Will we face it with dread and gloom or with faith and expectation?
So often when entering a new year, I hear comments along the lines of, "I sure hope this year will be better than last year." Each year brings new challenges to our faith. If we feel circumstances where we were believing for divine intervention have not yet been resolved, the tendency of our human reasoning is to look forward with dread rather than faith. However, as born-again, Spirit-filled, Word-of-Faith Christians, we simply cannot give in to typical human reasoning!
While praying in the Spirit recently, the Lord showed me one of the key issues bothering many of those knowing the whole counsel of God's Word is a perceived total apathy towards the Truth by so many Christians around us. We know the solutions to mankind's problems can always — and only — be found in God's Word. We sometimes begin to feel we are the only ones who are interested in really knowing the Lord and understanding His Word. Then the Lord showed me there are countless numbers of people who are hungry for more and yet don't know where to go to find it.
Those of us in the ministry often feel frustrated that we cannot connect with those who are hungry for God. As a ministry university, we have spent much time praying for the wisdom of God in promoting the education we offer. Pastors of churches pray for the wisdom to promote the ministry the church has to offer to those who they know are hurting and in need. We need a better way to reach these hungry souls, and the better way is always God's way.
This is how the Lord showed me we should pray going into the New Year. Remember, we are the answer to the prayer Jesus told His disciples to pray concerning sending forth laborers into His harvest. God called us with a personal intervention into our lives. He can do the same for every hungry person around us. We simply need Him to connect us supernaturally with the hungry souls. We are the deep calling unto the deep. The hungry heart wants to go deeper in the Word and deeper in the presence of God. That is what we have experienced and we know how to lead them into this deeper place in God.
The psalmist who penned Psalm 42 was in a crisis of life and needed to experience the deep, abiding presence of God. He starts with:
As the deer pants for the water brooks, so pants my soul for You, O God. Why are you cast down, O my soul? And why are you disquieted within me? Hope in God, for I shall yet praise Him for the help of His countenance.
The psalmist begins to remember where his help comes from in the next few verses. I believe every truly born-again believer has a knowing in their spirit that this help from the Lord is available. Verses 6-8 say:
O my God, my soul is cast down within me; therefore I will remember You from the land of Jordan, and from the heights of Hermon, and from the Hill of Mizar. Deep calls unto deep at the noise of Your waterfalls; All Your waves and billows have gone over me. The Lord will command His lovingkindness in the daytime, And in the night His song shall be with me — A prayer to the God of my life.
I believe it is time for us to pray in a new Word-of-Faith revival. There are still many hungry hearts who need to be supernaturally directed to find the answers about how good a God our God is. Many who are not yet in the Kingdom, God is calling by His Spirit to come in and know Him. Many who are wallowing in despair in dead churches, God is calling to connect where the answers are being poured out freely by our loving God.
It is time for our LCU sphere of association to rise up like never before and call in the supernatural connection to hungry hearts. Deep calling unto deep. 2019 can be the greatest year of impact we have ever seen. We entered into this calling to do the greatest work we ever could and to have the greatest impact we can possibly have. So join us at Main Campus as we declare 2019 as "The Year of Deep Calling unto Deep."
Dr. Doug Wingate
President and Founder of LCU