves, and pray and seek My face, and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin and heal their land.”

Father, we realize that You are speaking to us, today, in that way. And Lord, we want to just respond to you right now and say, Lord, we want to serve you. We want to commit our lives to You, We want to confess to you. We need to consecrate our lives before You. That is what Mizpah was all about.

We thank You today, Father, that we are privileged to be called Your people. And Father, today, I just pray that each one of us -- each one of us -- would recommit ourselves to You, even now.

And for those who don’t know You, that they would make that all-important decision to say, Lord Jesus, would You come into my life, and change my life. Forgive me of my sins and turn me around, (that’s called repentance), turn me around, so that I can start living for You and start serving You and start bringing honour and glory to Your Name, so that I can stand up, and stand up for Jesus.

Lord, thank you for the promise that You hear our prayers, in Jesus’ Name, Amen.

 ________________________

To hear the full broadcast, click on the link:

http://proxy.autopod.ca/podcasts/chum/6/4576/good_news_644_sept18.mp3

Revivals -Part 2 – ‘Mizpah’ -- Aired Sun. Sept. 11th, 2011

REVIVALS – Part 2: ‘Mizpah’  - by Rev. Don Crisp

Last week Don Crisp introduced our theme verse for this series on Revival……   Zechariah 1:3 - Return to Me declares the Lord Almighty and I will return to you.

This week’s theme is taken from: 1 Samuel 7: 2-13  as the background for our Part 2 on revivals.

Verses 3 and 4 are as follows: “Then Samuel spoke to all the house of Israel, saying, “If you return to the LORD with all your hearts, then put away the foreign gods and the Ashtoreths^[a] (Canaanite goddesses) from among you, and prepare your hearts for the LORD, and serve Him only; and He will deliver you from the hand of the Philistines.” ⁴ So the children of Israel put away the Baals and the Ashtoreths,^[b] (Canaanite goddesses) and served the LORD only.”

There are so many stories in the Bible that speak of God’s people being renewed and revived.

But the history of Revivals is not limited to the pages of the Bible…….  History reports many as well….

·         Last week, during his message on ‘Gilgal’, Don mentioned  the ‘Great Awakening’  in 1734.

As 300 Missionaries were sent out from Germany to England and the United States.

·         Don also spoke of the Revival of 1863-64 during the Civil War where over 10%  of the Union and Confederate troops came to Christ…..  some 300,000 soldiers.

·         The Welsh Revival of 1904 was an instance where one man, Evan Roberts, brought over 1-Million people to Christ. His prayer was “Lord, bend me: Align my will with yours.”

Return to Me declares the Lord Almighty and I will return to you.

 Revival happened even in the far North, at the the remote town of Pond Inlet is on Baffin Island

400 miles above the Artic Circle.

It’s accessible only by plane, thousands of miles away from any population centre.

In Feb 1999 God visited this mainly Inuit community in a special way – He brought renewed life to believers and new life to the unsaved. Joshua Arreak was leading worship at the conclusion of several days of bible teaching, and people were in prayer together:

He says: ‘And suddenly without our expecting anything supernatural, there was a visitation.’

Those who witnessed the dramatic changes brought by this revival said that it wouldn’t have taken place without prayer.  What happened at Pond Inlet was preceded by a year of fervent, regular prayer.

J. Edwin Orr explains:

‘Whenever God is ready to do something new with His people, He always sets them to praying.’

Then, when revival comes you can’t stop people praying.

Last week we established that God’s people needed to go to Gilgal……..A return to Gilgal  -  home base.

The place we go to meet God, for...

·         Remembrance

·         Renunciation

·         Restored relationship

·         Rest and Renewal

Gilgal was the place that God’s people returned after victory. Joshua 10:15-43

Gilgal is where we go to rest, following the battle.

Prayer at Mizpah - Today, we need to visit ‘Mizpah’ where we will be reminded of our Ebenezer, (1 Samuel 7: 2-13)

Mizpath - A place where we do business with God, for:

·         Commitment

·         Confession

·         Coming back to the Lord

Return to Me declares the Lord Almighty and I will return to you.

Titus Coan was used by God in Hawaii when revival came from 1835 to 1840.

·         He said that a mark of the revival was the tremendous hunger for God’s word.

·         The town of Hilo swelled to ten times its original size growing from 1,000 people to 10,000.

·         This was due to people moving in from outlining areas so they could attend church and hear  God’s word.

There’s the two key elements for Revival: Prayer – God’s Word.

That’s what happens at ‘Mizpah’.

Again, when revival broke out in Saskatoon Saskatchewan, Canada, in Oct 1971 we’re told that:

‘Criminals were… confessing their sins and giving themselves up to the police. Restitution was common. People paid long overdue bills. Some businesses opened new accounts to account for the conscience money being paid to them. Those who cheated at restaurants or hotels returned to pay their full bill. Stolen goods were returned.’

They experienced ‘Mizpah’

This happens when we experience  ‘Mispah’. May God open our minds, and our eyes to His truth.

You can be in Church and still miss the point of where our focus should be….. on – ‘prayer and His Word’

My prayer is that God will open our minds, our eyes and our hearts to His truth.  To you, His people. This day, in His house from his Word.

May God open our minds, and our eyes to His truth.

May we open our minds and eyes to the truth about Mizpah.

To sum up, 1 Samuel 7:3:

·         Commit yourselves to the Lord

·         Serve Him only

·         He will deliver you

·         Assemble at Mizpah and I will pray or intercede for you.

At Mizpah the people:

Ø  Fasted

Ø  Confessed ….. "We have sinned against the Lord."

Victory over the Philistines followed

and then Samuel,  (V 12)  … took a stone and set it up between Mizpah and Shen.

He named it ‘Ebenezer’…..saying: 

‘This marks the place where the Lord helped us’  -(the Message)

“Then Samuel cried out to the LORD for Israel,” The result was that Verse-9 concludes saying: “ … and the LORD answered him.”

·         The result was that the Lord brought a great thunderstorm which caused great confusion among the Philistines and enables the Israelite warriors to overcome them

(V.10). “Now as Samuel was offering up the burnt offering, the Philistines drew near to battle against Israel. But the LORD thundered with a loud sound upon the Philistines that day, and so confused them that they were overcome before Israel.

 (V. 11) And the men of Israel went out of Mizpah and pursued the Philistines, and drove them back as far as below Beth Car.”

·         The Lord thundered against the Philistine soldiers and so confused them that it was possible for the Israelite soldiers to attack and defeat them.

·         It is significant to remember that Baal was the Canaanite storm god, and it makes the power of God’s thunder even more effective in shaking the Philistine army to the core.

The end result was that the Philistine domination over Israel was broken.
 

When we return to God.
When we return to Gilgal…… home base

When we do business with God in our hearts and make our commitment through confession and pray….. at Mizpah

The Psalmist reminds us in (20:7):

“Some trust in chariots, and some in horses; But we will trust the name of the LORD our God.”

Here’s the Truth:

·         God’s people found victory on her knees.

·         God’s people found victory through

Ø  Commitment

Ø  Confession

Ø  Coming back to the Lord

·         God’s people found victory at Mizpah.

Return to Me declares the Lord Almighty and I will return to you.

Here’s what it's about:

Ø  Everyday we need to meet with God….. that’s Gilgal

Ø  Everyday we need to meet with God at ‘Mizpah’

That’s our God appointment……..

Ø  Everyday we need to remember our ‘Ebenezer’

That place in our heart where we draw near to God.

Today’s Prayer:

“Our Gracious Loving Heavenly Father, how we thank you for ‘Mizpah’. We thank You that we can draw nearer to the heart of God. We thank You Heavenly Father that You watch over us, and You guard over us, and You draw us closer to Your side. And today, Father, I pray for victory for those who are listening to this message. Wherever they need victory in their lives, Lord, may they just release it to You, and receive their victory that is found only in Jesus Christ.

We give you thanks and we give you praise, Father; that we can go to Gilgal to meet with you; that we can meet with You at Mizpah’ and do business with You. Almighty God, knowing full well that You will take whatever our circumstances are, and give us the victory that is needed, according to Your timing, indeed , according to Your will.

Lord, hear our prayer this day. Encounter our lives, today. Impact our hearts, today. We pray all these things in Jesus’ name, today. Amen.”

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Heads up for next week’s message, entitled:

 ‘If My People’  - which is based on  2 Chronicles 7:14  …“ if My people who are called by My name will humble themselves, and pray and seek My face, and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin and heal their land.”

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To hear this week’s Broadcast, in full, go to:

http://proxy.autopod.ca/podcasts/chum/6/4512/good_news_643_sept11.mp3

Revivals in the Old Testament Part 1: Gilgal - Aired Sun. Sept. 4th, 2011

REVIVALS  - Starting in the The Old Testament - (and more recent examples) – Part 1: Gilgal  - by Rev. Don Crisp

Don Crisp started with the Scripture:  Joshua 4: 19-24, which is about when Joshua was told to take twelve stones out of the Jordan, as they crossed the river to set up camp in safety at Gilgal. He made a monument with those twelve stones, “Then he spoke to the children of Israel, saying: “When your children ask their fathers in time to come, saying, ‘What are these stones?’ ²² then you shall let your children know, saying, ‘Israel crossed over this Jordan on dry land’; ²³ for the LORD your God dried up the waters of the Jordan before you until you had crossed over, as the LORD your God did to the Red Sea, which He dried up before us until we had crossed over, ²⁴ that all the peoples of the earth may know the hand of the LORD, that it is mighty, that you may fear the LORD your God forever.”

It’s important to note that ‘Gilgal’ not ‘Jerusalem’ was ‘home base’ for the Israelites.

It’s also important to note that when we go astray, we need to return to ‘home base’…..  Gilgal.

God speaks to His people in Zechariah 1:3 when He says: “Return to Me declares the Lord Almighty and I will return to you.”   

In other words: Come back to Me and I’ll come back to you. That’s the Message and will be the theme throughout this series on Revivals.

Don speaks about the ‘Great Awakening’ Revival that began in Germany in 1734, and the Revivals that took place throughout the US, including details of the “Great Revival” during the late Fall of 1863 through the Spring and Summer of 1864, during the Civil War.

According to Confederate Chaplain J. William Jones, it is estimated that over 100,000 Confederate and somewhere between 100,000 and 200,000 Union troops accepted Christ during the Civil War—representing roughly ten percent of the men that were engaged.

Another great Revival occurred in 1904, when a young ministerial student named Evan Roberts, began to feel that God was sending an urgent message that He was going to pour out a mighty spirit of revival on Wales.

In his home church, Evan Roberts began preaching with a simple 4 point message that he was convinced could help God bring revival:

1. Confess all known sin to God
2. Deal with and get rid of any “doubtful” area of your life
3. Be ready to obey the Holy Spirit instantly
4. Confess Christ publicly

It was the beginning of one of the greatest movements of God in all history. Over the course of the next year and a half, over 1,000,000 people were led to saving faith in Jesus, through the nation of Wales.

The revival eventually made its way across the Atlantic and swept through parts of New York and New Jersey. There was even a daily column in the New York Times called “Today’s Converts” that listed those who were being saved.

Times seem to have totally changed and we have to admit that our world is nothing like that of 1904.

Did you know that in North America, yes, in Canada, pastors, for most part, are not dealing with Revival in their Churches, but rather:

·         indifference

·         apathy

·         tradition

Eight out of ten Americans consider themselves Christians, Gallup said, yet only about half of them could identify the person who gave the Sermon on the Mount, and fewer still could recall five of the Ten Commandments. Only two in ten said they would be willing to suffer for their faith.
(Source: Erwin Lutzer, Pastor to Pastor, p. 76.)

Thomas Trask gives us these statistics

from his book, The Choice:

10% of church members cannot be found
20% of church members never attend church
25% admit that they never pray
35% admit that they do not read their Bibles
40% admit that they never contribute to the church a tithe or an offering
60% never give to missions
70% never assume responsibility within the church
85% never invite anyone to church
95 % have never won anyone to Christ

Yet:

Did you know that there is Revival happening all over the world right now.

Did you know that there are some 20,000 people converting to Jesus Christ every day in China?

Did you know that there are some 32,000 people in Africa converting to Jesus Christ every day?

In this broadcast, Don includes many powerful examples of Revivals through history, and states that it’s time for all of us in North America to return …to Gilgal… (where they stacked 12 stones as a Memorial so that all Israel would remember the miracle).

We must return to our Gilgal –we must return home. It’s time to rebuild, to start over again. It’s time for God’s people to rebuild their lives …by returning to God.

Return to Me declares the Lord Almighty …and I will return to you.  - Zechariah 1:3

To listen to the full broadcast, with much greater detail, go to:

http://proxy.autopod.ca/podcasts/chum/6/4461/good_news_642_sept04.mp3