For God’s gifts and his call are irrevocable. —Romans 11:29

Because the gifts and calling of God are “irrevocable,” a person who had a tremendous anointing yesterday can continue to see the momentum of that anointing continuing to manifest itself. He or she may hastily conclude that “the anointing is still with me” when it is but the momentum of yesterday’s anointing.

This is sobering. I could be a hypocrite in my personal life, and yet my gift could continue to function. I could even deceive myself by telling myself, I must be right with God, or I couldn’t preach. The truth is, God’s calling and gifts are irrevocable. That means that God will not withdraw my preaching gift simply because I have not been a loyal, obedient son. He gave me certain abilities when He made me and called me into the ministry. By study and hard work I can improve upon those gifts—without a fresh anointing that comes only from continued intimacy with God. And when people say, “That was a good word,” or “God spoke to me through you today,” I could assume that God is very pleased with me indeed. One of the worst things we can do is to take compliments too seriously.

It is possible that there are those who sincerely don’t know better. They are well equipped, high powered, eloquent, and charismatic; people are blessed by their ministries. These people who are thus used by God may sincerely believe they are pleasing God because their anointing is functioning so well. “I am under God’s anointing,” they may well say. True. But it could be yesterday’s anointing. There may be nothing fresh about it.

The fresh anointing is the essential thing. It is what replenishes the irrevocable. If our irrevocable anointing is not replenished by a fresh touch of God, we are depending on yesterday’s anointing.

Excerpted from The Anointing: Yesterday, Today, Tomorrow (Charisma House, 2003).

When Jacob awoke from his sleep, he thought, “Surely the Lord is in this place, and I was not aware of it.” —Genesis 28:16

The most wonderful thing that can happen to anybody is for God to turn up. The problem is that we don’t always recognize Him at the time, and we only see later that it was God.

The trouble is, we think God can only come in one particular way, and that’s the way we’ve met Him. The question is this: If He turned up in an unexpected way, would we affirm Him?

The sooner we learn to recognize the Lord, the better. For some, it may take years to see that God has been in a situation with them; for others, it may take only a few seconds. But the narrower the time gap, the better, for it shows our hearts are in tune with what God is doing. I can think of nothing worse in the world than for something that God is in to be happening and I not recognize it.

If you’re not a Christian, then it’s also true for you that the sooner you realize when God is there, the better, because the Bible says, “My Spirit will not contend with man forever” (Gen. 6:3). Let me put it like this. It may be that whenever you hear preaching, you sense that the Holy Spirit is dealing with you, that God is on your case. You know that the preacher wouldn’t know much about you, if anything at all, and the only way he could speak in this manner was if God had led him to do so.

If you are a Christian and the Lord turns up and you don’t recognize Him, you are impoverished since you miss seeing God for who He is, then. I guarantee you will wish later you had seen it was the Lord sooner.

Be open to the unexpected time. Be open to the unexpected manner in which God might turn up. He came to Jacob in a dream. God can do that.

Jacob affirmed God. Fortunately for him, it didn’t take him long. The question is, how long will it take you?

Excerpted from All’s Well That Ends Well (Authentic Media, 2005).

The bolts of your gates will be iron and bronze, and your strength will equal your days. —Deuteronomy 33:25

God never promotes us to the level of our incompetence. What He truly calls us to do, we can do. As St. Augustine prayed, “Command what Thou wilt; give what Thou commandest.” God always provides grace for what He has called us to do. “Your strength will equal your days” (Deut. 33:25). If you or I are operating at a level that brings fatigue and leads to what we now call “burnout,” then something has gone wrong; we moved outside our anointing at some stage. It should never happen.

This is not to deny that God may hide His face from us. It is not uncommon to experience the “dark night of the soul.” But this is not necessarily the same thing as burnout. God may leave us to test us, as He did Hezekiah, “to know everything that was in his heart” (2 Chron. 32:31). But burnout is what we bring on ourselves by taking on what God did not command.

The apostle Paul came to terms with his limitations and strengths. When his enemies scoffed, “His letters are weighty and forceful, but in person he is unimpressive and his speaking amounts to nothing” (2 Cor. 10:10), it stung. It hurt. But he spoke with disarming frankness when he implicitly acknowledged nonetheless that his public speaking probably did not flow with the eloquence of a trained orator. “I may not be a trained speaker, but I do have knowledge” (1 Cor. 11:6).

“But I do have knowledge,” he could say. He may not have been a trained speaker, but he knew what he was talking about. And as it happened, his expertise touched on the very issue that had become the focus at the time. So his anointing came through where it counted. It turned out he had training that mattered. To Paul’s opponents, the issue was how you said it; to Paul, the issue was what you said. In other words, Paul’s anointing of knowledge more than compensated for his deficiency in public speaking.

There are some lessons here for you and me. First, as I said already, nobody has everything. That is enough to keep all of us humble. But there is another lesson: For every limit there is a compensation. You may not have the gift you envy in another, but God has given you an anointing that person probably does not have.

Excerpted from The Anointing: Yesterday, Today, Tomorrow (Charisma House, 2003).

Be kind and compassionate to one an­other, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you. —Ephesians 4:32

There are a lot of things God knows about me that I wouldn’t want anyone else to know. God has enough on me to bury me! But you will never know any of it because God won’t tell.

This is precisely how you and I are forgiven: “As far as the east is from the west, so far has he removed our transgressions from us” (Ps. 103:12). Our sins are “wiped out” (Acts 3:19). It is as though our sins don’t exist anymore—they are gone, gone, gone, gone! Insofar as our standing and security with God are concerned, they will never be held against us.

Joseph is sometimes referred to as a type of Christ—a person in the Old Testament who, long before Jesus came along, displayed characteristics of Jesus Himself. Despite his imperfections, Joseph was indeed a type of Christ in many ways. His ability to forgive his brothers as he did foreshadows Jesus’ actions toward His disciples. Scared to death and ashamed over the way they had deserted Jesus when He was arrested, they were huddled behind closed doors when the resurrected Jesus turned up unexpectedly and declared, “Peace be with you!” (John 20:21). The disciples were totally forgiven—and they knew it.

We all have skeletons in our closets; some are known to others, many are unknown. It is comforting to know that God freely and totally forgives all of our sins and will never tell what He knows. That is the way Joseph forgave. And that is the why we are urged, “Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you” (Eph. 4:32).

Excerpted from Total Forgiveness (Charisma House, 2002).

We, however, will not boast beyond proper limits, but will confine our boasting to the field God has assigned to us, a field that reaches even to you. —2 Corinthians 10:13

Sometimes the hardest thing in the world is to accept yourself. I have struggled immeasurably at this point. To be myself has been about the hardest thing I’ve sought to do in ministry. My consolation is this: God will use me only to the extent to which I am true to what I know. This means I must not pretend to understand a verse in the Bible that remains hidden at the moment.

But in the early years I began to take myself a bit seriously, especially if I had preached a good sermon. While compliments can be encouraging, they almost ruined me in some ways because I tried to come up to a standard that some said I met. It wasn’t my standard but theirs.

It hadn’t been that way at first. I was merely myself. But my preaching began to change. Some said I had been shouting too loudly when I first preached, so could I please stop it. Still others said, “Don’t tell anecdotes or refer to yourself when you preach.” When I managed to remember these things, I would get praise from certain people who hinted that, just maybe, I came up to their standard!

But I was miserable. Before I knew it, I was bordering on moving outside my anointing. If I was truly myself, I was afraid people would think, Yuck. But if I was not myself, God would think it! I eventually came to terms with my limits—which is probably the hardest thing I have ever done. It became a matter of sheer obedience to God. I had to affirm Him for making me as I am and affirm myself, even if people didn’t like it. After all, I began to see with ever-increasing conviction that what matters is what God thinks and the way I will be regarded on the Final Day.

Excerpted from The Anointing: Yesterday, Today, Tomorrow (Charisma House, 2003).

Water is often used to extinguish fires, but Water Mission International has been using H2O to ignite Holy Ghost blazes around the globe. Founders George and Molly Greene closed their lucrative engineering firm in 2001 to engineer safe water filtration systems in areas where children die daily of water-borne illnesses. What they discovered was astonishing: The more water they purified, the more communities were open to hearing the gospel.

“People are always questioning about how this [water] system works and asking how they can acquire it,” Uganda’s Glory Center pastor Charles Neddje says. “We always tell them about our great God. Can you imagine that even nonbelievers come willing to offer us land to plant churches because of this water system? It is an iron tool for the gospel.”

But with 884 million people without clean water around the world, there is much work still to be done. So the Greenes are enlisting Western churches to help during Water Sunday, March 22. Congregations are dedicating a portion or an entire service to raising funds and awareness to help end the clean water shortage. Through video and photos, attendees are shown how quickly the gospel is spread by giving an impoverished area a purified water source.

“The goal of our projects is not just to provide physical water, but to share the Living Water message as well,” says Kevin Herr, a Water Mission representative. “When a project is completed we have a special celebration ceremony and when appropriate, show the Jesus film.”

Water Mission has provided clean water in 49 countries and hopes to be a world leader in water filtration by 2017. ­­—Felicia Abraham

Dubbed as one of the fathers of the modern praise and worship movement, renowned worship leader Don Moen returned this spring with his first studio release in three years.

With 13 new songs packed on the producer/songwriter’s March 27 release, Uncharted Territory, the album has a classic Don Moen sound that includes uplifting lyrics written to encourage believers facing uncertainty and fear. The record houses a mixture of uptempo Sunday service praise songs and get-you through-the-tough-times ballads.  

“With all the uncertainty today, many find themselves in uncharted territory due to circumstances beyond their control,” Don Moen says. “It is my prayer that these songs will help people offer sincere praise to God, even in the most difficult situations.” —Felicia Abraham 

Josh James Riebock

A compelling look at a Gen-Y author’s journey toward understanding himself and his faith, Heroes and Monsters: An Honest Look At The Struggle Within All of Us engages the reader with vivid stories of childhood hero worship—and anguish at his father-hero’s failures.

When Riebock’s father’s drunken driving left the two of them stranded in a cornfield and his father unconscious, a young, frightened Riebock focused on a scarecrow whom he imagined to be named Jack. Riebock’s relationship with his father was shattered, but throughout his young years, he maintained a relationship with “Jack.”

Riebock relives his youth and early adulthood as he struggles with his failures and downplays his successes. Later in life, his wife and friends assist him in exploring his inner “monsters,” while his growing intimacy with Jack leads him to self-revelation and maturity. Jack’s desire to be a part of every area of Riebock’s life illuminates God’s desire to be known personally.

Riebock’s struggles are familiar but unique, and the help he receives from Jack is reminiscent of William P. Young’s portrayal of God in The Shack. Readers may also appreciate the pencil drawings throughout the book. —Eilene Ishler

When John Grooters and his then-young-teen son, Jedidiah, lamented the lack of a suitable movie for a guys’ outing, they didn’t just grumble—they ended up making their own. Released in February, The Frontier Boys aims to “fill a gap” for teen boys, according to the writer and director father of the pair.

The PG-13 full-length drama follows a group of high school athletes whose friendship and faith is rocked when one of them is critically injured in a gang-related shooting. The 112-minute film was shaped to appeal to teenage boys without being too edgy. “We almost ignored the girls” in making it, with no love interest, said Grooters, but the resulting movie has proved popular with teen girls as well.

From a biblical perspective the film deals with death, faith and loyalty, and violence, and delicately shares the love of Jesus with viewers.

The cast features country artist Big Kenny and Christian singer Rebecca St. James. Both musicians contribute to the soundtrack, which also includes music by Switchfoot, Jesus Culture and Superchick

Paul Baloche’s worship songs are staples in churches around the world, including favorites such as “Open The Eyes of My Heart,” “Hosanna,” “Above All” and “Our God Saves.” On March 13, Baloche releases The Same Love, featuring 13 new songs, including tracks co-written with Kari Jobe, Jason Ingram, Lincoln Brewster and others.