Please Remember
Ruth Johnson

This is Part Two of the message Remember.

On a blustery, windswept day I walked briskly along a rain soaked path in the crisp air of early fall. Overhead, maple trees were stunningly ablaze with vibrant oranges and reds. Oak leaves swirled around me and blanketed the ground in a sea of brilliant yellow.

In the stillness of this welcome solitude, I reflected on our nation.

Distress has gripped so many as they wrestle with uncertainty about the future. For multitudes, all sense of peace eludes them. As these thoughts welled up within me, I also felt how God is deeply moved with compassion for the people of our troubled land. At the same time I sensed how profoundly He yearned to tell His children in this country these words…

“Just like happened down through the ages, My eyes are going to and fro (2 Chronicles 16:9 NLT) across the earth. I’m still searching for those who know My Son, but didn’t stop at just encountering Him as their Savior. They also decided to passionately embrace how Jesus showed them to live. Yet as I longingly look across America, My heart breaks with unspeakable grief. So many who say I am their God, and even call Me their Father, have drifted far away from closeness to Me.

They’ve become so absorbed with thinking about their own struggles that they’ve forgotten this truth My Son did everything He could to teach them...

If you try to keep your life for yourself, you will lose it.
But if you give up your life for Me, you will find true life.
Matthew16:25 NLT

My Son knew that only when a person dies to dwelling on himself one moment, one thought, one heartache, one choice at a time, can he ever fulfill what being My child is all about. Only then can he fulfill why I even gave him the gift of life in the first place.

But My heart is broken because so many of My own sons and daughters of this vast land have lost sight of why My Son left Me over 2000 years ago and came to earth to live among them. They are tragically no longer affected by the humble simplicity of His message. Instead, life for My children in America has become all about them. They don’t even remember anymore why Jesus came.

Yet, there are countless people who are aching for someone to see them, and care.

They don’t know where to find comfort for their souls. But I could help them if only a son or daughter of Mine could see them, and then love them for Me.

These troubled ones are everywhere.
     They are young and old.
     Many are My own children
     Others don’t know Me at all.

These are the same kinds of people who were in the market place when Peter walked by a long time ago. But when he passed by them, My presence was so strong upon him, those who didn’t even know Me were touched (Acts 5:15-16 NLT).

This can only happen when a child of Mine refuses to dwell on his own heartaches and tenaciously chooses to look up above his circumstances to rivet his eyes on Me. Peter had to learn this. Otherwise he would have been destroyed by reliving in his thoughts, over and over, his horrific regret for betraying the finest, most faithful Friend he ever had. If he had made that mistake, he would have died a broken man. But Peter never forgot that Jesus gave up His life so that Peter could live a very different way (2 Corinthians 5:15 NASB). Therefore, one choice at a time, just like it takes for any child of Mine, Peter refused to give into focusing on himself, his hurts, his losses, his horrible regret. Instead, every day of his life he remembered My Son. The words Jesus spoke burned in his soul and that fire never dimmed. Consequently, Peter became like that kernel of wheat mentioned in the Gospels and from his years on this earth there was a ‘plentiful harvest of lives’ (John 12:24-26).

This is why wherever he went, Peter carried My holy presence. My hope could shine from his eyes. My peace radiate from his countenance. He could see those who were longing for someone to see them, and care. And lives were touched just because he passed by, sometimes without him even speaking a word.

To have such a profound impact comes with a price. A person must remember, all of his days, what My Son taught. Every day he must give up his life being centered around himself. No matter how he is feeling, he must choose to turn his thoughts to staying close to Me.

But then, an amazing miracle happens!

He experiences why I gave him the gift of being born in the first place. For his closeness to Me and My holy presence as a way of life, allows him to make a difference in people’s lives everywhere he goes.

How I wish My children in this nation could understand that to experience all this is worth everything that it costs them in dying to themselves. For nothing can compare to the joy of seeing a flicker of hope come back into the eyes of someone a child of Mine just loved for Me.

If only…”

A car whisked by and startled my thoughts back to where I was walking. Yet now the magnificent beauty looked so different.

I wept as I felt the tender love of the Father for His hurting children in our country and His overwhelming sadness for those who don’t even know Him at all.

This is the same pursuing love that His Son brought to me many years ago.

I was only thirty years old. But I was trapped in the dark abyss of bitter hatred. There was no way out. Terrorizing fears paralyzed me. Day and night, haunting regrets tormented me. I was so young. Yet I’d already given up thinking I could ever stop feeling so completely hopeless and alone.

I was one of those troubled people who ached every moment of my life for just one person to see me, and care.

I choked back a sob, as I whispered…

“Oh God, we Your children have lost our way.

Help us find our way back to our roots in Your Son where knowing Him all began, and there re-discover what that encounter was really all about.

As I glanced up at the sky, these words written a year ago in a message titled, “Remember Him” now have an even greater significance for Christianity in America than when I first shared them…

This is a sobering hour in the history of mankind.

Otherwise so much of Christianity is tragically futile to the world, and utterly meaningless to God’s own children.

In this hour in America, we need this restoration of lost truth to the hearts of us who say we are the Father’s children.

For believers are even more self absorbed in their own troubles than they were just a year ago because of the deepening uncertainty that has enveloped our nation.

Consequently, there is an even more agonizing ache in God’s heart to have “really loving others, intensely and with all our hearts” become passionately important once again to those who know His Son, Jesus.

This living out of the Gospel is what has to happen to prepare the way for His Visitation to come again to Christians in America.

Down through the ages since Jesus returned to the Father, it has always been this radical return to the core teachings of the Gospel that has ever made it possible for the Fire of Revival to sweep across a tribe, a people, and a nation.

“Oh Lord!

We Your people cry out!

Shake us at our foundations.

Set our hearts on fire once again!

Renew our passion to bring the help of Your Presence to those who desperately need us to see them, and love them for You.

Expose in us who call You our Father what is crushing our longing to be intimate with You.

Help us find our way back to being broken in Your presence and close to You. This is our only hope because You’ve clearly told us…

If My people who are called by My name humble themselves and pray
Seek My face and turn from their wicked ways
Then I will hear from heaven
Forgive their sin and heal their land.”
2 Chronicles 7:14