Here we go again! I go off into the middle of the desert and God just shows up and messes me up…

What so many folks say is faith is actually fear. It doesn’t matter how they dress it up and parade it around, calling it high and lofty names… it is simply a masquerade. Fear, rooted in ignorance, is actually a lack of faith.

This is how Jesus met his end. Religious people killed him because he threatened their system. There is a whole theological issue involved in this: Jesus came to die so did they really kill him. I think that perhaps this is the whole point. He had to die. However, he had to do so within the confines of the context of sin, religion and faith. Man had embraced sin, created religion to take the place of faith, then executed the prophet who brought their ignorance into public view.

Yes, I understand that there is more to it than just this. Yet, does it matter? What value is salvation if we refuse to embrace it? Does a new life have any value if we chose to not live it? If we simply decline to R.S.V.P. to the celestial invitation to become royalty, does it matter what we could have been?

There are around a billion people in the world who don’t have clean drinking water. Almost 50 million people are dying of AIDS in Africa. Three billion people live on less than the equivalent of $2 per day. Forty-six million Americans do not have health care. 100,000 people died in Burma and China a few months ago due to cyclones and earthquakes. One and a half million in a small northeast corner of the state of Ceará in Brasil are enslaved to the powers of darkness.

The world is on fire, its drowning, it is in a state of emergency. The world is in desperate need of people who will pour themselves out for the sake of redemption and reconciliation.

We, of all the people on the face of the earth, have the answer and should be rushing in to stand in the gap. Why do we buy into Satan’s deception