The word “repent” means to turn around, to change one’s mind and direction, but many believers think that repentance is only for the heathen.  Some teach that repentance is not necessary for the believer and even demonstrates a lack of confidence in the finished work of the cross.  Such teaching demonstrates a profound lack of understanding and robs it’s followers of one of the most powerful secrets to a victorious Christian life.

The misunderstanding begins when we think of repentance as turning AWAY from sin; 180 degrees in the opposite direction.  But a man could turn away from his sin and still be lost.  For example, if a man is hiking through the wilderness, he looks at his compass and realizes he is off course, he will need to turn.  But spinning wildly and randomly moving in another direction will not help him.  Turning away from his lostness is not enough.  He must make sure that he changes his direction in such a way that he is now heading towards his desired destination.  Turning away from sin is important, but what you turn TO is more important than what you turn away FROM.  We do not need to turn away from sin as badly as we need to turn TO Christ.  Incidentally, when a man turns to Christ, he automatically turns away from sin.

Let’s say that our hiker discovers that he is only 2 degrees off course.  Though he is only slightly misdirected, he still needs to turn, to change direction, to “repent” if he wants to arrive at the desired destination.  The hiker needs to constantly reference his compass and adjust his orientation accordingly.  To think of repentance as being only for the rank sinner, the unbeliever and prodigal is a mistake.  Repentance is NOT ONLY for those who are committing gross sins or living in blatant immorality. Repentance is the practice of the righteous. We must constantly turn our hearts to God; from darkness to light, from the flesh to the spirit, from the temporal to the eternal, from death unto life.

As the people of God our hearts must be focused on Christ.  He is our goal and we must be always moving towards Him.  If we are moving in any other direction, pursuing any other thing, or having our desire and affection set on anyone else, we are off course and we need to “repent”.

With this understanding, “repentance” takes on a whole new definition.  If I have lusted or lied, I must repent…yes.  But, I am not simply “repenting”, or turning, FROM those sins, I am turning TO Christ.  Bringing Him back into focus and setting my heart upon Him afresh.  If my focus is on the sin, I will miss the real point and may even still be off course.  Instead I recognize sin as a symptom of a deeper problem; that I am moving in a direction contrary to Christ.  If there is hatred, malice, envy, or strife in my heart, it reveals to me that my heart is not towards Christ.  Therefore, I must refocus it.  I must recalibrate it to bring myself back into alignment with Christ.

I find myself repenting all day every day.  I am not repenting because there is so much sin in my life, but because I need to constantly refocus my heart, my attention and my affection on Christ.  This is the only way to live and walk in the Spirit.

Aha!  I knew that title would get your attention.  Well it seems as though my Facebook page has been hacked!  I had not checked it for a couple of weeks, while I was in Africa and had no idea that it had happened until I got emails from friends saying that there was a link, disguised as something innocent, that would send the unwary clicker to a website full of “adult content”.

After getting several emails like this I began to see a pattern emerging that really bothered me.  Everyone was calling this filthy smut, “adult content”.  Now I’m not trying to make a mountain out of a mole-hill here, but there is a real concern.  Could it be that many of us have unwittingly drank the kool-aid that has been peddled to our generation by the spirit of this age?  Maybe not intentionally, but subconsciously, have we adopted into our vocabulary, in subtle ways, the philosophies and mentalities of the world?

Since when is pornography, “Adult Content”?   The very name suggests that while it may not be suitable material for a child, it is perfectly acceptable for an adult.  God calls it immorality, fornication, adultery, lasciviousness, licentiousness, depravity, lust, debauchery, lewdness, degradation and perversion.  But these days, all of that “intolerant” language has been replaced by something much more politically correct and non-offensive.  It is now known as “Adult Content”.  We call homosexuals, “gays” and homosexuality, “An alternative lifestyle”.  We call abortion, “Planned Parenthood”.  We call broken marriages and homes, “blended families”.  We call violence and murder, “entertainment”.  We justify dishonesty, corruption and deception by calling it “politics”.  But my friends, don’t be deceived.  None of these neutered names make any of these things one once less dangerous, less immoral or less offensive to God’s holiness.  God still calls it what it really is.  Whether you’re an adult or a child, God still calls it “SIN” – and the warning label is for all ages.

Psalms 51:10 “Create in me a clean heart, O God; and renew a right spirit within me.”

David was one man personally and intimately aware of the deep darkness that lurks within the human heart.  He had, himself, sunk to depths of depravity he would have never thought possible as a harp playing, shepherd boy.  But situations, opportunities and regal power had brought to the surface the gruesome reality of the human heart condition.

When Jeremiah said, “The heart is more deceitful than all else and is desperately sick; who can understand it?” (Jer. 17:9) he spoke like an insurance adjuster who writes off a damaged vehicle as a total loss.  There seemed to be no hope for salvaging some good thing in it.  Paul declared, “I know that nothing good lives in me”.  And in Psalms reads, “All have turned aside, they have together become corrupt; there is no one who does good, not even one”.

I used to think that when David prayed, “Create in me a clean heart, O God…” he was asking God to clean his heart.  Suddenly I realized that I had been reading it all wrong!  David is not asking God to clean his heart, but rather to create a new clean heart…one that will replace the hopeless, desperate, unmitigated disaster he was born with. David wastes no time asking God to heal his old diseased heart.  Instead he asks for a new one…a clean one.  Such a thing, only God could create.

Spurgeon said, “Human nature is too far gone ever to be mended. It is not a house that is a little out of repair, with here and there a slate blown from the roof, and here and there a piece of plaster broken down from the ceiling. No, it is rotten throughout, the very foundations have been sapped; there is not a single timber in it which has not been eaten by the worm, from its uppermost roof to its lowest foundation; there is no soundness in it; it is all rottenness and ready to fall. God doth not attempt to mend, he does not shore up the walls, and re-paint the door; he does not garnish and beautify, but he determines that the old house shall be entirely swept away, and that he will build a new one.”

David’s words, “Create in me…” conjure eerie images of the pre-adamic earth.  A bottomless soup of boiling bedlam reigning unchallenged for untold eons.  The thick darkness and horrifying chaos seemed impenetrable. “The earth was without form and an empty waste, and darkness was upon the face of the very great deep…” Then God spoke and His word created order out of disorder, light out of darkness, beauty out of chaos and life out of extinction.

David, like the primordial earth, needed more than a good washing.  He cried out to God to give him a heart transplant; to vanquish the old peutrifying horror and create in its place a new heart, as fresh as Eden’s first morning.  Unfortunately for David, this was impossible in his day.  In fact it is as though you can hear his perpetual frustration in his writings as he struggled throughout his life with that old troublesome heart.

But what a privilege is ours!  Today, through Christ, a new heart is available to whosoever will.  “Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new.” (2 Cor. 5:17)  It is a wonderful mystery; the greatest “creative miracle” possible.

As a college student I had a job working for Wal-Mart.  For those of you who live outside the USA, it is a chain of massive discount department retailers.  It is the largest private employer in America and the largest corporation in the world…and for good reason.  Whatever may be said of their imperialist business model, Wal-Mart knows how to treat its customers.  While I was working there, someone walked up to the customer service counter with an old garden hose, weathered and worn, apparently years old.  They claimed to have purchased it at Wal-Mart but had no receipt and now wanted a new one.  At any other store this would be utterly unthinkable, but at Wal-Mart the customer got a replacement, because his satisfaction was more valuable than the price of a hose.  He walked in with an arm-full of worthless rubber and walked out with a brand new garden hose.

Wal-Mart may be generous, but there is someone more generous still.  When we come before God with our worthless, hopeless, helpless hearts, He is willing to accept them.  He doesn’t patch up that old rubber hose of our hearts.  Instead he offers us a brand new one; fresh and clean.  Now that’s a great exchange.

“A new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you, and I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you an heart of flesh.”—Ezekiel 36:26.

We have received many testimonies of the powerful things God did at the Fire Conferences in Taiwan and Hong Kong. Here is one I just received today;

“Wendy” writes: “I was there in the Taiwan Fire Conference! I am still jumping with the “Fire”! In fact, my ears still resound with the word “Fire” that you shouted to me as I received the prayer from the “anointing tunnel”…thank you, thank you, thank you…for coming to Taiwan! God has used Evangelist Bonnke and you incredibly!

My best friend Noel and I have received from the Lord the calling to go to Japan during the Conference! And we are already making plans of penetrating the business world there with a radical corporate training programs using dramas with embedded message of Jesus’ salvation…

The Fire will keep going in Taiwan! Taiwan shall send out missionaries to all of Asia and to the ends of the earth!”

We pray for Wendy, Noel and thousands of others that have been touched by the fire of the Holy Spirit and we pray that it would engulf all of Asia for the Glory of God.

My wife and youngest son with Oral Roberts in his Newport Beach home in March 2009

Heaven became more wealthy yesterday as it welcomed to its illustrious ranks, the famous Pentecostal evangelist, Oral Roberts who died at 91 years of age. He was a pioneer in the healing movement and an inspiration to countless other young evangelists. I visited with him several months ago in his Newport Beach home and was challenged in many areas. He said to me, “Do you pray for the sick in all your meetings?” “Of course,” I said. He rephrased the question and asked it again, this time a bit more deliberately. “Do you pray for the sick EVERY TIME you preach?” When he put it that way I had to say “no.” He said, “You must.” The ministry of Jesus was three-fold he told me: “preaching – teaching – healing.” That is a description of the ministry of Jesus and that is also a description of the ministry of Oral Roberts;: Preaching, teaching and healing in the name of Jesus. May the next generation pick up the baton from these heroes in the faith and finish the race.

This is the menu that the guys made for our Christmas dinner in the tech container. (you’ll have to forgive the tech guys…some of them still need to get saved:-)

Christmas dinner…delicious!

We provided Christmas dinner for our volunteer nigerian workers as well. Here it is: before and after

Our African crusade director; John Darku winning some silly “award”

“Bushmeat” AKA lunch

A hearse on two wheels

Nigerian soldiers who have just gotten saved filling out “decision cards” that we use to help usher them into local churches

“I am the resurrection, and the life: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live: ” ~ Jesus Christ (Jn 11:25)

People have been asking for more details about the 3-year-old boy that was raised from the dead last week in Sapele, Nigeria. It is a truly extraordinary story and worth some elaboration.

Last Saturday night (December 12) a woman came to the meeting with a 3-year-old son that was very ill. During the service she said that he actually passed away. I was still on the platform ministering when she brought him behind the platform. She was holding his lifeless body and weeping when the ushers found her. They confirmed that he was indeed dead and told her that all the crying in the world wouldn’t bring him back to life. They said, “Take him to the medical tent.” “No,” she told them, “I want to bring him to the man of God.” Security allowed her to wait there until the service was over.

As I was walking down off the platform, surrounded by ushers, there were people all around wanting prayer as usual. But this woman, holding a child caught my eye. I stepped to the side and said, “What’s wrong with him?” They told me in broken pigeon English, “The child is not well.” They dropped his limp body in my arms, and I prayed for about thirty seconds before handing him back to the mother.

Before service started on the following night (Sunday), John Darku, our African crusade director told me that there was a woman there with an incredible testimony. Rev. Peter Vandenburg and I went down to speak with her. I was amazed to find that it was the woman from the night before. She had brought her son, and he was perfectly well. They told us that the child had come back to life almost immediately after prayer.

My message that night was from Romans 8:2, but before I preached it I brought this woman and her son onto the platform along with a witness to give the testimony. The crowd of more than 200,000 people exploded with rejoicing when they heard about the miracle. It was Romans 8:2 in action – “The law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus, hath made me free from the law of sin and of death.”