The Church in America is full of people who are quietly, deeply hurting. Many are losing heart as they experience terrifying fears. We know that we–the Church of Jesus Christ, this country, the world–find ourselves in a very deep, dark, hopeless, indifferent, perplexing and visible crisis. We have scores of casualties. Absolute truth is no longer considered part of our convictions, and that is affecting and negatively impacting everyone. In the Church, this includes the uncontrollable, tragic sexual epidemic and sexual assaults by the clergy; this is all redefining our morality and identity by breaking up families and gravely hurting and ripping apart people’s souls. Historians have seen nothing like it before, and no one seems to have the answer. This crisis is hitting every strata, every class, every neighborhood, and every arena and area of society. It is unmasking the Church in America to the reality that we are not driven by God’s love, which would lead us to love our neighbors; instead we are driven by unhealthy and selfish fear that is not based on truth, but on subjective human opinion and feeling. As the Church goes, so goes the rest of America…and the world. If the people in the Church are angry, anxious and fearful, then the world will be also. So what does a Christian do when facing adversity, persecution and crisis? How can we revive the Church?

In Psalm 80, God gives us the precise diagnosis for our malady…prayer that angers God, and perhaps prayerlessness.

Then He renders the permanent and precise prescription for healing, the surgery or circumcision that will deliver us from our misery to a healthy outcome, when David prayed, “Restore us, O God; cause your face to shine, and we shall be saved!” Then the Psalmist resolves, “We will not turn back from You; revive us, and we will call upon Your name.” Christians must be prayed up, eager and ready to arise and shine with a clear voice, as David and Joshua did. They must engage the Church and the culture, as Chuck Colson did so well with “an urgent call to revival that is birthed by radical prayer, living in the healthy tension of truth and grace with the highest level of biblical integrity and transparency.” This will lead the Church to the permanent position of the cross, to anchor our conscience deeper and deeper at the cross, starting with our pastors, elders and deacons…to confess sin and repent as a consistent practice; the people in the pews must catch it as they see our Christian leaders model biblical Christianity.

People are very confused today about what real Christianity looks like; they need to know who Jesus really is.

They are not being radically loved because they are not radically prayed for. This brings shame to the Father’s name. Each of us must be consumed and driven by the conviction that our single purpose and corporate mission as Christians is to pray radically to love radically, so the Father will be pleased to grant us personal and corporate revival, which we so desperately need. Remember, we are the salt and light of the world!

God our Father has given us an awesome, divine, eternal and precious gift that will take us into an adventurous, exploring and very secured joyful ride, filled with wonder and with all the provisions we will ever need. That gift is Jesus Christ who is filled with unlimited promises that are one-hundred percent true and real. He is also filled with unlimited, radical and super powerful grace to help us with all our needs in our time of need, regardless of the severity and gravity of our need.

One of the great needs of the church today is that many Christians have become spiritually frustrated and extremely ineffective because of where they look for answers for their needs. They continually look to others rather than to God our Father through Jesus Christ in the power of the Spirit for the answers they desperately need. The reality is that they treat God as a paramedic, asking for His help only when they have a need.

It has become evident that a great number of Christians are shallow because they are confused about what they believe. This causes Biblical disunity. This also leads to a long list of consequences that affect them very negatively. Consequently, there are more prisoners in our churches in America than in all the prisons and jails put together in the whole world. We have become rebels and captives to our own sin, and we refuse to see the exit door, who is Jesus Christ. He will empower us through the Spirit, to run out the door to the safe and secure everlasting arms of our good Father, inside His fence!

We as a church in America, hence society at large, are in a desperate and critical, spiritual CRISIS! What are we to do?! We must look to the gift God has given: Jesus Christ. He offers to all Christians, in His unlimited package called the Gospel, a bullet proof plan of protection with an impenetrable fence of love.

There are the five Biblical, practical and essential components of God our Father’s fence of love for us to use as our application for life:
1. The fence is the Word of God. The fence is our righteousness. This fence is wide and spacious because God our Father gives us a lot of freedom and space in which to move and be happy and free in Christ. This fence is not restrictive, but it protects us (Deuteronomy 32:46-47; Hebrews 4:12-13).
2. The Body of Christ. Your community of believers are locking arms tight and standing tall/high, as our protector inside and around the entire fence. We serve as vigilantes, looking out for and defending our own with our very lives. Jesus died and bled to establish His church (Matthew 16:18; Ephesians 3:10, 5:25; Colossians 1:24).
3. The Holy Spirit our Helper and Counselor illuminates the fence with the brightness of Christ Jesus and empowers us with resurrecting power, so none of us will miss or jump the fence. The Devil will try his hardest to get us to jump the fence of righteousness, but since he has been defeated, we have no excuse to jump the fence! (Luke 10:35-37, 11:13; Ephesians 1:13-14).
4. The cross right in the middle of the fence for us to cherish, value and tightly embrace, never letting it go (Galatians 2:20; 1 Corinthians 1:18-2:6).
5. Then go and make disciples of all nations, teaching them to obey ALL the Word because you are strong and equipped with the cross and with Christ! (Matthew 28:16-20; Luke 10:1-3).

Radical Consecration will produce radical and permanent deliverance with lasting transformation that will lead to personal revival. Consider this example from the Bible. Paul, a former serial killer, was surprised, delivered, transformed and revived when confronted by Jesus Christ as he was on his way to kill more Christians. Through God’s grace, Paul became radically consecrated to the Father and His gospel. The body of believers today needs to experience this same revival and radical consecration!

Radical consecration requires us to soak in the all-sufficient, all-reliable and yes, all-delicious, Living Word of God, our play book, so we are enabled to pray the Word of God with boldness. 2 Timothy 3:16 tells us that the entire Bible is inspired by God, and it prepares us in every way for every good thing God wants us to do. We must know the Word of God in order to live the Word of God.

Jesus was radically consecrated when He came to earth.

He came primarily to vindicate the holy name of His good and holy Father. He was crucified in order to save us from the guilt of our sin. Consequently, we are required to be 100% consecrated, vigilant and super radically aware that at any moment, Jesus may come back. We must make every effort to be pure, clean and spotless when He returns to take us to the home He has prepared for us (John 14).

In Isaiah 6:1-8, we encounter Isaiah’s very painful yet marvelous, radical and glorious consecration ceremony. When he saw the awesome holiness of God, he said that he was undone, meaning that he had totally fallen apart because he was a man of unclean lips. God’s provision for Isaiah’s radical consecration was to have a seraphim take a live coal from the altar and touch Isaiah’s mouth and lips with it. This act took Isaiah’s iniquity away and purged him of his sin. Because of this, Isaiah was filled with radical consecration. When God asked who would go, Isaiah said, “Here am I! Send me!”

Please note two important practical applications and deep insights for us to immediately apply to our lives in Christ, as we compare Joshua with Isaiah in verse eight when Isaiah said, “Here am I! Send me.”
1. Isaiah, just like Joshua, responded with a radical consecrated response of immediate obedience, as he arose, fully prepared and ready to go when he said, “Here am I! Send me.”
2. Furthermore, in verse eight, we read that Isaiah responded with “Here am I.” He did not say, “Here I am.” “Here am I” is not only a geographical position like we saw in Joshua, but most importantly, it is also a personal consecrated position indicating that he is all in: 100% in!

Isaiah and Joshua were both totally and radically consecrated and devoted to fulfill Yahweh’s mission, not their own, without ever giving up, regardless of how hard, difficult or discouraging the mission became.

That is exactly the position we should be in. It is Jesus we utter out of our mouth and through our lips. Hence, like Isaiah, in order to cleanse our hearts, tongues, minds and lips, we need to experience the same radical, painful, yet glorious and marvelous consecrating ceremony.

Psalm 96:9 announces that we are to worship the Lord in the beauty of His holiness and tremble before Him. That requires radical consecration in every area of our lives, including our marriage. We are told in Hebrews 13:4 that marriage is honorable among all and the bed undefiled. It goes on to say that God will judge fornicators and adulterers.

We must be 100% radically consecrated to our Father.

Doing so will cause us to believe and behave with meekness as chosen by the Father, purchased by the Son Jesus, sanctified and set apart radically by the Spirit, to become exactly like Christ. We must then value, cherish, adore, revere, esteem, exalt, worship, glorify, sanctify and lift up real high the majestic, holy name of our great and good Father. This is accomplished as we bow our knees to Him with deeper humility, meekness, a gracious attitude and a burning love for Him and for our neighbors. Then we are enabled to fulfill His great commission in the context of the first and second greatest commandments for the greater hallowing of His holy name.
We read in Deuteronomy 32:44-47 that Moses spoke all of the words God gave him to the people of Israel and told them to make those words their life. He followed this up by telling them that God would bless them if they did so. We need to follow Moses’ instructions and consecrate ourselves radically by making the Word of God our very life, so we can pray the Word radically to love radically.

For God, our Father to surprise us with His wonders and unlimited blessings, He requires our unwavering and intentional, radical consecration to Him, with a commitment to obeying Him with a willing and grateful heart. Doing so will then make us realize our desperate need for radical, fervent, bold and specific Biblical prayer, to infuse us with the necessary power to make our Good Father happier as we do His will, not ours.

What did Jesus Christ do when He experienced temptations, trials, abandonment and betrayal by others?

We find in Luke 22:44 that when He was in agony, He prayed more earnestly. Then in verse 46, when He found the disciples sleeping, He told them to rise and pray, so they would not enter into temptation. He was repeating His command from verse 40 which the disciples had ignored. They were to follow His example. Jesus asked the Father to take away the cup He was facing, yet He also said He was willing to endure the suffering if it was His Father’s will. He was willing to endure the suffering and not skip the cross. We must be willing to endure the hardship and suffering God allows into our lives just as Jesus did. This is accomplished through radical prayer and by staying consecrated fully to our Father.

Radical, Biblical prayer is not just one thing we do. It is what we are to do all the time. It is who we are. It is our devotion, culture and lifestyle! It is our very life! We exist, so that in every breath we take seven days per week, 24 hours per day, we aim at being consecrated to our Father, so we can be true to our commitment to make our Father happier.

Jesus taught in Luke 11:2 that we should pray for the hallowing of God’s name.

When we pray in that fashion, big things happen. This is the prayer that drives every other prayer we pray. It is the prayer of priority. In order to hallow God’s name, we are required to be 100% consecrated to our Father as we value, cherish, adore, revere, esteem, exalt, worship, glorify, sanctify and lift up real high His holy name. It also requires that we bow our knees to Him with deeper humility, meekness, a gracious attitude and burning love. It is necessary that we be committed to obeying Him without delay.

If we are not consecrated to the Father, then we are consecrated to the devil. That is deadly!

Our Father is eager for us to get rid of all of our messes and all of our idols. He is zealous for us to ask Him to perform a deep power cleaning within our spirits, to hit all the corners and clean the entire house. He purchased this cleansing for us with the very expensive sinless blood of Jesus Christ. His command is for us to repent with godly sorrow. He will not approve our behavior that is not in line with His clear, specific commands.

We must not do the right thing in the wrong way like Uzzah in 2 Samuel 6.

God prescribed very specific guidelines for how the Ark of the Covenant was to be moved. Long poles were to be inserted through the rings on the Ark, and it was to be carried by the Levites. It was not to be touched. Instead of following God’s guidelines for moving the Ark, King David had it set on a new cart. The oxen pulling the Ark stumbled, and Uzzah took hold of the ark to steady it. God’s anger was aroused against Uzzah, and he died right there by the Ark of the Lord. He didn’t want the Ark to fall, yet he did not follow the precise guidelines of the Lord. An important lesson to be learned from Uzzah is that excitement and zeal for the Lord can never replace simple obedience. Our lack of consecration and our disobedience devalue the gospel. We must be convinced and believe that Yahweh means all He says, and then comply in obedience to all He commands.

What sin and idols in our relationship with Yahweh are preventing us from 100% consecration, so our Good Father will surprise us with His wonders and unlimited blessings? Let’s make King David’s prayer of confession and consecration in Psalm 51 our prayer as well.

God is eager to surprise us with his wonders when we pray radically to love radically. We need to pray with great anticipation, radical expectation and unwavering confidence in the finished redemptive work of Christ Jesus. Then God will surprise us saying, “Here my son; here my daughter. This is what you really need!” God expects us to be one hundred percent strong, real, set apart, consistent, resilient, obedient, humble, teachable and dedicated. This leads to a readiness to arise, go and be prepared to engage and lead others into any battle He sends for the greater hallowing of His name.

Joshua 3:5 does not leave any room for negotiation with God. It eliminates any excuse for bringing shame to our Father’s name or for hurting the people we say we love. It presents a very critical, urgent and super important message for today because the church is being defiled, the gospel misinterpreted; and America is in spiritual ruins.

The key is consecration to God.

The definition of consecration is to be set apart for a holy use, to dedicate to God our Father and to Him alone. It involves being sanctified and purified, to devote ourselves one hundred percent to our Holy Good Father alone!

Joshua told the people, “Consecrate yourselves, because the LORD will do wonders among you tomorrow.” This also is a personal invitation from Yahweh Himself to Christians today, and we must obey without delay. Yahweh means the God who delivers.

Yahweh is making you an amazing irresistible promise today. He wants to deliver you and free you from whatever handicap, slavery, addiction, oppression, falsehood, misconceptions or imprisonment you are experiencing.

He is offering to heal you from mental, emotional or physical handicaps by transforming the disposition of your heart, which is the central station or the control room for a Christian.

Yahweh delivers one time without any type of recovery program. Jesus came to make us brand new. Therefore, if anyone is in Christ (one hundred percent consecrated), he is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new. (2 Corinthians 5:17)

It is sad to see a great number of Christians allow their emotions to control them and paralyze them with fear.

In Ephesians 1:17-20 God tells us that He will open our eyes of understanding, so we will know that His power that raised Jesus from the dead is available for us. We have no excuse to live in spiritual paralysis.

We find the account of Moses leading the children of Israel out of Egypt in Exodus 14. Moses told the Israelites to stand still and see the salvation of the LORD (Yahweh.) When they crossed the Red Sea and saw the dead Egyptians on the seashore they believed in Yahweh and in Moses. How sad that their belief lasted only three days. Then they went back to their complaining.

For God our Father to bless us and to surprise us with His wonders time after time, we must consecrate ourselves to Him and to Him alone. He will not share us with the world or with the things of the prince of the world. It is either all or nothing: one hundred percent in or one hundred percent out!

Since God has offered us the help we need to live consecrated lives, why do we continue to live in the danger and misery of uncertainty and insecurity? We must stop bringing shame to our Good Father and stop being a double minded agent. We need to consecrate ourselves to Yahweh immediately, so we can enjoy His transforming powerful wonders. Ask Him to make you hungrier and thirstier for His righteousness. You do not need to keep faking it or continue to live in the dumpster. Take your mask off, surrender now to our Good Father, repent with godly sorrow and become real because Jesus is the real deal.

Grace is God our Father’s super inclusive, irrevocable, uncompromising, radical, and unlimited power that will break the hold of sin in Christians. This marvelous gift from God will set us free with unspeakable joy, so we can do God our Father’s will at all times without any regrets. The grace of God is the hope we desperately need to empower us with Biblical Courage.

Grace is God’s one hundred percent underserved gift to us.

It became one hundred percent secured for us by our older brother Jesus Christ’s very expensive and brutal bloody sacrifice of death, as our substitute on our cross. Consequently, our Father’s radical grace is not ours to retain or restrain. We must radically proclaim, partake from, and freely extend this grace to others immediately, without reservation and fight for it, with our very lives so no one will be excluded from receiving it, regardless of what they have done or where they came from. This is grace driven by Biblical Truth, as prescribed in John 1:14-16.

Joshua sent two men to spy out the area around Jericho across the Jordan River from where the nation of Israel was camped. These men ended up at the house of a harlot named Rahab. She proclaimed that she knew the Lord had given the Israelites the land. She also rehearsed to them the history of God’s great power shown when He dried up the waters of the Red Sea and also when He defeated the two kings Sihon and Og. What a confidence booster those reminders must have been as the two men remembered God’s unlimited power and His one hundred percent faithfulness.

The story of Rahab gives a wonderful testimony of God’s grace.

It was that Grace that broke through to the Harlot, Rahab, a most unlikely character that God chose, to bring salvation to herself, her family, the spies, Joshua and God’s people. Rahab also became a type of savior (a vessel of mercy), and she received the huge and prestigious privilege and honor of being an ancestress of King David, hence in the Messianic Line of Jesus (Ruth 4:21-22; Matthew 1:5-6.)

This Biblical story from Joshua 2 should infuse into us a lot of super powerful grace that will produce unprecedented living hope in us. Then we can love God our Father so radically, that we will become much more compelled, every time we take a breath, to make Him really happy with our genuine joyful gratitude. In other words, that you and I will hallow our Father bigger and better every time.

Seven Radical Observations from Joshua 2:

1. God our Father is not a respecter of persons. He will choose and save the least probable of persons (you and me) to display and manifest His glorious grace.
2. God our Father divinely chose a most unlikely character, Rahab, to deliver her, her family, and the spies, from ungodly Jericho. Even in a doomed city, or country, a greatly depraved and wicked person can experience the all-powerful grace of God our Father.
3. Even Rahab’s lie, not to be taken as an example, was motivated by her belief that God our Father would destroy Jericho as had been predicted.
4. God our Father is faithful. He will always, one hundred percent of the time, keep all of His promises.
5. God our Father, in the Power of His Spirit, through Jesus Christ (the famous one) is the same yesterday, today, and forever (Hebrews 13:8.)
Yahweh’s powerful reputation was known throughout the land. He will keep exalting and spreading His reputation of super power, through the large number of His children (I Corinthians 1:10), His vessels of mercy (Romans 9:23), and will answer our radical prayers again and again and again in bigger fashion. Therefore, His name will be hallowed bigger and better as the Name of Jesus becomes much more famous through us. We must proclaim radically His mercies, extend radically His mercies and fight radically for His mercies to make sure no one our Father sends our way is denied the same exact mercies that we received.
6. Just as Yahweh made a way out of a situation for the Israelites where there was no way out, He will do that same thing again and again, and in bigger fashion for us.
We know that Jesus Christ reigns with great power. We must embrace, cherish, value, believe, and act on that fact right now. God the Father is saying to us that the only thing we need to do is trust Him and obey Him radically without delay in everything He wants us to do. Charles Spurgeon said it well in stating that, “The Christian life should be a mosaic of minute obediences.” We must become real radical partakers and dispensers of God our Father’s ALL inclusive, All sufficient, All Radical, All irrevocable, All uncompromising, and All unlimited, super powerful Grace!
7. People must notice that when we as Christians show up anywhere, God our Father shows up in the fullness of His splendor, majesty, glory and power. Therefore, the opportunity of salvation, reconciliation, restoration and healing of the LORD for those people, has arrived through us. Hence we must pray radically for precise discernment and deeper capacity to suffer with those people with deeper compassion.

Let’s then Proclaim Grace, Extend Grace and Fight for Grace

It is encouraging to know that He will always fight for us and make us victorious.

If we are prepared, God oftentimes uses these battles to build us up with His strong and mighty, credible character to equip us for fulfilling His great commission. One of our ministry goals should be to pitch our tent to tabernacle and get dirty with any neighbor our Father chooses to send our way.

Joshua chapter one gives the account of God’s commands and promises as Joshua prepared the Israelites to cross the river Jordan to enter the Promised Land. God gave Joshua the same promises He had given Moses regarding Israel’s inheritance. God continued to move Israel toward the Promised Land during Joshua’s leadership just as He had with throughout Moses’ time. By following God’s command not to turn to the right or to the left from the Law, the people were to keep their eyes fixed on our Father. They were to be consumed with the Word by meditating on it day and night. Then came God’s promise that He would be with them wherever they went. On the other hand, we also see that God requires complete obedience and those in the camp who did not obey were to be put to death. Disobedience is not acceptable. They were not only to profess but also possess the Word of God.

The book of Joshua is about conquering the land that God promised to His chosen people who kept rejecting Him.

God is a very persistent loving, merciful and gracious Father, who suffers deeply and long. He never gives up pursuing His children with His radical, irresistible love! Jesus realized how much the Father loves Him, and therefore, became our substitute to perish on the cross. God loved Moses so much that He forgave his sin of disobedience of smiting the rock instead of speaking to it. He did not give Moses a do-over opportunity, and Moses still had to suffer the penalty of his sin; he was not allowed to enter the Promised Land. We need to take a radical time out to heed this clear and urgent warning for us to run to our Father NOW in genuine repentance to plead with urgency for the heart of Jesus Christ with a new beginning.

Unlike Moses, Jesus finished the work and completed the radical and impossible mission God the Father gave to Him, John 17:4 and 19:3. We need to follow Christ’s example rather than Moses’ who took God’s Word, mercy and grace for granted like many of us do every single day. We need to be like Joshua and be willing to pay the price of real and effective leadership to arise, go, and prepare that will please Yahweh to lead His people into the Promised Land. God expects His disciples to lead at a moment’s notice. Radical prayer is essential in meeting this expectation. In verse two God’s first command to Joshua was to arise and go over this Jordan. God the deliverer wants to deliver you and me just like He delivered Joshua and the Israelites. Our battles are the Lord’s just as Joshua’s were. Let us commit to stop reacting and rebelling out of fear and anger. Rather, respond out of love to empower us by GRACE with radical courage, and not hide or run away from reality like prodigals do. Our Father does not want to hire us but love on us radically and lavishly.

Joshua followed God’s command to prepare the Israelites to cross the Jordan. Joshua told the people to prepare provisions for themselves because in three days they would cross over into the land that was promised to them. Faith by all participants was necessary because, at that time of year, the waters of the Jordan were overflowing, making it impossible for them to cross.

To arise, go, and prepare like Joshua did with his hope alive requires a relationship of trust and intimacy with our Father through radical, Biblical prayer.

By being prepared in this way, we can expect our Father to surprise us at any moment, even when the situation seems impossible. Our Father will make a way out of situations that seem impossible. He will open new doors, making what appears impossible to become very possible. When this occurs, we become by faith radical partakers of our Father’s unlimited grace that produces radical courage to empower us to obey radically. Biblical courage is doing what is right in the eyes of God our Father, regardless of the consequences. We must be willing to live out our Biblical courage.

True, effective and lasting leadership is driven and sustained by Biblical (Truth of the Word) radical prayer.

Much more is accomplished on our knees than on our feet! Radical prayer defines who we are as Christians and hence establishes our current and eternal legacy as Christians. In conclusion, consider the following questions: Is Jesus the full and exclusive object of your affection and satisfaction? If not, why not? Are you ready to arise, go, and prepare? If not, why not?