99% Hopeless?

I was listening to probably the best Fathers Day sermon I have personally ever heard at the Bonita Valley Community Church www.bonitavalley.org given by Senior Pastor Jeff Brawner yesterday. You really should check it out. Bonita Valley is the Church that Chad and his wife Krystal attend in Chula Vista, just south of San Diego proper. It is a fine example of an A/G Church which has embraced multi-media and the future of relevant ministry to this generation while maintaining its unique "A/G'ness"... Hard to do for most of us because change is tough...

Anyhow, we preachers when we listen to another sermon while at the same time as absorbing that good word often come up with numerous thoughts of their own. Well, wait a minute, it's not just preachers. I know this because many times, people come up to me to ask me about points in the sermon which I just preached which I don't recall making. The Holy Spirit has a way of taking a message given one way to 100's or 1000's and sending it out as many ways as there are people in the audience. Awesome!

One of the scriptures quoted (Gen 17:1-2) reminded me that Abram was 99 years old when God spoke to him an additional time (there were 7 times total all pretty much guaranteeing him the same thing). 99 years old! Abram had certainly taken the long road to fulfillment of his promise and it was mostly through many instances of partial obedience and even getting down right side tracked several times.

I found myself in that service at a place I have been many times before. I was feeling 99% hopeless in many ways. It was Fathers Day and I am a worried Father as I know many of you are and I can plainly see my faults (a good thing). I am in the process of raising funds for our next assignment in the Philippines and this is not a good economy for that... And every other missionary I know is either having trouble raising funds and they are losing funding as well. One I spoke with recently lost 3 supporters last month, 2 of which had been with him for more then 20 years!

Now I know that 99 years old does not translate to 99% of Abram's life, but to me, I was at a point where I was holding on to that 1% bit of hope inside of me. That hope which is grounded in the prophetic promise of God, knowing that I am being obedient and remembering what He has done for me in the past. I had to grab hold of that "Mustard Seed" 1% and allow that reality to overwhelm the 99% human vision reality once again. At my most basic level of understanding of the spiritual warfare that rages in my brain, I have to view the positive and the negative, the godly and the ungodly as a light colored dog and a dark dog battling it out. The only way to win? Feed the good dog... Starve the bad dog out!

Men! And ladies too! Let us hold on to the promise... Hold on to the little bit which can conquer the negative majority and stand on the Word of God!

As for me and my house, as long as we trust in the Lord and do not lean on our own understanding, as long as we acknowledge Jesus in all of our ways, I know that I know that EVERYTHING is gonna be great!