Revival | Real Life on Rocky Top

It is Well with My Soul!

Aug 28 2017

It’s been awhile since I have sat on the back porch up on Rocky Top to write. Truthfully, I have been terrified of what would come out as I hit the keys on my laptop.

If you have been with me since the beginning of this blog, you know I am REAL. What does that mean? I don’t play games or try and pretend all is well when it is not well.

Protests took place in Rocky Top city this weekend. My son and his wife are in Houston as Hurricane Harvey dumps rain on the already saturated earth. Parents are hurting because their young son has been diagnosed with brain cancer.

I returned from a land just a few weeks ago where floods, hurricanes, or protests would have been welcome disasters. I sat in a room as two precious sisters in the Lord shared how their husbands had been tragically killed for their faith. Yet, these women sang praises to Jesus and lifted up His name.

Perspective is always an antidote for self-pity.

As many of you know, Preacher resigned as senior pastor at First Baptist Concord last week. It was an agonizing decision. His words on Sunday, August 20 will ring in my head for a long time, “I love this church. Yet, I love Jesus more. We must be obedient to His call on our lives.”

On Monday, September 11 we will begin to serve Life Action Ministries as missionaries to America and the world. Life Action is a ministry filled with many wonderful people who daily sacrifice so much to see our nation turn their hearts toward God.

At sixteen years of age I walked down the aisle of a church and told the pastor God was calling me to missions. In God’s graciousness, He knew it would take forty years, give or take a few, to prepare my heart to totally accept this call. What can I say except that I am a slow learner.

The mission statement of Life Action ministries is to ignite Christ-centered movements of authentic Christianity that displays the gospel and fulfills the Great Commission.

Our nation is sick. The answer is Jesus. Churches in our nation are in desperate need of revival. Revival is not a week-long set of meetings with guest preachers. Revival occurs when a dead heart comes back to life and determines to follow Christ at all costs. Revival happens when a church body decides to care more about the lost than their own personal preferences. Preacher and I must be obedient to His call of revival on our lives.

Real life on Rocky Top will continue. Preacher and I will still call this home as long as the Lord allows.

What I want you to know is “It is Well With My Soul.”

Many tears have been shed as Preacher and I sought God’s direction for our lives. Change is not easy, especially as we age. When comfort is longed for, God challenges us with change. A true disciple of Christ never becomes “comfortable.”

Paul in the New Testament is the ultimate example of one who followed Christ. Over and over we see Paul making ministry decisions not based on what was best for himself or what was comfortable for him. In Philippians 1:12 Paul clearly emphasized that everything in his life, the good and the bad, was about the advancement of the gospel.

When change comes, the question is not “What does this mean for me?” but “What does this mean for His kingdom?”

Preacher and I are just God’s servants. Our desire is to simply advance His kingdom.

So dear readers, from my heart to yours “It is Well With My Soul.”

Allow any change, difficulty, or hardship to bring Glory to the King and advance His Kingdom!

Which Step Will You Take This Year?

Dec 31 2016

As the New Year comes in tonight, I welcome my friend, Kristi Nolan to the back porch on Rocky Top. Kristi’s challenge was very personal to me! I truly believe “obedience” is the key to our churches experiencing revival as well as our nation experiencing spiritual awakening.

“The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.” Lao-Tzu

We’re on the cusp of a new year…..one year is passing away and some are ready to bid it farewell-don’t let the door hit you on the way out. For many 2016 was a year that brought more than its share of bad news; while for others, 2016 was a year of new adventures and milestone events. 2016, like most every year, has a mixed bag of success and failure, joy and sorrow, peaks and valleys. As we prepare for a new year, we often make goals for things we want to do or not do, choose differently, choose better – make a fresh start, a new beginning. For many of us, that means we start reading Genesis.

This week as I read through the familiar stories that always bring fresh insight, I was reminded of the steps we take with God. I was reading about Abraham and how when he set out from his home he chose to take his nephew Lot with him, neglecting the portion of God’s call that said to “go from your country and your kindred…”. That one step of disobedience leads to great devastation. When the herds and flocks of Lot and Abraham become too large to be contained within the land where they had settled, Abraham wisely proposed that they spread out. He offered Lot first choice, and that’s when Lot makes his first step towards devastation. “And Lot lifted up his eyes and saw that the Jordan Valley was well watered everywhere like the garden of the Lord, like the land of Egypt….Abram settled in the land of Canaan, while Lot settled among the cities of the valley and moved his tent as far as Sodom. Now the men of Sodom were wicked, great sinners and against the Lord.” (Genesis 13:10-12)

Lot chose to pitch his tent on the outskirts of immorality – not in it, just outside of it. And the ramifications of this decision would be devastating. Lot would eventually offer up his own daughters to the wicked men of Sodom in an effort to protect the angels of the Lord. He would lose his wife as she chose to turn and gaze upon the city as it burned. And ultimately his legacy was forever affected as his daughters, who had been raised around such immorality, decided that it wasn’t a bad idea to get their own father drunk and lie with him in order to conceive and preserve the family name. I’ll just leave that right there for a minute…………

One simple step of partial obedience by Abraham and Lot’s one step made out of selfishness, led to tragic decisions for his entire family.

I’ve heard before “Draw the line that you will not cross, not to see how close you can get to it without crossing, but to stay as far away from the line as possible.” This example in Scripture demonstrates the truth of that – his tent was pitched on the edge, yet the immorality absorbed his family.

The journey of a thousand miles – one step of disobedience leading to devastation or one step of obedience leading to redemption. Which step will you take this year?

Was Sunday Real? or Was It Just Emotion?

Aug 28 2015

Ok…….let’s be real with each other. It is the middle of the week after a Sunday in which the Lord really moved in my heart and in many other’s hearts. I dealt with some personal sin in my own life. I prayed and called out for the Lord on behalf of my family, my church, my friends, our nation, and our world as Preacher led us. I sang at the top of my lungs………”There is Power in the Name of Jesus to break every chain.” P I fell on my knees in brokenness and stood up to walk in His freedom, joy, and forgiveness.

But now it is the middle of the week and some of those chains are rattling in front of me. I see them and I hear them. The enemy is taunting me and the feeling is fading. So what do I do???

Preacher said, “Revival is renewed passion to know Christ, love Christ, share Christ and serve Christ!” So I decided to………

Run to the Word! The best way to know Christ is to be in His word. To read it, study it, memorize it. There is no shortcut on this. If you don’t choose to run to His word, well you might as well just quit reading this blog right now. So I ran to His word and the Lord began to teach me even more about Revival and how to sustain it in my own life. Here are some practical things that the Lord said to me through thru the following verse:

“The Lord God is my strength, and he will make my feet like hinds’ feet, and he will make me to walk upon my high places. To the chief singer on my stringed instruments.” Habakkuk 3:19

Make sure He is my Master. The word “God” in Habakkuk 3:19 is “Adonai” which means “Master”. Unless He is my Master in every area of life…..meaning I choose to obey Him every time He speaks to me ……..He will not be my strength. When I was a little child, I was told that when God speaks to you that you should take the first step in obedience and then His strength will carry you through. I know this is truth for every directive He has ever given me………from choosing to hold my tongue to moving across the country to serve Him in a new ministry. The first step is my obedience, and then His power enables me!

Acknowledge my high places and REPENT! High places aren’t fun, pretty places. In the Old Testament “high places” referred to where people sacrificed to idols. Many times people sacrificed their own children on high places. High places are strongholds of sin in my life. A stronghold is the area of your life that the enemy has a grip on; an area that the enemy can count on your response. It can be an addiction to food, alcohol, drugs, approval, gossip, anger, greed, shopping, pride, laziness, self-centeredness and the list goes on and on. God’s power can’t enable you to walk on your high places unless you are willing to acknowledge you have them. If I excuse my “sin” because of anything or anyone, then the chains can’t be broken. One can’t repent and turn from sin unless, one acknowledges and agrees with God that it is sin.

Have the feet of a doe! Yep, that’s what the Lord said. Hind’s feet are the feet of a female deer. I believe God specifically used “hind’s feet” for a reason. The feet of a male and female deer are different! As I researched this some experts say that a doe can go higher than a buck because they are more agile and because their feet are different. One study said that doe’s nails are longer so they can grip the rocks better and therefore are more agile in rocky environments. The Lord doesn’t want strongholds in our lives to pulls us down or weigh us down. He wants to give us hind’s feet to move powerfully and effectively through them.

Worship! Habakkuk, the prophet, began chapter 3 with a musical term “shigionoth”…… a musical term that meant to sing with delirious joy. The prophet closes chapter 3 by reminding us about worship. Worship when the chains are rattling! Worship means to declare God’s worth. Fill your heart, your mind, your life with music which glorifies Him. Speak words of His worth! The moment I begin to sing His praise, the noise of the rattling chains disappears.

And finally Serve others and Share Christ…..Revival is only revival as Preacher says when it leaves the church building. So this week when I began to “lose the feeling” I asked the Lord to put others in my path that I could serve and share Christ’s love with. After having several opportunities to just love on others, God begin to fill me with His joy.

So up on Rocky Top I have seen a lot of deer. I haven’t been quick enough to snap a picture of one.

But a dear friend of mine has! She actually took the above picture of a doe on my high place…..yep right outside my window. See that precious doe peeking up over the rocky top! When she sent me this picture I had so much joy in my heart. Thank you Lord that you will send Your power into my life to walk right through any stronghold/high place in my life if I will just run to your Word, acknowledge you as my master, worship you and then love and serve others!!!

Sunday was REAL! “There’s an army rising up……to break every chain, break every chain.”

Tag - Revival