Comments on: We Are Not Ready

By: not perfection

not perfection — Wed, 25 Aug 2004 20:57:00 +0000

Dan, all I can say is we - as individuals - must continue to put our trust in the LORD and turn over control of our lives to him. We must surrender everything and put Jesus first. If we do, we trust that He will do his will and provide the direction we need. God bless you.

By: steph

steph — Mon, 23 Aug 2004 17:14:00 +0000

Like the voice of one crying in the wilderness…it is a reality that our “fast food nourished” Church is so starving they have lost their taste and ability to digest the truth of it all.
Oh how right you are - we are not ready, but we are aware. I fear my own shallowness yet my soul seeks depth. Like King David said - search my heart, know it and show me the stuff that needs to be garbaged so I can walk in The Way everlasting. That means walking through the fire. We need to have Daniel’s lifestyle to face the lions that have rattled their cages enough and the locks will soon fall off.

By: Dan Edelen

Dan Edelen — Sat, 21 Aug 2004 21:02:00 +0000

David,

Sometimes I feel like I am screaming into a gale. I talk about developing an underground economy for Christians and get met with yawns. I talk about being less private in our lives and then I hear plenty of people say they don’t want their phone number listed in the church directory. I share how we are too disconnected from the Lord and each other to have the strong community we need to keep us from being picked off one by one, but then I find I cannot get a half dozen people together because everyone has filled their schedules to the max—maybe sometime eight months from will work. I ask what is wrong with Christians seeking to hire the unemployed Christian brothers and sisters in their own churches, but then people say that is no one responsibility but the unemployed.

It’s madness.

Some people are starting to get it, but how they want to implement solutions becomes the veritable band-aid on the severed limb. People who do have good ideas simply don’t want to hear that those ideas are just a start and can be improved upon and expanded, especially when they have thousands of dollars invested in trying to sell those ideas via conferences and books.

We have to start thinking and acting like a persecuted church. We have got to develop a mentality that if you open our mouth to speak of Jesus, someday you will find someone else’s foot in it. Persecuted churches in communist and Islamic countries make us feel good that at least somewhere Christians are being tried for their faith, even if we currently are not in America. But how quickly the tide will turn to include us! We cannot count on politics to change this. The other side of our pet issues plays dirty—they always have. We can hold off things a decade or two at best, but better to be prepared than to have it catch us sleeping. Personally, I think we’ve gone long past the sleep stage and have drifted into something even deeper.

We are not ready.

By: not perfection

not perfection — Sat, 21 Aug 2004 19:37:00 +0000

Dan, I had these kinds of thoughts in morning meditation today and wanted to banish them (live in a little denial). My version went, “it’s too late; turning it back to God is coming too late; we’re losing the battles because we don’t deserve to win; we’ve grown complacent and undisciplined in faith; it’s too late.”

Your post seems to be a message from the Holy Spirit not to neglect this point of view, but to address it in my own walk of faith.

Blessings and prayers,