Grace Thoughts

Guest (Male): Hello friends, welcome to Grace Thoughts, the radio ministry of Grace Connection Church with Pastor Tim Kelley. Grace Thoughts has been dedicated to preaching a clear gospel of grace for over 20 years. Here is Pastor Kelley.

Number two: the next point, after you hear a burden, guarantee there will be warfare. A dear friend of mine, this was years ago now, I'll never forget it. We had a particular hard Sunday morning service—is that a dead lizard? On a Sunday morning service, he rededicated his life to Christ. It's decrepit, too. It's been dead for a long time, not just recently. Little rigor mortis has set in over here. I will preach over here.

Like Ezekiel's dead man's bones over there. He made this strong decision for Jesus Christ, and it was real. I believe this man was a sincere man. He went home that Sunday and we talked, and he wanted to turn over a new leaf and just really get going with God again. Then he got bronchitis. Two weeks, three weeks on his back, pretty sick.

When he got off his back, it was that Sunday morning that was two or three weeks ago was just like a distant memory. He never really acted upon the moment when God was nudging him to get to another level. He could never make those decisions and act upon it, and then three weeks later, it was like it never happened.

This is a quote, I think this is Redpath; I've got it from a couple of different sources: "Whether you be concerned primarily with building the wall in your own soul or with building the wall of your church or with building the wall of the kingdom of God throughout the whole world, you'll discover that there is no winning without warfare. There is no opportunity without opposition, and there is no victory without vigilance."

Ezra and Nehemiah both faced great warfare and opposition, not only from the neighboring people that we know of—Tobiah, Sanballat, and Geshem—but also from the Jews that went back that no longer were that passionate. They just wanted to settle in. They didn't want to strap their swords under their belt; they just wanted to raise their cattle. They didn't really care about restoring the walls. They didn't really care about getting the temple functioning as it was. They didn't care about supporting the Levites and the priest. Their own lives became the center of their universe.

That's an important sentence: their own lives became the center of the universe. One of the ways that Nehemiah battled here was through prayer. Real prayer engages in a battle. Ezra and Nehemiah both asked God for help. When you speak about warfare, it's not just the guys in the countryside threatening you. Warfare comes from places that most of the time you'll never expect.

Warfare can come from loss of friends, external pressure, finances, or sin—anything to keep you out of God's purpose where you would find your greatest effectiveness. The devil knows where I find my greatest effectiveness. If he can frustrate Tim Kelley in his marriage, if he can get Tim Kelley freaked out about his finances, or if he can take Tim Kelley out at the knees, then maybe he can get Tim Kelley out of his purpose. Fill yourself into that equation. Again, warfare—I don't want to paint it with pink here. It's not fluffy. Sometimes it's nasty and really painful from different angles.

You make decisions for God when you were on the sidelines. Maybe you're on the sidelines and then say, "You know what? God's stirring my heart. I want to go all the way with the Lord. I want God's best for my life. I want to know him greater tomorrow than I do today. I want my life to count for the kingdom of God." When you make that decision publicly, put your belt on. It's going to get hairy; it's going to be a ride. It will come from the most unsuspecting places. You can find your purpose, my friends, limping, crippled, and in a wheelchair, as long as you keep moving.

Next thing is spiritual conditioning. Moving a little quicker here. I could have called this spiritual discipline, but I call this spiritual conditioning. There's another quote: "There is no blessing until we look deep down in our own soul and see our spiritual life as it really is." That's a good sentence. Should you mourn over that in your life today? What about the wall of separation from the world? What about the wall of your prayer life and your Bible study? What about the wall of your walk with God?

What about the wall of your personal devotional life? What about the wall of your consistent testimony before others? What about the wall of your Christ-like life? Do these things in the sight of God lie in ruins? In essence, when I hear the call and I get the burden, I ask myself what is the condition of my own heart. Am I ready for this? Or do I have so much other stuff out here in my way—the clutter in my path, in my room? Am I ready for this? Am I connecting with God regularly?

Have I let little gremlins of sin and worldliness invade my daily life? Do I spend more time justifying my liberties than dwelling on my spiritual state? Have you resolved any areas of your life that you have honestly kept back from the lordship of Christ? In other words, "God, you're not controlling this area." I take a spiritual inventory: where do I stand, really, with the Lord? Where do I stand with what he wants for my life? Do I care what he wants for my life? If I'm going to achieve the burden and find God's purpose, I've got to resolve these issues.

You may say, "I don't care." Okay, that's okay. You're honest with yourself and honest with God, and we'll go on from there. But the self-deception is where it gets tricky—when we think we care or we have a measure of care, but we keep a great portion of our life back from God's control. Before a burden can be implemented, it has to be bathed in prayer. Nehemiah in his prayer recounted God's past faithfulness to Israel and he asked for it again. He recounted Israel's past unfaithfulness to God and repented for the nation.

Before any undertaking for the Lord, pray and fast first and for a while. Before you launch out on something, pray, fast, and take your time at it. The biggest mistakes I've made in ministry in 30 years have been great ministries—nothing wrong with what we were trying to do—but we leaped into great outreaches without prayer and fasting. In each case, it had incredible ramifications in our ministry and in my personal life. The mission was worthy, yes. It wasn't self-based; it was ministry-based and people-based. But still, we never prayed and fasted over it.

Back in the early '90s, I was asked to go to Springfield, Massachusetts, and take on a damaged church up there for a season of time. No one quite knew what was going to happen, but I launched out because of loyalty. I launched out because there was a need, but I didn't really pray and fast about it. I didn't wait and hear God's voice and bang on God's door and say, "God, give me wisdom here because this isn't a small thing moving 1,300 miles away with your family and taking on a very damaged church." This is something you go into prayerfully, but I was young and I thought this would be another adventure in the kingdom.

I paid for that. A lot of people paid for that. That wasn't the only time I did it. In fact, that taught me from that point forward. I didn't do anything. I was painstaking. When big decisions would come, I'd go weeks without eating and spend time alone, isolated, because I didn't want to miss God again. There's always a price to pay. God brings you back, he restores it—and he did—but there's always damage when we go that way. That leads me to the last point, and we'll close. We get started.

You hear God banging on the door. Maybe you're here tonight or you're watching on the webcast and you're thinking, "I knew he wanted me to teach Kid Connection. Now I'm accountable." I'm just making that up. But let's get started. It takes the step. I heard the call, but I wasn't ready to preach. I had to get trained. I had to get the snot kicked out of me. I had to have a lot of things happen before I was ready to actually get up and teach. I had to get more life experience. I had to learn the Bible; that helped.

It was a dozen years before God finally—when it came time to do it, God just put me there. I didn't have to manipulate it or go behind the scenes. I didn't have to take anyone out. I went to church on a Wednesday night like you guys are right here, and the pastor got up and said, "I'm resigning and I think you should keep Tim Kelley as your pastor." By the way, this Sunday will be exactly 30 years since my first Sunday as pastor. Exactly 30 years, July 5th, 1989.

There I was. I was an associate pastor and I was happy with that. I was cooking eggs after the Sunday morning service. I was doing bus ministry and teaching when I could. I wasn't looking for anything. I just knew when God wanted it to happen, it would happen. All of a sudden, it happened. It was God's time for it to happen. In the meantime, we just waited and were faithful in where God called us. When God gives us a burden, it begins to displace the rest. When you start having a burden of love for souls, the burden of divine purpose, your life gets outside the temporal into the eternal kingdom.

My burdens begin to give me a new life. Hearing about Dr. Ziyad tonight, he's walking into court probably as we speak. His life's in the balance. You know what penalties they issue out there in Muslim law. Different way to see things, isn't it? We brace our heart for the coming battle. We prepare our hearts with spiritual conditioning and evaluation. We get going. We move, we make the call, we dive in. Nehemiah's job was really hard. He had no idea what he was going to face.

It started with a burden. He didn't have anyone calling him on cellphones and giving him updates as he's marching there over a couple of months. He showed up and walked around the walls at night to evaluate it and get a temperature for the people. It was a big job and he didn't have any training in it at all. But he got going. One more quote says this: "We are prepared to serve the Lord only by sacrifice. We are fit for the work of God only when we have wept over it, prayed about it, and then we are enabled by him to tackle the job that needs to be done."

May God give us hearts that bleed, eyes that are wide open to see, minds that are clear to interpret God's purpose, wills that are obedient, and a determination that is utterly unflinching as we set about the task he would have us do.