Bible references: Hebrews 12:1; Isaiah 43:18-19; Revelation 21:5; Philippians 3:12-14
The teaching on day three of the CMFI PPFC 2023 was a clarion call for us as individuals and as a community to let go of all the obstacles that hold us back, keeping us from progressing or moving forward, and to rouse ourselves to action for the next 14 years and beyond.
Let it go and move forward with God
Apart from sin, there are other terrible weights that hinder progress. By them clinging to you or you clinging to them, they weigh you/us down such that we are prevented from making the kind of progress we ought to make, and at the pace at which we ought to make them.
Leave behind your regrets, failures, successes, and accomplishments so that you can grow.
Many people are tied to their past by the invisible chains of their successes, reputations, popularity, name, acquisitions, failures, losses, hurts, regrets, and deficiencies; bound by invisible chains to the past so that they cannot move on.
We want our community to move on with God, and so, we must have people who are ‘light’ – free and unburdened like a child; fresh in their minds; people whose heads are not overloaded by many losses, regrets, successes, etc. from the past.
If we are going to move on with God into His goal, His future, and His greatness, we need people who are free from the weight of their names, their glory, and their reputation; free from their knowledge, their wisdom, their position, their authority, and their religiosity. Just free!
A New Beginning
We need people who, today, can be ‘born again’, that is, be as if they started their life today.
See, I am doing a new thing! (Isaiah 43:19).
I am making everything new! (Revelation 21:5).
Just like when you got born again and came to know to Lord and begin a relationship with Him, we announce to you the year of the Lord’s favour (Luke 4:18-19). We proclaim that this year can be a new year for you, a new beginning!
Can something still come from your broken mind, broken spirit, broken dreams? YES!
To experience a new beginning, we must let go of the past! Each one of you must let go of the past – your successes, whatever they may be – so that you may move ahead. There is still so much that God wants to do with you. Will you give Him the chance? Then you have to let go of your past; your greatness or your smallness; your gains or your losses; your wealth or your poverty; your mistakes or what you did right. There are chains of the past on the mind, on the spirit, on the body. Let them go!
Letting go of your past is a deliberate decision to make like the Apostle Paul did in Philippians 3:12-14. It is the vision of what God wants from us that makes us forget all that we think we have done. And that is what keeps us young because we are not overloaded with the past.
By repentance, we let go of that which we have done wrong: as far as the east is from the west, so far has he removed our transgressions from us (Psalm 103:12). And the progress that you have made so far in the light of all that He expects from you, let it go. Let it go. Let it go so that God may have a free people with whom He can move on. BE ONE OF THEM!
Obstacles to Growth
The biggest obstacle to growth is that which makes us boast. The things we secretly hold on to – what we have been, what we are, etc. Those are the things that make us not move ahead. See the example of King Saul in 1 Samuel 15 (verse 17: Although you were once small in your own eyes, did you not become the head of the tribes of Israel?)
It is when we become big in our own eyes that God does not know what to do with us. What will God do with you when you are so big? In your own eyes, you have fasted so much, you have sacrificed so much, you have suffered so much, you have given so much, you have worked so much, etc. What do you want God to do with you?
God works with those who are small; those who are nothing; who know nothing; who claim nothing; deserve nothing; can do nothing; and have nothing. [During this crusade] pray that God will make us become free – free from being somebody, from knowing so much, free from having done so much in our own eyes; free.
New Beginnings: Some Biblical Exemplars
The Bible provides us with examples that illustrate how new beginnings come about. Consider the following:
Father Abraham
Abraham experienced 14 years of backsliding from the time when Ishmael was born (Genesis 16:15-16 & Genesis 17:1-2). During this time, there was no spiritual history of Abraham; he was not sinning, he was simply satisfied – he had prospered, got a son, and the promises of God had begun to be fulfilled. He was a satisfied man. After 14 years, God appeared to Abraham and that is when the spiritual history of Abraham resumed.
The history of Abraham could have ended with Abram the father of Ishmael but he became Abraham the father of all nations, because he met the Lord again.
Prophet Isaiah
Isaiah chapters one to five were altogether ‘the total book of Isaiah’. Then, Isaiah had a new encounter with God and the prophet of five chapters became the prophet of 66 chapters. In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord, … (Isaiah 6:1).
It was that fresh encounter with the Lord that gave us the remaining 61 books of the book of Isaiah. He was a prophet, but in chapter six, he met the Lord, and the Lord cleansed his mouth with fire, with judgement. The Lord recommissioned him and sent him to the nation and to the nations, and 61 new chapters flowed from his life. His whole life could have been like the book of Micah, but he became the prophet of 66 chapters.
Isaac
When Isaac left Philistine territory and went up to Beersheba, he met the Lord again. He abandoned the prosperity that God had given to him and met the Lord again at Beersheba and a new life, a new chapter, started in his life. See Genesis 26.
From Jacob to Israel
After Jacob returned from Paddan Aram to Bethel, he encountered the Lord again and became Israel. Genesis 35:1-15.
Precipitating Fresh Encounters with God for New Beginnings
A new beginning with God starts with a new encounter with God. New beginnings come from new encounters with God. But like Abram, you can stay for your 14 years – satisfied with no further history with God
We are not only to forget the past, but a new take-off starts with a new encounter; just like the way you had it when you encountered Christ and got born again.
New beginnings start with new encounters with God! If not, you will stay in your satisfied state or stay in your discouraged state. We let go of the past in order to have a new encounter with God and so have a new beginning.
We drop the weights of the past but the energy for the future comes from a new encounter with God – as it was when you got born again. You met the Lord and all things became new. Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here! (2 Corinthians 5:17). It is the encounter with Christ that separates the past from the present [and the future].
You can provoke a coming back to the Lord. Each one of us can come back to the Lord. Consider the example of Solomon: Before his first encounter with God, he offered a thousand burnt offerings (2 Chronicles 1:6). Subsequently, and before he encountered the Lord again, he offered twenty-two thousand (2 Chronicles 7:5, 11-22).
The second encounter requires deeper work for a new beginning.
The Goal of this Message
The goal of all this sharing is that during the praise, prayer, and fasting crusade, the brethren will do a new and deep work in their hearts for a new beginning.
One of the things you will need to give up is regrets about the mistakes of your past. You need to give up your regrets and make peace [with God and with yourself].
God has the power to make another vessel, He is not fatalistic; He is immutable, we are not; if we were, there would be no possibility of repentance (as is the case with fallen angels, demons, and the like).
But for us, there is forgiveness with God, and it is because God makes it possible. But with you there is forgiveness, so that we can, with reverence, serve you (Psalm 130:4).
Accept your mortality and the mutability that comes with mortality – the fact that God can make another vessel out of a wrecked vessel is the beauty of redemption. It is self-righteousness to not believe that God can make a new vessel out of a wrecked vessel, so drop it! God does not reach out to those who are full and satisfied and surfeited.
Prayer Topics
- Pray that we’ll be stripped of the past, especially the good past.
- Pray that we’ll be free to move on with God by becoming small again in our own eyes – through repentance and through an honest confrontation of the vision – that we’ll become small again in our own eyes
- Pray for our entire community that this time of fasting and prayer will truly produce a new encounter with God for a new beginning, for each person and for us all – that we may advance into all that God has ahead for us.
- Pray, to judge and destroy the devil’s attacks against this PPFC, against you, or against any other believer in our community – through sickness, infirmity, backsliding, distractions, sorcery, etc. Judge the attacks and works of the devil against the crusade, against you, against us all.
- Pray again that God will expose and judge all the attacks, agents, and works of the devil against this crusade, the fast, and against you.
Amen! God bless you!