Pentecostal Power

LORD I give thanks to You O Lord for You have heard my cry for mercy and empowered me to preach Your Word this morning.  I got up earlier than usual but I suppose it was normal to do so when I am preaching in a Sunday service. I have not preached for a whole month before today and I was a bit worried about being rusty and the pulpit might seem an unfamiliar place. But all my worries were gone as I worshipped the Lord this morning in the cool of dawn. I have a list of songs on MP3 and usually in the morning I plugged in my earphones so as to not disturb my neighbours or those who are still asleep. I did not preach about Pentecost despite being Pentecost Sunday partly due to an assigned topic a month back and I thought I needed to respect my leaders who invited me to preach.
It turned out well because of the Lord's grace and enabling power. I must have started at 9.50am after the Lord's communion and I preached without once looking at my watch until the very end and I saw my watch ticking 10.33 and I stopped forthwith. So the sermon that seemed barely a few minutes the way I was going in Pentecostal power had taken 48 mins in total. I used some slides which were useful this morning as my first point depended on some historical facts from the return of the exile (537BC) to the building of the second temple (520BC) and time of Nehemiah's return in 445BC which is approximately 70 years.

Our Church's initial missionary thrust came in 1947 just after the Second World War and several churches were planted in the Ranau district by our founding missionary from England. It is exactly 70 years on and we are truly into our 3rd generation of believers. The 2nd generation believers are now in their 50s and 60s and in ten years' time most of them would have retired from active service and it is up to the 3rd generation leaders to rise up and take over. I also pointed out that in the Bible that any great revival would last at most two generations and things will begin to fall apart either at the end of the second generation or the beginning of the 3rd generation.

I spoke about Moses, Joshua and the elders and when the latter passed away the Israelites turned from following the Lord. Likewise in the time of David, the golden age of Israel but by the second half of Solomon's reign things were beginning to fall apart as he deserted the living God and by the third generation in Rehoboam, the kingdom was split and Israel would never regain sovereignty till the Hasmonean rule in the 2nd century BC. Again we see after the completion of the 2nd Temple in less than two generations Jerusalem had fallen again and the walls were burnt with fire and Nehemiah rose up to be His people's restorer. So I made the challenge to my home church today whether the 3rd generation will rise up and whether the current 2nd generation leaders remain faithful and impart that revival spirit that gave birth to the church in North Borneo.