• I was in Iraq, July 4-11.
• I preached at First Baptist Church of Bridgeport (our home church) right after I got home, on Sunday, July 12.
• I was glad to preach on revival themes at the United Baptist Church in Springfield, Missouri, on July 19. Pastor Steve Brudnak leads this flock, and I trust our ministry helped them up the revival road. I am set to come back to them for revival meetings next year.
• On the weekend of July 25-26, I flew to Denver to participate in the Summer Bible Conference at the Front Range Baptist Church of Fort Collins. Jeff Redlin is the pastor here, and Dr. Greg Mutsch was the other speaker. We saw the Lord work to open eyes and lift people up during these blessed days, and were helped by the preaching of Dr. Mutsch in a big way. I knew him from his days at Pensacola Christian College, and was happy to learn about his ministry now at Accelerated Christian Education. He and the pastor and I had some good talks about revival while I was here. The Lord is showing His people at this church the Bible truths about revival.
• On July 29, I was allowed to give a report on the Iraq mission at the Martinsville (Indiana) Baptist Tabernacle, the place where I made the decision to go on the mission last April. God used these people, and their pastor David Zempel, in a very significant way to get me over there. We had a good service this Wednesday.
• On July 30, I drove from Martinsville in the Indianapolis area to the Cleveland, Ohio, area for a public prayer meeting anticipating the Conference on Holiness and Revival in August. They had me preach, and we all felt that the Lord did some important things in our lives this night.
• On the 31st, I drove to South Bend, Indiana, for a unique opportunity afforded me by Pastor Virgil Wesco of the Fellowship Baptist Church. They have a wonderful congregation, with an obvious emphasis on the Christian family in their ministry. I am visiting more and more churches that are putting the family right in the center of their compliance with the Great Commission, and this is one of the most notable of them. The church also runs a “School of Theology,” and they asked me to teach my seminary-level class on the History of Revival to the students, in connection with a series of actual revival meetings. Of course, I was thrilled to do this, asking the Lord to bless His Word as it went out in a couple of different forums. On Saturday, August 1, I taught all day. Toni drove down that evening to be with me through Tuesday. Then on Sunday I preached three times (with all three services regarded also as part of the class) and taught class afterward. On Monday through Friday we had classes before and after a revival service each night. It was both unusual and wonderful. The Lord gave me several evangelistic conversations during the week, too. I am grateful to have made friends with Pastor Wesco, his entire large and godly family who help him in the ministry, and with a number of amazing Christians in this amazing church.
• On August 8, I went home and got to see my dear friend Marc Knoedler and his family at a little gathering, and then drove down to Lima, Ohio, to preach at the Bluelick Bible Church on Sunday the 9th. Pastor Jim Neighbors was in Africa on a missions trip, and had asked me to preach for him on that day. God gave us a wonderful day, with souls saved and a touch of revival.
• August 10-12, I joined evangelists Billy Ingram and John Van Gelderen for the Conference on Revival and Holiness organized by Pastor Matt McPhillips at the Court Street Baptist Church of Port Huron, Michigan. This important meeting had no connection (except a heavenly one) with the conference of a similar name that took place the next week in Cleveland. The Lord met with us at Port Huron, and much good was evidently done, especially for the sponsoring church.
• August 16-20, I was with Pastor Don Barth of the Broadview Heights Baptist Church near Cleveland for Sunday services at the church and for the Conference on Holiness and Revival that was held in a church in Garfield Heights. Without a doubt this conference belonged wholly to God! The attendance was good every night, and we saw God work in a life-changing way. Folks from several different churches and towns came, including some from Illinois all the way over near Iowa! A man got saved one night, even though the meetings were planned for Christians. The conference expenses were met through the nightly offerings, including a miraculously huge offering on Thursday night. A couple of thousand that came in above the budget will be reserved for next year’s conference. We saw several saved at the church, too, the Sunday before the conference. What a week!
• Friday I flew from Cleveland to Milwaukee to speak at a workers gathering at the Falls Baptist Church, and Saturday I flew to Flint and then to Orlando for revival meetings at the Memorial Baptist Church of Ocala, Florida, August 23-28. They were called a Conference on Revival, but were really revival meetings. Pastor Mike West was again a gracious and generous host, and his people responded well to the truth of the Bible. in Spirit-filled evangelism.
• On Saturday the 29th, Toni flew down and I flew up to Louisville, Kentucky, for meetings at the Landmark Baptist Church, led by Pastor Jon Stone. The Lord is really working and blessing in this church at this time. The congregation is much involved in evangelism, and numbers of folks are being saved and discipled. Brother Stone is a remarkable man, and is growing in grace Himself, and it is evident. We are having good meetings here as I write these words, as well as an opportunity to visit with friends we know from our days at Juniata.

Pray for me in September! I am set to preach in revival meetings at Faith Baptist Church of LaCrosse, Wisconsin (the 6th through the 11th), at Grace Baptist Church of Eaton Rapids, Michigan (the 13th through the 17th), at Spring Meadow Baptist Church of Smyrna, Tennessee (the 20th through the 25th), and at Prairie Baptist Church of Gibson City, Illinois (the 27th through the 30th). I will also be back at the great annual men’s retreat at Newark Baptist Temple near Columbus, Ohio, September 18-19. Toni and I are grateful both for your friendship and your prayers. The summer was a season of great things done by God in answer to those prayers. Write me this fall if we can pray for you about something, or do anything for you. We cherish our relationship with you. RICK FLANDERS (Acts 1:8).

“If my people, which are called by my name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land.”

(II Chronicles 7:14)

It isn’t uncommon today to hear Christians pray aloud for God to send a revival. However they don’t always do it right. It is important for the Christian to be informed by scripture in order to pray the right way. Jesus said, “If ye abide in me, and my words abide in you, ye shall ask what ye will, and it shall be done unto you” (John 15). We must have God’s words abiding in our minds in order to pray intelligently. We must get the facts from the Bible so that we can know what God is like, how He thinks about things, and what He wants to do in answer to our prayers. But many public prayers for revival are grossly disconnected from the truth of the Bible. They are not only disturbing to people who know better, but also misleading to those who are motivated to pray for revival.

Some say, “Lord, revive America,” but what does this prayer mean? Is it really scriptural to ask the Lord to revive our nation? God has had a covenant with only one nation of men in the history of the world, and that is Israel, not the United States. In what Biblical sense would we expect the Lord to revive America?

Especially at gatherings on the annual Day of Prayer, I have heard people pray for “the moral re-birth of our country.” This is indeed a perplexing prayer. First of all, a re-birth is by definition a miracle. “How can a man be born when he is old? Can he enter the second time into his mother’s womb and be born?” The question of Nicodemus, recorded in John 3, is reasonable, and points to the physical impossibility of a re-birth except by miraculous power. Moreover, we have no basis for asking God to perform a miracle unless the scriptures indicate that He is willing to do it. There is nothing in the Bible about the moral re-birth of a nation. What do we mean by that anyway—a return to the morals and family-life of the 1950s? The fact is that the only re-birth that has ever happened is the spiritual re-birth of an individual soul, as described in John 3. We can pray for that, but we have no reason to believe that God will respond to prayers for the moral re-birth of our country.

There is a great need for men and women to pray for revival today, but ours must be informed prayers. The promise in II Chronicles 7:14, a great revival verse, contains four principles that will make our prayers scriptural and effective.

1. Revival always has to do with God’s people.

God said, “If my people, which are called by name, shall humble themselves and pray,…then will I hear…” This is a timeless principle that has always applied to revival praying, and always will. God revives His people. Revival is something the Lord will do for His own. This was true when He gave the promise of II Chronicles 7:14, and it is true today. However, there are differences between an Old Testament revival and a New Testament revival that we must understand.

Of course, the Second Book of Chronicles is in the part of the Bible we call the Old Testament. The term, “Old Testament,” refers to the covenant God made with the nation Israel especially applicable in the centuries before the first coming of Christ. “Old Testament” means “Old Covenant.” Believers in Christ today do not live under the stipulations or provisions of the Old Covenant, but rather enjoy the better promises and provisions of the New Covenant. Although revival is essentially the same in all dispensations, the results of a revival have differed according to the applicable covenant. Revival always had to do with God’s people, which were the Israelites under the Old Covenant, and believers in Christ under the New Covenant.

As we have noted, God’s people under the Old Covenant were the nation of Israel. The stipulations and promises in that covenant are reviewed in Deuteronomy 27-30. If the people would obey the special laws and statutes and ordinances they were given by the Lord through Moses, He would bless them with wealth, health, victory in battle, growing families, and many other physical blessings. Should they refuse to comply with these laws or turn away from the Lord to other gods, they would lose those blessings and experience chastisement through specific curses. When the blessings disappeared, and the curses came, Israel was in need of revival. If they would repent and get back to obeying the Law of Moses, the blessings would come back. See in these chapters how an Old Testament revival worked.

Of course, this is what is described in II Chronicles 7. King Solomon was asking God to make the Temple they had just built for Him a place where the nation could meet with Him and seek His reviving power and blessing. God answered him one night and said,

“If I shut up heaven that there be no rain, or if I command the locusts to devour the land, or if I send pestilence among my people; if my people, which are called by my name, shall humble themselves and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land.”

(verses 13 and 14)

We can see, by reading the context, that the healing of the land spoken of in II Chronicles 7:14 was to be an agricultural healing. It would be deliverance from drought, locusts, and pestilence, according to the promises of Deuteronomy. This was because the promise was for an Old Testament revival. It was not the political, moral, economic or even spiritual healing of a Gentile nation like the United States.

The New Covenant under which we now live as Christians is expounded in Hebrews 8, 9, and 10. It was promised in Jeremiah 31 and Ezekiel 36 as the covenant that God will have with Israel when they repent in the latter days and are converted to Christ. The Lord Jesus taught that we believers live under that covenant now (Matthew 26), and the night before He died on the cross, He explained the practical applications of this covenant that would be experienced in the New Testament age. This teaching is found in John 13 through 17, and five blessings are highlighted there: remarkable answers to prayers offered in Jesus’ name (14:12-14, 16:23-24); the obvious help of the Holy Spirit in living out the Christian life (14:15-26); supernatural peace, love, and joy in the lives of those abiding in Christ (14:27, 15:9-12); the bearing of much fruit, spiritual reproduction (15:1-8); as well as persecution (15:18-16:4). All five of these will be experienced by Christians as long as they live at the level of submission and faith where the Lord can give them (called abiding in Him). When we fail to live at that level, and fail to experience these blessings, it is because we are in need of a New Testament revival. It would be right to say that the people of God in general are in need of such a revival right now. But we would be talking about God’s family, and not about a particular human nation. When we pray for revival, we are praying for God’s people to be revived, and not for our country to be revived. Such a revival is urged in James 4:1-10, and is much needed in our day. If the churches in America were really revived and brought back to New Testament Christianity in its purity and power, our society and culture and even our politics would be greatly affected. However, it would be a revival of the Christians and not a revival of the country. And this is revival for which we should be praying.

2. We must humble ourselves.

The Old Testament revival described in II Chronicles 7:14 would begin with God’s people humbling themselves. So would the New Testament revival of James 4:1-10. In verses one through five, the problem plaguing the churches is identified as worldliness (“friendship of the world”). In verses six through ten, the cure is identified as the grace of God.

“God resisteth the proud, but giveth grace unto the humble. Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.”

The grace of God for revival is accessed by humility. Under both the Old and the New Covenants, the people of God must humble themselves in order to be revived. Notice the revival promises of James 4:8-10.

“Draw nigh to God, and he will draw nigh to you. Cleanse your hands, ye sinners; and purify your hearts, ye double minded. Be afflicted, and mourn, and weep: let your laughter be turned to mourning, and your joy to heaviness. Humble yourselves in the sight of the Lord, and he shall lift you up.”

When God’s people humble themselves under the New Covenant, and “draw nigh” to Him by confessing their sins for cleansing and surrendering their hearts for purification, God has said that He will “draw nigh” to them with the New Covenant blessings of John 13-17!

3. We must seek God’s face.

Many scriptures call for God’s people to seek His face and find Him, when they have strayed from the path of His will. See this in Deuteronomy 4:29, I Chronicles 28:9, Psalm 27:8, Proverbs 8:17, and Amos 5:4, in the Old Testament. Find the same message in James 4:1-10, in the New Testament.

“Draw nigh to God, and he will draw nigh to you.”

When His people deliberately and earnestly seek the face of the Lord, He will be found of them. And seeking God always involves turning from our wicked ways, because He is holy. Seeking God’s face means seeking His favor and blessing. It speaks of people looking for God, aware of His absence among them, desiring to have Him and His blessings back! The words in James 4 about weeping and mourning indicate that Christians who want revival must be serious and passionate about seeking His face. To pray for revival calls for us to seek His face and turn from our sins.

4. We can expect God to respond to prayer for revival!

Every promise of revival contains the assurance that God will answer the prayer for revival. In II Chronicles 7:14, God says that “If my people…” will do what He requires, “…then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin,…” and revive them again with the restoration of covenant blessings. “If my people,…then will I.” It’s like “Turn ye unto me, saith the Lord of hosts, and I will turn unto you,” in Zechariah 1, and like “Return unto me, and I will return unto you,” in Malachi 3. It’s the same as what we read in James 4, “Draw nigh to God, and he will draw nigh to you.” Revival promises are conditional promises. They do not just predict something God will do in the future as a sovereign act; they promise what God will do if we will turn back to Him. Conditional promises present God as predictable. He has said that He will respond to our prayers and repentance. We can count on Him to do what He said He would do when we do what He has called on us to do. Revival praying is praying in the will of God, and will predictably get what it seeks. Remember that I John 5 tells us we can have “confidence” in the fact that “if we ask any thing according to his will, he heareth us: and if we know that he hear us, whatsoever we ask, we know that we have the petitions that we desired of him.” And the reviving of the people of God is clearly according to God’s revealed will. He will revive the members of His family if they will repent and look to Him to do it. This is the power of revival praying.

We are living in both challenging and exciting days, and my report today has plenty of news both to challenge and to excite us as we pray.  First, here is a survey of what happened in May.

·         I began the month at the Faith Baptist Church of Angola, Indiana, where our friend, Dr. Arnold Fair is the pastor.  These were revival meetings from Sunday, May 3, through Wednesday the sixth.  As when I visited to preach last year on a Sunday, people here were responsive to the truth of God.  I got to go visiting with a fiery young Christian one day, and we witnessed to several, and he managed to get some folks out to the meetings through our visits.  We also saw how the Lord works with us when we join with Him to spread His Word.  I believe our visitation efforts as well as the meetings will have a lasting impact on his life.  At least he says they will.  The Fairs are wonderfully gracious and generous people, and his members are like him.  They (his members) also benefit from the ministry of a pastor who really knows the Word of God.  God is working here, and certainly did in these days.  He gave me some new sermons just for this week, including one from Isaiah 7 on “Wimpy Prayers.”  Pray for Faith Baptist Church!

·         Then on the tenth through the twelfth, Toni and I were at Mio Baptist Church in the upper part of lower Michigan, for Mother’s Day, a short “Spring Revival Campaign,” and the first annual Rural Pastor’s Conference.  These were great days.  We saw a number make some important decisions in following Jesus, and we experienced a triumphant conference on Tuesday with pastors from all over the state, learning practical truths that help country preachers.  This meeting came out of a burden God gave my friend, Pastor Glynn McMorris, and the Lord greatly blessed it.  Some of you country preachers who missed it ought to attend it next year.

·         Then from May 14 through the 20^th, I was “out west” to teach my course on the History of Revival at the West Coast Baptist College, and to preach at the Southern Hills Baptist Church in Las Vegas.  The men in the class (several of whom are going to be evangelists) were sharp, and deeply interested in our topic.  The people at the young but large (running 300) church in Las Vegas were very receptive to revival truth, and I think permanent good was done here.  We saw several make very important decisions. Pastor Joshua Teis was away taking class for a  graduate degree at Pensacola, but his assistants were  good at taking care of me and running the services.

·         On May 24, I was back at the Temple Baptist Church of McMinnville, Tennessee, to preach on the family for a Sunday dedicated to that subject.  My friend, Brother Tom Fittis (originally from Northern Ireland), is the pastor of this fine congregation.  We saw good response to the teaching and preaching on the home, especially in the Sunday night service when I preached from Malachi 2 on the purpose of the family and marriage (do you know what that is, according to the Bible?).  In the morning service, a young married man asked for prayer that he would be saved.  During the day, I got to see a couple of special guests that are dear to me, Susanna my daughter from the Bill Rice Ranch (where she is a staff-member), and evangelist Richard Coyle.

·         The last week of May I was home a little to catch up on some work (both ministry and household work) and also to get over to Milwaukee to see our new granddaughter, Megan Elisabeth Flanders.  She was born on May 17 while I was in Las Vegas, and Toni got to see her when she went over to attend our grandson’s kindergarten graduation. Toni went back this week to help Lis (who now has five kids), and I went over at the end of the week.  In the middle of the week, I drove to the Cleveland area to preach at the Broadview Heights Baptist Church on Wednesday and to meet with pastors on Thursday for a prayer meeting aimed at the revival conferences planned for this summer and next.  Please pray for this important effort to spread the truth that God is ready to revive His people!  Let me report to you that I found the church clearly on the road to revival, and in a real sense in the midst of revival.  It would thrill any Christian heart to sense the spirit of the midweek service at Broadview Heights, to see the response to the preaching of God’s Word, and to hear the prayers of God’s people at the end. They took in 11 new members in the May 27 service.  Praise the Lord for what He is doing here!

I have some more good things to report and to request prayer about.  I got a message from Dr. Blaser at New England Baptist College telling me great news about revival in the college and the Christian school this month.  Grades 7-12 experienced two powerful chapel services in which kids got right with God and each other.  A quieter but very real work of revival was evident in the college student body as the semester drew to a close. He sees this as a continuation of the work God was doing in the Northeast Revival Conference back in April.  Word of these events is affecting the church (Central Baptist in Southington, Connecticut) for good, and we all ought to pray for them.

This summer will bring my trip to Iraq (July 4-11), and also our 40^th wedding anniversary (June 28, with a little time off and a trip to celebrate after the Iraq mission), the revival campaign at Reese Baptist Church (May 31-June 5, in which I am now involved with Pastor Adam Nelson who leads this small-town Michigan church), preaching at the New Salem Baptist Church in Indiana on June 7, teaching the seminary course on the History of Revival at the Indiana Baptist College June 8-12, preaching at the Houghton Lake Baptist Church June 14 and the Court Street Baptist Church of Port Huron June 20-21 (both in Michigan), and also Family Week at the Bill Rice Ranch June 28-July 3 (a week I start Sunday morning at the Nolansville Road Baptist Church in Nashville).  I don’t have many meetings scheduled in July except for the Bible Conference at Front Range Baptist Church in Fort Collins, Colorado, the 26^th.  August will be an amazing month as God blesses us at the Fellowship Baptist Church the first week (actually starting on August 1^st), at the Conference on Holiness and Revival in Port Huron, Michigan, August 9-12 (at Court Street), at the Conference on Holiness and Revival in Cleveland, Ohio, August 16-20 (in the auditorium of the Faith Community Baptist Church), in revival meetings at the Memorial Baptist Church of Ocala, Florida, August  23-28, and at special services at the Landmark Baptist Church in Louisville, Kentucky, beginning the 30^th.  We surely do need your prayers in all of these efforts for revival, and we rejoice in anticipation of what God will do through them.  If you want, please write me about any of the summer’s meetings.  They will be very important and unusual.  I will send you a report on the Iraq trip, and then something else at the end of August.  May the Lord give you His peace and power every day!

RICK FLANDERS (Acts 1:8)

“Bow down thine ear, and hear the words of the wise, and apply thine heart unto my knowledge. For it is a pleasant thing if thou keep them within thee; they shall withal be fitted in thy lips. That thy trust may be in the LORD, I have made known to thee this day, even to thee. Have I not written to thee excellent things in counsels and knowledge, that I might make thee know the certainty of the words of truth; that thou mightiest answer the words of truth to them that send unto thee?”

(Proverbs 22:17-21)

Calamities are often the consequences of foolishness. Many say that our country is facing great calamities, if something big is not done to prevent them, and a reasonable person must ask if these troubles are coming because we have not been wise in some way or another. The Book of Proverbs is the main wisdom book of the Bible, and it teaches us many proven rules for life, as well as broader principles upon which a successful life is built. In the twenty-second chapter of the book, King Solomon exhorts the reader to pay attention to his divinely-inspired “words of truth,” and some of his statements in the chapter seem to apply to our situation in 2009. These powerful words cause us to ponder whether our problems are simply the results of foolishness. Of course, anyone can learn from mistakes. We can pray that God will grant to the people of our times the grace and wisdom to return to the teachings of the Bible, and to Himself as the ultimate Source of wisdom.

Verse 3 says, “A prudent man foreseeth the evil, and hideth himself: but the simple pass on, and are punished.” Was not our current crisis foreseen? Could not bureaucrats and politicians, or bankers and economists, see that the rules of finance were foretelling the collapse that we have experienced in sections of our economy? Yes, many certainly could foresee the evil, but selfishness and politics let warnings of danger go unheeded, and the nation just passed on and was punished.

The next verse says, “By humility and the fear of the LORD are riches, and honour, and life.” Everybody wants riches, honor, and life, but many Americans have not been willing to pursue them by the right means. A result of this unscrupulous pursuit of goals has been calamity.

Verse 6 states, “Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it.” Home child-training has almost become a relic of the past, and the consequences have been horrendous. With both parents pursuing careers away from the children, and many homes being broken and re-broken in divorces, social problems have multiplied. The rise in out-of-wedlock pregnancies, juvenile crime, drug abuse, and suicide should not surprise us when kids have grown up without nurture or training. We have yet to understand the full effect of the collapse of the American home on the state of things in our country.

We are warned in verse 7 that “the rich ruleth over the poor, and the borrower is servant to the lender.” Divine wisdom warns us against debt. Yet our economy has been built largely upon debt in the last hundred years, and its failure has been precipitated by failure in the credit system. The Bible views indebtedness as a negative condition comparable to slavery, but we have loved it. The fruit of this foolishness is now ruining us!

Verse nine says, “He that hath a bountiful eye shall be blessed; for he giveth of his bread to the poor.” But most Americans have decided to discard charity for the welfare state as the means of soothing their consciences about the needy. Yet public assistance depends on prosperity, a benefit that taxation and government spending work against. Socialistic programs have been running down the clock of their effectiveness. Eventually we will wish we had stayed with private charity. Charity works because people are helped out of of compassion and not by compulsion with the sense of entitlement. Socialism eventually ruins the economy of every nation that tries it.

We are warned in verse 16 that the person who “oppresseth the poor to increase his riches, and he that giveth to the rich, shall surely come to want.” Are we not seeing this principle proven? Too-good-to-be-true schemes designed to enrich the rich and swindle the poor have had the curse of God on them. So also have corporate and middle-class welfare programs and gigantic federal “bail-outs.” Try to justify the massive use of public funds to save private businesses on a moral basis. You cannot do it. Why should future generations of Americans be burdened so that the country can give to the rich? Why should so many that have oppressed the poor through deceptive deals be allowed to get away with doing it? These are fundamentally crooked activities, and the God of heaven will make sure that they blow up in the faces of those who put them on.

Verses 17 through 21 (cited at the beginning of this article) are a plea for people to listen to the divine wisdom that has guided the truly-successful for centuries. They are followed by one more precept that certainly seems to explain the mess we have made.

Verses 26 and 27 say,

“Be not one of them that strike hands, or of them that are sureties for debts. If thou hast nothing to pay, why should he take away thy bed from under thee?”

Many do not know that the Bible more than once warns against co-signing for a loan. This is what Proverbs 22 means by the phrase “strike hands” and by the idea of being “sureties for debts.” When the government pledged to back loans and mortgages, we all became “sureties for debts,” and we put ourselves in the unhappy position of playing the fool. Progressive thinkers scoffed at the notion that federally-backed loans were based on unsound principles. Experts of different kinds encouraged our politicians to head down the road of debt-for-prosperity and government-backed-success, and they have not left that road yet. But the eternal truths of life, given to us in the Bible (such as these in Proverbs 22), always apply, and we will not get out of this mess, nationally or personally, until we heed them.

In the final analysis, building a life on eternal truths is a matter of trusting God. Our national motto says that we trust in God, but our actions tell the true story. We trust in God by assuming that the Bible is true. Proverbs 22:19 says that “the words of the wise” and “the words of truth” were given to us so that our “trust may be in the LORD.” When we deal with the issues of life, the question always is, “Will we trust God or not?” If we will give God the benefit of the doubt by assuming that the teachings of His Word are true, and then acting on that assumption, we will act wisely and make for ourselves a better life.

READERS OF THIS ARTICLE SHOULD NOTE THE FOLLOWING:

1. A “Rural Pastors’ Conference” will be held May 12 at the Mio Baptist Church in Mio, Michigan (look for it on the map), and many of you ought to attend this unique meeting led by a really remarkable fundamentalist pastor. Go to the website at www.ruralpastorsconference.com, and see what will be going on. The speakers will be me (and I pastored a country church for over thirty years), Pastor Glynn McMorris of Mio Baptist, Pastor Tim Rader, and Pastor Bob Wall. You also may want to call the church at 989.826.3944.

2. My class, History of Revival, will be taught as a block-class at the West Coast Baptist College, May 14-20, and at the Indiana Baptist College, June 8-12. Contact WCBC about costs and accommodations by e-mailing Mike.Lester@lancasterbaptist.org or calling 661.946.4663. Contact IBC at info@indianabaptistcollege.com. This school will be offering special arrangements for people who want to come for just one day of class, something of interest to preachers and revival-oriented Christians in the Indianapolis area.

3. A Conference on Holiness and Revival will be held August 10-12, at the Court Street Baptist Church in Port Huron, Michigan, with me, John Van Gelderen, and Billy Ingram speaking. Call Pastor Matt McPhillips at 810.334.6411, or contact him at pastorcourtstreet@sbcglobal.net, for the details. This is a much-needed meeting for my state, and will be blessed of the Lord, I believe.

4. Pastor Jim Townsley is leading a conference on revival for New England next week, April 5-9. Services will be held at the Central Baptist Church of Southington, Connecticut, and you can contact them at www.centralbaptistchurch.net for details. It is called the Northeast Revival Conference, and I will join a fine set of speakers to help people in the all-important matter of revival.

5. If you are interested in keeping up with my work, contact me by e-mail (drrickflanders@gmail.com), or call me at 989.863.0784, or go to my website at www.drrickflanders.com. I can put you on my prayer-update list.

6. April 11 (the day before Easter) will be the National Day of Evangelism this year, with many churches coordinating door-to-door soul-winning efforts on the same day. Find out about it by going to www.dayofevangelism.com. I think this is a really good idea. Pray with me that many will be saved this year through this special thrust.

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• Lesson 2
• Lesson 3
• Lesson 4
• Lesson 5
• Lesson 6
• Lesson 7
• Lesson 8
• Lesson 9
• Lesson 10
• Lesson 11
• Lesson 12

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• Lesson 1
• Lesson 2
• Lesson 3
• Lesson 4
• Lesson 5
• Lesson 6
• Lesson 7

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“. . . it is given unto you to know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven . . .”
(Matthew 13:11)

1. Lesson 1
2. Lesson 2
3. Lesson 3
4. Lesson 4
5. Lesson 5
6. Lesson 6

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1. Motivation – Lesson 1
2. Motivation – Lesson 2
3. Motivation – Lesson 3
4. Motivation – Lesson 4
5. Motivation – Lesson 5
6. Motivation – Lesson 6
7. Motivation – Lesson 7
8. Motivation – Lesson 8

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