A Year to Consider Jesus — Carter Conlon

Happy New Year. Praise God. We're going to be starting the new year as a church with a 21-day season of prayer and fasting. We're going to join with Pastor Gary Wilkerson's church in Colorado Springs, Pastor Claude Hood's church in Montreal, Canada, and Summit International School of Ministry for a 21-day season of prayer and fasting.

I don't want anybody to have a heart attack. I'm not asking you to fast for 21 days. It's a season of prayer and fasting, which means that you are free to choose how much or how little that you would like to fast.

The issue really is not so much that it's the length of any fasting. It's simply that we're setting apart this time for the seeking of God. Now, you can fast a meal a day. You can fast two or three days if you want in a row.

I don't really want anybody fasting for 21 days. I don't think, unless you are completely familiar with the physical side of this and you're medically up on it, I don't advise it. Never fast without liquids at any time.

But we're going to have a season of prayer and fasting together beginning on January the 9th right through until January the 30th. It's 21 days. We're going to be meeting. There will be no extra services for prayer and fasting, but we're going to turn the 3 o 'clock service every Sunday into a prayer service.

And Tuesday night will be a prayer service for the whole month of January. The services will be very much like the prayer services you've experienced here when we go into a three-day fast together. There will be an open microphone in many of them where those of you who'd like to pray will have an opportunity to pray.

We're going to be praying for New York City. We're going to pray for the five boroughs. There will be a prayer board in the lobby, and you'll have an opportunity to sign up. There will be a 24-hour prayer going on.

There will be half-hour slots. You'll have an opportunity to sign up for a half-hour that can be every day, every two days, when you set aside time to pray for a particular borough in the city. Now, I would encourage you to go online and find out all the information you can about the borough that you're praying for.

Find out what the needs are, the demographic of it, what the concerns are that should be our concerns, and you can pray about these. On the opposite side of the prayer board will be an opportunity to find a prayer partner to walk through the area with and to pray together.

Now, I don't want anybody standing on the street corner with your hands raised praying in tongues. Most everybody talks to themselves now out on the street, and it's an accepted thing now because quite often people have a Bluetooth or whatever is the new technology.

I guess it's changed now, but nevertheless, they have some kind of a device that enables them to talk on the telephone as they're walking. And so what I would suggest you do is find a prayer partner. If you're praying for Queens, for example, pick a spot in Queens and just walk through it together as if you're talking to each other and pray.

And let's truly believe God for New York City. We have to. We're at a time where we have to believe for New York City. I'm going to be on the radio on 1010 WINS 13 times a week encouraging the people of the city who'd like to pray with us to come out and be part of the meetings at 3 o 'clock Sunday and Tuesday night.

And so you may find a lot of people who are not familiar with Christ the way you are. Remember to be very kind. People may come in. They may bring paraphernalia with them. They may not fully understand how we pray.

Please don't be unkind about it. Remember they're being invited to this house to learn how to pray. So don't tell anybody to put their rosary away or anything like that. God, give us wisdom in these things.

People are going to come and they're going to pray the way that they know how. And we will do everything that God enables us to do to lead them to the saving knowledge of Jesus Christ. Thank God for this opportunity to pray.

On the 17th of January, we're going to be trying to interlink with Summit School, with Pastor Claude's church, with the Colorado Church, so we can all pray together on that particular Tuesday night. That'll be the 17th of January.

The IT people tell me it's a possibility we can do that. So, for example, there'll be a 25-minute segment where the Colorado Springs Church will be leading us in prayer. It'll be on the screen. And then there'll be another segment where Summit will be leading us.

And then we will have an opportunity to lead the prayer too as well. Just gives us a bigger picture that we're not in this alone. Now, the other churches are not praying for New York City. They're praying for their cities and for their concerns.

But we are going to gather to pray for New York City. Thank God. Now, this book, The 180-Degree Christian, keeps selling out, which is a great problem. Thank God for that. The publishers only have 785 copies left.

The first run has sold right out. So, they're sending them to us. We made a promise that you could buy it throughout the holidays, and we keep running out of them. So, next Sunday morning, there'll be another 785 copies for those who'd like to get one still of The 180-Degree Christian.

We made them available for less than cost at $10. And so, we'll keep that price until everyone here has had an opportunity to buy one. Now, I know this morning there are 60 books that sold for $13. So, if you want a $3 refund, just take your book to the book table at the end of the service today, and they'll give that to you.

I've just sent a shockwave right through our book table people right now. I know that. If you don't go for your $3 refund, then that extra $3 will go into the missions fund for hunger. Thank God. 2012, my message, a year to consider Jesus.

Considering Jesus in the New Year

2012, a year to consider Jesus. Hebrews chapter 12, please, if you go there with me. Lord Jesus Christ, I don't have any strength except you give it to me. I have nothing to say unless you put your words in my heart.

I have nothing to add to your kingdom, but simply a heart that wants to love you and serve you. I pray, God, that you would enable me to be a strength and a blessing to your church body here in New York City and at large.

Help me, Jesus, to get out of the confines of my own frailty and to find your strength this year in a new way. God Almighty, I'm asking you to be merciful to New York City. I'm asking you, Lord Jesus Christ, for a season of great grace, unprecedented in history, something, Lord, that we know we can't do and no church program can make it happen.

No personality can do this. This is way beyond any of us. It's something, Lord, that only you can do. All I can do is come to your throne with a heart of faith, asking you, Lord, to do what you came to the cross to do, to sweep the city with a wave of mercy and bring in hundreds of thousands, if not millions, into your kingdom in this last hour of time.

Help us to pray this month like we've never prayed before. Help us, Lord Jesus Christ, to have your heart for the city. Give us faith, and as we heard in communion time today, give us hope in your mercy.

Lord, we thank you for this. God Almighty, would you open this word to every heart. I ask it in Jesus' name. Hebrews chapter 12, message title again is 2012, a year to consider Jesus. Wherefore, verse 1, seeing we also are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight and the sin which does so easily beset us, and let us run with patience the race that is set before us, looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is set down at the right hand of the throne of God.

For consider him that endured such contradiction of sinners against himself, lest you be wearied and faint in your minds. A year to consider Jesus. Now, we're entering a season, beloved, where many of us are going to have to consider to what extent we are willing to embrace and follow the full pathway which God in Jesus Christ has laid out for us to follow.

We're given a season to consider something. It's a short season. I do pray it lasts a whole year, but we are in a place now where the Lord is asking us to consider something of him. Now, unfortunately, as in Revelation chapter 2, there was a church called Ephesus, and there were people there whose service to God consists more or less of living comfortably inside of the borders which society has attempted to place around the church and around itself.

The Church Bound by Cultural Captivity

In other words, much of the testimony of Christ in our generation has been hemmed in, bordered, boxed in as it is by a society, by the scorn, by the boundaries that a society has set around the testimony of God.

Much of the testimony of Christ in our time is somewhat accepted as long as it abides by the rules and doesn't shake the apple cart. It's sad to say we're living at a time when just a few people can tell us when we can and can't pray, what we can and can't do.

Even though those who believe in God and in Jesus Christ, they believe in a heaven and a hell, statistically, are over 70 of the American population, yet still a handful of people have risen up and tried to tell this society when you can pray publicly and when you can't, what you can display about God and what you can't.

Borders, roundabout, the church of Jesus Christ that long ago fell asleep in this country and allowed walls to be built around it and allowed people who are outside the kingdom of God to begin to dictate to the people of God what you can do and what you can't do, when you can do it and when you can't do it.

Ephesus had a religiousness that was known for works and endurance and keeping doctrinal purity within its own ranks. You see, the world has no problem with that as long as they'll snicker at us in the workplace, but we're generally tolerated as long as the general population is squeezing some good from this church and it doesn't make the sea of sinners around it uncomfortable in their behavior.

American culture can tolerate religion as long as religion does not make it uncomfortable, as long as there's nothing in it of conviction, as long as it is not standing as a very definitive contrast to a society that is casting off as it is moral restraint at an unprecedented level.

It's a religion, according to Revelation 2 .4, that has left its first love. The outside of the church world looks in and sees a relationship of mutual tolerance. That's all they see. We tolerate and serve God and he tolerates us and serves us.

And that's what they see. That's how they perceive the church in many, many cases. It's like a marriage that has lost this inward spark of love and passion that once carried it, now staying together for mutual convenience and for the kids.

There's nothing in it anymore. There's no love behind it. There's no passion behind it. You remember the first time you fell in love or the first days when you got married. God help anybody that had something negative to say about your wife or your husband.

You weren't ashamed. Maybe you married somebody that was maybe not the handsomest person in America as we know it today, but you didn't care. Your heart was filled with love. You're filled with the passion inside for this person.

You're not ashamed to be seen in public. You're not ashamed to walk down the street arm in arm. You're not ashamed to say, this is my wife or this is my husband. This is the person that I've given my life to on this earth and I'm walking with.

But like a marriage that stays together for mutual convenience and for the kids not realizing that it's become so unattractive to the kids that they'd rather live with somebody unmarried if this is what marriage is.

And we look at much of what has been purported to be the testimony of Christ today and we see our children leaving the church in droves because it's so unattractive. I'd rather live outside of this. If this is what a relationship with God looks like, if this is the passion it produces, if this is the character that evolves from it, I'd rather find something else.

I'd rather find another partner. I'd rather live in some other manner. And frankly, I don't blame them. Revelation 2 .5 tells us this church lost its candlestick, lost its influence, lost that which was in its fabric that makes it attractive.

A wholehearted love and embracing of the Lord Jesus Christ, of His work on the earth, walking with His heart, unashamed of the testimony of God, fighting for those who in their ignorance are fighting against their own salvation, willing to walk with Christ, willing to endure the scorn, willing to walk through the misunderstandings of a misguided and falling society that is heading for hell in a handbasket, lost their candlestick.

In our time, much of professing Christianity has lost its influence. I want to read to you from the foreword to the 180-degree Christian that was written by Pastor Jim Simbla, the senior pastor of Brooklyn Tabernacle.

Declining Christianity and the Loss of Influence

For some years now, believers in Jesus Christ have been forced to face a sad fact. Christianity is on a decline across America. Almost all surveys conducted by Christian pollsters reveal disturbing downward trends as they check the vital signs of Christian churches, the clergy and professing believers.

Nationally, average church attendance is decreasing, as is volunteerism to serve others. Hundreds of pastors are leaving the ministry every month, and few who begin as pastors make it to retirement still in the ministry.

Several surveys now confirm what many have suspected. The lifestyles of men and women regularly attending evangelical churches are almost indistinguishable from non-believers, as evidenced in their priorities and value judgments.

Bible study is less and less part of the normal Christian life. Instead of the church evangelizing the world, the world and its influence have made deep inroads into Christ's church. In addition, and not surprisingly, some of the largest evangelical denominations have experienced negative growth over the past decade.

In some places, thankfully, signs of God's grace abound. There are churches that are effectively spreading the gospel and growing numerically. There are many believers who are still clinging to the eternal truths of God's Word and confessing Jesus Christ unashamedly.

But any objective analysis of the big spiritual picture must result in some sobering conclusions. The Christian church faces radical challenges as problems as we move through the early decades of the 21st century.

Much of what professes to be Christ has lost its influence, not only in America, but in Canada, Australia, the UK, Europe, many parts of the world, especially in the Western world, for a great season, we enjoyed freedom of religion, but we played fast and loose with God.

And we moved away from the simplicity of Christ and opened the gates wide to the value system of a fallen culture and allowed it to become the value system of the church. And in doing so, we created theologies to justify our backslidden condition.

Considering Our Ways Through Haggai

But now we're being faced with a crisis of unprecedented proportion, and most likely, we might experience the beginnings of it before this year is finished. And I'm thankful that this is not the end of the story.

We have a season, the Bible tells us to consider our ways. Listen to what the prophet Haggai said to the people of God who were called to rebuild the testimony of Christ in their generation. Let me just read it to you.

Then came the word of the Lord by Haggai the prophet saying, is it time for you, O ye to dwell in your sealed houses? And this house lies waste. Now, therefore, thus saith the Lord of hosts, consider your ways.

You've sown much and bring in little. You eat, but have not enough. You think of the church in our time with all of the strategies, all of the new vogue presentations of Christ to supposedly fill the house of God only to see the whole work of God go into decline.

You drink, but are not filled with drink. You clothe you, but there's none warm. And he that earns wages, earns wages to put it into a bag with holes. Thus saith the Lord of hosts, consider your ways.

Go up to the mountain and bring wood and build the house. And I will take pleasure in it. And I will be glorified, says the Lord. You look for much and lo, it came to little. And when you brought it home, I did blow upon it.

Why? Says the Lord of hosts, because of my house that is waste. And you run every man unto his own house. Therefore, the heaven over you is stayed from dew and the earth is stayed from her fruit. This is the Lord speaking through the prophet.

He says, you've settled in, to a form of religiousness. Now I'm talking about the country as a whole now, not speaking just to Times Square church. You develop strategies as it was to fill the house of God, to more or less mask the spiritual bankruptcy that was encroaching upon you.

But suddenly you find heaven closed and you boasted of this great harvest that was going to come in. But where is it? Says the Lord. You had these little sporadic in gatherings, but it seemed that I blew it away.

There was no substance to it. There's such a poor retention factor of new conversions in the church of Jesus Christ. We've made conversion so easy now in the house of God, no repentance, no turning from sin, no giving of one's life fully to the work and the cause of Jesus Christ.

Just pray this little two line prayer with me. And now your sins are forgiven and you're going to heaven. And we've opened the gates wider than the scriptures have opened them. And we brought in what's supposed to be a harvest.

And now finding this harvest has no power to stand against the whole of that which society has thrown against it. There's no power in it to stand. It falls. People come in, but we don't see warriors anymore.

We don't see those that are willing to stand in the face of the storm. Where are men of character now? I know there's a lot of people who claim to be Christian, but where are the men of character? Everybody's a Christian now.

Paul said, don't tell me who you are by your words. Show me by the power of God that is in you. And Haggai says, and I called for a drought upon the land and upon the mountains and upon the corn and upon the new wine and upon the oil and upon that which the ground brings forth and upon men and upon cattle and upon all the labor of their hands.

I called, the Lord said for a drought. And that's where we are folks right now. The Lord has called for a drought. I make no apologies for saying it. The Lord has called for a drought in America to get our attention and to get the attention of his church and get the attention of his people and get the attention of a lust-laden society and of people that are inundated with a preoccupation with themselves.

The Lord called for a drought. It's the mercy of God that's going to send us into the storm that we're going into. It's judgment, yes, but mercy precedes and triumphs over judgment. I've said it today and I've said it again, better to go to heaven hungry than to hell full.

Better to be brought into a place of understanding on need than to live like everything is fine only to find out that we've missed the whole purpose. We missed the gateway to eternal life. We had a cultural Christianity, but there was no reality in it.

The Altar Outside the Camp

Hebrews 13 10 tells us that we have an altar. We have an altar, whereof they have no right to eat which serve the tabernacle. We have an altar. Those who have settled in for just a simple cultural Christianity, a relationship with God that has no spark, it has no passion.

It's all about just coming to church, doing your time, looking at your watch, reading your Bible for 10 minutes every day, vocally seeing you're a Christian, whether or not you have the courage to love God in public or to stand with God and do the work of God.

There's an altar for that, but it's an altar that has no power. It has no lasting ability. It has no sustaining strength. It has no revelation. It is nothing but ideas out of men's minds. Hebrews 13 10 says we have an altar, whereof they have no right to eat who serve the tabernacle.

In other words, those whose whole relationship is just in washings and ordinances and laws and obligations as it is to stay together for the sake. No, there's an altar. It's so much deeper. It's so much more satisfying than those who have settled into just ritual and labor.

For God's sake and for your soul's sake, don't let it happen to you. Don't let it happen to you. That's why Paul said to Timothy, stir up the gift of God that is in you. When you came to Christ, the hand of God came on you, and you were called to do something that only you can do.

You were given a responsibility of God. You were given giftings of God to glorify Christ in the earth. Don't let it spiral down into just coming to church out of obligation. A passionless relationship with God that bears no fruit in the earth.

Nobody wants anything of it because they look at it and said, I've already done despairing enough. I don't need religion adding to it. No, it's an altar that lives outside of the praise and the scorn, which a fallen world uses to put borders around us.

Wherefore, Jesus also, verse 12 of Hebrews 13, that he might sanctify the people with his own blood suffered outside the gate. Jesus, for the sake of saving us, for the sake of enabling us to walk again with the Holy God, traveled outside the borders of the religion that tried to confine him and would have accepted him had he played its game.

He could have risen to be one of the highest in the whole echelon of it, but he wouldn't play the game. So they send him out. Historians generally think through the dung gate, the off scouring of the world, that which is of no value, that which is worthless.

They dragged him out the gate to the outside of the city. Let us verse 13, therefore go unto him without the camp bearing his reproach. Let us go where he is. Let us follow him for here. We have no continuing city, but we seek one to come by him.

Therefore, let us offer the sacrifice of praise to God continually. That is the fruit of our lips giving thanks to his name. We have a chance today to escape what has us surrounded. We have a chance to come to a new place where our mouths are opened in constant thanksgiving.

We have a chance as a church age. I'm not speaking just to Times Square Church. I'm speaking to anybody who can listen now, who still has ears to hear. We have a chance to escape this, this cultural captivity that we find ourselves in.

We have a chance to live again. We have a chance to come to an altar where the fire of God really is, where the glory of God abounds, where the giftings of God are multiplied, where people are given abilities that can only come from the heart of God.

They're given strength that can't come from any amount of natural effort or natural thinking. Natural religion can't produce it. It's a supernatural life. We have an altar. To go to that altar requires humility.

It requires an admission that my religion might fall short of the glory of God for my life. It requires a bending of the knee. It requires a contriteness of the heart. It requires a death to ourselves.

It requires the ability to step outside of the gate and be willing to endure the scorn of a fallen world, even though we are fighting for their souls. Let us go to him. The scripture says, let us go to him outside.

That's where this altar is found. Not bowing our heads any longer because somebody snickers at us in the workplace. Not refusing to stand to our feet and pray because somebody on a loudspeaker tells us we can't pray anymore.

No, sir. We have an altar. We have an altar. And it's called being given for the glory of God and for the souls of men. There's a place that this church age is being called to fight in to bring people into true freedom.

Running the Race Without Weights or Sin

Now, Hebrews chapter 12, where we began, says it this way. Wherefore, seeing we're encompassed about, so great a cloud of witnesses. And you go through the book of Hebrews chapter 11, and we see that threatenings, fire, flood, trial, personal inability, all of these things, nothing could stop these people.

They were given to the purposes of God. And you go all the way through this chapter. And it is so conclusively proven that to the genuine believer in Christ, there's nothing that can stop the plan of God ordained for your life from happening.

There's nothing except that you and I choose to live within the walls that somebody else puts around us. Live inside these confines, powered by snickering as it is. Coward by the view of a fallen society that we might be narrow or misguided or foolish or weak.

I don't know about you, but I don't care what people who don't know God think. I couldn't care less what they think. I'm fighting for them. I'm fighting for their eternal soul. So let them laugh because Jesus said, they're not going to treat me any different than they treated him.

Let us lay aside every weight. No weight can cross you. There are people here today, you're under a weight and the devil sends the weight to convince you that you must be focused on this weight. You see, this must be the focus of your whole life.

You must be just focused on the weight and you must live your life and your Christian life trying to get out from under the weight and trying to stay away from the weight. But the scripture tells us clearly that no weight can crush us.

So we have to lay it aside. We have to put it away and not let the focus of our own struggles be that which dominates our thinking. When there's something higher that God is asking us to do and the sin, which so easily besets us.

Number two, no sin can keep you. No sin. Say with me, no sin, nothing, no prison door, no blindness, no wounding of the heart, no captivity. Jesus said, I came to give sight to the blind, open the prison doors to those that are bound to heal those whose hearts have been wounded.

No sin, no sin can keep you. No power of sin can keep you. No power of death can hold you. You are free to get up and walk out of every grave and every captivity and every place of death. Glory to God.

And let us run with patience the race that is set before us. No opposition, no exhaustion, no limitation. Nothing can stop this race that God has set before us. I know in my heart, I've determined one thing that like the apostle Paul at the end of my days, I want to be able to say, I have run a good race.

I've fought my fight. I've finished my course and there's laid up for me a crown of righteousness. I don't want to get to the end of this life and say, I wish I'd run the race. I wish I'd run it God's way.

I wish I'd stayed between the lines. Oh no. Oh no. Oh no. Oh no. Oh no. This is a wonderful race. This is a glorious race. This is a beautiful race. Its finish line is eternity. Its finish line is heaven.

Its finish line is the throne of God. No weight can crush you. No sin can keep you. No exhaustion can stop you. Looking unto Jesus, verse two, Hebrews 12, who for the joy that was set before him, the joy of seeing you and I here today, the joy of seeing you free, the joy of having you back in living relationship with God again, who for the joy, it was all about you and it was all about me.

That was the focus of his joy. That was the source of his strength. That was the vision that was in his eyes. That was the guts he had to go to the cross, who for the joy that was set before him. What have we set before us in this generation?

Gold and cars and jobs, position, society and power. No wonder there's no joy in the true church of Jesus Christ. No wonder there's no joy in much of what professes to be Christianity. Our focus is wrong.

It's all about people. It's about those who need to know a savior. Who for the joy, who for the joy of being here with us today, walking the aisles of this church, living inside of your life and mine, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despised the shame.

In other words, he didn't give in to the scorn. He didn't give in to the ridicule. He didn't give in to all the accusation that came against him because he saw you. He saw you. That's why he didn't quit.

He saw you here. He saw you. If you can get that in your heart like I do, have it in mind. He saw us here today. He saw us in eternity with him. He saw us ruling and reigning with Christ forever. He saw us in heaven.

He saw us restored to God. He saw us brought back to him again who were created in the image of God and lost it through sin. He saw it. That was the joy that was set before him. He saw it. We've got to see New York like this again.

You won't cower if you have the eyes of Jesus. You won't let your mouth be closed. You won't stay in your seat if you see men and women the way Jesus sees them. He endured the cross, despised the shame, and is set down at the right hand of God.

Considering Jesus and Choosing Wholehearted Faith

He won. He won a victory. And that is the altar that you and I have if we're willing to join him outside of the city. If you and I are willing to escape the boundaries to be put outside as it is of a people who really are fighting against their own salvation, consider him, verse 3, Hebrews 12, that endured such contradiction of sinners against himself, lest you be weary and faint in your minds.

Consider him. A year of considering Jesus, 2012. A year when you and I are going to consider how deep and how far are we going to go in this walk with God? Are we going to settle in and become a powerless voice like Lot?

Even meeting with angels could not bring his own family out of captivity because he was so intermixed with the ways of the city. His value system was not much different than theirs. That's why his sons-in-law didn't believe him.

He wasn't truly a man of God, saved in a sense because somebody else interceded for him, but would have perished if left to himself. No, I'd rather be like Noah. He built an ark. He endured the scorn, the ridicule every day of people passing by and saying, you foolish old man, it hasn't rained here for a thousand years.

And here you are building a boat. What a foolish and stupid thing to do. But the Bible says in Peter that Noah was a preacher of righteousness. He was standing and he was willing to endure the scorn that Hebrews says he prepared an ark.

He heard something from God and began to prepare a place. And that man brought his family in with him. He brought his whole family in. Folks, your children don't want to see a half-hearted response to Jesus Christ in you.

They don't want to see you raising your hands in this sanctuary and yelling at your wives at home, sir. They don't want to see it. Your religion will turn them away from God. They want to see a changed father.

They want to see whether or not they're out on the street and laughing at you secretly inside. They want to see a man who stands with God. They want to see a mother who goes into the prayer closet. It all starts in the home.

That we make a choice. We consider Jesus and we make a choice because we understand the victory that has been won by others and by Christ can be ours. So we make the choice to go to that altar that those who play games with God can't go to.

And we go there honestly and we go there on bended knee and we say, God, help me where I'm blind. God, help me where I'm captive. God, help me where I'm wounded. God, help me to be a father. God, help me to be a mother.

I didn't have any training. I don't even know what a father is supposed to do, but you are a father and you can help me and you can strengthen me. We have an altar, but we don't get there until we're willing to be unashamed of Jesus Christ in our generation, starting in our own homes, that we're not willing to play any religious games with God.

Oh, and there's strength there. Prophet Isaiah says in the last days, in the midst of the fires, there are going to be a people who have a voice, a song, a praise to God. Now that doesn't just happen.