On Eagles' Wings Pt 11 — Don Courville

God's Strength for the Weary

Hast thou not known, hast thou not heard, that the everlasting God, the Lord, the Creator of the ends of the earth, fainteth not, neither is weary? There is no searching of his understanding. He giveth power to the faint, and to them that have no might he increases strength.

Even the youth shall faint and be weary, and the young men shall utterly fall. But they that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength. They shall mount up with wings as eagles, they shall run and not be weary, and they shall walk and not faint.

We welcome you to On Eagle's Wings, a church revival ministry designed to encourage you for revival, to share the gospel with you, to be a help to you. We trust that God will use us in your life in such a way.

Spiritual Renewal Through God's Grace

I was reading in a Psalms passage, Psalms 103, 1 through 5, and ran across a passage about the youth of the eagle being renewed. Psalms 103 starts out, Bless the Lord, O my soul, and all that is within me, bless his holy name.

Bless the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all of his benefits. Who forgiveth all thine iniquities, who healeth all thy diseases. Who redeemeth thy life from destruction, who crowneth thee with loving kindness and tender mercies.

Who satisfieth thy mouth with good things, so that thy youth is renewed like the eagles. We trust that God will use this program to renew your spiritual life, that you'll learn to live by the grace of God.

If you've been living by the power of the flesh, we trust that this will give you some principles to teach you to live by the power of the Spirit. And also we want to encourage you for revival. Revival in our land will start with you and I.

It will start with me getting right with God, you getting right with God. It has to start with the individual. I was listening to J. Vernon McGee just the other day as he shared on revival, and he said that so many times the problem seems to be either in the pulpit or either it's out in the people, and one group blames the other, but it all comes down to we each got to be right with God.

Let this program be a ministry to you, as you listen to it, I trust that God will encourage you to pray for revival, to experience it in your own life if you haven't. Let Him work in your heart. I'm going to share some stories on revival in other parts of the country, and also in other parts of the world in the next months ahead as we have time.

Revival and Persecution in China

I have a country on my heart, and that's China. Whenever I read something about China, and especially in relation to revival, it stirs me up. Now, in my opinion, the countries that are experiencing the deepest growth in the Lord and seeing the greatest blessing of the Lord are the countries that are suffering the most.

China is one of these countries. The Christians over there go through tremendous persecution, as well as those that have been in Russia and Romania and other communist countries. I have a little testimony story that I've got out of a report from Underground Evangelism, a ministry that tries to get Bibles into these communist countries.

Let me encourage you to support groups that try to get the word out, that are sound, and really have a desire to get the word into these countries. This is one group, Underground Evangelism, and I've got a story that I just want to read to you about in China, talking about what revival does.

It's called, God Has Not Forgotten China, the second testimony, and it starts out this way. In many places in China, we're seeing a great revival. This revival is due in part to your prayers in the West and to the love you have shown us both now and in the past.

Over 100 years ago, there were no Christians in the city in which I serve, but then a man came from the West to preach the gospel. He preached for three and a half years, but no one believed, so he went to the mountains to preach.

The people there had never seen a Westerner before, and they called him a foreign devil and spit on him and stoned him. There were many people in the West who were praying for this man and his work, and he did not give up.

He came back to the city and eventually built the first church there, which is still standing today, and so the gospel began to take root. More missionaries came to China, and the church began to grow, but it met with persecution.

Some missionaries were forced to leave, some were buried alive, and others had their heads cut off. We know that the blood of many Western missionaries was spilled throughout China, but this was the price paid for the revival we are now seeing.

In 1958, the church was swept again by great persecution. This was after the Revolution when all the Western missionaries had to leave. Many people were arrested and put in prison, and many pastors were sent to concentration camps in northeastern China where they froze or starved or were beaten to death.

Some Christians lost their faith and turned against the Lord, and looking at it with purely human eyes, it seemed like the church in China had been totally destroyed. But our God had not forgotten China and the Chinese people, and out of this persecution and suffering came great revival.

In our own particular area, in our district, it first began in 1966 through 1968. Revival, of course, is due to a sovereign move of God's Holy Spirit, but it is also due to the brothers and sisters who love God and are willing to suffrage for Jesus.

The home church which I am in charge of has around 300 people who attend services. Two hundred of these regularly take communion. I might stop and say that this is a Chinese Christian that was sharing this story, and I have another story from a sister that I'll share with you probably next time.

But he went on about these Christians, and he said once when a group of us church leaders were holding a meeting, a district official came and gave us a letter of warning. He said, I want to see if you are bold and daring enough to have a church meeting next week.

If you do, it will go very badly for you and your congregation. Later we gathered all the brothers and sisters together and prayed and discussed what we should do. We told them plainly that if they came to church next week, they would very likely face persecution.

What do you plan to do? We asked them. Are you willing to come next week? Even in great persecution, we will stand tall for the Lord, they answered. This is just a small persecution, so of course we will come.

The next week even more people than usual came to the meeting. There were over three hundred. We began the service, and soon the local officials came in with a large contingent of soldiers carrying guns.

They surrounded the building so that we couldn't get out, and fired their weapons, so we began to pray fervently. Three brothers got up to give their testimonies, and the soldiers came in sight and arrested them and took them back to the commune headquarters.

The next week we held another meeting, and even more people than the previous week showed up. Once again the police and the army came, and they arrested three more of our leading brothers. For three days these brothers got no food or water.

The food we brought to the jail was refused. On the fourth day, they were each given a bowl of rice. One of the communist officials said, I want to see if you are bold enough to pray before you eat your rice.

The first brother thought to himself, if I don't pray before I eat, that would be like denying the Lord. So he took up his bowl of rice and prayed. The official slapped him in the face, knocking the rice bowl to the ground.

The second brother then took up his bowl of rice and began to pray. The official struck him in the face with his fist, knocking him to the floor. The third brother, who was very nervous, said to himself, Lord, if I don't take my rice bowl and give you thanks, it will be like denying you in front of all these people.

So he lifted up his bowl of rice, stood up, and began praying. This time the communist official got a bucket of boiling water and poured it over the brother's head. Another official stopped him and said, You can't do that to this man.

If we kill him, how can we account for it? In this particular case, the more our congregation was persecuted, the more revival we had, and the more the brothers and sisters loved one another. During this same time, my older brother, who was over seventy, was arrested.

They bound his hands with ropes, and each time he took a step, they asked, Are you still going to believe in Jesus? Are you still going to preach the gospel? As long as I am alive, I will continue to believe and to preach the gospel, he answered.

One of the men became so furious that he took a metal club and hit my brother on the head, which raised up a huge welt. Again he was asked, Are you still going to believe? You can kill me and cut off my head, and I will still believe, he answered.

The man then struck him repeatedly on the head and face, until his face was so swollen he could hardly see. Do you still insist on believing, they asked my brother. Yes, he answered. Then they threw him down on the rocky ground where they were standing, breaking three of his ribs, which caused him to pass out.

They poured cold water on him to revive him and dragged him into a latrine where they tried to throw him down the hole. By now a group of people, all non-believers, had gathered around, and they were furious when they saw how this old man was being mistreated.

Their anger kept the officials from forcing my brother down the latrine. Finally they took him to another location where they tied him to a tree and stoned him and then left. A man happened to pass by an unbeliever who recognized him, and he came to us.

We went and got my brother and brought him back to the house of a sister. As he lay there unconscious, a large number of us stood by, weeping and praying. Eventually my brother regained consciousness, and seeing us standing there weeping, he said, Brothers and sisters, don't weep for me, weep for China, weep for the Church, weep for the souls of the lost.

These words brought great comfort to our hearts, and then God did a very wonderful thing. Even though a leg and three ribs were broken, my brother healed, and now at age seventy-three he is very strong and healthy.

It's not just the old ones who suffer. Our younger co-workers, some as young as ten, have also known suffering through beatings and other things. The revival we are experiencing right now is because of these brothers and sisters in their service to the Lord.

They are willing to suffer for Christ. Now that we have fellowship and communication with you in the West, and because in the last several years you have given us many, many Bibles, this has also been a great help in bringing revival.

The Need for Revival in the Church

Well quite a story, many, many more stories like it could be read about revival. The thing that bothers me is, I wonder if it will take persecution to bring revival in our country. We need it, it's desperately needed.

I see in churches all around a hunger for God, a hunger for purity, a hunger to see the Spirit of God come back again. Many churches have Ichabod written over them as the glorious departed. I hope your church isn't one of those.

Thanksgiving as a Daily Christian Practice

We're in the time of being thankful, and this is why I read this story, that we might just remind ourselves that we are still greatly blessed. Even though our nation is turning more and more against God, we still have freedom, we still have food, we can still walk down the street without fear of being arrested for being a Christian.

We have many things to be thankful for. Are you thankful? Has God just filled your heart, overflowing with thanksgiving? Are you thankful when you have to do something that's unpleasant? The Bible says in Colossians 3, 17,.

And whatsoever ye do in word or deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God and the Father by Him. Actually, I believe the Spirit-filled Christian will be just as thankful every day of his life as the special time of thanksgiving that we've set apart, and everybody seemingly is supposed to be thankful on Thanksgiving Day.

But if you're filled with the Spirit of God, you'll be thankful every day. Your heart will overflow with praise to God. The Psalms will flow out of your heart in praise, enter into His gates with thanksgiving and praise.

In everything, give thanks, for this is the will of God and Christ Jesus concerning you. Paul said in 1 Thessalonians 5, 18. Are you thankful in everything? Are you thankful? Well, we've been going through a little bit each time on the life of Moses, and we're in Exodus 3, and I've been looking at Moses and his life and looking over some of the things that he said.

Moses' Call and His Five Fears

You know, when the Lord came to him in Exodus 3 and said that He was going to deliver Israel, Moses was excited. But then when God said, You're my program, Moses, I'm going to send you, in verse 10, He said, Come now, therefore, I will send thee unto Pharaoh, that thou mayest bring forth My people, the children of Israel, out of Egypt.

Well, Moses kicked it into gear to get out of there. And the way he did it was, he came up with these five excuses. And actually, those five excuses, I believe, revealed five fears in his life. And over the next few times that we meet together, I'm going to share some things with you about those five fears.

One of the things that the Scriptures teach us in Luke 1, especially in 71, 74, 75, and there, in that area, is that when Christ came, He came to deliver us from fear. The Scripture said that He would grant unto us that we, being delivered out of the hand of our enemies, might serve Him without fear in holiness and righteousness before Him all the days of our life.

I'm sorry to say, but I believe a lot of us are dominated by fear. And if we really got into the superstition aspect of it, you might be surprised how much of your fear has to do with superstitious witchcraft, some kind of thing like that.

Will you walk under a ladder? And you'll say, well, of course not. Well, that's just superstition. But let me tell you something. As long as we are afraid of anything, there will be a flaw in our faith.

Fear is focusing on our inability. Faith is focusing on God's ability. And God's going to take Moses through a series of lessons here. Let's see what we can learn from Moses' five excuses, or five fears, if we want to call them like that.

And God offers something. Each time He gives an excuse, God offers something in exchange for His fear. And He does that for us, too. In 311, Moses says, I don't have any ability. I have a lack of ability.

Moses' Fear of Inability

And Moses said unto God, Who am I that I should go into Pharaoh, and that I should bring forth the children of Israel out of Egypt? And God told him, well, I'm going to be with you. In verse 12, certainly I will be with thee.

And if you think about it, if God's with you, and He's always with us, if you're a child of His, if you're a believer, what do you have to be afraid of? He said He'd never leave us. Well, He said, Moses, I'm not going to leave you.

Moses' Fear of Lacking Authority

Well, when we get to verse 13, Moses said unto God, Behold, when I come unto the children of Israel, and shall say unto them, The God of your fathers hath sent me unto you, and they shall say to me, What is his name?

What shall I say unto them? A little bit concerned about his authority. He says, I don't have any authority. And God answers that, Here's your authority, and that's my name. God said unto Moses, verse 14, I am that I am.

And He said, Thus thou shalt say unto the children of Israel, I am hath sent me unto you. And so He says, My name will be your authority. Then you slip over to chapter 4 and verse 1. Moses says, But Lord, they're not going to believe me.

Moses' Fear of Rejection

Moses answered and said, But behold, they will not believe me, nor hearken unto my voice, for they will say, The Lord hath not appeared unto thee. So he has a lack of acceptance there. And God says, What about my power?

I'm just going to pour my power out unto your life. And He used this illustration with a rod with Moses, and He tells him to throw that thing down. It turns into a snake. And you know the story. Well, Moses is getting a little bit desperate now, and he says, in verse 10, he says, I am not eloquent, O my Lord, I am not eloquent, neither hithertofore nor since thou hast spoken unto thy servant, but I am slow of speech and of a slow tongue.

Moses' Fear of Inadequacy

You know, that desert did something to Moses. While he was out there all those years, he had all that confidence before, but now he has no confidence in himself, and God actually has to rebuild his confidence to go forth.

God needs an instrument, a human instrument. He needs you. You might think, Well, God doesn't need me. He sure does, brother or sister. He needs you. You're important. You say, All I can do is pray. Well, let me tell you something.

You can't do anything till you have prayed. Your pastor needs you to pray for him and with him. He needs to be encouraged. There's a neighbor that you can pray for, that you can do something for. Don't say that you can't do anything.

God's going to get after you, as he did with Moses. And so God says, Listen, my spirit, my spirit will speak through your mouth. Verse 11, God told him, he says, Who made man's mouth? Who maketh the dumb, or deaf, or the seeing, or the blind?

Have not I the Lord? Now therefore go, and I will be with thy mouth, and teach thee what thou shalt say. He's saying, It's no problem, Moses, all the way through here. Lack of ability, no problem. I can handle it for you, Moses.

Lack of authority, no problem. Lack of acceptance, no problem, Moses. We're going to get the job done. Well, I can't speak. No problem. But then Moses does something. In verse 13, he said, O my Lord, send I pray thee by the hand of him whom thou wilt send.

Moses' Fear of Reluctant Allegiance

Now here is a lack of allegiance. This one got Moses into trouble. It says, The anger of the Lord was kindled against Moses, and he said, Is not Aaron the Levite thy brother? I know that he can speak well.

And also, behold, he cometh forth to meet thee, and when he seeth thee, he will be glad in his heart. And thou shalt speak unto him, and put words in his mouth. And I will be with thy mouth, and with his mouth, and will teach you what you shall do.

And so for 40 years Moses had to whisper everything into his brother's ear, and his brother would tell the people. Don't you think that got a little bit old after a while? Moses got a crutch, and he had to carry that crutch for 40 years.

Lack of allegiance. Well, as we get into these things, we're going to study them out. I hope you're not afraid. The Bible says God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind.

Actually, if you have a fear of man, a fear of witnessing, that's a fear that God has not given to you, and you need to deal with that. Maybe there's something else in your life that's producing fear, or maybe it's not fear.

Maybe you're just not even willing to talk for the Lord, or do what you're supposed to do. You know what? If we get too many people like you in our churches, then our churches are cold, non-functional as far as a practical aspect.

We need revival. And I was like that, and God touched my heart and told me that I couldn't be like that. If I wanted to reflect the glory of the Lord, I had to speak. I was just over in a place a little bit ago, getting a couple of my girls a milkshake, and there's a young man sitting there, standing there.

Got to talking with him, just a junior higher, and I shared the gospel with him, gave him a track, asked him if he'd been saved, and he said he had and talked with him. You know, it'd been very easy not to say a word to him, and that's the problem with Christians.

It's so easy not to do anything. Every time we do that, we grieve the Holy Spirit. He's left us here in this world to talk, to speak for him. We need to learn to work and to witness by the power of God's Spirit.

You say, I can't do it. Well, that's the best way to get started is to admit that you can't do it and ask him to do it. How about it? Are you willing to just give it to him? Why don't you say to the Lord that, Lord, I can't do it.

Would you do it? I can't handle this fear. Would you take this fear away from me? I can't witness, or I can't do this or that that I need to do. Would you just die to your ability and say, Lord, would you just do it through me?

Christ's Grace in Weakness and Salvation

Next week, we're going to continue on and look and see how God worked through these excuses of Moses. And I'll share a little bit more on principles of fear and some insights of how that will affect you.

But yet, if you'll learn to have victory, how God can use that to lift you up. Oh, my friend, are you discouraged? Let him lift you up. Are you lost in a dark, dangerous, discouraging world? Do you know Jesus as your Savior?

If you don't, why don't you just right now ask him to come into your life? Tell him you repent of your sin, that you're sorry. Ask him to forgive you, to make you the person he wants you to be. But as many as received the Lord Jesus Christ, to them he gave the right to become the sons of God.

Receive him. Let him lift you up, my friend. And Christian, let him lift you up. Apostle Paul, in talking with the Lord about his thorn in the flesh, had the Lord Jesus say unto him, My grace is sufficient for thee, for my strength is made perfect in weakness.

And then Paul said, Most gladly, therefore, will I rather glory in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may rest upon me. Have you learned to live by the grace of God? Have you learned to let him lift you up?

Are you still struggling? There's freedom. Jesus came to set you free.