A Clear Conscience, Day 5

Leslie Basham: When you ask the Lord to show what it would take to clear your conscience, He might take you up on it. That’s what Dr. Jerry Kirk discovered.

Dr. Jerry Kirk: I’m reminded of a time in the Communion service where the Lord spoke to me very clearly that there were three people I needed to be in touch with and work through our relationship. One of those was the mayor of Cincinnati. As a result of that, he and I were reconciled and brought back together.

Leslie: This is Revive Our Hearts with Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth for Friday, April 15, 2016.

All week, Nancy’s been sharing with us about the joy of having a clear conscience—of being right with God and other people. If you missed any of the programs, you can catch them at ReviveOurHearts.com. 

Today we’ll hear the prayers of a group of leaders, praying for revival. And specifically, praying that believers would discover what it’s like to have a clear conscience.

We'll hear from Byron Paulus, Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth, Jeremy Story, Kevin Adams, Al and Susan Henson, Al Whittinghill, Jim Cymbala, and to start things off, here's Dr. Jerry Kirk—the man who had to be reconciled with the mayor of Cincinnati.

He'd been reading the chapter on a clear conscience in the book Nancy wrote with Tim Grissom. Here's Dr. Kirk.

Dr. Jerry Kirk: I was surprised, as I went through this chapter this week, with the realization that there are some persons again that I need to work this through with. Sometimes, because of theological differences, we presume it’s okay to not treat one another relationally the way our Lord has said.

So I want us to focus in on our own sins, our own need for cleansing and purity of heart and reconciliation. Maybe it’s with some persons in the church. Maybe it’s racial issues. But let’s come to the Lord now and ask Him to search our own hearts and bring to our minds anything that would hinder the release of the fullness of the power of His Spirit within the Body of Christ.

Kevin Adams: Heavenly Father, we come before You and we recognize that You are a God who’s a powerful God and a pure God. You want to work through people like us. Lord, we do not want to stop Your work. So show us, O Lord, is there anything? Is there anyone, any relationship that is hindering what You want to do?

Oh, Lord, we want to be open to You. Heavenly Father, almighty and eternal God, show us, we pray, through Your Spirit.

Al Henson: Father, You have made us one in Christ, and how You must grieve that we don’t experience that oneness with You and with others because of a conscience that’s not clear and because of the sin that lies in our relationships.

So we just cry out to You now, Father, and praise You that You have sent Your Spirit to be in us and among us and the church across our land. We pray, in Your mercy and Your grace, that You would search our hearts, both those that are listening today and ourselves.

In our meetings, we pray for an outpouring of Your Spirit that would cause people to be sober-minded about this matter of their relationships. Pour Your Spirit and search our hearts that we might be able to know what hinders You from working among us. We cannot go on, Lord. We can’t go on without Your Spirit.

So we cry out to You to show us what we need to see. Lord, by Your Spirit, that we might know that we need to repent and turn and make our relationships right and clear our conscience one with another and with You and with businesses, etc. Please, Father, pour Your Spirit out onto us.

Al Whittingham:  Oh Lord, we thank You for Your mercy and grace and endurance. We ask that You would give us power morally, spiritually, every way—inwardly—to love those who despitefully use us and those we love and those who despitefully used You. Help us to somehow go beyond where flesh could go, to truly demonstrate the love of Christ

We just want You to free Your Spirit within each of us to have Your way. Help us to lay down our lives for those who are Your enemies and with those who are our close friends. With those bad relationships that we know, give us the grace to go to that person.

Lord, have mercy on Your church. Help us to be honest on this matter. No matter what it costs, help us not to be a stumbling block to them.

Kevin Adams: Lord, I pray that You might give us a glimpse of the forgiveness that we have had from Yourself. Give us a glimpse again of the forgiving Christ, and help us to be imitators fully from the heart.

Dr. Jerry Kirk: Lord, we pray for all of those who are gathered together with us in prayer. We pray not only that You would search our own hearts but that You would give us wisdom and the insight of any need in our families, in our children and their spouses, in our grandchildren, in our associates.

Lord, we ask that You would bring about the answer to Your prayer, Your High Priestly prayer, that we might all be one. Whatever You need to reveal to us, we ask You to do that.

Al Henson: Lord, our hearts are deceitful and desperately wicked. We can’t know them. But You know our hearts, and You’re able to search our hearts. So we cry out for You to pour out Your Spirit on all of us today that we might be able to hear You and then to rejoice in the opportunity to make things right with You and others.

Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth: Lord, You pour out Your blessing in the place where brothers dwell together in unity and oneness of heart. I’m thinking about the many people I’ve talked with just in recent weeks who have shared about unresolved conflicts in their marriage, with their children, between brothers and sisters in the body of Christ who aren’t getting along with each other.

There are walls and there are barriers, and pride has put those up. But You are calling Your people to humble ourselves and to be willing to take the first step and to move toward those where there is a distance between us.

Lord, we believe that when we take You seriously on this issue, You will pour out the blessing that You’ve promised when we dwell together in humility and true love and forgiveness and forbearance and longsuffering; that when we’re willing to make right these wrongs of the past, we will see in the church and overflowing to the lost world around us the blessing, the outpouring of Your Spirit of grace.

We pray for that as You move in the hearts of Your people to deal with these issues, not to let them go. I think of churches where—and it’s true in all our churches—there are people who are working side by side, serving side by side, sitting side by side, and yet they have breeches in relationships.

We pray for a healing and a restoration and a brokenness of heart that would result in the healing of those broken relationships.

Al Whittinghill: Yes, Lord, this seems so common in every church—passive tolerance of one another, even among ministers and those on our knees here. Lord, we pray for the convicting power, that You will lift our thoughts beyond the thoughts of man and this earth. May we have the mind of Christ. Give us the ability to trust You on this matter and to choose Your cross and to allow the love of Christ to capture and make our hearts the prisoner.

Jeremy Story: Yes, Lord, I agree with my brother. I ask that You would give us eyes that see the wisdom of heaven, that would see from Your perspective, that would help us to see You and would make everything else seem dim and make everything else seem second best. Father, it would cause us to reconcile with one another for Your greater glory.

Lord, I ask that You would give us what You have asked us to do, which is to have the same attitude as that of Christ. Allow us to not put ourselves first but to put others first, to make ourselves humble, even to the point of death.

Lord, help us not to hold onto things but to release them and to reconcile to others, not to hold onto our hurts. Father God, would You do that in our hearts this morning, in the hearts of people across this nation? We know it is Your desire to bring Your Holy Spirit, to bring Your conviction, and to bring Your direction to honor the Father.

So, Holy Spirit, we ask that You would move across this nation and that You would move across this world in areas where there is division between brethren, between those who are followers of You. Lord, would You place in their hearts a deep conviction to reconcile? We know You desire it, Father. We know You’re fully capable of it.

So we ask in Your mighty name and in Your mighty power, to move in the direction that You desire, to bring reconciliation and renewal leading to revival. We know You can do it, so we ask You, Holy Spirit: Would You do this, Father? Would You convict across the nation, including those of us on the call, of anything we do to get in Your way?

Byron Paulus: Lord, if our love for one another is the chief indicator to the world that we are Your disciples, then the converse would be true, that Your world would be sitting back and saying, “Why doesn’t the church love one another, and how can they really be Your disciples and Your children?”

God, I pray that You would tear down the walls and the obstacles and the barriers and the hurts and the offenses and everything that is standing between brethren, and that people wouldn’t be able to stand in Your presence apart from knowing everything is right between them and their brother.

And then, God, we know that the overflow of that—You don’t need to tell Your people to love. Once their consciences are clear, they race to love one another. Then as a result, I believe that there would be this quickening in the heart of the lost, that those unconverted, unregenerate would say, “What is this?” And they would long for the same as they see genuine love flowing out of hearts that are pure one with another.

God, do that for Your glory, even beginning this very moment as we’re praying. Begin to answer our prayer. Begin to pour out Your Spirit. Begin to cause Your church to clear its conscience one with another so that the world may see and know that You are. You are our God, and we are Your children.

Jim Cymbala: Father, open the windows of heaven and come down and bless Your church across the land. We are so absolutely helpless without Your Holy Spirit. We have nothing. There is nothing in our hands that we can do because we have nothing unless You give it to us.

So we plead with You today. Open the windows of heaven and pour out a blessing. Make us open as never before and helpless and desperate for the movement and power of Your Holy Spirit. Help us not to depend on our talent, our ability, our intelligence, our cleverness; but help us to be wide open to You—not only wide open to others and honest with them, but wide open to You.

Come and spread Your blessing across this land in churches of every denomination, every place where they call upon Your name. Send out Your blessing upon Your people so that people might know that You are real and that You’re alive, that sinners might be saved, that there might be conviction of sin, that Your name might be glorified.

Lord, how can You be glorified in a lukewarm church that’s running on its own energy? Come, Lord, and replace our strength with Your power. We pray this in Jesus’ name.

Kevin Adams: Lord, unite us as we pray about key issues we need to respond to. Father, sometimes as churches we've argued and gotten offended over secondary issues. I pray that those of us who have our own little "soapboxes" that we want to stand on and get everyone to agree with us. Lord, help us to concentrate on the first issues, to concentrate on the coming of your kingdom, to see a transformed church, to reach out to a lost world.

Forgive us that so many secondary issues have broken relationships. I pray that You might give us a fresh vision of the importance of what You want to do with this generation. Forgive us for the small things that we have shouted about. We've been silent about the big things. Show us in our individual lives where we need to take action. I pray in the churches the small issues will dim in significance. Give us a new vision of the importance of what You want to do.

Byron Paulus: Lord, I pray for the husbands out there, those men who wonder why their prayers aren’t being answered. You tell us clearly in Scripture it’s because they aren’t living with their wives in an understanding way. They’re living against them, really.

In the walls of their homes, Lord, there are obstacles and barriers, and there are broken relationships. I pray that men and husbands all across this land would ask You for revival in their hearts, ask You for revival in their homes. And then they would expect You to move in their community and church and neighborhood.

So Lord, would You send a great spirit of conviction and hope and anticipation and obedience and all that is necessary in this moment for You to move across the hearts of men and husbands. Bring them into the joy and the release and the freedom and the victory of a revived life in their relationship with You. God, do it, I pray.

And may men lead the way. God, I know You’re stirring in the hearts of men through prayer in northwest Arkansas, and I hear You’re doing it down in Florida, and there are other pockets where men are crying out to You and seeking You, and You’re answering their prayer and You’re moving.

God, do it all across the land, in every city, every state, every village. God, move upon our land.

Kevin Adams: Lord, I want to pray for the youth of this nation. I want to pray, to begin with, for the youth in our churches—the Christian youth. Thank You that thirty-one years ago You touched me as a young man, seventeen years old, and You came in and gave me new passion. You turned my life around.

Father, I pray that You might do the same with the seventeen-year-olds and eighteen-year-olds and sixteen-year-olds—that it would not just be something they need to do and now they’re just becoming part of a church, but that You would birth in them a new desire.

Oh Father, that they would know the new birth fully, that they would have transformed minds, transformed desires; that they would be active in telling their friends. I pray for a revival amongst young people, the young people of our churches.

I pray for those who just come with their parents or grandparents Sunday mornings, and it’s hanging on. I pray that they might find the truth themselves and there might be a real movement as a result of this. Oh, I pray for the youth. Touch them, Lord. And thank You for those whom You are touching. Thank You, Lord.

Al Henson: Lord, I pray for fathers. I wonder how many of our youth in our churches are hardened toward You because their earthly fathers have wronged them and not lived rightly before them and not been loving to them and not set the right example.

So I pray first of all that You would move on the dads across the church of America, that You might fulfill this principle of humility and brokenness and clearing their conscience with their children. Help dads to be able to go to their children and say, “I have misrepresented Christ to you, and I have sinned against you,” so that in the home a right picture of Jesus could be reestablished, and fathers could have a clear conscience with their children, their young people.

We pray for the sons and the daughters, that out of this example they would then be able to turn back to their father and their mother and say, “We also have disrespected you and dishonored you,” and there might be a reconciling in the family unit. Then that these young people might grow up in an environment in the home and the culture of the church where they would really see Jesus.

How much of Christ is hidden to our young people even in our church, Lord? It’s our cry that young people would be able to see Jesus because the family and the brothers and sisters at church are really loving each other.

You have said, by this shall men know that we are Your disciples by the way we love one another. Lord, our young people and our children in our churches are growing up seeing moms and dads fussing and fighting, and brothers and sisters arguing and in conflict. And Lord, the gospel is hidden to our own children; the way of the Lord is hidden to our own kids!

So we pray for adults in the church that they would learn to love each other and love their children, and then the children might say, “Oh, I see Jesus. I see the love of God. I see the power of the life of Christ to be able to serve one another and love one another and, when we make mistakes, forgive one another.”

Lord God, we cry out for Thy Spirit to be poured out upon this matter. Then the world and the youth of the culture of the world will see the Lord, because they see a church that has the power to truly care for and love one another.

We pray in the name of Jesus: Stop brothers and sisters and adults and fathers and mothers. Stop us until we know that we can find in Jesus the power to live the sanctified, transformed, godly life. No longer to be impotent, but to be full of the power of the life of Jesus, we pray.

Lord, we cry out together with these brothers and sisters across the land. Outpour in Your Spirit on the matter of these sins, Lord, these sins among us that we need to clear our conscience of. Pour out Your Spirit in our gathering these days, that the church might truly be revived, that the church might know life again, that the world then might see Jesus, that the gospel would no longer be hid, we pray.

Jim Cymbala: Father, we ask You to help us with the thousands and thousands of young people in the inner cities who don’t even have parents. They have no father; they’ve never known a father, and their mother is not serving You. Unless You do something, Lord, and raise up models and spiritual mothers and fathers in the body of Christ, these children are never going to have anyone who cares for them.

I lift up all the young people in inner cities across the land who go to homes and face nothing but opposition as they try to serve the Lord—nothing but opposition, emptiness and opposition.

I pray that You would do something that we don’t even know how to ask, but with groans too deep to be uttered. Come, Lord, and do something for these young people, thirteen, twelve, eleven, fifteen, seventeen . . . they don’t have a hope in this world unless You do something through us and among us.

So we lift them up to You, and we pray that where there is no way to the natural mind, You will make a supernatural way that they might be nurtured and loved and encouraged and discipled. We pray this in Jesus’ name.

Al Whittinghill: Lord, as a final thing, I want to pray that You will raise up an authority structure over young people that they can respect; that You will tear down the false heroes, false models, and the peer pressures that are putting pressure, deceiving the youth. We pray for the authorities, that You will surround these young people with laborers of Your harvest and that You will open their eyes and disillusion them with falsehoods that they are trusting this day.

We realize that this generation—Lord, it’s like Judges—they don’t know You and they don’t know Your mighty works. But may they see Your mighty works; and specifically give them a right view of godly authority, that they might trust You and love You and be the vanguard we need in this nation.

Dr. Jerry Kirk: Father, we long to see the outpouring of Your Holy Spirit in our own lives and in our own ministries and in our own homes and in our own cities, to awaken and revive and transform Your people so that You can use us in whatever way You please. We pray that You would do it, Lord. We bring our lives to You.

Change us in any way You want. We want You to rule in our hearts and in our ministries and in our fellowship one with the other. And in these weekly prayer gatherings, we long that You would release the fullness of Your Spirit among Your people in radically new ways.

Teach us to love one another in a way that honors You and pleases You. To You, Lord Jesus Christ, be all the glory. In Jesus’ name, amen.

Leslie Basham: That’s Jerry Kirk praying for revival with Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth and other friends. 

They’ve specifically been asking the Lord to speak to His people about the importance of having a clear conscience. 

Nancy writes about what it means to have a clear conscience—to be right before the Lord and with everybody else. She writes about it in a workbook called Seeking Him: Experiencing the Joy of Personal Revival.  

This would be a perfect twelve-week study for your personal quiet time, or invite a group of friends to go through Seeking Him with you. 

I’ve been telling you the workbook all week, and giving you the opportunity to get a copy when you support Revive Our Hearts with a gift of any size.  

Today’s the final day we’ll be making that offer, so let us hear from you. Ask for Seeking Him when you call 1–800–569–5959, or donate online at ReviveOurHearts.com.

Have you ever considered the wonder that God would adopt you into His family? Tomorrow we'll hear from Dr. Russell Moore. He'll help you appreciate how amazing it is that we can be adopted into God's famiy. Please be back for Revive Our Hearts.

Revive Our Hearts with Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth is an outreach of Life Action Ministries.

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