We are at the same time living in a nation of weak, absent leadership with “no strategy” for moving forward in the face of evil, and in the world of an unshakable King whose strategy has been abandoned by His own people. One is a people without a plan, and the other is a plan without people.
I need a daily debrief from the Spirit just to keep from drowning in the hopelessness of the news. It’s not just Israel, Gaza, Ukraine, Ebola and the Islamic State, but also the passivity and sweeping ignorance of the church towards the Kingdom that sends my heart into despair. Last night I listened to Somalian-American leaders in Milwaukee describe how young fatherless boys are being drawn into radical Islam because they are looking for a place to belong and a story to live. Great news! Our young are being drawn into an ideology that promotes beheading people in the name of a new world.
Have we no better plan? No greater drama to offer? Is it not a tragedy that America’s young people must choose between the “grand cause” of Jihad, the “grand cause” of Marxism, or a fatalistic Christianity biting its fingernails in hopes that Jesus will soon rescue us from this mess? Where is OUR Story? Do we tell it in our Sunday gatherings? If those young Somalis wandered into our meetings, would they walk out with hope burning in their hearts, or with a conclusion that the American Church is pathetically disengaged and irrelevant to the crises of the age?
Now is the hour. This is the divine moment for the church shout, “WAIT! There is another way! There IS a better story, a beautiful, grand possibility that answers all the churning needs of your heart, and heals the broken world besides.” It’s both a plan and a people.
Dispatches from the Shadowlands 
Amen, my friend!
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Sadly I don’t think they would walk out with hope burning in their hearts…and I feel like we are disengaged…Don…how do we turn this around…how do we light the fire again in our local churchs…
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Hang on, Leslie. You’re asking the question of the hour, and it deserves some well-thought-out responses. I’m working on it!
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Hard times in this world and I go through dispair when reading of and seeing the world today, I’am sure that one of the reasons why Jesus walked away from people to PRAY so often was for renewal . Then seeing the word “beheadngs”, I thought of some men of Satan’s works. Men like Mao Zedong, Adolf Hitler, Genghis Kahan, Nero and of coarse Herod Antips. I like to think that the last words that John The Baptist thought of was the blind see, the deaf hear and the dead are raised. I was reading Romans 1 today and also the words in Mark 2;17 came in. So we will continue praying for our leadership and The Peace that Only Jesus brings. Blessings to You Don and All Your readers !!!
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My thoughts are that you are doing your part, the work will never be done until Jesus returns. As long as we are breathing, there is always something to do to further the Kingdom of God.
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Reblogged this on Lessons in Coriakin's Garden and commented:
Brilliant fire of Truth… “A Plan and A People.” I’ve ‘reblogged’ it because Brother Don Stephens says it so well.
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