Give Him 15 is joining a 40-day national call to prayer before the 2018 Midterm Elections. Here is today’s Focus:
Day 35 – Awakening His Beautiful Bride
“I know your reputation as a live and active church, but you are dead. Now wake up! Strengthen what little remains—for even what is left is at the point of death. Your deeds are far from right in the sight of God. Go back to what you heard and believed at first; hold to it firmly and turn to me again.” (Revelation 3:1b-3a; TLB)
George Barna has given us some shocking statistics on the church in America. Due to a number of factors, Barna considers 48% of American adults to be in a “post-Christian” state and 45% to be completely unchurched.1
There is a greater concern: 55% of Americans believe that you can get to heaven by doing good works.2 This ideology leaves Christ completely out of the picture. Where is the need for a Savior if we can get to heaven without Him? Is living forever the goal or is an eternal relationship with our loving Father the goal? What does it mean to be a Christian? All of these questions are raised by that one response alone.
If the Church is God’s representative on the earth and if that representation is to love and reflect Him, enforcing and expanding God’s Kingdom on the earth, then we are in trouble. The American Church is generally anemic, weak, and uneducated in God’s ways.
Yes, there is a remnant! It is small, but it is noteworthy! These largely evangelical and charismatic Believers “get it.” They prayed. They voted. They shifted a nation. They are praying some more! Some are planning to run for government offices from the local to the national level. They are impacting the realms of influence God has placed them in—family, education, business, religion, government, media, and arts and entertainment.
We must pray for the rest to awaken to God’s Truth and their purpose in the earth!
Points for Prayer:
Thank the Lord for His beautiful Bride!
Call for God to shake the Church awake! Cry out over her, “Wake up, Church! Wake up!”
Intercede that Believers would fully recognize their ability to greatly impact culture if we all pray and work together in obedience to God and His Word.
Pray a blessing over those Christians who are already out there making a difference. Pray that nothing would be able to hinder them.
By Dutch Sheets
President, Dutch Sheets Ministries
1 Barna, George. The State of the Church 2016. Barna.com, 9/15/16.
https://www.barna.com/research/state-church-2016/ 4/19/17.
2 Ibid.