The Prepper Broadcasting Network - 2024.12.30 - Reliance - Preparing For Harvest

Episode Date: January 12, 2025

God Bless the Menkings!! 

Then he went out again by the sea, and all the multitude came to him, and he taught them. As he passed by, he saw Levi the son of Alphaeus sitting at the tax office, and he said to him, Follow me. So he arose and followed him. Now it happened, as he was dining in Levi's house, that many tax collectors and sinners also sat together with Jesus and his disciples, for there were many, and they followed him. And when the scribes and Pharisees saw him eating with the tax collectors and sinners, they said to his disciples, How is it that he eats and drinks with tax collectors and sinners? When Jesus heard it, he said to them, Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. I did not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.

Lord, thank you for your mercy and your love and your grace and your faithfulness towards us. You are mighty and powerful and glorious and worthy of all worship and honor and glory and praise. You are good and your mercy endures forever. Thank you for your word and for the precious promises that you have provided to us. Jesus, thank you for being our high priest. Thank you for interceding for us. Thank you for providing for us and bringing us the abundance of your Holy Spirit. Holy Spirit, thank you for your presence. Thank you for your guidance. Thank you for your comfort and your correction. Lord, use our lives for your glory. Bless us in this time and in this season as we look ahead to another calendar year. God, you are sovereign over this year that has

passed. You are sovereign over the year that is to come, and you are sovereign over everything for all time. We declare your goodness and your justice and your love for this generation, God, and we pray that you would bring forth laborers into your harvest. You are worthy of a great harvest in this generation, and we pray that we would see it with our own eyes, that we would magnify you, and that we would declare your glory. Lord, speak to us now. Help us to redeem the time. Use everything that we do for the sake of your kingdom. In Jesus' name, amen. In many ways, when we pray for revival, and when we ask for a harvest of souls, and when we cry out to the Lord to bring about salvations and to expand his kingdom on the earth, we know that we are supposed

to do that. And if we're not, we should. And however much we're doing of it, we should do more of it. much we're doing of it, we should do more of it. However, we may not be fully prepared for the success of such initiatives to receive the fruits of that kind of move of the Holy Spirit. We are all, or should be at least, desperate for something like that to come. But what will it look like? Well, it will look like many more people coming to the gospel. But who are these people going to be? They are not all going to be the well-heeled, the cordial, the people who fit into polite society, who understand high levels of professionalism in their behavior, high levels of professionalism in their behavior, good conduct in their communications, and Christ-like cultural milieu. What we are talking about is an assemblage of people who are broken and desperate and who have been adrift in many, for a long number of years and even decades.

What we are talking about are the sick, the sinners, and these are the people that we need and are called to welcome in with open arms, arms of fellowship, arms of love, even understanding that that is going to bring with it some challenges and some problems. The church in the first century saw this sort of thing, and it was one of the things that Christians were ridiculed for at the beginning by the Stoics and other philosophers and thinkers who saw it as a religion for women and children and slaves, because it did not catapult the highest of masculine and classical virtues of strength and might and prestige and a kind of societal honor defined by that culture to the forefront. Those were the people who we are cautioned against giving preferential treatment to. Those are the people who we are told should

not be seated in the best seat because they have access to resources or power or because they are someone. And when our God declares that he is no respecter of persons, and when our Savior Jesus Christ makes it a special point in his earthly ministry to fellowship and to draw near to those who are following him who would readily admit their own sinfulness and readily admit what is going on. Here, when we're talking about Levi, we're talking about Matthew, Matthew the tax collector. And he, as an ethnic Jew, had betrayed his people in working for the Romans and was presumably cast out of polite society in the Judean culture. So we are not talking about an inflow of revival inside of hearts of people

who are all crystal clear and squeaky clean and everything else like that. We are talking about a harvest for the kingdom of God of people who have been neglected and despised by the world and have gone through tremendous hardship and suffering and lack and want, even if not in a material sense, in a moral and in a spiritual sense, in an emotional sense, in a psychological sense, in all of these different ways. When people come into the kingdom of God and they receive newness of life and the new birth, being born again and being saved through placing their faith in Christ, there is not always going to be this instantaneous, marvelous, supernatural

transformation that completely eclipses all patterns of old behavior. Sanctification is a process. It is ongoing, or at least should be ongoing in all of us, and it will be the case for those who are newly coming into the kingdom. And so as we pray for revival, again, as we should, as we are obligated to, as we should work towards, in part because it is the universal will of God that none should perish. And we have an obligation fulfilling the Great Commission for us to go forth and to spread the gospel and to disciple and to strengthen and to build up the church and strengthen the things that remain. And so if we have been given the faith necessary through the Holy Spirit to believe for revival,

to believe for an upswing of mighty victory in this generation for the kingdom of God, again, I'll remind us that God is worthy of this. He has owed this. us that God is worthy of this. He is owed this. There has been so much destruction and chaos and damage sown and coming against the kingdom of God as a result of the sinfulness that has plagued our own individual hearts and our culture and our people and this entire world. You can see it running amok in all sorts of different places, but it's these broken people who are going to be the ones who are ripe for harvest. And again, the metaphor, the analogy, the figure of speech here should be taken as a cautionary tale, because when these people come into God's kingdom, and by God's grace they will,

in multitudes, multitudes, in large numbers, filling out all sorts of different places, earnestly seeking God, devouring his word, being nourished by the Holy Spirit, worshiping and praising and giving thanks to God. What can happen oftentimes in religious communities, Christians are no exception to this and often prove the rule here, is that there are then questions being asked and murmuring that's going on among those who have been with the Lord for a longer period of time and who may have gotten used to a particular way of doing things. And again, this doesn't mean that upon an influx of new believers that everything has to be tossed out, but we must have the attitude that Jesus has towards these people. He did not turn them away.

He didn't say for them, oh, you can stay as you are permanently and not progress in the Lord and not move on and continue striving to seek the faith and to be reformed and to be restored and to be transformed by the supernatural working of the Holy Spirit. He invited them and he guided them and he discipled them and he gave them the choice to follow him and to be influenced and impacted and transformed by his ministry and by the work of the Holy Spirit. But when we see people coming into our church, I know for a fact that there is going to be a tendency to look at people and wonder, well, how are they going to contribute? What is this going to do to my church? How is this going to impact the culture or the

preaching or the worship or anything else like that? And again, the point here is not that everything needs to be built from scratch, although certainly I bet we could all point to different places where that would actually be a good thing if it was built from scratch on a biblical foundation after so many different things have been accreted and developed over time in a way that runs contrary to the Bible and to God's will at worst, and is just a case of improper triage where we're focused too heavily on the wrong things at best. And so in these sorts of places, there's going to be contention that arises, and it's one

of the paradoxes of success here. And it's one of the things that Paul dealt with in the early churches of the New Testament, writing his epistles to Corinth and Ephesus and Colossae and many different other places as well, to try to mend any gaps, heal any wounds, and help set up these different congregations for success, appointing leaders, commissioning different approaches, and giving concrete spiritual guidance from the revelation that he had received and from what was going on in the Gospels and the continued lessons of the apostles and the immediate disciples of Jesus. And so as Paul is giving this instruction, he's dealing with a group of people who are operating in the midst of a hostile environment and who represent

all manner of different professions and cultures and levels in society. And when we read in the Bible that there's neither Jew nor Greek, neither male nor female, neither slave nor free, when we see that, we understand that being a part of the body of Christ should absolutely be this great leveler, this eternal leveling factor. And the fact that Christianity is open to anyone, that it isn't restrictive to various classes or castes or types of people, that should be an aspect of tremendous appeal. And yet the way that the Christian church, at least in America, presents,

even when you have different places that will actively and appropriately advertise the diversity of their congregation and of their church members and everything else like that, we still see from the outside a perspective of the church as being judgmental and stuck up and morally backward and fundamentalist and anti-science and all these different things that have been floating around our culture, that so many people in the body of Christ have been doing valiant work to attempt to combat. However, when we are dealing with a revival and an influx of people into the church. And our attitude is anything less than yes and amen, but then setting and maintaining proper biblical standards and encouraging people to engage in a program of discipleship, of pouring out in service for mentoring and guiding people who are

new to the faith and helping them to deal with the battles and the challenges that come from being new Christians. Even if you're coming from another part of the faith and you find Jesus in true reality and place your faith in him really for the first time, even though you were grown up in an institutionally Christian or culturally Christian context, that can be even more challenging in some ways, particularly for the families of those who are going through that transformation and that process. And so everybody is dealing with their own individual baggage. Everything gets brought to the cross. Everything gets put under the blood.

And everything gets removed as far as the east is from the west, as far as our past sins. And this leveling of the playing field, this new birth, this new opportunity, is one of these breaths of fresh air and supernatural thirst-quenching, life-giving water that comes directly from the Lord. This is the bread of life that Jesus will not turn someone away who has placed their faith in him. And yet we have to walk that balancing line where it doesn't mean that Jesus's open and extended hands to everyone implies immediately that once that placing of faith in Jesus has happened, once that salvation has been secured, that there are no ongoing responsibilities, that there's no other transformation that has to take place, because it is only natural when you truly surrender and place your faith in Jesus for

salvation and understand who he is as God and as Lord, for that to have a complete transformative overhaul effect on every aspect of your life. That is what should be expected. But it's not going to be an easy process. It's not going to be an overnight process for everyone. And so we have to be used to expecting a little bit of discomfort. And we need to be asking ourselves these questions and asking, well, if Jesus said that he did not come to call the righteous but sinners, then what do we expect other than if revival is to happen, that there's going to be additional people in the church who many people would look around at and say, well, who are these people and what are they doing here? Look at who they are. Look at their past. Look at what they do. And we need to have the grace to extend to people the same way

that Jesus extended to them a right hand of fellowship and a willingness to come alongside them. It's going to be extremely challenging. And if you are involved in any kind of religious community, in any kind of church, Christian or otherwise, I suppose, you understand that there's always going to be quote-unquote church stuff where there are arrangements and logistics and anything dealing with a human institution that can run contrary in many cases to the direction that the Holy Spirit wants to take things. And people need to know, especially the leaders of a church, when to push in one direction, when to pull in another, how to emphasize things. It's a very challenging job. And when we look at that, it doesn't mean that it's only the institutional leaders of the church who bear that responsibility. It's everyone in every seat, in every meeting who has any connection with the church whatsoever, because it's the people who are involved in the everyday life of

the church who are absolutely critically important in setting the kind of culture, in making an environment welcoming, yet pointing forward to further and additional and future transformations that are possible because of the work of the Holy Spirit. We have to be ready with reasons why we believe. We have to be ready with our testimonies of what God has done in our own lives and what we have seen him do for others. We have to be ready with a report on the power of prayer. We have to understand how to instruct people and how to disciple them, whether formally and officially or on a more casual, interactive, informal basis about how we allow the Holy Spirit to lead us in our own lives and in our own decisions. And so if we are not modeling that,

if we are on autopilot, as many seem to be, if we are just going about the motions but not living a real Christian life, then what can happen to some of these people who encounter Jesus in some way, shape, or form and then enter the religious life of the church only to find that there are still these same kind of problems that they dealt with in their old lives. Problems of betrayal and covetousness and envy and judgment and any number of different sins that can arise. Sins of pride, sins of disbelief, sins of rebellion, all of these different things. sins of rebellion, all of these different things. And I'm speaking to myself here in that if I am going to point this out and try to communicate this message to people, then I have to exemplify this better myself. I have to exemplify this properly. I have to be a good steward of what

the Lord has given me. And if someone comes along and is a new convert and they are given incredible giftings by the Holy Spirit and they exceed me in the faith in many different ways, I have to say yes and amen to that. It is one of those things where I will stand in judgment before my creator on judgment day and before my king and my Lord and my savior and I will give a report for what I did with what he gave me. I'm not in a race with anyone else individually. I am competing and fighting the good fight of faith for the sake of being obedient to the call that the lord has placed specifically on my life and to to that end, I endeavor to read the Bible and to pray and to participate in fellowship and to seek to use my giftings

wherever I can and to try to be generous and hospitable and loving and welcoming. But again, even if we have those kind of objectives, if we do see the revival, and I should speak that with greater faith, when we see the revival that God is owed in this generation, those principles will be tested. There will be challenging situations, and we are going to need to rely on the guidance of the Holy Spirit to tell us when to lean into certain aspects, when to withdraw, when to refer someone to someone else to talk to, just how to handle it. We're just not going to have all of the answers. People are coming in with deep wounds. People are coming in who may, in many cases, need significant deliverance.

may, in many cases, need significant deliverance. People are going to be coming in with flawed worldviews who maybe have some conception of the life of the spiritual, but who have no real exposure to it in the way that they grew up. There's nothing that is a solid foundation there. And as we help people through discipleship and through our efforts, I would just encourage everyone, whether it's inside of your own family, in a church, or whatever community that you're involved with, to handle everything with care. We need to strike the correct balance of boldness and being uncompromising with the word of God while simultaneously being uncompromisingly welcoming and loving to people who are seeking after Jesus and people who the Holy Spirit is drawing into the kingdom. And for one, and this may seem like an obvious point, let us remember

where we were when God found us. And for those of us blessed enough to have been walking with the Lord essentially for the entirety of their waking lives and going through an extended process of sanctification where they can say that I have earnestly sought to pursue the Lord in every season of my life through mountain, through valley, through obstacles, through triumphs, through everything, then I praise God for you. And I am so joyful that you had that experience. And that is not necessarily the case for many of the people who are going to be joining the church, who are going to be joining our family, the family of God, in the days ahead. And so family is complicated, church is complicated, all human institutions are complicated.

And this is why it should be readily obvious to us that the best solution, as it always is, is to defer to what the Bible says and what the Holy Spirit leads us to do. And where the Word of God is strictly underdeterminative for a situation, and even where it's not, we need to pray that the Holy Spirit would give us the faith and the wisdom and the discernment, and would just frankly give us the words. I mean, sometimes it's hard to know what to say, and we can often spend untold amounts of time sort of losing sleep and tossing and turning and thinking over conversations and replies and rebuttals and if this then that cause and effect kind of lines but wouldn't it be better if we could just deliver a script that's given to us by God himself surely God knows what

to say surely the Holy Spirit can lead us into this and And there are promises that, you know, you could go back and forth in debating about how generalized this is, but Jesus tells of a time when people will be brought before magistrates and to not take a care for what they would say because the Holy Spirit would give them the words in that situation. Now, it doesn't seem to me that the best interpretation of that is to say that apart from that very specific predicate, when we are hauled before the government or tribunals for the sake of our testimony, that that's the only situation in which we should rely on the Holy Spirit to give us guidance about what to say. But we need to be careful because when we use our words without thinking, without prayerful consideration, without inviting the Holy Spirit into a conversation, we never know, particularly if we're talking with someone who we are not familiar with, if something we say is going to turn a screw or just poke at a wound that hasn't been resolved yet. And again, this doesn't mean that everything that we do should be kid glove kind of treatment where

everything is coddling. The message for new converts is that welcome to your new life, welcome to the eternal blessing of infinite promises and love and fellowship with God. You are now in the middle of a battle and we are going to help you fight it. That is the most important part of this attitude. It has to be realistic. It has to be authentic to what the Bible teaches. be authentic to what the Bible teaches. And I'm reminded of the writings of Francis Schaeffer, who wrote towards the end of the 20th century and really just emphasized from a worldview perspective that if Christianity is going to stand in any relevant way in the culture,

now we could certainly say that biblical Christianity, people who have orthodox beliefs about the Bible, about Jesus, about God, about creation, about sin, about morality, about prophecy, all of these different things, even where there is some latitude for disagreement about that, we can certainly say that genuine orthodox biblical Christianity is a minority viewpoint in America, even if the nation itself, by polling, would consider itself a Christian by culture in many different ways. So from that perspective, we have to be ready to deliver the truth, to speak in love, to disciple effectively, and to help manage the different situations that can come up without overstepping our bounds, going against what good leadership has instructed us

to do, and all the while using our gifts for the good of the kingdom, especially for those who are new in the kingdom. And so it's a challenging tight rope to walk, but such is the case and such is the way of the narrow path that we are endeavoring down as we pursue the Lord in his fullness, as is the only proper and right ultimate pursuit of all of our lives. And so as we wind things down, again, brothers and sisters, I would encourage you, as you prepare, as you pray for revival, as you pray for God's will to be done, can we ask ourselves, are we really ready for what that looks like? And are we willing to say, even if I think I'm ready for what that looks like, I may not be, and I may not

know exactly what it's going to look like in my own particular situation. And if that is the case, and that's certainly a reasonable conclusion, will we commit ourselves as this new year begins to pray, to seek the face of God, and to ask him to make our hearts tender for the sake of being able to bless new converts in the faith with the right kind of discipleship and the right kind of guidance, the kind of guidance that presents the authentic Christian reality that we are steadfast in our belief in. And if those beliefs need to be strengthened, then I hope that you would continue to pray that the Lord would equip you to have better understanding of these things, to dedicate more time to them, that he would bring about a genuine curiosity for the things of God

and for the things of the faith, whether it's digging deeper into Bible reading, learning under established and well-respected Bible teachers, doing what you need to do to be fully prepared in receiving discipleship so that you can dispense it. And most of all, I pray that And most of all, I pray that we would all seek God for the sake of just allowing the Holy Spirit to lead us, to fill us, to lead us. And that we would have hearts that are ready to yield to the prompting and to the still small voice of the Holy Spirit. Because when a harvest comes in, there is a great deal of tenderness, there is excitement, there is love, but there are also unique challenges that arise as a result of it. So as we think ahead, as we earnestly expect in great anticipation and hope that the Lord is going to win mighty victories in the upcoming time. Would you join me in praying that the Holy Spirit would lead us in all of these things,

that we would understand the right balance that we need to strike? Because it's absolutely critical, and we have to be ready for it. And I pray that the Lord would help us to become ready as we keep a watchful eye and we pursue him every single day, taking further strides along in the faith. And before we close in prayer, I do want to mention again that every year at the beginning of the year, I do a fast for three days. And again, this is for the purpose directly of hearing a word of guidance from the Holy Spirit for the year. My word for this past year was to clean house. And we've applied that in our home in a bunch of different ways. We're still working on others, but I'm expecting the Lord again to deliver on his faithfulness. And I am looking forward very much to this time of fasting and praying and

seeking his face. And so if you haven't yet made that a spiritual discipline, it's not as if it's a special recipe that is going to cure all your ills. But if you are in a position where the Holy Spirit is leading you into something like that, then I pray that you would obey the call of the Lord to doing that. I know that in the almost 10 years that I've been doing this, it has always been such a blessing to me and to my family. And just to know that I'm receiving personal direction from the Lord is, it's just so reassuring. It establishes and firms up that foundation. And it gives me something to anchor my year on. And it's a fantastic way to start out a new calendar year. And this can happen at any point. If you're listening to this in six

months time in the middle of the year, there's no reason why you can't embark on something like that yourself. And so I pray that you would seek the Lord and you would ask him if doing something like this to make a concerted effort in a specific time frame to press into him, to hear from him, to receive what he wants to provide you, what he wants to give you in terms of even transformation and correction as necessary. We all need a bit of that. And we're told to earnestly desire and to love the correction as necessary. We all need a bit of that, and we're told to earnestly desire and to love the correction of God. And so I pray that the Lord would search us, that he would help us, that he would secure us, and that he would prepare us for what is to come. So again, I would encourage you, brothers and sisters, to seek the Lord to see if that kind of approach, regardless of the type of fast or the length or anything else like that,

I pray that you would make it a point to press into the Lord, to hear from him as this new year begins, or whatever time you're listening to this, to be fair. Jesus, you are good. You are wonderful. You are amazing. You are powerful and mighty and glorious and true, and you will rule and reign forever and ever. We pray that your will would be done and that your kingdom would be present within us as you have promised. Give us peace and love and joy in the Holy Spirit and through your Holy Spirit. Help prepare us for the harvest. And as you bring forth laborers and as you bring forth converts and new believers, I pray that your will is done and that the right people would be in the right places at the right time to provide

discipleship and encouragement and prayer support and deliverance and that you would stand ready to minister to the needs of all these precious people, especially those who have been downtrodden and repressed and challenged and just beaten down by this world who will come to you and see you as Savior and understand what that relationship means and not treat it casually and who will be truly set alight by the indwelling of your Holy Spirit. I pray that you would gift them mightily, that you would restore the years that the enemy has taken, that you would heal, that you would deliver, that you would transform, that you would restore the years that the enemy has taken, that you would heal, that you would deliver,

that you would transform, that you would save, that you would provide, that you would protect, that you would be their God and that you would be our God and that we would all look to you, Lord, so that we could fulfill the calling that you have placed on our lives. And we can only do this through the Holy Spirit. Holy Spirit, be present with us. Speak to us. Speak to us and show us through your word and

through prayerful reflection and through your still small voice what it is that you would have us to do to prepare for the year ahead, to move forward in our own lives and to receive from you whatever it is that you have for us. We bless you, Lord. We enter your courts with thanksgiving and we enter your gates with praise. We declare that you are now and forever worthy, worthy, worthy, and that you are holy and righteous and true forevermore. We love you, Jesus. Prepare us for this year as only you know how. In your name, amen.