A New Beginning  

by Gene Easley

    Joshua 3:4 says, “Ye have not passed this way heretofore.”  The children of Israel were to pass for the first time across the River Jordan into Canaan’s land.  It always feels good to get out of the rut and go somewhere you haven’t been before.  It is a relief when we are not going in circles any more but are moving forward in God to a new experience.   

    Many churches and individual Christians have spent years in a rut.  They need someone to lead them to a new experience in God with a new vision and a new burden.  We know we are headed to an eternal promised land.  But there are also promises here of victory and blessing for this present time into which many may never go.   

    I have witnessed God’s Spirit being poured out in abundance and lives being transformed.  I have also heard and read the testimonies of saints of an earlier era, who spoke of the all-night prayer meetings where great healings and deliverances came with power.  I have heard the stories of the Spirit being poured out and the tabernacle of God being saturated with His eternal glory.  My prayer is, “God, get us out of our rut.  Renew the church with a fresh visitation of Your divine presence.  Move us forward into the promised land of victory, where our lives can be meaningful and our service to You effective.”  

    God was leading Israel to a land they had never been to before--to a land flowing with milk and honey.  Israel had experienced the cruelty of Egyptian bondage.  They experienced the hardships, the testings and trials of the forty-year wilderness journey.  Most of the group who crossed the River Jordan had been born in the wilderness and had never known anything else.  Canaan would be a new experience.  They would eat the fruit of the land in which they had sown nothing.  They would inherit homes they had not built.  It would be a blessing and gift from God.  

    The church needs the gifts of God to operate again in believers’ lives and in the sanctuary.  A new beginning does not start with our turning over a new leaf.  It starts with God pouring out His blessings.  A new beginning does not begin with the institution of new programs but rather with a new outpouring of God’s Spirit bringing instant transformation.  If we forsake one program and start a new one, we will still be in a rut.  Nothing will really change.  Only the Spirit of God will bring change.  He will launch us out into a new and effective avenue of service.  

    I have been at the altars of prayer where the presence of the Spirit of God was so real that no one wanted to leave the sanctuary.  Some were crying with many tears; others were rejoicing; some were speaking in unknown tongues as the Spirit moved on them and gave the utterance.  Some were singing, and musicians were providing the appropriate music.  No one wanted to leave.  It was times like those that one felt the heart being renewed and victory infused over all the bondage and battles plaguing our lives.  

    A new beginning can be found at the altar of prayer.  My prayer is that God will not allow us to be satisfied with a powerless church--with no souls being saved, with no lives being transformed, with no saints being filled anew with the power of the Holy Spirit.  When the Spirit fell on the Day of Pentecost, it marked a new beginning for the work of God on planet Earth.  The 120 believers in the upper room had prayed for ten days.  Their hearts were ready for the outpouring of His Spirit.  May God lead us back to the altars of prayer and prepare our hearts and lives for a new visitation from on high.  May God give the church a new beginning!

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"Wilt thou not revive us again: that thy people may rejoice in thee?" (Psalm 85:6).