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God Can When We Cannot
Richard Owen Roberts

Richard Owen Roberts (1931 - ). American pastor, author, and revival scholar born in Schenectady, New York. Converted in his youth, he studied at Gordon College, Whitworth College (B.A., 1955), and Fuller Theological Seminary. Ordained in the Congregational Church, he pastored in Idaho, Oregon, Washington, and California, notably Evangelical Community Church in Fresno (1965-1975). In 1975, he moved to Wheaton, Illinois, to direct the Billy Graham Center Library, contributing his 9,000-volume revival collection as its core. Founding International Awakening Ministries in 1985, he served as president, preaching globally on spiritual awakening. Roberts authored books like Revival (1982) and Repentance: The First Word of the Gospel, emphasizing corporate repentance and God-centered preaching. Married to Margaret Jameson since 1962, they raised a family while he ministered as an itinerant evangelist. His sermons, like “Preaching That Hinders Revival,” critique shallow faith, urging holiness. Roberts’ words, “Revival is God’s finger pointed at me,” reflect his call for personal renewal. His extensive bibliography, including Whitefield in Print, and mentorship of figures like John Snyder shaped evangelical thought on revival history.
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In this sermon, the speaker uses the analogy of a vine being transported and planted to illustrate God's faithfulness and provision for His people. The vine represents the nation of Israel, which was taken out of Egypt and carried for 40 years before being planted in the land of Canaan. Despite the stubbornness and hard-heartedness of the people, God kept the vine alive and enabled it to thrive in its new location. The speaker also emphasizes the importance of recognizing and repenting of sin, as God deals with sin in a timely manner.
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And all of you, of the purpose that we came to quite a long time ago and then somehow seemed to lose sight of, but now we're coming back to this urgent purpose, and that is to join our Lord Jesus Christ in his yearning, in his desire to become a house of prayer for all the nations. You remember when Christ cleansed the temple, drove out the money changers, tipped over their tables, and made it clear that they had made the house of God a house of merchandise. He said, my Father's house is a house of prayer for all the nations. So we determined to meet again on Sunday evenings as we once did for prayer. And we're encouraging everyone who possibly can to be here. We understand that when you've got children, it's hard for both husband and wife to come, but if one at least would come, perhaps the husband one week and the wife the next. But let's all of us join together in the spirit of prayer. And you may be thinking to yourself, well, I've never prayed out loud in a prayer meeting. That's all right. Don't you worry a bit about that. You come and link your heart with others. So that's at six tonight, and I truly hope you will all participate. I also want to remind you of a most excellent Sunday school class that is going on at nine o'clock. Chris Ansberry did a wonderful job this morning teaching out at Ezra and Nehemiah, and I trust that all who possibly can will join in that as well. Now personally, I've come back from Texas after preaching there 28 times over the last two weeks, and that had just about all that I could possibly handle. But the blessing of God was upon it, and we saw this week a deep stirring in the second church where I was preaching, and many coming to confess their sin and to get right with God. So although I'm worn out, I'm quite refreshed and delighted that the Lord still permits me to serve here and there. A few of you perhaps were alert to the fact that one of the churches that I was in was burned down by arsonists in January, and the people were so delighted. Ten churches in East Texas were destroyed by two young men who were professing Christians and members of a Baptist church, and nobody quite knows what happened. It appears that one of them admitted to someone that his mother died and his father tried to commit suicide, and he was angry, and so he got his friend to join him in setting fire in ten churches. But they've been arrested, and I've been praying for these poor guys. They probably, just in a season of rage, set these fires. They were very ignorant about what they did. They left fingerprints in many places. They left boot prints. They stole from the church where I was preaching two very expensive guitars, and they had those, so when the police caught them, they had the evidence of the guitars. And now the judge is saying that they're going to go for the maximum penalty, 99 years for each offense, and instead of them lumping them together, one after another consecutively. So, in other words, 990 years sentence to prison. And I'm concerned for those foolish young fellows. Perhaps some of you will join in prayer that God will break their hearts and bring them into a right relationship with Christ. Someone perhaps is saying, the church burned down, so how did you preach there? Well, they had a large new gymnasium that they had built, and they were able to set the gymnasium up, and we had the services there. Anyway, thanks to all of you who pray. Now, I'm going to be the poorest pastor any church ever had, because before we knew David was going to resign, I had already committed myself to preach in a great many places this year. So, Lord willing, I'll be here next Sunday, then I'm scheduled to be in Michigan the following week with the Church of God. They're holding a solemn assembly, and they've asked me to come and help them with that, and then preaching in the churches of that particular denomination. So, again, my thanks for the privilege of being with you. Now, we're reading this morning, as Dennis pointed out at the beginning of the service, from Psalm number 80. And I ask you to join me now in turning to this passage. And while you're finding your way to Psalm 80, let me point out that this is a psalm specifically dealing with Israel at the time that they have gone astray. But this psalm is the psalm of the vine, and as perhaps some of you realize, this psalm has been an American favorite because America, through the earlier generations, was described as the American psalm. And this psalm was taken seriously as applying not only to Israel of old, but to these United States of America. Because in the early days, while our nation was being gathered, a great many of the leaders of the nation were saying, we are the new Israel. And so that label of the new Israel identified us in the world for a very long time. At the time of the Continental Congress, which at that time, many of you will remember, was not in Washington, D.C., but in Philadelphia. A sermon was preached in Christchurch in Philadelphia entitled The American Vine. The Continental Congress dismissed and went to Christchurch to listen to the sermon. Maggie and I reprinted that sermon in a pamphlet form and have circulated vast numbers of copies of it throughout the country. So keep those thoughts in mind as we read, but also remember that there's a very significant personal application that can be made of this psalm and wonderfully also an application to our church at this time. So join me please as we read. O give ear, shepherd of Israel, thou who dost lead Joseph like a flock, thou who art enthroned above the cherubim, shine forth before Ephraim and Benjamin and Manasseh, stir up thy power and come to save us. O God, restore us and cause thy face to shine upon us and we will be saved. O Lord, God of hosts, how long wilt thou be angry with the prayer of thy people? Thou hast fed them with the bread of tears. Thou hast made them to drink tears in large measure. Thou dost make us an object of contention to our neighbors and our enemies laugh among themselves. O God of hosts, restore us and cause thy face to shine upon us and we will be saved. Thou didst remove a vine from Egypt. Thou didst drive out the nations and its planted. Thou didst clear the ground before it and it took deep root and filled the land. The mountains were covered with its shadows and the cedars of God with its boughs. It was sending out its branches to the sea and its shoots to the river. Why hast thou broken down its hedges so that all who pass that way pick its fruits? A boar from the forest eats it away and whatever moves in the field feeds on it. O God of hosts, turn again now. We beseech thee, look down from heaven and see and take care of this vine, even the shoot which thy right hand has planted and on the sun whom thou hast strengthened for thyself. It is burned with fire. It is cut down. They perish at the rebuke of thy countenance. Let thy hand be upon the man of thy right hand, upon the son of man whom thou didst make strong for thyself. Then we shall not turn back from thee. Revive us and we will call upon thy name. O Lord, God of hosts, restore us. Cause thy face to shine upon us and we will be saved. No doubt you have often been surprised, just as I have. In the morning you drive by a certain area and you see that a large new multi-story building looks to be just about complete. But there's no landscaping, there's no shrubs or bushes, certainly no trees. You come back by that place in the evening and here are giant trees all around it and all kinds of shrubs and bushes and flowers. And once in a while we even see how they do that. You've seen that huge, huge machine with that scoop on the back with prongs that come down in every direction. And you know that they dig out a big hole and then that machine digs out a tree and it carries it on its back and it plops it in that hole and they can do an entire block in a single day with wonderful trees which all survive. Now the picture in this psalm is a bit like that and yet it's quite different because in this psalm it talks about a vine that has been transported, not just a little distance, not a matter that took a matter of a few hours, but the vine was dug up out of Egypt, caved for 40 years as a result of the stubbornness and the hard-heartedness of the people and kept alive in all that period and then eventually planted in the land of Canaan. And after it was planted, God enabled it to send down its roots into the depth where there were waters to be found and it sent out its branches in every direction. The vine flourished and enjoyed the heads of God's protection about it. But when this psalm was written, all that had changed. The heads was dropped, wild pigs roamed through the area, strangers passed through and plucked and ate the fruit, and the whole was perished. And this is a lament, a cry. Questions are asked. Why? How did all of this happen? And for what purpose? Notice these words, verse 4, O Lord God of hosts, how long wilt thou be angry with the prayer of thy people? And I'd like to ask you, has it ever occurred to you that prayer, instead of being answered, can provoke God to anger? And when you face that, naturally you want to ask, what kind of prayer would provoke God to anger? And it's not just anger, but notice verse 5, Thou hast fed them with the bread of tears. Thou hast made them to drink tears in large measure. So anger, that results in things happening to the people of God that provoke them to tears in great measure. So again, what kind of prayer would provoke God to that kind of anger? Have you weighed that? Are you prepared right now to leap to your feet and say, I know! Perhaps not, but it is something to carefully weigh. But notice also in verse 1, O, give ear, shepherd of Israel. Now, when do you ask someone to listen? Well, most of us have had the sufficient dealing with children to know that when a mother says, sit down and be quiet and listen, she does that when she has strong reason to believe that they haven't been paying any attention to her. And is it not reasonable to suppose that when God is asked by the soldier to give ear, he has reason to believe that God has not been paying attention to the prayer that has been prayed. And it seems to me there is a connection between not paying attention, or in short, not answering the prayers favorably, and the answering the prayers, and just introducing significant causes of tears. Sometimes the time I have passed during daytime meetings, especially all the places I go, they have noonday meetings every day. These last two weeks I have had noonday meetings as well as evening meetings, and then also in-between, four classes possibly in the last two weeks. But in these noonday meetings, where everything is informal, and where the speaker can ask questions that is appropriate for people to answer, I've asked this question to find the fact, think of the extended family. And I assume we all know what is meant by the term extended family, not just the mother, father, and children, but aunts and uncles and grandparents and cousins and so on. Think of the extended family and ask this question, is there a single family here? Speaking of the extended family, that has no cause for tears, and whenever I've asked that question, not a single family has ever said, oh, we have no cause for tears. Every family has acknowledged many, many tears over these last two weeks. Many parents shed tears over children on drugs, over husbands who are alcoholics. The list of possible causes for tears is immense. And while I'm not giving you opportunity to respond, because naturally in morning services we just don't do that, nonetheless it's worth consideration, in your extended family, are there tears? Well, we have a nephew who smoked himself to death, praise God, not long before his death, brought on by extreme smoking, he found the law. And we have a niece, a sweet girl, I was with her when I was preaching last fall in South Carolina, but divorced twice, made an awful mess of her early life, but now living for Christ. And there's tears, tears, everywhere you look, tears, tears, tears. So, the question again, what would provoke God to bring tears in life? When God is grieved with His people, because they have been disobedient to Him, and He brings upon them some manner of a righteous judgment, and they ask God to deliver them from the judgment, but not from the cause of the judgment. It's an offense to God. Now, there are passages in Scripture that parallel this aided song, and I'd like you to turn momentarily to Isaiah chapter 5. And read a parallel passage, Isaiah chapter 5, verses 1 to 7. This is the parable of the vineyard. Let me sing now, for my well-beloved, a song of my beloved in his vineyard. My well-beloved had a vineyard on a purple hill, and he dug it all around, removed its stones, and planted it with the choicest vine. And he built a tower in the middle of it, and he hewed out a wine vat in it. Then he expected it to produce good grapes, but it produced only worthless wine. And now, O inhabitants of Jerusalem and men of Judah, judge between me and my vineyard. What more was there to do for my vineyard that I have not done in it? What, when I expected it to produce good grapes, did it produce worthless wine? So now, let me tell you what I'm going to do to my vineyard. I will remove its edge, and it will be consumed. I will break down its wall, and it will become trampled ground. And I will lay it waste. It will not be pruned or hoed, but briars and thorns will come up. I will also charge the clouds to rain no rain on it. For the vineyard of the Lord of hosts is the house of Israel, and the men of Judah his delightful clan. Thus he looked for justice, but behold, bloodshed, for righteousness, but behold, a cry of destruction. Clearly, Psalm 80 is describing Israel after God had made a decision concerning her. Because she did not produce good grapes, but worthless wine, he brought her under judgment. He broke down the head. He allowed the wild pigs to destroy the vine. But fortunately, the psalmist is aware of what has happened, and he knows what to do. Now, as I have said to you, our own country has been described as the American vine. Our head is broken down. As a nation, we are producing worthless fruit. The wild pigs, and a lot of them are in government, in positions of leadership, are destroying the vine. But the tragedy is, as a nation, we don't know what to do. And we haven't done it. We continue to destroy ourselves without, it appears, any real understanding of what's happened to us. But isn't it wonderful that even though a nation can make the wrong choices time after time after time, and although a nation of churches can do the same, not every church has to follow that path. Where I was speaking these last two weeks, I had been there the year before, and had spoken to a considerable number of pastors. And some of them heard what was said. The second church I was in, when the pastor introduced me, he said, Mr. Roberts spoke in our area last year. I listened to what he said, and my whole life was transformed. And as a consequence, this church has completely turned around. And the evidence was that it actually has. Now here we are, as a church based, with considerable difficulty. Obviously, huge changes that most of us had not anticipated coming. And in some measure, we can even liken ourselves to this vine of Israel, or this American tribe. And this chapter will give us some wonderful direction and help as to what to do. So let's go back to verse one, and to weigh the several statements that introduce the psalm. I already pointed out the opening line, O give ear, shepherd of Israel. And I indicated to you that one seriously asks God to listen when they have reason to believe he is not doing so. Now I have been in situations where I have heard the leadership of the church say, God always hears and answers prayer. Now that sounds awfully nice, but it isn't true. It's not true at all. And when you think about it, now you folks don't see this as much as I do, but being in so many churches in the course of the year, and having pastors even describe their church prayer meeting, not long ago a pastor described a church prayer meeting as an organ recital. And suddenly it dawned on me. He was saying, in our church the only things we ever pray about are people's organs. The whole focus of the church is upon the physical body. Pray for so and so's heart. Pray for so and so who broke their finger. Pray for somebody who got a deep scratch on their arm. I mean, in a typical church, if it's given an opportunity to submit prayer requests, if 40 requests are received, 39 of them will be about organs of the body. Now listen friends, this is my feeling. When God isn't answering prayer, and yet you still feel you need to go through the motions of prayer, pray for things that require no divine intervention. What we call safe prayers, or cheap prayers. I have to go to work, and I have to fly. Will you please pray that I'll have a safe trip? Well the possibility is pretty strong that without prayer I'll have a safe trip. We pray for things that do not require us to go out on a limb in faith, and we pray for things that are pretty well guaranteed to occur. After all, when God created the human body, he gave it incredible healing abilities. I'm simply saying that at a time when the people are not seeing magnificent answers to prayer, the tendency is to pray for little things that are more or less assured to be all right. But weigh carefully the possibility that your own personal prayers are not really being heard and answered by God. Weigh the possibility. If we ask God to heal the deep wounds of our nation, he may not heal us. Because the wounds are a part of the judgment that God has brought upon us. And it is clearly wrong to ask God to remove the wounds without our dealing with the cause of the judgment that's upon us. So line one, prayer, that apparently are not being answered. Look at the next line. Thou who dost believe, Joseph, life, of what some of you will remember, that at the time that Aaron inspired the people with his golden hat, the Lord was very angry and he said to Moses, Moses, get out of the way. I'm going to go down there and utterly destroy those people. Out of you, Moses, you alone, Moses, I will raise the upper people to myself. But Moses didn't get out of the way. He got right in God's face. And he argued with God. He gave God two reasons why he should not totally destroy Israel. Reason number one, he asked, what will the Egyptians think? That God brought them out of Egypt with his mighty arm only to destroy them in the wilderness? And number two, how can you keep your promises if you destroy these people? You gave promises to Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and you can't keep them if you destroy them. Now God said to Isaac, has it occurred to you that God likes us to get right in Israel and to argue Israel in the way Moses did? So you see, God said, I'll destroy them. Moses got in his face and then God said to Moses, well, I'll send an angel before you. But I won't go with you myself because you are stiff-necked. If I were with you, I would destroy you on the way. But Moses wouldn't take that. Moses said, if you don't go with us, we're not going anywhere. And then God said, all right, I'll do it. But Moses wasn't satisfied. So then, having won twice, his courage is running high. Now, show me thy glory. And the Lord says, all right, Moses, come on back up to the mountain. Stand there in that cleft of the rock. I'll cover you with my hand. I'll cause all my goodness to pass before you. And when Moses came down to the mountain, he had to put a veil over his face because the glory of God was so brilliant on this mountain. So you see, this psalm, the second line, is raising this issue, Thou who dost lead Joseph like a flock. They had reached that point where not only were their prayers falling on deaf ears, but they were in a state of confusion. They were milling about. They were not going anywhere. They were not accomplishing anything. They were outside the will of God and his purpose for their life. Look at the third line. Thou who art in throne above the cherubim, child of God. Now, that's a truly remarkable mountain. Most of you are aware that the Ark of the Covenant had two cherubim above it. That Ark was placed in the inner sanctum, in the Holy of Holies. And the presence of God was so brilliant that before the high priest could enter that Holy of Holies on his annual trip there to make sacrifice for his sins and those of the people, they had to insert first a smudge pot. To obscure the glory of God. And then too, before he entered, they tied a rope around his ankle so that if when he was in the Holy of Holies he sinned against God and was struck dead, they could lay hold of the rope and drag him out without being in there themselves to be struck dead. Now, in the third line, the request is, Thou who dwellest between the cherubim, child of God. My word they hear. Now, you see, God's ear has become deaf to this fact. He's not leading them in the way that they hoped and knew and explored. He's not killing the Holy of Holies. And we can apply this, as I said, to our own eardrums. Our nation is not on praying ground. We're not seeing God do remarkable things on our behalf. We are not experiencing his leadership as we did for many generations. And certainly, the glory of the Lord is not killing either the nation or its church. And it's so clear that the glory is not in the church because where there's glory, there's holiness. I mean, what I just said about the rope around his ankle. In God's presence, if there's no holiness, there's death and destruction. There are three remarkable lines that we need to lay hold of and begin to seriously think about our own church. Is not the hope for our church that God will again answer large-scale prayer? In the second church where I was in Texas, several people were telling me that a few months back they got under the burden of praying for lost people by name. So they would gather every week and pray by name for lost people, lost husbands, lost wives, lost children, lost parents, lost neighbors. And they got very fervent in prayer that way. And the whole church was excited because several of those lost people on the list had been gloriously saved. We, as a fellowship of believers, must do whatever is necessary to see that our prayers are again answered, that the Lord's presence is with us, that he is leading us truly like a flock, that his glory is in our midst. Look at the fourth line, before Ephraim and Benjamin and Manasseh stir up thy power and come to save us. It's an incredibly urgent and consequential line. That is, how many of you think God is really stirring himself up on behalf of this nation and coming to save us? Just about everybody that talks with me, he says, we are so close to destruction that it could happen in a moment's time. But when you look back over the scriptures, there are these incredibly beautiful records of God actually stirring himself up on behalf of his people, doing wondrous things for them. Just consider when Joshua led the people across the waters into the land. What a phenomenal thing that they put a foot in the water and suddenly this rushing river, all of a sudden, walls out and it doesn't make any progress. Just keeps up there as if it were mud. And the Egyptians put a foot in the water, drowned the whole water. God exercising his strength on behalf of his people, showing himself strong. Oh, would God, he would show himself strong on behalf of our people and our nation. And I think each of us can legitimately say to the Lord and include me in what I say, show yourself strong in my path, in my path, in all of the affairs in which I am involved. Listen to these words from Isaiah 59, verses 1 and 2. Behold, the Lord's hand is not so short that it cannot save. Neither is his ear so dull that it cannot hear. But your iniquities have made a separation between you and your God and your sins have his escape from you so that he does not hear. And whenever people cry that their prayers are not being answered in a glorious way, then it's well to ask, have our sins caused us to refuse to listen to our prayers? Peter made a lovely statement in chapter 12 of his first epistle, or chapter 3, verse 12 of his first epistle. The eyes of the Lord are upon the righteous, and his children attend their prayers. But the faith of the Lord is against those who refuse. Well now, we've noted already that the prayer of verse 3 is repeated twice more. So verse 3, O God, restore us, I think that King James says, turn us again, O God, and cause thy face to shine, and we shall be saved. So we have it there, we have it again in verse 7, O God of hosts, restore us and cause thy face to shine upon us, and we shall be saved, and we have it again in verse 19, O Lord God of hosts, restore us, cause thy face to shine upon us, and we shall be saved. And in verses 14 and 15, similar words are addressed to God, O God of hosts, turn again now, we beseech thee, look down from heaven, and see, and take care of this vine, even the shoot which thy right hand has planted, and on the sum whom thou hast strengthened for thyself. So, we'll leave it at this. And we all know, I hope, that God delights to come again among his own people and to restore and to save. But let's have a further look at verses 4 and 5. How long wilt thou be angry with the prayer of thy people, thou hast fed them with the bread of tears, and thou hast made them to drink still in thy nation. Surely, we must never lose sight of the fact that God does deal with sin in a timely way. It must be said of God, and it cannot be said of our court system, God practices judicial timing. He's never late. We've grown, we're embarrassed, we're disgusted, a person can be seen murdering someone, there can be 14 eyewitnesses, and 12 years later, they're still fooling around in court, pretending to administer justice. But it's never timely, is God. And whenever a church or a nation or an individual realizes that they are made to drink tears in Christ's nature, they ought to inquire, have we offended you, Lord God? Is there something we have done or left undone that we need to deal with? One evening to speak, I spoke for about an hour and a half. On the words in the end of James was, to him who knoweth to do so and doeth not, to him it is sin. Oftentimes when we look over our lives, we say, well, I don't know of anything that I'm doing that I shouldn't do. But we're not all that careful about asking, what about the things I should do that I'm not doing? The sins of omniscience. And in that James passage I just cited, it talks about sins of omniscience that are made to work, what we call an aggravated sin, a sin that is made to work, because you know what you should do and you don't. You are God with all the heart, soul, strength, mind, the first and the greatest commandment. But if that's the first and the greatest commandment, what is the first and greatest sin? Adultery? Murder? Rape? No, obviously the first and greatest sin is not to love God with all the heart, soul, mind, and strength. So when we're facing situations that are like the songs just describing, and we don't see any obvious open sin in our lives that accounts for it. I've looked over our church situation. Honestly, I don't know of anything by way of a sin of commission that we've got to deal with. I think we have, I thought to myself, seriously start to walk in obedience to the Lord. Maybe some of you know something I don't, but I could not think of one sin of this congregation, one sin of commission. But I can think of numerous sins of obedience. Sins we should do and we haven't been doing. Can we not join with the songs we find out? Turn up again, O God, and cause Thy face to shine, and we shall be saved. You see the wonderful truth of this passage is when we can do what we must follow. Now take the issue of dealing with sin of obedience. Sometimes you reach the point where you say, I know I ought to love God more. I just don't know how. I know I should pray more fervently, but honestly I just don't seem to have it in me. Isn't it wonderful that all those gods command us to pretend that it's the truth ourselves? When we can't, we still can. He doesn't give us any chance at being possible because he makes it possible when we can't figure out how to do it. But let's observe it well. Verse 6, Thou dost make us an object of contention to our neighbor, and our enemies laugh among themselves. Well, that is obviously the condition that we're in. We are the source of contentment for the world. Every time the media can find some flavor of sin in some prominent prophet's preaching, they love to spread it around the world. There was a time when things were different. Now, I have to speak carefully here because you might misunderstand my motives, but imagine I was one who was married and our children were born. No doctor to charge us for birth. Even the hospitals achieved big discounts. If you walked into a department store or any kind of a store and they knew you, either there was no charge or the price was dramatically higher. Well, not that way now. I'm not really lamenting the fact that we don't get discounts. All I'm saying is it represents an incredible change of view. There was a time when the most honored men in America were served of a living pie. I remember things that had happened yesterday. When Maggie and I moved to a different state, and we had to have our driver's license, and we had to take the road test, and the fellow that gave the test took Maggie first, and he abused her, he was rude, he was mean, he was as nasty as could be, but when he saw my application and the test minister, he turned all red and embarrassed me. And he just about said, Oh, you don't need to apologize. He went through the formalities of it, but he didn't treat her at all like he treated her, and he apologized to Maggie for his response. I'm only saying this, this, that I just stated, this, the verse 6, our enemies laugh among themselves. We have lost something that we're not burdened enough personally, but for the glory of God we're burdened. When there's no longer any respect for Christ and the Church, then we have become again afraid that God will truly forgive us. And to shake it away, he does, when he can, show the picture of a bride that once had the grace of God upon her, that once slurred, magnificently slurred, but because of a high tolerance of sin, just as God had his own sin, God broke down his head, so I, the God, he, the God, and God himself, may now appear again of the standard state of the Church, which certainly is a terrible state, as a nation of sinners. And when he appears, the power of his truth I'm told that he will. If not Christ, he will be back after me, right here in this house. So I, the King of Israel, speak to you today, most of you, as I have known, and by God's grace, most of you, and I think it's a great promise to all of you, we are facing wonderful days of our lives, and I believe it's time for it, of that whole month, that we meet the hour and are being sure that there are no sins of any sort that will come. And so my plea now is that we look over the page that we should be looking at, and that may come at a time, and that we bring that before the Lord, and when we find that we don't even know how we will be there for the rest of our lives. Oh, Father, in Christ, by the power of Christ, in my mind, I can see this place packed full. I can see the promise after promise of Christ. I can see the glory of Christ, the glory of this place, and that's the beauty of it. That vehicles driving all over the world, still, the driver, who is in charge, can feel, I don't know if you know, but that has happened to you before. I can hear the aircraft and I can feel some of the feelings one has, that the time has taken. I, driving on this planet, have fought, and the driver has connected with someone different, because of the love he's got, he's alive, let's let our hearts receive that, happy feeling, and let each of us pray to do all that we can to help Father, those of us who have all the time, connection, and remember some of the wonderful manifestations of this, that the Spirit, is flowing out of the world, each of us, will be able, by the Holy Spirit, to face the reality, that this time is a strong one, and to do all that we must, and all that we can, so that once again, our prayers will be urgently heard and answered by you, so that once again, your powerful hands will be working on behalf of this congregation, so that once again, the glory of the Lord will become so attractive here, that multitudes will turn to our wonderful Savior, God, that none of us shall regret or disappoint you, that we shall move forward together in bringing glory to our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ, in whose name we pray.
God Can When We Cannot
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Richard Owen Roberts (1931 - ). American pastor, author, and revival scholar born in Schenectady, New York. Converted in his youth, he studied at Gordon College, Whitworth College (B.A., 1955), and Fuller Theological Seminary. Ordained in the Congregational Church, he pastored in Idaho, Oregon, Washington, and California, notably Evangelical Community Church in Fresno (1965-1975). In 1975, he moved to Wheaton, Illinois, to direct the Billy Graham Center Library, contributing his 9,000-volume revival collection as its core. Founding International Awakening Ministries in 1985, he served as president, preaching globally on spiritual awakening. Roberts authored books like Revival (1982) and Repentance: The First Word of the Gospel, emphasizing corporate repentance and God-centered preaching. Married to Margaret Jameson since 1962, they raised a family while he ministered as an itinerant evangelist. His sermons, like “Preaching That Hinders Revival,” critique shallow faith, urging holiness. Roberts’ words, “Revival is God’s finger pointed at me,” reflect his call for personal renewal. His extensive bibliography, including Whitefield in Print, and mentorship of figures like John Snyder shaped evangelical thought on revival history.