Who are you, O great mountain?
Updated: Mar 18, 2021
Zechariah 4:6 is the verse that the CEF Southern Illinois Chapter stands on so to speak. It is our foundational passage. This was the Word of the LORD given to me as I prayed and pondered the question...do I have enough for the task? I struggled over my own lack of ability, time, and financial support for a job too big for me and a few other willing volunteers.
When God established the rebuilding project of CEF in Southern Illinois HE just did it and almost over night. HE established a local committee and stirred the hearts of people in local churches to adopt schools.
Pre-pandemic there were 14 Good News Clubs (GNC) meeting at local elementary schools in six of the nineteen counties of the Southern IL Chapter. Over 200 volunteers have been trained and a little over 650 kids were attending a GNC. God also raised up youth workers to be trained during the summer to conduct summer 5-Day Clubs and approximately 16,00 kids have attended a club during the summer.
Was any of this accomplished without a lot of PRAYER, hard work, tears, sweat, and much time in major spiritual warfare... ABSOULUTLY NOT! But, just as God promised Zerubbabel in Zechariah chapter 4...the rebuilding would not be by might nor even power, but by the Spirit of the LORD of hosts.
"Zerubbabel was not told HOW God was to carry out His plans and purposes… for like us, he only saw through a glass darkly – nevertheless his responsibility, like ours, is to live by faith in God – to trust the Word of the Lord – to believe all that God has told us."
It is only by the out pouring of the Holy Spirit that any good work may be accomplished. We must rely fully upon the Holy Spirit of God who resides in us to overflow through us. As His children being established and taught by His Word thence we speak.
(2 Corinthians 4:13) It is written: “I believed; therefore I have spoken. "Since we have that same spirit of faith, we also believe and therefore speak.
A couple verses that I pray and declare often over the mission to the children in Southern Illinois are;
(2 Corinthians 10:4) We use God’s mighty weapons, not worldly weapons, to knock down the strongholds of human reasoning and to destroy false arguments.
(Isaiah 55:11) So shall my word be that goeth forth out of my mouth: it shall not return unto me void, but it shall accomplish that which I please, and it shall prosper in the thing whereto I sent it.
We buck the tide of culture when we teach children that there are absolutes and that the Word of God is ALL Truth.
(John 17:17) Sanctify them in the truth; your word is truth.
"Jesus prayed that they would be a consecrated, hallowed people for Himself. "Sanctify them in the truth; Your word is truth." The sanctification of a sinner saved by grace is both a specific act of the Holy Spirit that takes place at a moment in time, but it is also an ongoing process that is undertaken by the Holy Spirit in the heart of a believer.
"While we are positionally sanctified the moment we are justified in the sight of God and covered in Christ's righteousness, we are being progressively sanctified for the rest of our Christian life on earth, as we continue to grow in grace, mature in the faith, and become gradually conformed into the image and likeness of the lovely Lord Jesus."
"The ongoing process of sanctification continues throughout the life of a Christian – as one is increasingly conformed into the image and likeness of the Lord Jesus Christ."
"Positional sanctification takes place at the moment of Salvation, while practical, progressive sanctification is a life-long process for the believer."
This is a very important truth
to keep ever before us as we work with children. Â
For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God—9 not by works, so that no one can boast. Ephesians 2:8-9
And I am sure of this, that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ. Philippians 1:6.
