Our soul waits for the Lord.  He is our help and our shield.  Psalms 33:20

 

Offer to God thanksgiving, and pay your vows to the Most High.  Call upon Me in the day of trouble; I will deliver you, and you shall glorify Me.  Psalms 50:14-15

 

Good morning everyone.  God never promises life would be fair, but He does promise His help, strength and victory would come to those who will call upon His name and wait for Him.  In Psalms 50 ‘calling’ out to Him gives the idea of loudly accosting someone, crying out repeatedly to them to get their attention until they cannot help but listen to you.  In Psalms 33 ‘waiting’ upon the Lord means digging a ditch and entrenching yourself there until the Lord comes to deliver you out of all your troubles.  In this day when so many are running about in a whirlwind of busyness and over scheduled activities we desperately need to stop everything, entrench ourselves, continuously ‘cry out’ to the Lord until He rises up and comes to rescue us with great deliverances.  Everywhere I turn I find the people of God ‘crying out’, but sadly most of them are not ‘crying out’ to the Lord.  Instead they are voicing their discouragement over their finances, their jobs, their health, their churches, their families, the state of our nation and the possibilities of their declining future.  LISTEN TO WHAT THE LORD SAYS!  If we will ‘CALL’ upon Him, cry out to Him, accost Him with our pleadings and entrench ourselves until He comes, then He will DELIVER US and bring us out to a place wherein we glorify Him. 

 

Some of you would say, ‘Brother Jerry, you don’t understand’.  That’s not true.  I fully understand how life can be really, really hard at times.  In the past two weeks we received word one of our dear brothers in Christ, a long time supporter and friend of EPIC, lost his battle with cancer.  A great personal loss.  Then we received a call about an earthquake in India wherein seven churches in our network were completely destroyed.  Another great loss.  While praying through these situations I received a phone call from a pastor who is one of my most trusted friends and personal accountability partners.  In a broken voice he related that his only son had tragically taken his own life that morning.  His son was also his worship leader.  In the meantime we were dealing with several serious issues in people’s lives at The FORT as well as the Alliance.  Then just when you thought things couldn’t escalate I received a call from my only son who has been living for years in rebellion to the Lord and His Word.  For the last fourteen years Donna and I have continuously compromised our stance and beliefs with his rebellious lifestyle for fear we would not be allowed to see the grandkids.  I had just recently made it clear to my son and both my daughters we would not be willing to cross that line of compromise again, no matter the cost to us personally.  The gospel is free to all who would receive Jesus as their Lord and Savior, but it is costly to those who choose to live for God.  My son’s last words to me were, ‘I will never contact you again and you are not allowed to ever contact or see the grandkids again’.  There were many tears that followed, but as we entrenched ourselves and began ‘calling’ upon the Lord the Spirit of God came and rescued our wounded hearts.  Yeah God! 

 

Then just yesterday yet another call came from another pastor in Pennsylvania who I deeply love and am honored to be mentoring.  One of their church families was in a head on collision on the way to church yesterday morning.  One of their three children was killed and another one is in critical condition.  The man who hit them escaped, stole another vehicle, then proceeded to have another head on collision with another family killing another person and then escaped again.  As you can see life isn’t always fair, but God is still Sovereign and still able to do the impossible to those who will ‘cry out’ to Him and entrench themselves until He comes.

 

The Lord has shown me that many of you are being leveraged in your heart by the enemy and have unwantingly allowed compromise into your lives.  The yoke of slavery and fear the enemy has placed around your wounded and discouraged heart has too often come through the conduit of family and friends.  They have wickedly used your love and commitment to them as leverage to get you to compromise your love and obedience to Christ.  Leverage leads to manipulation which leads to compromise.  Compromise ushers in control which brings forth bondage.  Bondage always leads to slavery and slavery in this regards is deadly.  My word to you today is, ‘Cry out to the Lord!’  ‘Entrench yourself and don’t move’ until He comes and delivers you with a shout of triumph.  If He did it for me, He will certainly do it for you.