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October 2009 Newsletter
ARE YOU DESPERATE ENOUGH YET?
What will it take for God to get your full and complete attention? Once you realize
how important you are to Him, you will want to give Him everything you’ve got. But
that is part of the deception of this life. Satan and the world are trying to get
your attention and deceive you, but God is in the business of allowing things to occur
in your life to get your focus on Him and His word.
Mark 5:22,23 says,
“And, behold, there cometh one of the rulers of the synagogue, Jairus
by name; and when he saw him, he fell at his feet, And besought him greatly,
saying, My little daughter lieth at the point of death: I pray thee, come and
lay thy hands on her, that she may be healed; and she shall live.”
A ruler of a synagogue coming to Jesus at that time was a very big deal. His reputation
could have been destroyed. He could have lost his position, business contacts, and lots
of friends. The question became whether his little daughter was more important to him or
his position? God moved the ruler to the position of choosing the world or Him, and it caused
him to fall at the feet of the only hope that he had: The Lord Jesus Christ. What is the
Lord going to have to do in your life to get your full and complete attention?
Mark 5:25-34 tells us,
“And a certain woman, which had an issue of blood twelve years, And had suffered
many things of many physicians, and had spent all that she had, and was nothing bettered,
but rather grew worse, When she had heard of Jesus, came in the press behind, and touched
his garment. For she said, If I may touch but his clothes, I shall be whole. And straightway
the fountain of her blood was dried up; and she felt in her body that she was healed of that
plague. And Jesus, immediately knowing in himself that virtue had gone out of him, turned him
about in the press, and said, Who touched my clothes? And his disciples
said unto him, Thou seest the multitude thronging thee, and sayest thou, Who touched me? And he
looked round about to see her that had done this thing. But the woman fearing and trembling,
knowing what was done in her, came and fell down before him, and told him all the truth. And he
said unto her, Daughter, thy faith hath made thee whole; go in peace, and be
whole of thy plague.”
Have you reached the point yet that the only answer you will look for is the Son of God and no
one else? This woman had reached that point. Twelve years with this affliction was enough.
All the doctors and all the money in the world couldn?t solve her problem. She had only one
hope left, but oh my, what a hope He was! She had to get through the multitude to get to Jesus.
Was He worth it? She knew the answer. Do you know that answer?
I met a guy one day in a prison that told me how he thanked God he was put in jail. I was kind
of dumbfounded by his statement. But he said that was the event that finally got his full and
complete attention to serve the Most High God. He said that when you lay on your bunk in that
cell, there is only one way to look: Straight up to Almighty God!
An acquaintance of mine has just gotten into a lot of trouble with the law. Will this be his
watershed moment of fully and completely trusting in the Lord in all that he does?
I had dinner with an old friend recently. He told me that he had been in jail, and when he was
in there, another inmate had one of my books. He was stunned. He didn’t even know I had written
anything. He read the book, and knew God was setting all of this up to get him back in line to
serve Him completely with his whole life.
A wonderful woman of the Lord lives a couple of minutes from where the Yale student was killed
recently. She has been over there doing some powerful witnessing to the students on that campus
and giving out copies of One Heartbeat Away to them. If Virginia Tech didn’t get every
college student’s attention, maybe the Yale event will. Or then again, maybe it won’t,
and now something else will have to occur to wake them up.
That same lady also sent One Heartbeat Away to the man who is charged with the student’s murder.
The book is going into that prison right to him. A guard even called her and told her how to get
it to him. You see folks, when you boldly speak the truth in love, God uses those encounters all
the time.
As I was writing this newsletter, I walked up to the front of the airplane to throw some trash
away. I overheard a flight attendant use the word ‘Holy Spirit.’ So, naturally,
I butted in! It turned out that she was chatting with a man named Joe who was going to see one
final doctor for his cancer. This was it. Either he had the answer, or it was over. One thing
we told Joe, was that only Jesus had the answer he was looking for. We were trying to get him
to think about what happened when he died and all he wanted to talk about was living. It was
interesting and frustrating all at the same time. He was very stuck in his Catholic faith, and
kept saying he would be okay because of his good works. We took the time to pray that God would
get his attention and for his cancer. When I walked off the plane, he was waiting for me. We
talked some more, and he hugged me. That was nice, but means nothing the moment he dies.
Please pray for Joe that he will see Truth before he dies.
So ask yourself a question: Does God have your full and complete attention? But if He doesn’t,
ask yourself this question: What will it take for Him to get it? If 911, Tsunami’s, Hurricane
Katrina, the word ‘cancer’, celebrities dying, etc. don’t get your attention,
what will? Is it the collapse of the dollar? Martial law on the streets of America? A major
earthquake? A nuclear weapon going off in America? He wants your attention. Will you give it
to Him? If you are not born again, today is the day of salvation. If you are born again, today
is the day to repent of anything in your life that is not in line with God’s Word, and get
back on that narrow road. Don’t stand next to the narrow road. That is simply not good
enough. You need to get on the narrow road.
That is actually a very good prayer for the lost people in your life. Pray that God will do
whatever it takes to get their complete attention. That can be a dangerous prayer. I tell that
to people for whom I have prayed that prayer: That God will wake them up and get their attention
focused on Him. You don’t know how God will answer your prayer, but that person’s
soul is certainly that important to the Most High God. You can be rest assured of that. The
cross of the Lord Jesus Christ is all the proof that you need of that fact!
God is in the business of getting people’s attention. Make sure He has your complete
attention in the coming days. It will be necessary to survive what is going to happen and to
be used by Him the way that you and He really want before His return.
Until the nets are full,
P.S. A lot of people have been asking how the talk I gave, The Holiness of God, at the Deeper
Conference went. If you click on this link, you can listen to it:
http://www.markcahill.org/listen3.html
If you would like the whole set of DVD’s or CD’s of the conference, you can click here and order them:
http://indduplication.com/index.php?_a=viewCat&catId=64&PHPSESSID=2d17d6c57c372b94ad50b32576b09403
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