Saturday Night Revive!
Saturday night came with a sense of reckoning. The burden I felt on the first night was replaced with a new one, which is hard to compare in terms of severity, but it was very different. I was much more settled regarding the message itself, but the unanswered question was how far to take it. This sermon is where the Jeremiah mandate was to come into play. And this message was to be a pretty tough pill to swallow.
The day of preparation was spent almost entirely in prayer, which was a rewarding experience. I woke very early to look for a browsing center to deliver yesterdays blog post, and having to wait 2+ hours til they opened meant an opportunity to cruise around town in an auto and praying over the city. The driver took me to various temples and was bewildered as to why I did not desire to tour through them, but was content to sit outside and simply ask for a few moments of silence. The feeling in prayer was like parking myself in front of an old, tired behemoth of a principality, who was determined to never leave, but also had lost it’s teeth and was just as much of a monument to past demonic influence as the building itself. I engaged it in prayer, declaring the blood of Jesus as superior to it’s hold over the city. The experience emboldened me.
The impression from the Spirit of God all day to me was that THIS is the acceeptable year of the Lord, and I kept bumping into Luke 4:18 in my studies back at the room. The people of Kanchipuram must be delivered from oppression as they put their trust in Christ for the forgiveness of sins. The oppression of caste, arrogance, and ancient curses would be confronted in the message, provided I could muster the courage to name each one without flinching. It has always disturbed me why very few Christians openly condemned casteism, so the prospect of doing so carried a pronounced sense of dread.. especially since i would be standing and speaking in the heartland of it.
So the message itself was about authority, and how Christ reigns in authority, sitting at the right hand of God. Eph 1:23 goes a step further, declaring Christ not only the head of the church, but also the church as the body of Christ, meaning that right authority must come from the church and speak renewal and reconciliation to the world. Apart from the church working in obedience to the head, the sins of the world will not be held to account.
This message brought the other burden into balance, because really it is not my business to confront an ancient culture apart from doing so in obedience to Jesus, and it is not the business of the church to call hindus to repentance without repenting themselves for failing to stop this oppression in years past (not to mention our own complicity with it). The message was hard to deliver, and when it came time to do it, all of us involved in the service had been wrestling against darkness and distraction every step of the way. I knew this night was a spiritual battle ground, yet here we were, standing together to declare freedom to the captives, recovery of sight to the blind, and the acceptable year of deliverance for a people long oppressed.
The crowd was larger.. about 2500+, and the word is that this was the largest Christian gathering in the known (anecdotally) history of Kanchipuram! The message was delivered, the saints strengthened through repentance, and the principalities of oppression openly challenged in the name of Jesus Christ! The beauty of it to me, was not just confronting the spirits, but calling the church to a new maturity and boldness to understand their authority and responsibility to never let let up on the kingdom of darkness, but to keep shining the light of Christ!
Anyway, the pill ws swallowed, and now we move on to the night of blessing Sunday, where we will call for salvation, baptize in the Holy Spirit, and impart a prophetic annointing!
Please pray for a great finish and a new dawn for the church in India, as you check the new pics!
Indi-Andy
