God wants to put us in places where we have never been before. Our natural abilities and resources not meet the challenge of these divine appointments. To get there, He must break our self-reliance because we will need to depend solely upon God and put all our hopes and dreams into His hands. One of the greatest temptations is the love mammon.
By Carole J Keller
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As I pursued the truths presented in this book at a deeper level, it became apparent to me that the principle of surrender is at the core of everyone’s felt need. I have discerned that, as long as we hold tenaciously to our way, customs, and practices, it will be difficult to achieve a spiritual breakthrough. To obtain a breakthrough, we have to be willing to surrender and lay our broken dreams, plans and struggles at the Cross. It is there, at the Cross, that we find our Savior and our hopes and dreams take on new life and resurrection power.
Prompted in large part by the pervasive and tragic breakdown of moral values in our country, coupled with financial insecurity and other socio-economic worries, more and more people are longing to see a visitation of God in their lives. This hunger to be filled is the catalyst for restoration. Maybe it is a financial, medical, spiritual or emotional breakthrough we seek. Over time, we learn that we cannot achieve a spiritual breakthrough if our confidence is in ourselves.
We ask ourselves, “How did we get to this place of self-sufficiency?” One thing it seems the Word of God no longer plays a significant role in our culture as some denominations blatantly change meaning to fit the transgression. The diminution of the role of the Ten Commandments in our culture once considered the backbone of our inalienable rights and justice, hardly causes our eyes to Christians in general are too reticent to fight for the Judeo-Christian values that have always upheld their freedoms and liberties. How a candidate’s views affect their pocketbooks appears to have greater weight with the people than the principle he or she lives by. This apathy shames us before the world and is a blight to our nation.
This lessening role of the Word has shown up in relationships. It has created pride, and pride separates more people, causes more unresolved conflicts, creates more division, and shuts off feelings of compassion more than anything else as people fight to retain their own kingdoms. Pride keeps us from connecting with people, hearing counsel, telling the truth, and submitting to each other. We have drifted from being dependent upon God to being dependent upon ourselves, our programs, worldly knowledge. It is the restoration of those time-honored principles, beginning at the grassroots level, that will change our world and once again make us fruitful and prosperous. This brings glory to God and our nation.
In the midst of this upheaval, there are many who yearn for a restoration of the Book of Acts Christianity and the vibrancy that once characterized it. The early church turned the world upside down with Christianity. Believers forsook their prior lifestyles to be identified with Jesus, they depended upon God, they loved truth, and they loved each other. In contrast, today our lifestyle is so commingled with the worldly system and its values that it has blinded our eyes to our need for God.
But God knows how to bridge the gap between himself and His people. In our state of barrenness, God gets our attention, for it is in barrenness that God shows us the deceitfulness of our hearts. In barrenness, God proves to us how utterly dependent we are upon His power to survive.
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