In his devotional for today- “The Enemy’s Secret Strategy”(Link NLA)-John Bevere says the following about the goal of our enemy Satan to marginalize Christians:

Hollywood, religious people, and our culture have painted a warped and limited image of God’s people. What is the distortion? We have an enemy named Satan, who is called “the ruler of this world,” “the prince of the power of the air,” and “the god of this world.” He influences the world’s systems and sways the minds of those who do not belong to God. He has fallen angels and demons to help carry out his grand strategy.

The sad fact is that too often the church has limited Satan’s chief strategy to certain behaviors, like trying to get people to drink alcohol or watch sex scenes in movies. He’s much more crafty than that and uses a wide variety of snares and diversions. We’ve missed his primary purpose. Because what he fears most is Christians discovering who God’s made them to be—extraordinary people with abilities to carry out remarkable and unusual feats. This should be the image society has of Christians.

Response: You can see this everywhere in America today and particularly in Europe and the UK. Christianity is being marginalized and most of the time falsely identified with a couple of ‘far right’ issues now considered out of the mainstream.

However, the reality is that when accurate polls are taken Christians are still the real mainstream in this country but a great delusion is reining over this land and the Western world. Christians have allowed the enemy and in some ways have helped him to redefine and marginalize the church.

The media now portrays Christians as mean, angry, and judgmental folk who care more about their antiquated beliefs than about people. 

We are living in times where what is ‘good’ is now sometimes considered bad in this society and what is scripturally ‘bad’ is now the goals of many. Nevertheless we should let our lights shine in the darkness and do everything we can to make life better for ourselves and those we come in contact everyday.

Christians need to accurately portray the gospel and the Kingdom in our everyday lives blessing everyone who comes in contact with us—this puts the lie to how our enemy defines Christians and breaks through the deception and prevailing delusion.

May we let the Holy Spirit enliven us and let us become the example and face of Christ in a fallen and deluded world.        

(Image by Lel4nd (busy) via Flickr)

Historically in America we are in a transition time politically and economically when ‘business as usual’ no longer works. Anyone who tells you they know where this is going to end up is just wrong or prophetic.

I know I’m not the only one that has been going though some difficult times economically in my business and in our family. Church and ministry leaders are finding it far more difficult to fund their ministries in 2009 than in previous years. So many in the Christian community are suffering along with everyone else in this economy.

The church that I’m part of has had to find ways to cut expenditures without downsizing valuable ministries. The economy in wealthy Orange Co. Southern California has taken a heavy hit and nearly every family is being affected in one way or another which affects giving.

In the midst of this downturn one program in the church has grown exponentially—our food and thrift warehouse. The Lord has sent capable people our way to administer our food bank. It really is a miracle when you consider that a couple of years ago it was just an empty warehouse but our pastor had a vision that one day we would be supplying food to 1000’s in need. Didn’t really seem possible or even needed 2 or 3 years ago but now we are sending entire containers full of cloths to Africa and Southeast Asia and we are feeding 1000’s of needy folks even many in our own congregation that are going through some tough times.

We are now handing out roughly $100,000 worth of food every month—there are some real miracles happening when it comes to the exponential increase in our suppliers. Not only that—it has become a real ministry outreach and an opportunity to provides for folks on many different levels including healing.

One of the major backbones of the church is our prayer ministry program—HOPE ‘House of Prayer for Everyone’—on Wednesday morning we have a Marketplace prayer group that meets and prays over the businesses of church members, over the sales of the sales folk in the congregation, and we pray for jobs for those out of work. It is a practical time where many have received prophetic insight and direction from the Lord on how to carry on in these hard economic times. Lately we have seen lots of ‘break throughs’ in business where we seem to be going one way while the economy is going another. Not only that but new innovative businesses are being launched with incredible potential.

For years, all of us Christians have carried on our everyday business like everyone else in the country and that has been good enough in this wealthy land—now like everyone else the Christian community has been going through some tough times. It is no longer ‘business as usual’ and I submit to you that it never will be again. I repeat—It never will be quite so easy for us in the future as it has been in the last 60 some years.

It is time for Christians to be involved in God’s Kingdom Economy. One way to do that is sponsor ‘Marketplace Prayer’ groups in every church and allow the Lord to reach out in a new ways and bless us with his inspiration corporately and support one another in our everyday businesses and occupations. Let Him expand our horizons and business visions in Jesus name, Amen.