Obedient and Equipped

Editor's note. Today I'm offering you excerpts from a remarkable Prayer Breakfast speech delivered at NRLC 2008 by Charles and Kay James. You will be moved and motivated by what Charles says in today's TN&V, as you will in equal measure be moved Monday by excerpts from the second half of that speech delivered by Kay.

Corrie Ten Boom was a Dutch woman, a Christian woman in a German concentration camp during the Nazi occupation during the WWII. She wrote a book ["The Hiding Place"], and in that book she said, "You don't get your ticket until you get on the train." So many of you know that you have been called to this work and gifted once you came to it, gifts that you did not even know that you had because God equips you if he calls you to do his work.    So you need never say, "I can't do that. I don't know how to do that." Those are merely excuses that you put up before Almighty God as a reason for not being obedient. But once you are obedient he will equip you and there is great and wonderful joy in being obedient to God.  

We are here this weekend to celebrate life as the nation celebrates its birthday. Isn't that interesting? How those two things come to together. Yet, if we listen to the news it's not about celebration, it's about destruction, it's about violence…setbacks to the glorious call that we have to celebrate life, which comes from God. The times in which we live are not new, they're not new at all. If we go back six-hundred years before the birth of Christ, if we were to put ourselves in that situation in Israel, it would be the same situation.

The prophet Habakkuk, looking all about seeing no justice, seeing law set aside, seeing violence, seeing the wicked prosper. He was perplexed-- How can this go on God? He had a complaint, and he took his complaint to God as I'm sure many time, we in this room, have taken our complaints to God; and God answered him. …

So the Lord replied, in verse two, chapter two [of the book of Habakkuk], "Write down the revelation and make it plain on tablets so that a herald may run with it. For the revelation awaits an appointed time, it speaks of the end and will not prove false. Though it linger, wait for it, it will certainly come and will not delay."

We all want fast food from God. We want to pick the green apple rather then wait for the ripe apple, that's just because we're people. But, if we're people of faith, we have to trust that God hears our prayers, answers them in His own way in his own time. But stand at the ramparts. Stand and watch--continue doing what we do and the day will come when we will rejoice in the answer from God.

Our job is to stand firm, telling the truth, fighting for those babies. And though it may look dark, it may look impossible; we get set backs from time-to-time…God is in control. We can trust in Him. And so, with that, how shall I--how shall we--then live in light of the glorious mercy and power of God for our cause, for our lives, for our family and for this wonderful nation which he created for life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness?  And Kay is going to give you an answer.