Lord, I Give You My Heart

I'm listening to that song, "Lord, I give you my heart, I give you my soul..." It's Sabbath morning, and that is what I've done. That's all I really want to do. My sense is that this will soon come to an end, and I want all to be in the hands of Jesus.

The NET journey has been long and challenging. On Monday, we will likely have one of our last planning committee meetings. On Tuesday I leave for Rome. Once back, I'll be in the Northwest, after which the archaeology meetings begin (Sept 14). A week later is the Consecration Weekend with the Nashville churches and Prophecies Decoded starts.

We have done our best. We produced the extensive evangelistic/empowering DVD, wrote the detailed manual, offered training for Bible studies, small groups, youth evangelism. We developed ways to use the social media, and selected many resources for churches to use during the meetings. We edited archaeology and creation mini-series and created guidelines for home use. We have done fundraising. We have done all the accounting and distributing necessary. We encouraged revival and reformation in the churches, and wrote a book on the Holy Spirit to complement such focus. All this while teaching full loads and traveling 120,000 miles so far this year.

The book on prophetic interpretation (the actual title hasn't been decided yet) is almost finished. I wrote what I think will be the last chapter earlier this week, and have been doing some re-write and editing since. With the help of God, that will be finished tomorrow. Thanks for the many of you who have been praying.

What now? It's all in God's hands. Sometimes I think other institutions or organizations, and other speakers, are much better equipped to do what we are doing and will yet be doing for these NET meetings. But God has entrusted us that awesome responsibility this year. And all we can do is our best unto the Lord. He will do His part, which will make forget our best and forgive our worst.

1. Pray for the Prompt Publishing of the Book. Pacific Press will have to do an extraordinary effort to get this out in time for the churches to use. We've decided to make a change in our live site. Instead of giving the book on opening night, we will give it after they've attended six nights. Pray that the book will be a great blessing to people reading it, so they can get a better handle on how to study God's word, and why some of the things they've believed so far are not from the Lord. 
2. Pray for the Efficient Use of Social Media. We've had a couple of young adults working on this, and have put adds on Facebook, links to the website, the promo DVD on YouTube, etc. Oh, how I wish this, somehow, went viral. That it would stir the interest of many young people, especially, to call the 800 number, or go to the website and seek to register to attend a nearby church.
3. Pray for More Churches to Join. We have about 640 churches signed up (we thought we had more, but after an audit, we realized a number of duplications). While a very respectable number, how I wish we had 1,000 of them! It is still possible, but it would call for a miracle at this point. It is so much better for people to go to a church than even to someone else's home to watch Prophecies Decoded. We realize there will be perhaps thousands who will be watching this at home, by themselves. But the best opportunities to respond to the Spirit of God will be while people attend church.
4. Pray for the Churches Involved. At this point, pastors are getting anxious to be ready, to find all the volunteers needed to do this work well. Churches are sometimes stretched financially and lack people resources. Pray that they may have enough laborers to do the work, and enough financial resources to advertise and promote and resource guests well. Pray that the Spirit of God may be fully in control of their setting and bless each church abundantly. That they may find great joy and a bountiful harvest of souls.

Thank you for your faithfulness. It's been a great source of encouragement to know a number of you have been lifting me and the NET meetings before the Lord.

Lord, I give you my heart.

"Give me your heart, my son, and let your eyes delight in my ways."

Prov. 23:26