From the desk of Steve Shultz:
I've noticed both in the secular and Christian media, the passing away of many who were once prominent. I pray that many Christians who are prominent in the Lord will - of course - live MANY more years.
Nevertheless, we must all be training, NOW, the next generation who will take our place. We must train them to act with more power, faith and authority than we were able to do.
God is always growing things and people (a KINGDOM TRUTH), after all. You'll see what I mean as you read this most important word by Mahesh Chavda. Mahesh is one who I consider to be a true hero of the faith. Read what he says about redeeming the time AND also about training the next generation.
But first, here are some resources by Mahesh:
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Blessings,
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Steve Shultz
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Mahesh and Bonnie Chavda:
"Keep Your Heart: Our Battle for the Next Generation - Part 1"
"Keep your heart with all diligence, for out of it spring the issues of life." Proverbs 4:23
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Iron Man
The new summer blockbuster is the story of a young man born with extraordinary talents who has received a valuable inheritance but is wasting himself on all the world has to offer. Just when he thinks he is at the top of his game, he is abducted by evil forces and suffers a life-threatening injury to his heart.
Captivity and pending death cause the young man to rethink his reason for living. Once self-indulgent and successful according to the standards of the world, he saves himself by creating and installing a new power source into his dying heart. In the process, the man gets a fresh perspective on his own destiny.
Thus Iron Man, living by the power of the new life source, becomes a superhero committed to fighting the forces of darkness threatening the world. Combining the extraordinary gifts he possesses, Tony Stark, a.k.a. the Iron Man, fashions body armor for himself that enables him to carry out impossible feats in the campaign against evil.
The themes from Iron Man resonate with us all. There is not a place on the world map that is not in crisis. Culturally, economically, politically, ethically or spiritually, the whole world is under the threat of dark powers intent on destroying the human race. In the greatest story ever told, God through Christ has become the ultimate superhero.
As the Savior of mankind, Jesus came in the weakness of human flesh to serve the plans of His Father by laying down His life to destroy the works of darkness - for eternity. Our Champion carried the heart of His Father. All He did, His virtue, His mighty acts of power to heal and deliver and His ultimate sacrifice came from that heart.
A 5-Act Drama
We are living in the last act of a great cosmic drama that began unfolding when the world was just "a soup of nothingness, a bottomless emptiness, an inky blackness" (Genesis 1, The Message Bible). Creation, the fall, Israel, Jesus and the Church are each successive acts in the overarching story of God. In Act 1 (Genesis 1), God's Spirit "brooded like a bird above the watery abyss." As the curtain opened, God moved upon the face of the deep with the intention of creating a family after His own image and likeness.
Act 2 begins when the progenitors of that family choose autonomy and miss the mark of the glory and perfection ordained for us all. "The fall" of the race introduced the possibility of every imaginable evil onto the stage of human history. Communion with God interrupted, fellowship with darkness began, and God's family moved further and further away from Him. God yearns to recover His family. In every generation He desires a people who have His heart. The Church of Jesus Christ is God's plan A to recapture the hearts of man. He has no plan B. But where do we begin to take back His creation?
"Now Adam knew Eve his wife, and she conceived and bore Cain, and said, 'I have acquired a man from the Lord.'" Genesis 4:1
The Heart of a Child
God is the source and giver of children. He calls them His inheritance and reward (Psalm 127:3). Parents are privileged to be the vessels in each family through whom God desires to promote His eternal purpose. The highest spiritual act we can assume is to accept the responsibility for creating the world by forming another human being after the likeness of God. He framed the worlds with His word (Hebrews 11:3). Parents create the framework of a child as we allow ourselves to be effective vessels of God's word. The same holds true for church eldership and leaders.
The smallest but greatest and most strategic battlefield is the heart of a child. Capture and form those hearts and you mold and direct the world. Parenting is the ultimate form of leadership. As with natural children, so it is with spiritual sons and daughters. Beginning at home and extending to the family of God, it is the privilege and duty of parents and spiritual leaders to form dread champions, nurtured in the knowledge and admonition of God who are equipped to oppose the foolishness of this present darkness.
"All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God." Romans 3:23
All humans, including children, are born with a heart problem. Allowed to go the "way of the world," spoiled or left to follow their own devices, untrained to obey or consider others more important than themselves, left ignorant of the heritage of redemption, the children of today are the monsters of tomorrow.
Paul says they become "lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, unloving, unforgiving, slanderers, without self-control, brutal, despisers of good, traitors, headstrong, haughty, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God" (2 Timothy 3:2-4).
A Nation to Be Light
In Act 3 of our narrative, God reappears to choose a people for Himself and create a nation to be a "light to the Gentiles":
"And Moses went up to God, and the Lord called to him from the mountain, saying, 'Thus you shall say to the house of Jacob, and tell the children of Israel: "You have seen what I did to the Egyptians, and how I bore you on eagles' wings and brought you to Myself. Now therefore, if you will indeed obey My voice and keep My covenant, then you shall be a special treasure to Me above all people; for all the earth is Mine. And you shall be to Me a "Kingdom of priests and a holy nation."'" Exodus 19:3-6
"For you are a holy people to the Lord your God, and the Lord has chosen you to be a people for Himself, a special treasure above all the peoples who are on the face of the earth." Deuteronomy 14:2
In the last scene of Act 3, just before he steps off the stage, Malachi the prophet turns to the audience. Speaking as the mouthpiece of God to frame the next generation he says:
"Remember the Law of Moses, My servant, which I commanded him in Horeb for all Israel, with the statutes and judgments. Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the Lord. And he will turn the hearts of the father to the children, and the hearts of the children to their father, lest I come and strike the earth with a curse." Malachi 4:4-6
The SEED Who Will Save His People
The stage goes black and silent for four hundred years. Israel's selection, journey, testing, failure, and promise carry us to Jesus.
Act 4 opens with an angel talking with a virgin and the announcement that she will bear the Seed promised in Act 1: the Seed who will save His people from their sins. Or in the words of a physician who knew Him personally, would "turn the 'disobedient to the wisdom of the just' and make ready a people prepared for the Lord" (Luke 1:17).
The incarnation, life, ministry, death and burial of Christ all seem to bring our story to an abrupt and senseless end that leaves the audience in shock. No one wants to move. Evil has triumphed and the whole world is doomed to the consequence of sin.
But just as despair is about to set in, there is other movement. Light and the blast of trumpets break forth, angels and an earthquake! Christ rises from the grave! The Spirit who brooded over the whole "soup" in the beginning is back and has raised our Hero out of the pit.
God's Family Fulfilling Its Destiny
The final Act begins as Pentecost follows directly on Easter, and from His throne in Heaven our Hero directs a new "holy people" born of faith in Him and the power of His Blood. Jesus' intervention was strategically set in Roman times. Roman conquest and culture prepared the known world to receive the Gospel message more effectively than in any other period of history before or since.
The revelation of the community of God is posed in stark contrast to the values of the Roman day. Children born into Roman culture were cast upon a father's doorstep pending his acknowledgement or rejection. If unclaimed or disowned, the child was left to die of exposure or starvation or to be taken by temple cults as prostitutes or slaves.
In the same way, until a person is born again they are abandoned to the doorstep of the world's systems. Furthermore, once a person has been born again through faith in Christ, they are cast upon the stoop of the Church as God's family home. We must receive our children and assume the responsibility and privilege of parenting and overseeing such that the heart of the Father is formed in them.
This brings us to our present hour - the final act in God's redemption story. Act 5 is the Church - God's family fulfilling its destiny in days of renewal and return, preparing the way for the Lord. (To be continued in Part 2).
Mahesh and Bonnie Chavda
Mahesh Chavda Ministries
Email: info@maheshchavda.com
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About Mahesh and Bonnie Chavda: Drs. Mahesh and Bonnie Chavda have served together in full-time ministry for over thirty years, reaching the nations with the Gospel accompanied by signs and wonders. Hundreds of thousands have come to salvation and thousands have received healing from critical diseases like AIDS and cancer through their ministry. Many of these miracles have been medically documented, including healings of Stage IV cancer, the lame, deaf and blind as well as the resurrection from the dead of a six-year-old boy. Through The Watch television program produced by Mahesh Chavda Ministries, Mahesh and Bonnie reach a potential audience of a billion households every week with the saving message of Jesus and are equipping Believers to walk in the power and anointing of the Holy Spirit.
In addition, Mahesh and Bonnie have produced many useful tools for believers including their books, Only Love Can Make a Miracle, The Hidden Power of Prayer and Fasting, Storm Warrior and The Hidden Power of a Woman. Together, the Chavdas pastor All Nations Church in Charlotte, NC and Atlanta, GA. They also spearhead a global prayer movement, The Watch of the Lord?, where they have been leading their congregation in weekly corporate prayer for more than a decade.
