Now, a few months into his presidency, I am astonished. What happened to Obama? He seems to have fallen from inspiring orator with a visionary spirit to bumbling buffoon with a lack of clarity in an extraordinarily short period of time. His administration has goofed on so many levels it’s hard to keep track of it all. Every day another dumb thing happens — stuff for which there is little excuse. The pathetic attempt to tar and feather Rush Limbaugh, a regular Joe who happens to be the #1 radio host in the country, is just par for the course. In the previous eight years of the Bush administration, I never saw Mr. Bush stoop to the level of sneering at his critics. If anything, conservatives wished he would engage his political enemies. But Bush had a healthy respect for the dignity of his office. Despite his widespread unpopularity, he genuinely believed he was every American’s president, and his ego had to be submitted to the responsibility of his post. Apparently, Obama has chosen a different course. I thought we were ready to move past the corrosive bickering over partisan ideology. Apparently, I was wrong.

Mr. President, I ask of you only one thing: get a grip. Be a man. Lead this country forward. Don’t stop to throw stones — or you may discover the house in which you live is made out of glass.

Well, you made it. You have pulled off a pretty incredible feat. You have already earned your place in history, but in order to secure and build upon this amazing accomplishment, I have one piece of advice for you:

Stay submitted.

First of all, I am not in a position to judge your spiritual life and your walk with Jesus, but I pray that your love for Him would grow and you would find the time to get down on your knees and ask Him to give you wisdom, courage, conviction, and love. Submit to the Lord, humble yourself, and He will indeed raise you up.

Secondly, listen to trusted counselors. Actually, I have to say I am impressed by your willingness to listen to and consider a variety of different viewpoints. This is good. A wise man does not live in a vacuum. Nevertheless, do not be swayed by clever reasoning and sweet-smelling logic. Proverbs 14:12 says “there is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way to death.” Look deep inside of you and discover what resonates with your conscience and your spirit. Seek God and He will reveal to you the proper course of action.

Finally, the job of President of the United States of America is possibly the toughest job anywhere. You are not only responsible for the most powerful and influential nation on earth, but to some degree you hold sway over the mood and mindset of the global community. So do it right. Don’t make this about you. It’s time to put your ego, your agenda, and your ambition aside. You are now a public servant of the highest order. Your boss is the American people, and your task is to protect our borders, strengthen our economy, provide help to the downtrodden and abused, uphold a fair system of justice, and speak out a message of moral clarity in an immoral world.

This is now the moment of truth. All eyes are now on you. Where will you fix your eyes?

Congratulations, Barack Obama, on your special day. May God richly bless you and strengthen you in this new season of your life.

Jared

14 Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse them. 15 Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep. 16 Live in harmony with one another. Do not be haughty, but associate with the lowly. Never be wise in your own sight. 17 Repay no one evil for evil, but give thought to do what is honorable in the sight of all. 18 If possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all. 19 Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave it to the wrath of God, for it is written, Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord. 20 To the contrary, if your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him something to drink; for by so doing you will heap burning coals on his head. 21 Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.

It is interesting to see the reaction from both the Left and the Right here in America to the announcement that Rick Warren is to pray at Barack Obama’s inauguration this coming January. From the Left, it’s understandable to see the dismay given Warren’s track record defending the pro-life and pro-traditional-marriage positions. But from the Right, it rankles me that people are getting their knickers in a knot over the idea of a so-called “conservative” Christian minister praying for the swearing-in of a liberal president. Now I’m not here to judge Obama’s faith, but given his stated positions on several issues which go against the grain of Biblical authority, I am certainly dismayed by his candidacy. However, we are told time and time again to pray for our enemies, and also to pray for those in political authority, by none other than the apostles Peter, Paul, and even Jesus himself. There is no verse — none! — that would back up the notion that “thou shalt boycott praying for a presidential candidate you disagree with”. If anything, such a leader desperately needs our prayers and blessings more than anyone!

As to the fear that Rick Warren is somehow endorsing Obama’s political ideas by attending his inauguration and praying for him, that is absurd. Warren is a prominent American church leader. Obama is going to become the 44th President of the Unites States of America. It is quite honorable and logical that Warren would be selected to join in the proceedings, and it is quite understandable that Warren would accept the invitation. To do otherwise would be to insult a huge swath of the American public as well as cast a negative shadow on the face of the Christian Church as once again skeptics behold the hypocrisy of leaders who put political agendas ahead of the New Testament mandate to, if possible, live peaceably with all.

Believe me, this is not an easy statement for me to make. I am staunchly in favor of outlawing abortion in this country just as slavery was outlawed in past times, and I am very much a supporter of the traditional nuclear family and covenant marriage between a man and a woman. I feel Obama will prove to be a major affront to these causes — yet I cannot and will not compromise my holistic understanding of Christian theology in the name of moral zealousness. Remember, it is ultimately not the devil who put Barack Obama in the seat of presidential power. It is God. I think we need to act as such.

Feeling Plumber Fatigue, Media Turn on ‘Joe’

Remind me again why I follow political news? The mainstream media is insane. Now I hope McCain wins if for no other reason than to thumb his nose at these goons at every opportunity.

Well, all I can say is, surprise surprise! Most people don’t like harsh fundamentalists, whether they be Bible thumpers or Darwin thumpers, and frankly the atheist movement is not being well served by exalting the kind of angry, self-righteous verbiage that exemplify the work of Dawkins and his ilk. Our culture, our educational system, and our public square would be far better served by respectful, compassion, reasonable discourse on the subject of God, the supernatural, and the origin of the cosmos and life. The alternative is not pretty.

Anyway, for the two people out there who know about my super-secret Web project, you may be wondering what the latest news is. Well, the latest news is sad: the project died due to a lack of time, resources, and motivating vision. Here’s what the project was all about in a nutshell: an innovative Christian social news + networking site that would provide really cool ways to aggregate content from exciting news sites, blogs, podcasts, ministries, and so forth with an emphasis on media and the arts — all the while fostering meaningful relationships that would encourage discipleship and Biblical training. Lots of neat ideas…WAY too ambitious. I honestly would need to assemble a comprehensive team and expend a lot of effort in order to get this off the ground.

The strange thing is that the genesis of this project actually looked a little different and somehow it got lost in the shuffle: a site that would be forward-looking and would encourage and challenge the Church in the West to envision a future age where the Church isn’t a dying institution divorced from the language, culture, and concerns of the day but is wholesomely engaged in restoration and healing and progress within the culture around it.

Here’s what I think: there are many innovative streams within the Body of Christ today: missional, emergent, charismatic, apostolic-prophetic, reformed, and so forth. There are probably more streams that I’m not even aware of. The problem is that, by and large, these streams are not talking to each other — or if they are, it’s largely on a footing of either distrust or sheer ignorance. And so we come to an inescapable conclusion: if we’re expecting to reach non-Christians or former Christians with the Gospel and convince them that the Church is the place to be, then we need to be doing a much better job of understanding and articulating what the Church actually is (and is not) and what its primary purpose is in relation to people’s everyday milieu.

I am a strong advocate of unity within the Church (see my three-part essay on Thoughts of Resurrection for more on this topic), and one of the ways I would like to see unity in action is within the process of taking a hard look at how we “do church” and which ways we can embrace change, uncertainty, innovation, and Spirit-led renewal in order to effect a positive and greater impact on the world around us.

In other words, I wonder what it would look like if Brian McLaren, Bill Johnson, Rick Warren, Frank Viola, and N.T. Wright all got in a room together and talked about the state of the Church. Just a thought. (And if you don’t know who some or all of those people are, that proves my point exactly. We need more cross-pollination!)

So there’s a brief peak into my brain today. What is the solution to this conundrum? That’s something I’m still working on. If it ends up becoming a new project, that’s awesome, but if not, I’m confident someone else will pick up the baton. At any rate, I will continue to post my thoughts here on this blog over the next few months as I wrestle with these intriguing questions.

What do you think?

Only four months later…the Florida “outpouring” has dwindled to a few hundred people at the original starting church, and the leader of the revival, Todd Bentley, is now in the midst of a marital crisis and fierce doctrinal controversy that has left the broader charismatic movement reeling. Charisma Magazine wrote up in good detail the latest news as we know it.

I want to be very clear: I have been personally blessed by Todd Bentley’s ministry in the past, and some of his closest friends in ministry are people I know and trust (not personally, but in terms of spiritual fruit and teaching). So I don’t want to make light of this tragedy in any way, and I am praying for him and his family’s recovery and healing.

But something is going on in the Body of Christ right now, and we need to discern what is happening and not give way to doubt and hardness of heart. The first question we need to ask is: is the Lakeland revival over? I believe it is. But that’s the wrong question. The real question is: is revival over? And the answer to that is an emphatic NO!

I spent the last several days very distressed about this sequence of events, and as I’ve been seeking the Lord for answers, I’ve begun to sense some things that I think are important to remember and understand. I’ll just walk through some of my thoughts in bullet-point form:

• True revival is not about a person, a place, or a thing. It is about the sovereign move of Almighty God in response to Jesus followers crying out to Him from the depths of their souls.
• True revival is not about angles, visions, prophecies, miracles, visitations, glory clouds, gemstones, gold dust, oil, and other signs and wonders. It is about Jesus Christ. It is about His power to restore all the that enemy has stolen. It is about transformation. “I once was lost, but now I’m found. I once was blind, but now I see.” That’s revival.
• True revival cannot be beamed across a TV screen or performed on the platform. It cannot be told, it cannot be explained, and it cannot be contained. Because, you see, revival is the violent move of God in glory and power, and God — last time I looked — is not a video feed or a worship band or a talking head with a microphone up on stage.
• True revival is not a church, or a conference, or a tent, or a style, or a method, or a format, or a culture, or a tradition. True revival is timeless and transcendent, because God is outside of time and beyond this universe.
• When true revival comes, it will convict people to go out. All eyes will not be on any person, place, or thing. It will be on Jesus Christ. People will not wait for the “fire” to come to their city in pomp and circumstance before they go out and minister to people in the name of Jesus. They will go out and minister to people in the name of Jesus in order to bring the fire of God down to their city.
• When true revival comes, it will be messy, but it will not be flabby. It will not be frayed around the edges. It will not focus on the biggest and brightest and best and ignore the details. The devil is NOT in the details. God is in the details. The first shall be last, and the last first. When true revival comes, it will not be about flash, it will be about substance. It will be about meeting people’s needs where they are. It will be about speaking to people in a language they can understand. It will be about being all things to all men in order to preach the good news of Jesus Christ.
• Oh how arrogant to think that only the superficial gloss of “charismania” heralds the arrival of revival. Lord, forgive us of our pride, our presumption. Forgive us of our need for hype and attention instead of conviction and consecration. Forgive us for looking to men to bring us into your Holy Presence when all we need is a spirit willing to yield itself to you.

There is a shift going on…a shift in the Body of Christ right now where people are beginning to realize that the hallmark of every true revival is a gripping fear of the Lord and a powerful, irresistible yearning for holiness and purification. I felt this already when I was up at the JesusCulture conference a couple of weeks ago. More on that another time. Suffice it to say, it was an incredible, life-changing time, but not because of signs and wonders but because of God’s holy presence and the palpable feeling of intense spiritual hunger in the room that demanded a transformational response from heaven. We got down on our knees and we gave our all to Jesus, everything, without reservation, without hesitation. The conviction of the Holy Spirit was so strong that I was ready to repent of sins I haven’t even committed yet. That was a joke, in case you missed it.

So is the revival over? No! It’s just now truly beginning! Some people are saying the Lakeland “revival” was false and of the devil. I believe it was of God when it initially started. Other people are saying that the revival was real all along and the devil is now trying his best to shut it down. No, I believe that too is of God, although the devil is certainly on the offensive.

I believe God used Lakeland as a catalyst for radical spiritual hunger and has now shut down what was quickly turning into a quagmire in order for real revival to break out spontaneously, earnestly, sincerely, and sustainably across this dry land we call America. This time revival won’t be about Todd Bentley, or Lakeland, or God TV, or apostles, or miracles, or media, or glory clouds, or angelic hosts, or worship music, or prophecies, or anything else. It will be about one thing and one thing only: Jesus Christ. We will encounter Jesus, be saved by Jesus, be delivered by Jesus, be changed by Jesus, be loved by Jesus, be equipped by Jesus, and be sent out by Jesus to go do the compassionate works of Jesus in order for the world to hear about Jesus and see Jesus and be set free by Jesus.

If revival isn’t about Jesus, and Him alone, then somehow, somewhere, we’ve lost the plot.

“On that day many will say to me, Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many mighty works in your name? And then will I declare to them, I never knew you; depart from me, you workers of lawlessness.” — Matthew 7:22-23

Also, I’m making an announcement that I’ll soon be making an announcement (redundant, isn’t it?) about a secret Web site project that I’m busily working away on. Check out the latter part of the video for more on that front.

Thanks for watching, and enjoy the show!

Duck Season, Wabbit Season, Huckabee Season from Jared White on Vimeo.
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