Lifting Up The Standard!
7/22/07
(The following was used with
a PowerPoint presentation, the asterisks indicate slide changes.)
*Picture at the Lion‘s
Den. Somebody has to say what is
right and what is wrong.
*“Lifting Up The Standard”
If the church does not grasp
what God is saying to the church, we can no longer sing this song.
*America the Beautiful
O beautiful for spacious skies,
For amber waves of grain,
For purple mountain majesties
Above the fruited plain!
America! America!
God shed his grace on thee
And crown thy good with brotherhood
From sea to shining sea!
O beautiful for pilgrim feet
Whose stern impassioned stress
A thoroughfare of freedom beat
Across the wilderness!
America! America!
God mend thine every flaw,
Confirm thy soul in self-control,
Thy liberty in law!
O beautiful for heroes proved
In liberating strife.
Who more than self their country loved
And mercy more than life!
America! America!
May God thy gold refine
Till all success be nobleness
And every gain divine!
O beautiful for patriot dream
That sees beyond the years
Thine alabaster cities gleam
Undimmed by human tears!
America! America!
God shed his grace on thee
And crown thy good with brotherhood
From sea to shining sea!
O beautiful for halcyon (hal-cee-on) skies,
For amber waves of grain,
For purple mountain majesties
Above the enameled plain!
America! America!
God shed his grace on thee
Till souls wax fair as earth and air
And music-hearted sea!
O beautiful for pilgrims feet,
Whose stern impassioned stress
A thoroughfare for freedom beat
Across the wilderness!
America! America!
God shed his grace on thee
Till paths be wrought through
wilds of thought
By pilgrim foot and knee!
O beautiful for glory-tale
Of liberating strife
When once and twice,
for man's avail
Men lavished precious life!
America! America!
God shed his grace on thee
Till selfish gain no longer stain
The banner of the free!
O beautiful for patriot dream
That sees beyond the years
Thine alabaster cities gleam
Undimmed by human tears!
America! America!
God shed his grace on thee
Till nobler men keep once again
Thy whiter jubilee!
*Is. 59:19 ….When the enemy shall come in like a flood,
the Spirit of the LORD shall lift up a standard against him.
A large part of the church
today is timid, afraid, apathetic, intimidated, complacent, influenced by
worldly thinking, politically correct and crippled!
Many in the church believe
that it’s not the business of the church to be involved with civil affairs.
*Blank
Remember the Isley (I lie)
Brothers? “It’s Your Thing.”
“It's
your thing
Do what you wanna do
I can't tell you
Who to sock it to…”
Well, we certainly don’t want
to offend anybody.
It’s amazing to me how
vicious someone can be towards Christianity and it goes virtually unnoticed,
but when the church speaks up, attacks seem to come from everywhere.
There are few people in
American public life as openly hostile to Christianity as media tycoon Ted
Turner.
Ted Turner, successful and powerful broadcaster who heads the television networks
CNN, TBS and TNT, as well as other major business enterprises, has gone up
against the “big boys” of television broadcasting (NBC, CBS, ABC) and
succeeded. Now he seems to be challenging God Himself. In addressing a group of
broadcasters in Dallas, reported by the Dallas Morning News, Turner called Christianity
“a religion for losers.” Contending that he had no need of a savior, he stated that Jesus should not have
bothered to die on the cross. He went on to
suggest that the system of dating time
from the birth of Jesus (BC/AD) is outmoded and should be replaced with his system. He believes that he and
the other broadcast policy makers
can bring peace to the World by the year 2000.
Then, he says, time should be
reckoned from that year, as BP
(before peace) and AP (after peace).
There are usually reasons why
someone adamantly attacks our Lord and Savior Jesus, this is probably the
reason for Ted Turner….
Turner actually was a deeply
religious boy, despite his father's emotional abuse. He intended at one point
to become a missionary. Then, when he was a teenager, his younger sister Mary
Jane contracted a form of lupus, and suffered terribly before dying a
relatively short while later. All his prayers for her recovery — an hour a day,
he said — were for naught.
"She used to run around
in pain, begging God to let her die," he recalled. "My family broke
apart. I thought, 'How could God let my sister suffer so much?'"
Christians have been
convinced that it’s not our business to declare what’s right and wrong in the
eyes of God. Oh, we can do it in our
church building, but not outside.
Herod Antipas was ruler over
Galilee. His brother’s name was Philip. Now if you had the opportunity to talk with
this guy wouldn’t you want to be politically correct? John the Baptist didn’t think so.
*Mk. 6:17 ….Herod himself had given orders to have John arrested, and
he had him bound and put in prison. He did this because of Herodias, his
brother Philip’s wife, whom he had married. 18For John had been saying to Herod, “It is not lawful
for you to have your brother’s wife.” 19So Herodias nursed a grudge against John and wanted to kill
him.
Luke tells us even more….
*Lk.
3:19 But when John rebuked Herod the tetrarch because
of Herodias, his brother’s wife, and all the other evil things he had
done, 20Herod added this to
them all: He locked John up in prison.
What about the apostle
Paul. He was in the same
situation. He had to be careful not to
blow it.
*Acts 24:24 Several days later Felix came with his wife Drusilla, who
was a Jewess. He sent for Paul and listened to him as he spoke about faith in
Christ Jesus. 25As Paul discoursed
on righteousness, self-control and the judgment to come, Felix
was afraid and said, “That’s enough for now! You may leave. When I find it
convenient, I will send for you.”
Apparently, Paul didn’t care
about being politically correct either!
*(Blank) Being “Salt and Light” is more than we
think!
Salt and light is an
influence!
*Mat.
5:13 “You are the salt of the earth. But if the salt loses its saltiness, how
can it be made salty again? It is no longer good for anything, except to be thrown
out and trampled by men.
14“You are the light of the world. A city on a hill
cannot be hidden. 15Neither do people light a lamp and put it under
a bowl. Instead they put it on its stand, and it gives light to everyone in the
house.
*Blank
The Lord Jesus is leading me,
the leadership, and this church where we have never been before.
We are stepping out, we are
being stretched and most of all, we are being used by the mighty hand of God!
The Lord has told us to place
an ad that will reach this entire nation.
The ad is two fold: 1) an educational statement so clear and loud for
the unborn. And 2) a statement to the
candidates that God cannot bless a nation that sheds innocent blood and those
of us who hold firmly to this belief will not support an candidate who supports
“choice” or the death of the unborn.
Last week I shared that we
had come up against a wall. Little
did I know that He put the wall there.
I started off the week
fighting for what I thought was right until the Lord showed me I was wrong.
This has been one phenomenal
week in my life!
I have grown, I have been
corrected by the Lord and I have learned some valuable lessons.
I have heard a lot of voices
this week. I was given a lot of advice
and I had to sort through all of that.
I know that we all have the
same desire and that is to do exactly what the Lord Jesus is wanting us to do.
The buck really does have to
stop somewhere. Somebody has to make
the ultimate decision. I didn’t make
this decision by myself.
Tuesday this past week, I was
ready to go to war! Against the USA
Today newspaper.
I had talked with AFA
(American Family Association) and later in the day Don Wildmon called me.
Ÿ
They won’t print it
because of the message…
Ÿ
You need to change your
political message…
Ÿ
You will get more
coverage with us than with the USA Today paper…
Now, I want you to know that
I have an enormous respect for Mr. Don Wildmon. But I had to hear the Lord desperately.
God Himself told us to put
this in the USA Today paper. Lord you
have to make a way….
I don’t know how many people
told me that the USA Today was stalling not because of the picture, but because
of the ad… The USA Today kept saying
it’s the picture.
By Wednesday, I had a major
heart change.
Who listens to AFR? Who gets on line to AFA? Not the people we want to reach!
I like what Mark Kiesling
said: “We’re preaching to the choir.”
My mind kept going back to
the gentleman who I had lunch with.
When he refused to even look at the ad!
Michelle at USA Today was
honest with me when she said “Todd, the results I’m getting with the color ad
is not good.”
I had another gentleman come
in my office this week and this is what he said, “Todd, I enjoy going to the
Cracker Barrel on Saturday morning, have some coffee, breakfast and read the
USA Today. I don’t want to open the
paper and see a bloody picture while I’m eating my breakfast.” It was not Mark Summers by the way.
I was with another person
this week who I had given a copy of the Southern to when our ad came. Amazingly he told me the reaction of his
wife. She gasped when we saw it.
Then the Lord reminded me of
this passage….
*Lk. 16:8 ….For the people of this world are more
shrewd in dealing with their own kind than are the people of the light.
When Dave Maragni, John
Murrow, Rob Kelly and myself went to Jenner School the first time we wanted to
take something. Naturally, we wanted to
take Bibles. But strangely, I sensed
the Holy Spirit speaking to my heart to take coffee cups--and that’s what we
did.
There is a right kind of
zeal, and a wrong kind of zeal.
Religious zeal looks right
but misses God completely.
*2
Sam. 21:1 During the reign of David, there was a
famine for three successive years; so David sought the face of the LORD. The
LORD said, “It is on account of Saul and his blood-stained house; it is because
he put the Gibeonites to death.”
2The king summoned the Gibeonites and spoke
to them. (Now the Gibeonites were not a part of Israel
*but were
survivors of the Amorites; the Israelites had sworn to spare them, but
Saul in his zeal for Israel and Judah had tried to annihilate them.)
*Pr. 19:2 It is not good to have zeal without
knowledge, nor to be hasty and miss the way.
This is the right kind of
zeal….
*Rom. 12:11 Never be lacking in zeal, but keep your spiritual fervor,
serving the Lord.
This lesson was made very
clear to me this week!
*Be
zealous, but be teachable and listen to Me!
So please, for those who
thought the article should have been a certain way, I did too, but the Lord has
made a better way!
I want to show you
something….
*Show the nine pictures. Ending with the side by side pictures.
This was Michael Clancy’s
comments…
*“You're absolutely right
Pastor Todd! It does bring the focal point of the picture front and center.
Seeing it in the context of the full page does make a huge difference. It is
beautiful! USA Today does have the right to refuse any ad, and they will
receive many responses from the pro abortion crowd. This will be a great
victory! Lives will be saved!
Bless you for your perseverance, I'm so excited!”
Michael
*The color version was going
to be: $116,081.
*Black and white on
Friday: $89,436.
*By using a two day flexible
plan the ad is: $73,256.
*Circulation 2,210,000
Audience 4,350,000
*Color ad: 1 penny buys 1.9
copies of USA Today.
Black and White ad on Friday:
1 penny buys 2.47 copies.
Black and White ad with two
day flexibility: 1 penny buys 3.01 copies of USA Today.
Show the dates the ad will
come out.
*The Ad will appear in the
USA Today paper either August 6th or 7th.
Share Michelle’s comments.
Pray for the endless
opportunities with this article!
We want to be like the men of
Issachar….
*1 Chr.
12:32 ….men of Issachar, who understood
the times and knew what Israel should do
Open the envelope and rejoice in what God has done! Special account.