Dreams and Visions

"After this I will pour out My Spirit on all humanity; then your sons and daughters will prophesy, your old men will have dreams and your young men will see visions." [Joel 2:28]

 We live in a day when people love the supernatural, the mystical, and who throng to have an EXPERIENCE. They want to feel something. In my younger days I too ran down that trail. Over the years my hunger for an experience was replaced with the hunger for God. Pursuit of Him became enough.

Yet, I have been open to the different ways God desires to move in my life. That included having dreams or visions. As soon as I write that I know some people will want to take statement too far and others are not willing to believe God gives either or speaks through either. Be that as it may I can only seek God for myself and write and preach the things He reveals to me.

People who have "dreams" or "visions" are considered weird, mystical, and unbalanced. I guess we would have to put Joseph from Genesis and Daniel in that category too. God gave both men dreams and both men were used of God to interpret the dreams of others.

I do not dream often and when I do they certainly do not appear to have any significance. To my knowledge I have never had a vision. Well, that is until this past week. All three times I was in prayer. All three times I had a very vivid dream, a clear vision, or three distinct mental pictures. You can classify them like you want. So clear were these God has gotten my attention through each of them. I am still praying about what they all mean if anything. In some ways all three have a similar theme. In some ways they are different. At the risk of being labeled weird and unbalanced I am going to relate all three.

1. I walk into the warehouse where we meet as a church. There is an old wood burning pot belly fire place in the room. A man whom has his back to me and whom I never see his face is putting wood in the fire place. I am preaching from the pulpit. Fire is coming from my mouth and setting the hearts of the hearers on fire. The more wood put in the fire place by the man in the back the more fire comes from my mouth. I can see the fire in people's hearts spreading like a grass fire beyond the walls of the warehouse where we meet. The dream ends.

2. I walk into an old dusty dark abandoned church building. There is nobody there with me. I walk over to a light switch to turn on the lights but they do not work. I then notice a strange sight. Behind the pulpit a tunnel of fire is coming from the ceiling to the floor behind the pulpit. Somehow I know this fire is coming straight from heaven even though I cannot see outside the church building. I walk up to the pulpit and stand in the center of the fire. Suddenly the scene changes. I am still behind the pulpit in the fire but the room is filled with brilliant light. As far as my eyes can see I see row after row of pews filled with people all shining brightly so many in number I cannot count them. The dream ends there.

3. There is a river of fire coming straight from the throne room of God to a pulpit and from the pulpit out into the aisles of what appears to once again be the warehouse where we meet as a church. While there are people in the seats I do not know any of them. Those who get into the river are immediately transformed and revived with fire in their hearts. As they walk out of the warehouse the people they come in contact are revived and their hearts are in turn set on fire as well. In this way the fire spreads. The dream ends.

These are each very vivid in my mind. I keep wondering if God is showing me something. They have been too vivid to dismiss and the fact that they have come while seeking the Lord in prayer has my attention. I was not after some experience or anything mystical in those times of prayer. I was in pursuit of God for revival which has been an ever increasing burden.

If God gives you insight and you feel lead to share it with me please contact me. I continue to pray for God to reveal His heart and mind for me.

Thankful for People

Today I am thankful for people. People God put in my life. I am thankful for Eli Bernard for sharing Christ with me nearly 30 years ago. Your investment made all the difference. My whole life changed that night in October of 1983. God has given me a life I could have never deserved and never dreamed was possible. I am thankful for Charles Roberts for teaching me what ministry is all about and for always being there for me in the tough times. I am thankful for my great friends Eric Adcock, Jeff Robinson, and Jimmy Downe who make up most of my inner circle. You guys have seen me through the dark night of the soul and nights of weeping that eventually became mornings of joy. I am thankful for that soul mate Brenda Edwards who dared to marry me and has not flinched in following God's leadership these past twenty two years even down the roads less traveled and filled with the potholes of sacrifice and adversity. She has prayed with me and been my fervent prayer warrior. She has listened to my dreams, carried my sorrows and burdens, bravely endured times of poverty, and never walked out. You are my best friend, my soul mate, and my first choice for a lunch date. I am thankful for Taylor, Tanner, Tucker, Turner, and Jennifer who love me despite my many faults. Thank you for always being willing to forgive me when I get it wrong. I am proud of each of you and humbled God chose me to be your father. I am thankful for former flocks from Burke Baptist Church, CentrePointe Community Church, FBC Paradise, and FBC Seminole who loved my family and stood with us. I am thankful for their willingness to hunger for God and to follow His leadership. I am thankful for the people in Paradise God used to provide my truck and the people of Seminole who loved me enough to release me to God's new call on my life and then go beyond in financially partnering with us to the tune of $35,000 over the past two years all unsolicited and given freely in response to God's leadership. I am thankful for the flock at Faith Community Church who dream with me and who are learning to pray and have walked this adventure with us. I am thankful for those who started and stayed with us even when the going got really rough. I am thankful for those many people who pray for me consistently. I am humbled by God's great gift of people in my life. You know who you are.

Where would I be in life without the investment of countless faces from Denman Avenue Baptist Church, Southside Baptist Church, Carpenter's Way, and others who partnered with me with NO Compromise Ministries back in the late nineties and early 2000's?

Today I am thankful for each of you. If you are reading and this and wonder if I am thinking about you chances are yes. A sea of faces crosses my mind. Thank you for your investment of love, prayer, encouragement, friendship, partnership financially, taking your place in the body of Christ, and those who have believed God for crazy dreams with me like funding a hospital in Honduras. I am a blessed man. EXTREMELY BLESSED. Like George Bailey I am able to say this is A WONDERFUL LIFE and I am one of the richest men in town.

A Nation Adrift

We are drifting. Drifting as a nation further from God. We are drifting along with the masses in a current of immorality and indifference to the laws of God. We drift ever deeper into the sewage of sin without realizing what we are doing.

I saw something the other day where a lady was looking at a house to buy and walked into standing water throughout the house. She took her shoes to walk barefoot through the house so as not to ruin her new shoes. She was sickened to learn that she was actually wading in backed up sewage water. She actually stood in feces and urine. It sickened her as she ran out of the house looking for a water hose to rinse her feet off.

That is a clear picture of what is happening in the average American home. We have drifted so far from God we stand in the sewage of sin and welcome it to our homes never blinking an eye. We do it through the avenue of Satan's never ending assault on the mind through television. I challenge you take an hour or two hours and watch your programs through the lenses of God's eyes and God's word. Make a list of everything you see on television and commercials that offends God. Scrutinize all you see and then at the end of the that time take a look and ask yourself, "Have these things offended me like they offend God? Have I become increasingly comfortable with sin?" If you have the courage to do this it will change your viewing habits. If you have the courage to face this sobering truth. The path of least resistance is to resist this as the ramblings of a mad man.

I want to increasingly become comfortable being uncomfortable with life in America. I want the courage Noah had when he walked with God when his whole culture lived in wickedness continually. He swam upstream against the moral current of his generation. O how I plead with God for that kind of courage in fathers, mothers, teenagers, and children again.

Where bullying is no longer tolerated at any level of society. It happens by more church going kids to other kids than you want to know. Where bosses bully employees. Where some parents even bully their own prodigy.

Today we would label those who take serious the things of God as "holier than thou" types. Radicals. Troublemakers. Old fashioned. Out of step with the times. Well, I for one want to get comfortable with those labels for my God has been insulted and His laws assaulted. I cannot take it anymore.

I am increasingly becoming uncomfortable. I cannot enjoy going to a movie with my family. Sin abounds and my God is insulted. I am offended by most television programming because the behavior which reflects the behavior of our nation is offensive to God. I do find a little solace in the Andy Griffith show. I sat in a Christian concert in a church recently and wept because people stand in line to get into a concert but God and His word cannot draw a crowd in most churches on most Sunday mornings unless there is a dog and pony show.

When I hear things like how one father and mother recently spent $15,000 on their kids playing select sports in one year and did this for several years we are a nation drifting. These parents claim Christ as their Savior but think nothing of "not keeping the Sabbath holy" as they play ball. Sports has become an idol and it used to bring me such joy as I watched my boys. Now I sit in the stands more agonizing as I watch people drift further and further from God. Even my own children. I recently had to call one of my boys out during a game for "showboating" on a play. In this house we play for God's glory or we will not play.

I have seen and heard those who sit in church on Sundays singing God's praises cursing profusely at games when things do not go their way. I have witnessed the cut throat attitudes of parents jealous of one another's kids and all the backstabbing that takes place. I have witnessed when people acted like fools at games hollering, screaming, ranting, and defaming coaches. All for a game. It is no longer a game. It is an idol. We have bowed at the shrine of sports and few have the guts to destroy that idol and place God alone solely on the throne of our hearts, families, churches, and this country. How many tithes are being robbed and spent on select sports and travel expenses? How many children are living with inflated egos but are living offensive to God and are lost headed for damnation. Parents seem oblivious. When other "Christian" parents are compromising the same way with their children it makes it a lot easier to justify sin.

I do not see this same passion and devotion in training children to be righteous. In fact I wonder how many parents spend anytime in devotions and teaching children to follow God. Parents to do not blink at spending thousands of dollars on their kid for private sports lessons but get offended when church camp costs $300 and all the money is not raised. We are drifting.

Sex outside of marriage is no big deal in this society. Homosexuality no longer shocks or offends. What used to outrage Christians is now simply accepted as just being a sign of the times. The times insult a holy God and there will be a day of accounting at some point.

I was not shocked when a young woman came to tell me she was pregnant years ago when her and her boyfriend spent the night in a tent on her parents front yard. The parents gave consent to this but actually acted shocked when their daughter became pregnant. ARE YOU KIDDING? Sex is on television everywhere. Casual sex. Last night one couple said on a sitcom, "You do not have to be married to have sex." I was offended. When is enough going to be enough. These messages get in the hearts of impressionable men, women, teenagers and children. God is offended and insulted and yet we laugh it off as no big deal.

We are drifting when grown adolescents live in the fantasy world of video games locked away all hours of the night and day in a make believe world. The same can be said of pornography as sexual fantasies are played out on a video screen or television screen. We are drifting when young men and women do not know a work ethic and cannot understand responsibility. Parents are drifting when they enable their sons and daughters to continue to live this way by financing this lifestyle.

We are drifting when the church listens to sermon after sermon dry eyed, cold hearted, and never one time in the course of the year going to the altar to do business with God. When truth is expounded but not heeded the church drifts further from what God intended.

O God, please come rescue our souls, our families, our churches, our community and our country. How much longer will you tolerate the sin of a wicked and defiant nation? How long will you be patient as we drift further into the sewage of sin? Lord, I plead with you to start working in individual hearts as you call us all to genuine repentance. I ask you to call us back to the standard of your word, "holiness in all our behavior" and to "avoid every appearance of evil". I plead for you to break our hearts in conviction and contrition. Lord I beg you to open our eyes to see how far we have drifted from you personally and as families. I pray you breakthrough our rock hard hearts that have heard and rejected living out the truth of your word for decades.

Lord, I plead for you to do a work in pastors all over this nation. I pray they can no longer to be content to live and minister in prayerless lifestyles. I plead for you to call pastors back to the prayer closet to seek you in the secret place. I ask you to reward those pastors with revival in the public arena. I ask you to call your church to more than lip service about prayer. I pray for those pastors to have the courage to preach boldly under the power of your anointing not with persuasive words of human wisdom but in a demonstration of your spirit and power.

Please wake us up from our spiritual slumber. I beg of you to shake your smugly satisfied sleeping church. I plead with you to make us all uncomfortable again. Please stop the drifting now. In Jesus name.

We Need Revival

Do we truly want revival? It seems to me most churches are perfectly content to continue on with business as usual without it. If I have learned one thing about revival from reading history and experiencing small tastes of it personally, REVIVAL IS COSTLY. There are few who want to pay the price.

Revival inevitably leads to repentance and a return to holiness. Revival always means prayer. It takes prayer to give birth to revival and more prayer to sustain revival. The prayer meeting is just about extinct in the 21st Century church.

I read about men and women who were so hungry for God to move they would spend whole nights in prayer. Most churches seem perfectly content to do church as usual. The pews are filled and the offering plates are also full. Leaders are satisfied with these lesser blessings. 

Are altars full of people broken over sin in their lives and sin in our land? I was watching a news program the other day and heard that one of the anchors recently got married. I was sick to my stomach when Brenda revealed to me this man had married another man and recently returned from his honeymoon. Does anything sicken or shock the church anymore?

Are baptistries full and regularly in use with new converts following Christ in believer's baptism? Do those new converts stay the course or do they fall away like is the case so often these days?

Revival is costly but we must have it. I pray for God to call his church back to the prayer meeting and back to the altars at the church while we still have time. Lord, give us revival or may we die in pursuit of you for it.

FAMILY WORSHIP

What happened to the family altar? Where did the time of family devotions go? I received a text from a friend today who told me they got snowed in from church this morning. What did they do? They put together their own family worship service. The father brought the word along with the oldest son. The daughter sang. The grandmother testified along with the mother. The youngest son prayed and took the offering. The mother talked about what a memorable time they shared together.

Tonight the Edwards family enjoyed our normal Sunday night prayer meeting at home instead of with the rest of the Faith Community family because we thought the weather would be bad. We prayed for our church, our community, for sick friends, one going in for surgery tomorrow, for other people we dearly love, for our family, revival, and for miracles. Brenda thanked God for the "sweet music" in her ears getting to hear her four boys pray out loud.

There have been times in history when fathers and mothers did not just leave it to the church to train their children in righteousness. They sat down and taught the scriptures and taught their children how to pray. They invested in their children spiritually.

In our society how can young men and young women learn how to have a devotion if mom and dad not have quiet times with the Lord? How will young men ever learn to pray if they never learn to pray by following the example of their fathers? How will daughters learn to cast their cares on the Lord if they never see their mother do it in daily life? If they never see mom and dad turning to God in the day of trouble [Ps 50:15] they probably will not do it either.

For some of you it might seem it is too late. You squandered those precious opportunities and now your children are grown. You can still teach your grandchildren. We must pass on the legacy of our faith to the next generations. We must tell them of the goodness of our God. {Ps 78:5-8] This has never been easy. It will never be easy. IT IS NECESSARY!

The family altar must be resurrected in the home. When this happen families will be revived in their faith. As a result churches will be revived and entire communities can be transformed. If you are teaching your children how to throw, catch, shoot, or kick a ball but not teaching them how to meet with God you are failing them. If you are teaching them to shop for deals, to cook, and how to clean but not how to walk in holiness before the Lord you are doing them a great disservice. IT IS TIME TO RECLAIM THE FAMILY ALTAR AND REINSTATE FAMILY DEVOTIONS!

A Ministry For All

There is a vital ministry everyone can do. Every one is called to this ministry. It does not involve teaching or preaching for those who hate to be in front of crowds. You do not have to possess a gifted voice in singing for this ministry. You do have to go to some special training. It is a ministry of love that can play eternal dividends. What ministry am I referring to? Praying for others. Not just praying for them but send them those prayers in a card, email, facebook message, or a text. What a joy to stand in the gap for the body of Christ. We can all do that no matter how young or how old. I am so grateful this time of year for the many people who pray for me. I am also grateful when God brings needs to my attention to pray for others. Pray for one another. This is a gift that truly keeps on giving.

Like ·  · 

Little Blessings

It is a rare Friday night. All six of the Edwards family members are at home. We have a fire in the fire place. We have a good wholesome movie playing. I am not asleep yet. This is one of God's new mercies and little blessings for me.

The blessing of having all four boys at home. No ball games. No late night on the road. No eating without the oldest two. All four boys enjoying pizza and a good old family movie night does my soul good. All six of us sitting in our blessing living room being warmed by our blessing fire place with the first fire in our blessing home. These little blessings are not lost on me.

Brenda has a dear friend dying of cancer. She has only weeks to live. Brenda and some of her high school friends made a trip to see her. The one thing that lady told Brenda and the others that stuck was, "We do have perfect days more than we think. Enjoy those perfect days."

This is one of those perfect days or perfect evenings. It has been a good day. No, a great day. After my time with the Lord I cooked breakfast for the boys. Later we shared in a family devotion together. After school  we all went to get hair cuts together after school. We came home to pizza, a fire place, and a movie. This is a perfect day. No complaints. I need to take notice of such days more often. Days when God's blessings and mercies are abounding. Days when I take snap shots in my heart to remember later on. The day will come when the fire will still burn and the movie may play but it will just be Brenda and I to share our time together as the boys grow up and move on with God's plans for their lives. I do not want to take these days for granted.

It won't be long and these days will come fewer and further in between. In nine months Taylor will be off to football two a days at some college. Tanner will be junior and Tucker will be starting high school. Tuner will be making the jump to middle school. Turner and I both had a little cry about Taylor graduating and moving from home recently. So tonight I am enjoying God's little blessings but in a major way.

Great is God's faithfulness and His mercies are new every morning. Lord, thank you for those mercies coming in the form of a great night at home with my family.