Back in the 1990’s a friend of mine pioneered church in Liberty, Missouri called Desperation Church.
In 1995 Marie Barnett wrote the song Breathe, the chorus says, “I’m desperate for you.”
Searching the music libraries of CCLI, there are at least 50 songs with the word “desperate” in the title.
In 2004 a television series began called Desperate Housewives.
In a recent article on MSN Money the title was Desperate Times, Desperate People.
To be desperate means to have a great desire for someone or something. Often times the desperation comes because they have lost hope because the situation is so intense or the outcome seems bleak or because there is urgency in the need.
Many, if not most of you here tonight have a rising desperation in your heart for more. More of what? More of God.
You want God to move in your life, in your families lives, in your friends. You want to see God move like never before.
I am convinced that the more we turn to God and to His Word and the more we make our relationship with Him our top priority the more we are going to see God move in our lives as individuals, and in our families, and even in our church.
There are too many people in our churches today who want to follow Jesus and yet they reject the Bible.
That is not desperation. That is separation!
We cannot afford this separation. We need to turn ourselves back to God and allow the Holy Spirit to fill our lives!
The first church that sprung up after Jesus death, resurrection and ascension into heaven was a Pentecostal church. It was a church that was desperate to know Christ and the power of His resurrection.
Their desperation turned into transformation. They became a church that was not ashamed of the Good News. They were not afraid to let God move. They did not care what others thought. They were not afraid of the change that was taking place.
God is in the business of transformation. He wants to see lives changed. He wants to see His creation saved, restored, set free, healed, and provided for.
We need this in the church today!
We need this in Bismarck, ND!
We need this in Prairie Family Church!
Desperation that turns into transformation.
Men and women we need to turn back to God. We need to allow Him into our services. We need to allow Him in our homes. We need to allow Him into our work places and into our schools. We need to stop following the ways of the enemy and we need to be desperate for God!
We need pastors in the pulpits who are there to turn people to the cross, not solve their problems.
That is the kind of pastor I want to be. I was not called to Bismarck to solve the communities’ problems.
I was called to Bismarck to bring people to the cross so they will bend their knees to the King of king and the Lord of lords and so they can hear the Voice of God clearly for themselves.
If we don’t become desperate for Him and allow His power to transform our lives then we are going to miss out on His blessings and we are going to see thousand die and go to hell because we failed to be desperate for Him.
I want to be desperate for Him? Do you?
If we are going to be desperate for Him then we are going to need to take our relationship with Him up a notch or two.
We have discussed this in the past few months. It has been an underlying theme to my messages.
At the risk of your reputation in this town or your neighborhood, at the risk of people at your work or your school, or your friends calling you a Jesus freak we need to take our commitment to God through Jesus to higher levels.
What does that mean?
It means being more of what He wants us to be.
It means studying the Word of God more, praying more, worshipping more.
It means witnessing more.
It means loving more.
It means forgiving more.
It means reaching out from these walls more.
It means allowing the Holy Spirit full reign of your life.
It means being transformed by the renewing of your mind.
It means being a part of the world but not living according to the worlds standards but living according to the Word of God.
It means being desperate for more of God so we can be transformed because transformation is why God sent Jesus to the earth.
To be sure, we are living in desperate times and we need to be desperate people.
Pray
Father,
Open my eyes so I can see Your truth.
Open my ears so I can hear Your voice.
Open my mind so I can understand Your Word.
And open my heart so I may receive all that You want me to receive.
Help me to be desperate for you, so I may be transformed by you.
AMEN
Our main Scripture today is found in the Gospel of Matthew.
2 When John, who was in prison, heard about the deeds of the Messiah, he sent his disciples 3 to ask him, “Are you the one who is to come, or should we expect someone else?”
4 Jesus replied, “Go back and report to John what you hear and see: 5 The blind receive sight, the lame walk, those who have leprosy are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the good news is proclaimed to the poor. 6 Blessed is anyone who does not stumble on account of me.”
7 As John’s disciples were leaving, Jesus began to speak to the crowd about John: “What did you go out into the wilderness to see? A reed swayed by the wind? 8 If not, what did you go out to see? A man dressed in fine clothes? No, those who wear fine clothes are in kings’ palaces. 9 Then what did you go out to see? A prophet? Yes, I tell you, and more than a prophet. 10 This is the one about whom it is written: “‘I will send my messenger ahead of you, who will prepare your way before you.’
11 Truly I tell you, among those born of women there has not risen anyone greater than John the Baptist; yet whoever is least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he. 12 From the days of John the Baptist until now, the kingdom of heaven has been subjected to violence, and violent people have been raiding it. Matthew 11:2-12 NIV
What’s going on here? Jesus is doing what He came to the earth to do.
He was restoring the sight of the blind, He was making the lame to walk, He was curing people of leprosy, dead people were coming to life, and the message of God’s redemption was being preached.
Jesus was the real deal!
But John and John’s disciples had some questions.
According Matthew Henry’s Commentary, “Some think that John sent this inquiry for his own satisfaction.”
The thought is that John may have needed a strengthening of his faith while he was in prison. Matthew Henry says, “The remaining unbelief of good men may sometimes, in an hour of temptation; call in question the most important truths.”
Hopefully that was not the case. Hopefully John only desired to have it strengthened and confirmed.
Others believe that John sent his disciples to Christ for their satisfaction. And what does Jesus do? He points them to what they heard and saw. Jesus was gracious and compassionate to the poor. He was bringing to the world the tender mercies of our God.
Tonight I want to examine the correlation between John’s situation and life today.
John was the last Old Testament prophet and was the ordained forerunner of the Savior.
John shook people up. He announced the coming of the kingdom of God and he was unorthodox in his methods. There were extraordinary circumstances in his birth, he dressed different and ate weird things.
John was a different sort of man, who was a cut above the rest. He attracted thousands of people by his message. It was a message that challenged the ritualism and legalism of the religious establishment.
He fearlessly preached about faith and righteous standards. He never compromised when it came to the truth of God.
Why was John the way he was? John was desperate for more of God. John knew who Jesus was but some around him were skeptical.
How does that relate to us today? There are too many people in our churches today who want to follow Jesus and yet they reject the Bible. This makes for desperate households.
These people sit back and wonder what the Pastor is up to. They question the message; they question the direction of the church. Some just stop coming to church altogether.
Then when God starts to move and things start to happen, those people are wondering if this is God. They are like John’s disciples. They just aren’t sure and they aren’t sure because they have a lack of knowledge.
The prophet Hosea prophesied about this very thing. 5 You stumble day and night, and the prophets stumble with you. So I will destroy your mother— 6 my people are destroyed from lack of knowledge. “Because you have rejected knowledge, I also reject you as my priests; because you have ignored the law of your God, I also will ignore your children. 7 The more priests there were, he more they sinned against me; they exchanged their glorious God for something disgraceful. Hosea 4:5-7 NIV
This has been going on for the past 110 years.
In 1901 the Holy Spirit came to Topeka, Kansas and instantly controversy arose.
On April 18, 1906 the Los Angeles Times reported about the outpouring of the Holy Spirit on Azusa Street in LA. They called it weird, fanatical, irreverent, mad, and wild.
The people who experience the Holy Spirit knew it was real and that it was from God but others could not be convinced. And from that time people have been doing the same thing, when God moves that don’t know if it is God or something else.
Where is that going to lead us as a church?
48% of my grandparent’s generation was Bible believing Christians.
35% of my parent’s generation (the Baby Boomers) are Bible believing Christians.
17% of my generation is Bible believing Christians.
If that trend was to continue, out of all the people born after 1984 which includes my 3 daughters, only 4% would be Bible believing Christians.
From my grandparents to today there has been a 30% reduction in those who are truly Born Again in the USA.
Who will be left by 2018? Which is the same year Israel will have been a nation for 70 years. That is a significant date because the number 70 always carries significance in the Bible.
Fortunately that trend seems to be changing in the world!
According to Philip Jenkins, author and professor at Penn State University, there is an explosive growth of Christianity in the world. He states that in Africa, Asia and Latin America alone the number of Christians in the world by 2025 could be over 1 billion and 3 billion by 2050.
By that time, if the Lord has not returned yet, only 1/5 of the worlds Christians would be from North America or England.
He also believes that 1 billion of those in 2050 who are Born Again will be Spirit filled Christians.
By the way, the second fast religion in the world today is the Muslim religion and there are currently 1 billion of them in the world.
What does this say to us who live in America? It says to me that we need to be desperate for God so that He will transform us into what we are supposed to be so that we can reach the lost for Christ. America needs to wake up!
We need to be a church that is transformed by His power so that we can grow through people coming to know Christ as their Savior.
We should not be satisfied with church hopper growth. That is people coming to PFC from other churches. There may be some of that growth, but our true growth must come from people giving their hearts to Jesus Christ.
We need to reach the lost.
We need to reach the young people in our community.
We need to reach the families in our community who think their possessions are more important than their eternity.
We need to reach those who think their entertainment is more important that God.
We need to reach those in the bars.
We need to reach those who are into all sorts of immorality.
While the rest of the world is coming to Christ we need to make sure that the church in America doesn’t fall behind!
Right now in America the locusts are devouring the land. In the book of Joel 1:3-5 the prophet tells about how the locust will come to devour the land and leave nothing.
That is what is exactly happening in America today. The locusts are devouring the spiritual land and the devil is trampling on our morals and on our standards.
So what do we as a church need to do about this?
First, we need a church today that is going to have the rising desperation of John the Baptist. Why do I say that? What did John the Baptist do? He ate the locust! That which came to destroy was eaten up by the man of God.
John wasn’t afraid to preach what he believed.
He wasn’t afraid to step on the toes of the religious.
He wasn’t afraid about being different then the norm.
He wasn’t afraid to give his life for his God.
John wasn’t afraid to eat the locust. The significance of John eating the locust is that he was not willing to let the locust leave the land dry and as a desert.
Because John was the way he was many labeled him as weird, fanatical, irreverent, mad and wild.
That is how they label Pentecostals today. We raise our hands when we sing, we don’t use hymnals, we repeat the chorus too many times, and we shout hallelujah and praise the Lord and say AMEN when the pastor says something good. We believe the Holy Spirit is for today, we believe in divine healing, we believe that Jesus died for our sins, we believe that the Word of God is infallible and a guide for life and they call us weird, fanatical, irreverent, mad and wild.
We need to stop worrying about the labels people put on us as Christians and start living our lives with a desperation to be more like Christ so that we can experience His transformation.
Secondly, we need to allow God to fully immerse each of us with His power. We need to go deep with God!
The Greek word for immerse is baptizo and it means to dip repeatedly, to submerge, to cleanse by dipping or submerging, to wash, to make clean with water, to wash one’s self, bathe, or to overwhelm.
I believe today the church needs a fresh baptism or immersion in the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is the power of God which is available to all of His children today.
That same Holy Spirit that came to the believers in Acts 2 is still available to us today.
John Arnott, founder of the Toronto Airport Christian Fellowship once said, “You can’t overdose on the Holy Ghost!”
When the Holy Spirit comes into the life it takes the place of all the bad stuff that is in there. The more we allow the Holy Spirit to be in our lives the better it gets.
Why is it that there are so many people in our churches today who believe in Jesus but struggle with the Word of God? It is because they are not being led by the Spirit of God. Because they struggle the stop living like children of God and start living like children of the devil.
The Apostle Paul tells us in Galatians, 16 So I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh. 17 For the flesh desires what is contrary to the Spirit, and the Spirit what is contrary to the flesh. They are in conflict with each other, so that you are not to do whatever you want. 18 But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the law.
Galatians 5:16-18 NIV
Paul is writing to the Galatians about being under the law. They were trying to merit God’s favor by doing the deeds of the Law, rather than resting in His grace. Paul calls them fools for attempting to live and think this way. Paul explains that if we are led by the Sprit we will not gratify our sinful desires, but if we live by the law, we will not be successful.
Next week we will discuss what it means to be led by the Spirit of God.
But before we get there I have to ask tonight, are you desperate for more of God? Are you ready to go deep with God? Are you willing to fully immerse yourself in His power?
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