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SHOULDER TO SHOULDER #179 ---- 6/12/01

#1 · June 11, 2001, 12:44 pm

Quote from Forum Archives on June 11, 2001, 12:44 pm
Posted by: lifeunlimited <lifeunlimited@...>

Standing Shoulder To Shoulder With You In The Trenches
As We fight The Good Fight In This New Millennium

SHOULDER TO SHOULDER #179 ---- 6/12/01

Title:

TO SUBSCRIBE to "Shoulder to Shoulder", send a blank message to <[email protected]>.
To Subscribe for someone else, write <[email protected]>.
TO UNSUBSCRIBE, send a blank message to <[email protected]>.

My Dear Friend and Partner in Kingdom Work:

Today I greet you from the Hope Center in Fuzine, Croatia on our month long ministry in the Balkan region. What a trip it has been! God has been more than gracious to us. If I could best describe it, I would call this trip one of "glorious adversity" or "welcomed battles" or some other such mix of words. For, on the one hand we have seen God's mighty power and everlasting sufficiency buoy us up in unexplainable and astounding ways. On the other, we have seen the Devil try to oppose our work, distrupt our team unity, attack our team's physical health and stamina, mess up plans, and a dozen other sinister tactics in his attempts to keep God's work from going on.

For example, one of the key musicians on our team lost every single sound track for his music, three singers affecting a duet, a trio, and a quartet developed serious sinus and bronchial problems, another singer lost the sound track to one of our songs, and now I learn that another team member lost the tape to one of our most powerful choreographed skits.

Last minute changes have required unbelievable adaptability and flexibility. Just today our plans to visit a refugee camp were cancelled.

I do not remember any trip I've ever taken where it was such a joy and was so fruitful. At the same time I can't remember a time when Jo Ann and I were so physically and mentally exhausted. In Sarajevo we did more in less time with fewer people than ever before on a trip. In Dubrovnik it was a totally new trail blazing venture where we had never ministered before. In Fuzine it is familiar ground, but so many things have changed.

At the moment my mind is both awhirl with thoughts of what can possibly be, and also about as dull as a knife used to cut concrete. What a strange mix of emotions and circumstances ---- I just have to sit back and chuckle at the absurdity of and the lack of sense of it all.

Since we began our trip on May 22, we have been many places and have done many things. Kansas City, Chicago, Vienna, Sarajevo, Novi Travnik, Mostar, Dubrovnik, Rijeka, Crikvenica, Fuzine. Refugee camps, coffee shops, street evangelism, orphanages, churches. It is hard to realize the enormity of it all. . . . . And still there is more to do.

THE FUNDAMENTAL MESSAGE:

Each time Jo Ann and I travel to eastern Europe there is usually a central theme that God puts in my heart to share with the people. This trip it is the necessity of prayer. I talked about that some last week. I need to continue that today.

"Travailing Prevailing" as I called it last week is the kind of praying that makes you cry out to God in intercessory desperation for His glory to be revealed and His purposes to be fulfilled. In sharing that message here in the Balkans several things have become evident to me.

1. The spiritual bondage found in this place is the result of a complex mix of conditions, events, and attitudes. That is why I'm convinced there will never be a political or military solution that will work here. There are too many memories, too many wounds, too many nations that have trampled this place under their boots of war, too many religions that have forced themselves into ethnic identity.

While virtually every person we have ever met here, whether Croat, Serb, or Bosnian, has been gracious and kind in every way, the anamosity and hatred found in the hearts of many people is beyond description. You will neither legislate nor bomb those attitudes away, nor will you change them through political rhetoric or manipulation. You will never bring peace to this part of the world through partitioning the land or trying to create a blended government system of all the factions.

2. Because it is primarily a spiritual bondage that exists, only a spiritual answer will set the captives free. It is clear that the demonic powers of hell have taken advantage of every opportunity over the past eighteen centuries to strengthen their foothold and deepen their entrenchment into the fiber of this society. For every societal problem that exists on the surface, there are hidden issues in the heart and demonic controls in the heavenlies that continue to try to stir things up.

These wicked emmisaries of Satan himself are constantly on the prowl to initiate new elements of distrust and hatred into the system and also to implant evil and wicket thoughts into the hearts and minds of new players on the field. I talked today with Stevo Dereta, president of the Life Center International where we are working, and he said something I had been thinking. Every level of society in this region of the world is wicked and corrupt ---- including the church, even in many ways the evangelical church.

His statement reminded me of comments in one of my more recent letters based on Ezekiel 22 where the prophets, the priests, the princes, and the people all were filled with corruption and self-serving advancements. I was happy to hear that things are rapidly changing, however, at least in the church. Yet there is still competitiveness, petty jealousy, distrust, and resentment between various church groups.

Nothing will break this bondage outside of a spiritual invasion of Heaven's armies undergirded by God's warriors in the Church. Everything else that is tried, including humanitarian assistance and Christian based plans will ultimately fail.

3. Many believers in this region of the world have again become comfortable with the seeming futility of the current status. History has repeated itself so often that in many hearts hope is waning. The have concluded that faith is futile. Others have moved from the position of faith to fatalism. The pastors here are overworked and often paid little or nothing. They are, as one told me several years ago, "too busy to pray together", and yet that is the absolute necessity that can turn things around.

This past week my mind has been plagued with a major question. "Lord, do the believers here love their cities and their countries as intensely as I do?" That's not an ego type of question. I just don't know. In talking with Stevo earlier today I shared that question with him. He immediately acknowledged that many believers were more interested in their own personal needs than they were the condition of their cities and their country.

4. If things are going to change in this region of the world, the Christian leaders of the various denominations and other groups are going to have to come together in unity. It's amazing how much like the western church these believers have become. They have learned well from us, tragically. Everywhere I've preached these past weeks, I have urged them to seek the face of God, cry out to Him, and come together in unity to ask for His belevolent mercy and divine intervention.

5. If things are going to change here, believers here must continue to look outside their own area for resources and help. When you realize that this current generation is the first one in many years to be free from the oppression and athiesm of their Communist government, it will suddenly dawn on you that they have no solid infrastructure of spiritual vitality and institutions. What few denominational organizations exist are very small, poorly managed, and financially strapped.

Stevo shared with me earlier today his vision to begin raising up a system that will ultimately generate Christian journalists, film producers, writers, actors, technicians, and the like who will begin to infiltrate into the secular still "communistic" media and begin to influence it to the point that Christians become a force in this society. A young woman, Dali, whom we have known since she became a believer in her teen years, wants to finish her Bible college training and then go to America for one year to study Christian theater and drama because she feels God is calling her out to train believers throughout the Balkan region how to communicate the Gospel through drama, mime, music, and theater. She can't get there without help from outside.

There is no money available to hold training seminars and conference to equip pastors and other church leaders. Every trip Jo Ann and I take is at our expense. It isn't that these people don't want to assume financial responsibility ---- they can't assume it; there is no money. When you consider that six years ago there were less than 4,000 believers in all of Slovenia, Croatia, Serbia, and Bosnia, it should come as no surprise to us. Even though that number has risen greatly in recent years, the church here is still small, weak, and unable to help. It is still the "Macedonian" church needing help from some "Jerusalem" and "Philippian" believers.

THE ULTIMATE ANSWER:

This brings me to the final question: "What is the answer?"

Well, it's obvious.

For both the local believers here and the church around the world, the answer is the same ---- Prevailing Prayer.

But, it must also be unhindered prayer. We're not talking about religious games; we're not considering convenient Christianity.

We're looking at the need for prayer that comes from broken hearts of desperation crying unashamedly out to a sovereign and limitless all powerful God to intervene for a part of the world that has been invaded by outside forces more than any other spot on the planet.

I want to call you to such prayer. I want to stir you so much for these people that you can't sleep tonight. I want to prod you and even badger you to examine your own prayer life and that of your church. Do you really love what God loves? Do you see what He sees over here? Do you feel what He feels for these people?

I'm not asking you to come here to minister. I'm just asking you to pray . . . . to pray with all your heart for these people. For both the unbelievers and the believers alike. Pray that the blinders will be stripped from the eyes of the unbelieving. Pray that the fear and weariness will be lifted from the shoulders of the believers.

But, if you choose to join me in such praying, be sure it is unhindered praying.

WHAT HINDERS OUR PRAYING:

The Bible shows us many things that hinder our prayers. Let me name some:

1. If I reject the truth. Prov 28:9 ---- "If anyone turns a deaf ear to the law, even his prayers are detestable."

2. If I have pride. II Chron 7:14 ---- "If my people, who are called by My name, will humble themselves . . . . then I will hear . . ."

3. If my heart is hardened by things of the world. Zechsariah 7:12-13 ---- "They made their hearts as hard as flint and would not listen to the law or to the words that the Lord Almight had sent by His Spirit through the earlier prophets. So the Lord Almighty was very angry. 'When I called, they did not listen; so when they called, I would not listen', says the Lord."

4. If I lack compassion. Prov 21:13 ---- "If a man shuts his ears to the cry of the poor, he too will cry out and not be answered."

5. If I have unconfessed sin. Psalm 66:18 ---- "If I have sin in my heart, the Lord will not hear me."

6. If I have wrong motives. James 4:3 ---- "When you ask, you do not receives, because you ask with wrong motives, that you may spend what you get on your pleasures."

7. If I have broken relationships. I Peter 3:7 ---- "Husbands, in the same way be considerate as you live with your wives, and treat them with respect as the weaker partner and as heirs with you of the gracious gift of life, so that nothing will hinder your prayers.

8. If my lifestyle is sinful. Isaiah 59:2 ---- "But your iniquities have separted you from your God; your sins have hidden His face from you so that He will not hear."

9. If my prayers are empty words. Matthew 6:7 ---- "And when you pray, do not keep on babbling like pagans, for they think they will be heard because of their many words."

10. If I refuse forgiveness. Matthew 6:14 ---- "For if you forgive men when they sin against you, your heavenly FAther will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive them their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins."

11. If I am hypocritical. Luke 18:9 ---- (the story of the publican and the sinner)

12. If I am double minded, two-faced. James 1:5 ---- "If any of you lacks wisdom, he should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to him. But when he asks, he must believe and not doubt, because he who doubts is like a wave of the sea, blown and tossed by the wind. That man should not think he will receive anything from the Lord; he is double minded, unstable in all he does."

IN CONCLUSION:

Will you join me as my prayer partner for the Balkan region? The area is again on the verge of errupting into war again in Macedonia. It's the same old song, same old verse. Just different singers.

If God's people do not cry out to Him in intercession, who will? Do you think the pagans will? Do you think Satan will?

If not us, who? If not now, when?

In His Bond,

Bob Tolliver ---- (Rom 1:11-12)
Copyright June, 2001. All rights reserved.

--------------

^
/ |
(_/____)
/ ^ ^
{ (O) (O) }
------oOOOo--------U-------oOOOo------

Hang in there! I'm with you!

--------ooooO----------------Ooooo--------
( ) /
| | /
(_) (_)

Our heart is to "Lift up hands that hang down". We'd love to hear from you. Drop us a note with reports, observations, prayer requests, etc.

If this letter has blessed you and you know of someone else who needs to
be encouraged, feel free to forward it in its entirety to all such people
you know.

If you would like a list of past issues which you could receive upon
request, just let us know.

Posted by: lifeunlimited <lifeunlimited@...>

Standing Shoulder To Shoulder With You In The Trenches
As We fight The Good Fight In This New Millennium

SHOULDER TO SHOULDER #179 ---- 6/12/01

Title:

TO SUBSCRIBE to "Shoulder to Shoulder", send a blank message to <[email protected]>.
To Subscribe for someone else, write <[email protected]>.
TO UNSUBSCRIBE, send a blank message to <[email protected]>.

My Dear Friend and Partner in Kingdom Work:

Today I greet you from the Hope Center in Fuzine, Croatia on our month long ministry in the Balkan region. What a trip it has been! God has been more than gracious to us. If I could best describe it, I would call this trip one of "glorious adversity" or "welcomed battles" or some other such mix of words. For, on the one hand we have seen God's mighty power and everlasting sufficiency buoy us up in unexplainable and astounding ways. On the other, we have seen the Devil try to oppose our work, distrupt our team unity, attack our team's physical health and stamina, mess up plans, and a dozen other sinister tactics in his attempts to keep God's work from going on.

For example, one of the key musicians on our team lost every single sound track for his music, three singers affecting a duet, a trio, and a quartet developed serious sinus and bronchial problems, another singer lost the sound track to one of our songs, and now I learn that another team member lost the tape to one of our most powerful choreographed skits.

Last minute changes have required unbelievable adaptability and flexibility. Just today our plans to visit a refugee camp were cancelled.

I do not remember any trip I've ever taken where it was such a joy and was so fruitful. At the same time I can't remember a time when Jo Ann and I were so physically and mentally exhausted. In Sarajevo we did more in less time with fewer people than ever before on a trip. In Dubrovnik it was a totally new trail blazing venture where we had never ministered before. In Fuzine it is familiar ground, but so many things have changed.

At the moment my mind is both awhirl with thoughts of what can possibly be, and also about as dull as a knife used to cut concrete. What a strange mix of emotions and circumstances ---- I just have to sit back and chuckle at the absurdity of and the lack of sense of it all.

Since we began our trip on May 22, we have been many places and have done many things. Kansas City, Chicago, Vienna, Sarajevo, Novi Travnik, Mostar, Dubrovnik, Rijeka, Crikvenica, Fuzine. Refugee camps, coffee shops, street evangelism, orphanages, churches. It is hard to realize the enormity of it all. . . . . And still there is more to do.

THE FUNDAMENTAL MESSAGE:

Each time Jo Ann and I travel to eastern Europe there is usually a central theme that God puts in my heart to share with the people. This trip it is the necessity of prayer. I talked about that some last week. I need to continue that today.

"Travailing Prevailing" as I called it last week is the kind of praying that makes you cry out to God in intercessory desperation for His glory to be revealed and His purposes to be fulfilled. In sharing that message here in the Balkans several things have become evident to me.

1. The spiritual bondage found in this place is the result of a complex mix of conditions, events, and attitudes. That is why I'm convinced there will never be a political or military solution that will work here. There are too many memories, too many wounds, too many nations that have trampled this place under their boots of war, too many religions that have forced themselves into ethnic identity.

While virtually every person we have ever met here, whether Croat, Serb, or Bosnian, has been gracious and kind in every way, the anamosity and hatred found in the hearts of many people is beyond description. You will neither legislate nor bomb those attitudes away, nor will you change them through political rhetoric or manipulation. You will never bring peace to this part of the world through partitioning the land or trying to create a blended government system of all the factions.

2. Because it is primarily a spiritual bondage that exists, only a spiritual answer will set the captives free. It is clear that the demonic powers of hell have taken advantage of every opportunity over the past eighteen centuries to strengthen their foothold and deepen their entrenchment into the fiber of this society. For every societal problem that exists on the surface, there are hidden issues in the heart and demonic controls in the heavenlies that continue to try to stir things up.

These wicked emmisaries of Satan himself are constantly on the prowl to initiate new elements of distrust and hatred into the system and also to implant evil and wicket thoughts into the hearts and minds of new players on the field. I talked today with Stevo Dereta, president of the Life Center International where we are working, and he said something I had been thinking. Every level of society in this region of the world is wicked and corrupt ---- including the church, even in many ways the evangelical church.

His statement reminded me of comments in one of my more recent letters based on Ezekiel 22 where the prophets, the priests, the princes, and the people all were filled with corruption and self-serving advancements. I was happy to hear that things are rapidly changing, however, at least in the church. Yet there is still competitiveness, petty jealousy, distrust, and resentment between various church groups.

Nothing will break this bondage outside of a spiritual invasion of Heaven's armies undergirded by God's warriors in the Church. Everything else that is tried, including humanitarian assistance and Christian based plans will ultimately fail.

3. Many believers in this region of the world have again become comfortable with the seeming futility of the current status. History has repeated itself so often that in many hearts hope is waning. The have concluded that faith is futile. Others have moved from the position of faith to fatalism. The pastors here are overworked and often paid little or nothing. They are, as one told me several years ago, "too busy to pray together", and yet that is the absolute necessity that can turn things around.

This past week my mind has been plagued with a major question. "Lord, do the believers here love their cities and their countries as intensely as I do?" That's not an ego type of question. I just don't know. In talking with Stevo earlier today I shared that question with him. He immediately acknowledged that many believers were more interested in their own personal needs than they were the condition of their cities and their country.

4. If things are going to change in this region of the world, the Christian leaders of the various denominations and other groups are going to have to come together in unity. It's amazing how much like the western church these believers have become. They have learned well from us, tragically. Everywhere I've preached these past weeks, I have urged them to seek the face of God, cry out to Him, and come together in unity to ask for His belevolent mercy and divine intervention.

5. If things are going to change here, believers here must continue to look outside their own area for resources and help. When you realize that this current generation is the first one in many years to be free from the oppression and athiesm of their Communist government, it will suddenly dawn on you that they have no solid infrastructure of spiritual vitality and institutions. What few denominational organizations exist are very small, poorly managed, and financially strapped.

Stevo shared with me earlier today his vision to begin raising up a system that will ultimately generate Christian journalists, film producers, writers, actors, technicians, and the like who will begin to infiltrate into the secular still "communistic" media and begin to influence it to the point that Christians become a force in this society. A young woman, Dali, whom we have known since she became a believer in her teen years, wants to finish her Bible college training and then go to America for one year to study Christian theater and drama because she feels God is calling her out to train believers throughout the Balkan region how to communicate the Gospel through drama, mime, music, and theater. She can't get there without help from outside.

There is no money available to hold training seminars and conference to equip pastors and other church leaders. Every trip Jo Ann and I take is at our expense. It isn't that these people don't want to assume financial responsibility ---- they can't assume it; there is no money. When you consider that six years ago there were less than 4,000 believers in all of Slovenia, Croatia, Serbia, and Bosnia, it should come as no surprise to us. Even though that number has risen greatly in recent years, the church here is still small, weak, and unable to help. It is still the "Macedonian" church needing help from some "Jerusalem" and "Philippian" believers.

THE ULTIMATE ANSWER:

This brings me to the final question: "What is the answer?"

Well, it's obvious.

For both the local believers here and the church around the world, the answer is the same ---- Prevailing Prayer.

But, it must also be unhindered prayer. We're not talking about religious games; we're not considering convenient Christianity.

We're looking at the need for prayer that comes from broken hearts of desperation crying unashamedly out to a sovereign and limitless all powerful God to intervene for a part of the world that has been invaded by outside forces more than any other spot on the planet.

I want to call you to such prayer. I want to stir you so much for these people that you can't sleep tonight. I want to prod you and even badger you to examine your own prayer life and that of your church. Do you really love what God loves? Do you see what He sees over here? Do you feel what He feels for these people?

I'm not asking you to come here to minister. I'm just asking you to pray . . . . to pray with all your heart for these people. For both the unbelievers and the believers alike. Pray that the blinders will be stripped from the eyes of the unbelieving. Pray that the fear and weariness will be lifted from the shoulders of the believers.

But, if you choose to join me in such praying, be sure it is unhindered praying.

WHAT HINDERS OUR PRAYING:

The Bible shows us many things that hinder our prayers. Let me name some:

1. If I reject the truth. Prov 28:9 ---- "If anyone turns a deaf ear to the law, even his prayers are detestable."

2. If I have pride. II Chron 7:14 ---- "If my people, who are called by My name, will humble themselves . . . . then I will hear . . ."

3. If my heart is hardened by things of the world. Zechsariah 7:12-13 ---- "They made their hearts as hard as flint and would not listen to the law or to the words that the Lord Almight had sent by His Spirit through the earlier prophets. So the Lord Almighty was very angry. 'When I called, they did not listen; so when they called, I would not listen', says the Lord."

4. If I lack compassion. Prov 21:13 ---- "If a man shuts his ears to the cry of the poor, he too will cry out and not be answered."

5. If I have unconfessed sin. Psalm 66:18 ---- "If I have sin in my heart, the Lord will not hear me."

6. If I have wrong motives. James 4:3 ---- "When you ask, you do not receives, because you ask with wrong motives, that you may spend what you get on your pleasures."

7. If I have broken relationships. I Peter 3:7 ---- "Husbands, in the same way be considerate as you live with your wives, and treat them with respect as the weaker partner and as heirs with you of the gracious gift of life, so that nothing will hinder your prayers.

8. If my lifestyle is sinful. Isaiah 59:2 ---- "But your iniquities have separted you from your God; your sins have hidden His face from you so that He will not hear."

9. If my prayers are empty words. Matthew 6:7 ---- "And when you pray, do not keep on babbling like pagans, for they think they will be heard because of their many words."

10. If I refuse forgiveness. Matthew 6:14 ---- "For if you forgive men when they sin against you, your heavenly FAther will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive them their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins."

11. If I am hypocritical. Luke 18:9 ---- (the story of the publican and the sinner)

12. If I am double minded, two-faced. James 1:5 ---- "If any of you lacks wisdom, he should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to him. But when he asks, he must believe and not doubt, because he who doubts is like a wave of the sea, blown and tossed by the wind. That man should not think he will receive anything from the Lord; he is double minded, unstable in all he does."

IN CONCLUSION:

Will you join me as my prayer partner for the Balkan region? The area is again on the verge of errupting into war again in Macedonia. It's the same old song, same old verse. Just different singers.

If God's people do not cry out to Him in intercession, who will? Do you think the pagans will? Do you think Satan will?

If not us, who? If not now, when?

In His Bond,

--------------

^
/ |
(_/____)
/ ^ ^
{ (O) (O) }
------oOOOo--------U-------oOOOo------

Hang in there! I'm with you!

--------ooooO----------------Ooooo--------
( ) /
| | /
(_) (_)

Our heart is to "Lift up hands that hang down". We'd love to hear from you. Drop us a note with reports, observations, prayer requests, etc.

If this letter has blessed you and you know of someone else who needs to
be encouraged, feel free to forward it in its entirety to all such people
you know.

If you would like a list of past issues which you could receive upon
request, just let us know.