LIVING ON THE EDGE

A Unique Texas Stadium Memory

As the former home of the Dallas Cowboys comes crashing down tomorrow, a much more important memory will combine with the flattening of the walls to signify life victories in the lives of thousands of men.

Years ago, I was part of a team who prayed for those walls to come down. Not the walls we see, but the spiritual walls we can’t see with our physical eyes. As we counted down the days approaching the Promise Keepers Conference titled Break Down The Walls, we followed Joshua’s example set forth by God in the Bible book of Joshua 6, to march around the fortified city 7 times, not making a sound, but claiming the destruction of walls existing between men… walls of pride, walls of prejudice, walls of hate, walls of indifference, walls of spiritual destruction.

In the days leading up to the PK Conference weekend ‘Game Day’, we marched around Texas Stadium a total of 6 times, saying nothing aloud, obediently making no sound (Joshua 6:10), just praying that God would break down the walls that separated us, and bring a spirit of godly unity, mutual love, commitment, and healing brotherhood in Christ.

Early on Friday morning, Oct 25, 1996, at 6:00am, we gathered in the cool autumn mist for the final victory lap around the stadium. A single trumpet player preceded us (Joshua 6:8,16). A handful of prayer warriors silently made the 8 minute circle around the stadium, accompanied only by the playing of God-honoring songs on the trumpet.

As we completed the lap, the trumpet player took his cue with a loud victorious blast, and our small faithful group shouted at the top of our voices, “God is the Victor,” “He is Lord,” “Praise God”!

Although the visible stadium walls did not budge, we know because of God’s faithfulness and love for His people, and because of our obedience to His commands, those unseen walls came crashing down in the spiritual realm. Hundreds of men humbly gave their lives to Christ. Tens of thousands recommitted to follow God wholeheartedly. Untold thousands of families were healed because of those walls coming down. And the ripple effect is still impacting lives 14 years later.

Tomorrow God will give us a piercing visual reminder of what took place in our hearts that October weekend. If you were part of God’s move of might in those days, or even if you weren’t, let this picture stir you to a renewed abandon to God. Let these collapsing walls encourage you to seek God with your whole heart, and serve Him with your whole life.

Carolyn Webb, Guest Blogger

This blog site has been silent for a long time now because I have wanted it to be a source of encouragement and insight and not just a guy rambling on about stuff. There are too many of those sites out there so today I am trusting God to give me words for you to live by and that will encourage you and speak life into you so you can live life to it’s fullest. Something Jesus promised us when He came to this planet. (John 10:10)

Let me ask you a question. How would you complete this sentence? My number one goal in life is… What’s most important to you? What word or phrase would you use to complete this question?

Is it to be happy or to be a success in your career? Do you want to just have fun? Do you want to be comfortable in life? Is your number one goal just to retire or get married and raise a family? Is it to go on vacation this summer? How would you answer this question?

If you have never thought about it, you need to and you need to understand it because how you answer this question will determine your dominant life principle. We all have a one whether we know it or not.

Every time we need to make a decision, a choice, we access that database and decide what we will do based on our DLP. That thing that is most important to us.

For example if your DLP is to have fun in life and you get two different invitations that day, you tend to choose to do the one that will be the most fun for you because having fun is the most important thing to you.

It is very important we think this question through so we can understand what is our most important value and understand why we do what we do. What’s most important to you?

God has a lot to say about this subject and gives us His thoughts on the issue.

In 1 Corinthians 14:1a Living Bible translation, it says “Let love be your greatest aim.” Or let love be your most important value. Not your status, not success, not stuff, not power, not money. No. Our number one DLP should be LOVE.

When Jesus was asked what He thought the most important commandment was he said “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, and all your soul, and all your mind and all your strength. And love your neighbor as yourself. There are no commands more important than these.” (Mark 12:30-31) Jesus was very clear on what He deemed was most important in life.

Over the next several weeks I will be posting my thoughts about this subject and who knows, we may even discover that God loves us with an extravagant, unconditional love that we can experience daily.

What our families need, our churches need, our communities need, what America needs and what our world needs is not more sermons about love or more love songs or more “love doctors”. No. We need people who genuinely know and understand that… LOVE IS LIFE’S GREATEST AIM.

I have been on vacation for 3 weeks and God reminded me of a previous post that I believe is worth reading again. I will post a new blog later this week but I want to re-post an earlier blog. Enjoy.

“In our quest as church leaders to be relevant, I wonder if the church today is sacrificing “personal holiness” in order to reach the un-churched. It seems as if the more relevant we try to become the less like Christ we appear.

I love the stories of how Jesus would hang out with those non-religious people and thus tick off the churchy folk. But I wonder if he acted and spoke like the non-religious people or did He exemplify a stark contrast to their behavior? (Example: Woman at the well). I tend to believe He was pure in His actions, pure in His speech and pure in His thought. Paul in Ephesians 4:29 teaches us “Do not let any unwholesome talk come out of your mouths, but only what is helpful for building others up according to their needs, that it may benefit those who listen.”

Too often we rebel and think that “holiness” is too churchy and if I act “holy” people will get turned off to our church and/or Jesus. So we go the opposite direction to the point where the non-believer cannot tell any difference in a Christ follower and a non-Christian. We talk like them, act like them, and we laugh at their dirty jokes etc.

Now before you go crazy and start branding me a “holy roller” or a hypocrite, let me remind us that the word “HOLY” simply means to be set apart. (2 Corinthians 6) This does not mean we should be isolated from the world, the un-churched or those who are anti-Christ but rather insulated. Walking in the spirit. It also does not mean we stick our nose in the air like those pious religious people Jesus loved to mess with or those who hung Him on the cross. No. It means we act like, talk like and love like Jesus. We don’t need to sacrifice personal holiness or our fun in order to be relevant.

Jesus in John 12:32 said that all we need to do is make Him known and he would draw all men to himself. So if we are striving to be like Christ in ALL areas of our life, our speech, our actions, our daily walk and make Him famous then people will be drawn to the Christ in us not the fact we are trying to relevant.

Read this for additional study-Matthew 5:13-16