OneCry: A Nationwide Call for Spiritual Awakening
176
OneCry: A Nationwide Call for Spiritual Awakening
176eBookNew Edition (New Edition)
Available on Compatible NOOK devices, the free NOOK App and in My Digital Library.
Related collections and offers
Overview
OneCry: A Call to Spiritual Awakening is a challenge, a plea for readers to shake off spiritual apathy and wake up to the hope of God moving with extraordinary power in our day. It paints a picture of both desperation and hope; without spiritual revival our country has no hope, but when it comes we will need no other hope. Drawing on an abundance of stories from ordinary people who have experienced the power of life-changing revival in their own lives, this books provides a contemporary roadmap for spiritual awakening and real revival.
Passionate and story-rich, OneCry engages readers to seek God urgently at this moment in history, it inspires them with hope for what God can do, and it invites them to join a growing movement of believers who are uniting in one cry for revival and spiritual awakening. It is a summons to join together in a single focus: passionate prayer for revival in our nation like hasn’t been seen in nearly two hundred years.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780802489999 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Moody Publishers |
| Publication date: | 03/01/2014 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 176 |
| File size: | 3 MB |
About the Author
BILL ELLIFF leads the pastor emphasis of the OneCry movement. As the Senior Teaching Pastor of The Summit Church in North Little Rock, Arkansas, his passion is to see both genuine revival and methodological renewal in the church. Bill is a frequent conference speaker, writer, and consultant to churches drawing from more than 40 years of pastoring and revival ministry. He and his wife Holly have eight children and live in Little Rock, Arkansas.
Read an Excerpt
OneCry
A Nationwide Call for Spiritual Awakening
By Byron Paulus, Bill Elliff, Elizabeth Cody Newenhuyse
Moody Publishers
Copyright © 2014 Byron Paulus and Bill ElliffAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-8024-8999-9
CHAPTER 1
PART ONE
WHY ONECRY?
Indelibly etched in my (Byron's) memory are a number of agonizing cries. As a teenager, I will never forget the heartbreaking cry of my mother as I watched two army officers approach the back door of our farmhouse to tell our family about the death of my older brother in Vietnam. That piercing cry still echoes in my heart.
As a husband, my own cry joined my wife Sue's when we found out the heartbeat of our unborn child had ceased. At the gravesite, our united cries expressed our deep sense of loss.
On other occasions, my cries have been with and for the suffering of dear friends. In one instance, I was on the phone with one of my staff when I heard the scream of his wife in the background as their infant daughter breathed her last breath, losing her battle with leukemia.
A fallen soldier, a deceased infant, a bereaved mother.
Have you ever experienced a deep, heartrending cry?
It's Time to Cry UP
But crying out is not always the same thing as crying up. Sometimes our cries are born out of anger—cries at or cries for or cries because. But OneCry goes beyond those kinds of cries.
OneCry is about a vertical cry. Like the cry of Moses when he asked God to spare the nation from destruction. Or when the Israelites came together to grieve after the ark of God had been stolen and the nation had lost the glory of God. Like the cry of Psalm 85, when broken hearts looked toward heaven and pleaded, "Will you not revive us again, that your people may rejoice in you?" (v. 6 ESV). Or when Isaiah cried with prophetic passion, "Oh, that you would burst forth from the heavens and come down!" (Isaiah 64:1 NLT).
A vertical cry is not always a corporate cry for a beleaguered nation, a hurting community, a lifeless church, or even a messed-up family. Sometimes it is a very personal cry erupting from a deep spiritual need. And that is where it must begin, in the circle of our own heart. Like the stories that follow of David and Diane and thousands more in our nation who cannot stop crying over the condition of their own troubled soul:
God found me hard and closed off. Hurtful words, harsh actions, and bitter attitudes had so caused deep wounds in my heart that I shut down. I didn't want to pray any more, sing any more, fellowship any more. I had come to a place of "why bother?" I became the very person I had been hurt by. I wanted to hurt instead of being hurt. God created such anguish in my heart that I literally could not breathe. I begged and cried out for God to show me what was wrong. Through the Scriptures God spoke to me that He is my mighty warrior, and He will deal with my hurts if I let Him. I listed them specifically and, praise the Lord, I gave them all to Him that night. I am free! – David
Today I went to my knees before God to confess all that my broken heart could reveal and to remove the mask covering my heart. I asked a godly person to pray with me. For the first time, God gave me grace and strength to be as broken as an open acorn, to open my heart to let the old life flee and the courage to rebuild my life. I cried out to God, then I cried and cried some more, and prayed like never before. I feel that God has truly changed me! – Diane
God found me not only broke but completely shattered. I was a truly pathetic mess for years. Rape, thoughts of suicide, pot and alcohol abuse, and self-inflicting harm. I was ashamed of all that and more. I tried my hardest to deal with it on my own. How would my parents be able to face the church if their own daughter wasn't leaning on God for her problems? My father, a pastor, shouldn't have a daughter doing those things. I called upon God when He had about 33 percent of me. Now, I'm all His. I am slowly telling my parents, and without the passion I now have for God, I wouldn't be able to do anything. I can't do it alone. I never should have tried. – Allison
Twelve years ago, I came face-to-face with death. On the way home from a college mission trip, our plane crash-landed in a severe thunderstorm, killing eleven people, including two of my friends sitting next to me. I walked away almost unscathed, but I would carry emotional scars with me for years to come. Where was God when my friends needed Him? And why did He choose to spare my life? It took four years of counseling, but I finally let go of my anger against God. I learned to pray earnestly again. I even learned to trust Him when I started flying again. – Harold
No matter how difficult or hopeless of a situation we find ourselves in, God is waiting for our cry. OneCry is the cry of the soul that longs for God to come in all His glory.
A Sacred Cry
Have you ever been so swept up in the purposes of God, the lostness of the world, the brokenness of your own condition, the desire for Christ's honor, that you lifted your eyes to heaven and wept? Have your tears for His kingdom to come ever rivaled agonizing human cries of despair or bondage or sorrow?
This kind of heartfelt, passionate cry, this anguish of soul, is what it means to seek God fervently. It is this kind of cry we hear Jesus pouring forth when He wept over the city of Jerusalem. It is also reflected in the intensity of the cry of Jesus in the garden of Gethsemane (Luke 19:41; Hebrews 5:7). And as Jesus experienced, seeking God earnestly may require great personal sacrifice.
But some things are so important that they are worth the cost. And once we see the value of the power and presence of God as well as the alternatives without Him, I believe we will cry out to God like never before.
In fact, the cry of a God-seeker is not a morbid, defeated cry. It is a cry of hope. A cry that looks to heaven and changes the way we live on earth. A cry that resets priorities and rearranges schedules. A cry that will turn you from a prayer spectator to a prayer warrior. A cry that will take you to places you've never imagined and demand sacrifices on a level you never anticipated, but will also cause you to love and live more like Christ than you ever thought possible.
This cry, this one cry, is a turnaround moment. It's a moment when we admit that we don't have the answers. We don't have solutions. We can't fix what's broken in our world. Our one cry upward to God, born in humility, is our ultimate admission of need before Him. And when we admit our need, when we humble ourselves before the Lord, He gives grace. And everything changes. Not because of us, but because of Him.
We cry up to God in that sacred moment when we realize we have nothing else to offer.
Hidden Danger
When the I-35 bridge collapsed in Minneapolis a number of years ago, sending sixty cars careening down into the Mississippi River, speculation regarding the cause started almost immediately.
It soon became clear that the problem wasn't simply a matter of external stressors. The collapse came from within, due to structural problems that were not readily apparent. In strategic areas, the metal supports slowly became "fatigued." After decades of heavy use, the bridge finally could no longer bear the weight.
Sadly, after the crash, an investigation revealed that even though the bridge had been declared deficient by government inspectors, the serious work of overhaul was never prioritized. Restorative measures would have required shutting down the highway, rerouting traffic for months, and taking time to lift the entire structure in order to get to problems beneath the surface of the river.
Doing what it took to address the real issues was deemed too difficult. Too time consuming. Too costly. No one was willing to make the necessary adjustments to do what was needed to avoid disaster. Band-Aids were used when a total overhaul was required.
I wonder if America is in just as precarious a position today? Could business as usual be keeping us from taking seriously the dangers facing our society? Or, as in Minneapolis, perhaps the issues have been duly noted, but few are willing to do what's necessary to go below the surface to the heart of the problems. The "heavenly inspector" says, "Fix it," and we reply, "It doesn't fit in our schedules. It's too inconvenient. It won't be popular. It costs too much."
But how much longer can our nation bear the weight? Tomorrow may be too late.
Warning Signs
The Bible warns us to take action before it becomes too late: "Today when you hear [God's] voice, don't harden your hearts as Israel did when they rebelled" (Hebrews 3:15 NLT). The foundation of any nation is found in the hearts of its people. "If the foundations are destroyed, what can the righteous do?" (Psalm 11:3 ESV).
Warning signs that America has heart trouble are everywhere, aren't they? Financially, we are facing crushing debt and abiding fear of economic meltdown. Sociologically, our families are splitting up and being redefined by cohabitation, divorce, and so-called same-sex marriage. Educationally, many schools are failing and our kids are falling behind other developed countries. Politically, we are divided and gridlocked while facing new kinds of global threats.
At some level, the message is sinking in. Polls show that most Americans agree that the country is on the wrong track. Something is desperately wrong, and we know it. But just how bad is it? What it the extent of the problems we face?
There is ample statistical evidence that it is not well in the United States (or in the rest of Western Civilization, for that matter). Yet I fear that such statistics have become so familiar to us that we've begun to accept their conclusions as "normal." But they aren't! Our nation shouldn't be defined by ...
Fatherlessness. There are more unmarried mothers under age 30 than married mothers, with 40% of all babies born out of wedlock, and 48% of all first births to unmarried women.
Imprisonment. More than 7 million adults are on probation, on parole, in jail or prison—the most of any nation on earth.
Perversion. 40 million visitors peruse porn sites on the web—with the average age of first visits being age 11. And the most religious states (the Bible Belt) have the highest percentage!
Culture of Death. Since 1973, the total number of American lives lost to abortion is roughly equal to the collective world-wide death toll of World War II (approximately 60 million souls).
Chaos and Confusion. Biblical cultural standards have been jettisoned by government, the media, and a significant portion of the U.S. population (even within the church).
Bondage. America's national debt continues to grow, and in the future we face $124 trillion in unfunded liabilities—more than the world's GDP (83 trillion) and over $1,000,000 per U.S. taxpayer. And, this reality says nothing about the lifestyle of personal indebtedness that plagues many U.S. families.
And stats do not tell the whole story because behind every stat is a personal experience. After forty years of ministry in over 6,000 local churches across America, I continue to hear the stories of this disintegration every day. And the personal cost of having lost our way is overwhelming.
Every year, I receive thousands of letters from people who have encountered God in personal spiritual revival. But it's not the number of respondents I find significant as much as the depth of pain and dysfunction they have endured before experiencing God's intervention.
Here are a few examples of recent letters. I narrowed this sample to women, and then further narrowed it to women who were connected to church leadership.
• My sister-in-law is divorcing her husband and leaving her three boys to marry her former pastor. We grieve over this as a Christian family.
• My husband was once a pastor. He is now very worldly minded and disillusioned. This has been hard for our marriage.
• My pastor-husband left me for his secretary. The divorce was finalized two weeks ago. Pray for restoration to God and family.
• My sister has left her husband and believes she is in love with her pastor. Both families are in the midst of divorce and planning their new life together.
• There is a man I hate. He ran my father who's a pastor off from his church. I need to release my anger and hate.
These needy people are not alone. And if this is occurring in the pulpits of our land, imagine what is happening in the pew. Could this simply be the tip of the iceberg representing the havoc that broken lives, broken families, broken churches, and a broken society have left in its wake?
They are all casualties of the spiritual battle that is raging in our nation at this very moment. And every day, lives are swept away in a sea of hopelessness, bitterness, and confusion.
Empty lives. Broken families. A disintegrating nation. Like the I-35 bridge in Minneapolis, external pressure is mounting while the support mechanisms are increasingly fatigued and unable to support the weight.
That's where we find ourselves. And, unfortunately, there's nothing on the horizon that can or will change any of that. Look to the east, the north, the south, and the west. There are no human answers.
A State of Emergency
A chorus of voices from all sectors of our society has begun to sound an alarm. The trajectory of America on many levels is unsustainable economically, socially, politically, and morally.
This unsustainable course can't be fixed by rearranging government programs or implementing new policies. It isn't ultimately about combating violence or cleaning up the streets or even protesting the evils of society. No, the answer is spiritual. The answer is to call out for God's mercy, for the hope and transformation that only He can bring to a prodigal nation.
Is it possible then that the greatest threat America faces may be God Himself as He withholds His mercy and exercises His righteous judgment?
Consider these words from the heart of God to the nations:
If at any time I announce that a nation or kingdom is to be uprooted, torn down and destroyed, and if that nation I warned repents of its evil, then I will relent and not inflict on it the disaster I had planned. And if at another time I announce that a nation or kingdom is to be built up and planted, and if it does evil in my sight and does not obey me, then I will reconsider the good I had intended to do for it. (Jeremiah 18:7–10 NIV)
The principle in these verses is undeniable—God not only blesses people and nations, He judges them as well.
As Dr. Erwin Lutzer puts it, "The God of the Bible will not endlessly tolerate idolatry and benign neglect. He graciously endures rejection and insults, but at some point, He might choose to bring a nation to its knees with severe discipline."
So how urgent are the days in which we live? Scholar and revival historian Richard Owen Roberts writes:
When the people of God sin against Him and do not repent, He judges them. While some of these judgments are final and consist of death and destruction, the more standard form of judgment is both remedial and gracious and consists of withdrawal of certain evidences of His manifest presence and merciful favors. In the absence of God's manifest presence, there is always an immediate and extensive increase in iniquity.... God has judged America with the remedial judgment of withdrawal of certain manifestations of His gracious presence and mercy. [emphasis added]
The painful effects of wickedness we are experiencing—in our families, in our communities, even in our government—all of this showcases how much we need God's grace.
America is in a state of spiritual emergency. It's not just because of how the world is acting, but how the church is behaving. Where does judgment begin, after all, if not in the house of God (1 Peter 4:17)?
How we respond to our current trajectory will determine our ultimate outcome. It's time to cry up, to utter a desperate cry to God before it's too late.
The Cry That Counts
A number of years ago, I visited our nation's capital. While there for meetings, I had gone to the office of a US Senator to pray for him. Having just left, I found myself standing halfway between the US Supreme Court building and the US Capitol, two magnificent buildings representing two powerful branches of our government. That's when my cellphone rang.
It was a dear Christian friend whose teenage daughter had just confessed to him of having lost her virginity with a man she had just met. Devastated, this father was asking if he could fly to Washington D.C. that night to meet me.
I was shocked. My wife and I had spent many hours investing in this young woman's life. She was a vibrant Christian who had surrendered her life to fulltime vocational ministry, and now this?
As I hung up the phone, tears filled my eyes and I became exasperated. I looked at the Capitol and thought, "If our legislature would just make better laws, this type of thing would never happen! Our culture is filled with evil and it is allowed to run rampant through every corner, and our elected officials won't do anything to stop it. Our young people don't stand a chance!"
Then as I turned, I noticed the Supreme Court building, and I hurled more accusations: "If our courts would just interpret the law instead of making new laws to conform to our lifestyle, succumbing to what the people want as a license to live wicked lives, this would never happen!"
(Continues...)
Excerpted from OneCry by Byron Paulus, Bill Elliff, Elizabeth Cody Newenhuyse. Copyright © 2014 Byron Paulus and Bill Elliff. Excerpted by permission of Moody Publishers.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
PART ONE: No Hope Apart From Revival
Chapter 1: Unsustainable
Chapter 2: What's Missing?
PART TWO: No Hope Like Revival
Chapter 3: Too Far Gone?
Chapter 4: Rain Down
PART THREE: Road to Revival
Chapter 5: Closer Than We Think
Chapter 6: Draw Near
Conclusion: Join the Movement