on Faith, Hope & Love

This past Sunday I spoke at The Canopy on God's invitation to become History Makers. For me it was a message all about faith hope and love and here's why: it takes real faith and hope to believe in any substantial way that we can be 'history makers'.

I didn't say this on Sunday, but all through the previous night and all that morning I was really struggling against a strong attack of depression type feelings. Lots of discouragement and temptations to give up. On Sunday morning I did not want to preach, and I wrestled hard with the irony of the fact that I was about to proclaim something that I have not had much success at living out recently. Where I was at on Sunday morning was emotionally quite different from what I was saying; yet I was able to speak it because I knew in my head that it was truth and that God was stirring inside me. So that's a bit of the internal war that was being waged.

I believe that this message is resisted and fought against a great deal by the enemy. The level of discouragement I felt on Saturday night and Sunday morning was certainly unusual and it was pretty easy to recognize, at least on a mental level, what was going on.

In recent weeks, I've been sensing the Lord beginning to stir some things in me again... some old things, old dreams, old longings. These stirrings are difficult because they require hope to be rekindled in my heart. There's always hope in me, because of the work of the Spirit (Rms. 15:13) but I've realized recently that there is different hope for different things. So God is stirring me to hope again in certain areas and for certain things.

Things like revival in our time, a great release of the Holy Spirit in my generation, God raising up The Canopy and awakening a deep passionate love for Jesus within The Canopy; hope for radical holiness, sacrificial giving, miracles, healings and large numbers of people being saved.

There's a lot of rhetoric around those ideas and they make a nice sermon and people cheer about them, but it takes something to hold those things in you heart. There's a cost involved. There's the pain of hope deferred. It's one thing to cheer on Sunday when those topics are mentioned, but it's entirely another to hold those things, in hope, in your heart for years and years. This is why Hebrews 11:2 is so huge for me right now: "This is what the ancients were commended for." That verse is just shouting at me these days! They were commended by GOD! Why? Because they held things in their hearts for years and years, decade after decade and still had hope and faith for them!

God is being very gracious to me. As Kevin Prosch sings, "He saw that I had missed the stirring of the waters" and He's helping me by bringing some healing to me and inviting me back to faith, hope and love.

When the song History Maker came out, I was gripped by it because it gave expression to a lot of what I hoped for. For several years I was impacted by that song. Then over time, it began to fade somewhat in my heart. Not entirely, but the burden of hope deferred wore it down somewhat. Now God is working on me afresh and I realize again my need for faith hope and love.

For anyone who wasn't able to be there on Sunday, I'm including a copy of the message I spoke. I preached the message because I believe that it's part of what God is doing within The Canopy right now. I feel that he is not only awakening hope and faith in me in a new way, but that He is wanting to do that (and is doing that) in The Canopy.

So if you're able to spend a few minutes, give it a listen. I've edited it down slightly, so it's about 42 min.