God's Got It

 

 

Are you one who believes in fate or do you believe in coincidence? Do you view the world as a series of random events that chaotically intersect, sometimes producing positive outcomes and sometimes negative? Or do you believe that things happen for a reason; that events, even some that seem small, are part of a master plan? If you are believer and have witnessed God’s hand at work, I hope you believe that He is in control, that He has a plan, and that He is working that plan. He is working out everything for His purposes and He is using His ways to accomplish His will.

 

Psalm 115:3 says, “Our God is in heaven; He does all that He pleases.”

 

God is sovereign and God does what He wants to do. He is good, so what He does is always good. God’s sovereign will always glorifies Him, accomplishes His purposes, and benefits us.

 

Proverbs 16:4 says, “The Lord has made everything for its purpose, even the wicked for the day of trouble.”

 

God makes everything, people, and circumstances, for His purposes. God uses even things that are meant for evil for His purpose. The cross is an example.

 

Raise the Roof and Remove the Walls is about believing in the sovereignty of God and living our lives knowing He is in control.

 

Joel 2:28-29 says, “And it shall come to pass afterward, that I will pour out My Spirit on all flesh; your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, your old men shall dream dreams, and your young men shall see visions. Even on the male and female servants in those days I will pour out My Spirit.”

 

God poured out His Spirit on His people to indwell us at Pentecost. God at times, out of His sovereign grace, gives us periods of special outpourings of the Holy Spirit.

 

Habakkuk 3:2 says, “O Lord, I have heard the report of You, and Your work, O Lord, do I fear. In the midst of the years make it known; in wrath remember mercy.”

 

Habakkuk is telling God that he knows Him and that he knows of His great work, what He has done in the past and he asks Him to do it again. He is asking God to revive and awaken His people.

 

We live in a nation and a world that is fallen and broken and evil. The church needs to be revived and our nation needs to have a spiritual awakening.

 

Raise the Roof and Remove the Walls is about seeing the world as fallen and broken and looking to Jesus as the only way for it to be saved and restored.

 

February is a month where we pray for colleges and universities. The National Collegiate Day of Prayer was on February 23 and was hosted by Asbury University. The Asbury University that on February 8 received an outpouring of the Holy Spirit. Is this just lucky or good planning on the part of humans? No, it was the plan of a sovereign God who does what He wants to do, when He wants to do it, and how He wants to do it.

 

Raise the Roof and Remove the Walls is about knowing that circumstances don’t just happen but that Jesus is working His plan to accomplish His will.

 

Matthew 9:17 says, “Neither is new wine put into old wineskins. If it is, the skins burst and the wine is spilled and the skins are destroyed. But new wine is put into fresh wineskins, and both are preserved.”

 

I see what God is doing right now and who He is pouring out His Spirit on, a young generation. It is not going to look like other outpourings of the Holy Spirit, because what God wants to do now is different than what He has done in the past. The needs of this young generation are different than previous generations.

 

New wine expands so the rigid old wineskins are going to burst. God is doing a new thing that some of our old rigid church structures will not hold. So, we need to be open to having new structures in God’s church to hold the new thing His is doing in a new generation. God is all about doing new things.

 

Isaiah 43:19 says “Behold, I am doing a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it? I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert.”

 

Raise the Roof and Remove the Walls is about trusting God to do a new thing and letting Him to do a new thing in us.

 

I want to encourage you to pray that God would in His grace grow this outpouring of the Holy Spirit to spread throughout our nation and throughout the world.

 

Praying To God To Do a New Thing

and Raising the Roof and Removing the Walls.

Joe