Beyond Ordinary

One would tend to think that people are born great but birth is a great leveler. Although people are born with different backgrounds, settings, and into different stations of life, they come into this world with no achievements or personally earned credentials. It is when they begin to grow and to flex their muscles - both inwardly and outwardly - that they begin the processes that affect their destiny - and, quite possibly, ours!

Before God can move in a generation or a society, He often is forced to permit or to cause a great social, political, moral, or economic vacuum. When things are going well, people become complacent in their spiritual lives. It is in a time of crisis that they rise up out of the ordinary to do extraordinary things.

God has the power to turn a young shepherd boy into a giant killer and later a king. He can take the baby of a slave and raise him up to confound a pharaoh by delivering a nation of slaves from his bondage. He has the power to changing simple fishermen into fiery evangelists - impacting a generation with the gospel.

Every generation has must reach itself with the gospel. Even through great spiritual heritages can be left by a previous generation, the current can quickly become passive or degenerate into spiritual stagnation. The tides of revival that may flood a continent can quickly recede into isolated pools disconnected from each other and the lost world.

Faith and faithfulness thrives in critical times. Ordinary people are raised up to do super-ordinary things when the faith of others lags, Satan's hoards threaten, and the social/moral standards of an age ferment. We live in such an age. Although great churches abound and the gospel is advanced, there is an encroaching spiritual vacuum that threatens every step we take. The ranks of truly faithful people are depleted by the seducer whose greatest desire is to decimate and to render impotent the body of Christ.

Spirits of violence, moral decay, and satanic deception are infiltrating our society and threatening our youth. Among churches, the big get bigger but will not get better unless there is breaking up of the fallow ground. Until the preachers, "the ministers of the Lord, weep between the porch and the altar, and let them say, Spare thy people, O Lord, and give not your heritage to reproach, that the heathen should rule over them: wherefore should they say among the people, Where is their God?" (Joel 2:17).

Ordinary people are changed into giants of faith when they have hearts that are given wholly to God, raising them up to greatly impact a society, to give leadership in turbulent times, and to be channels of living water in times of spiritual drought. When there are those who have a heart for God that supercedes any other priority in life, the ordinary will rise up with super-ordinary power and authority - taking our land for Christ.

Jeff