Become a Reformer

by Barbara Wentroble
Tuesday, December 30, 2008

Eighteenth-century statesman Edmund Burke is credited with saying, “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.” It is time for “good men”--the church—to arise and let their voices be heard. The spirit of reformation must arise in God’s people and turn this nation back to righteousness and to God.

The media often portrays our nation as one devoid of Judeo-Christian values. A news commentator recently stated that culturally, America has reached an all-time low. Members of the body of Christ, particularly a number of prominent Christian leaders, have contributed to the nation’s decline through moral failures and carnal living. It is time for the church to embrace the lifestyle and values of God’s kingdom culture rather than those of the culture of the world.

One of the ways the enemy uses to change culture is to remove every trace of Christianity from public buildings. In recent years we have seen “Christmas” replaced with “Holiday Season” in ads, on signs and in shop windows. The Ten Commandments and nativity scenes have been removed from public areas. We have no plumb line to use as a measuring rod for right and wrong. We are living in a time when every man does what is right in his own eyes (see Judg. 21:25).

A clear definition of right and wrong must be in place for a disciplined society to protect its citizens. In the Old Testament, God made a promise to the Jews. As long as they obeyed Him, He would bless them as a nation. “Therefore know that the Lord your God, He is God, the faithful God who keeps covenant and mercy for a thousand generations with those who love Him and keep His commandments” (Deut. 7:9, NKJV).
God’s view of a corporate covenant with a nation has never changed. The first settlers to America believed they were a corporate people called to continue the Israelite’s covenant relationship with God and with one another. Today, in view of the moral and spiritual decay of our nation, we must rediscover our spiritual moorings. We must align ourselves with the corporate covenant this nation has with God.

As believers, we cannot remain nonchalant. We must become new wineskins that have embraced the spirit of a reformer.

After becoming a lawyer in London, Mohandas K. (Mahatma) Gandhi studied all religions, including the Bible. Although not a Christian, he was a reformer, and he said something we need to be reminded of today: “Mankind is notoriously too dense to read the signs that God sends them from time to time. We require drums to be beaten into our ears before we would wake from our trance and hear the warning.”
I believe reformers are hearing the warning to awake! The destiny of a nation is waiting for them to arise and let their voices be heard. God will use men and women to release prophetic decrees that will snap the chains of death wherever God sends them.

Moses was sent as an ambassador and a reformer. Spiritual protocol required him to know two important things: He had to know who he was and who sent him. We are required to know the same things in order to fulfill God’s purpose for our lives.
Like Moses, we need new identities to be positioned as reformers. Too often we live not out of who we truly are in Christ but out of diseased feelings, attitudes or images of self that are not real. For reformation to come to the culture, reformation must already reside within us.We cannot be the same people in the new season that we were in the old.

We must know who we are and who sent us. This knowledge authorizes us as reformers to fulfill our assignments. It makes us ready to receive new anointings and become new wineskins.

Our new anointing is the anointing of the reformer! What Jesus said of Himself is true of us: “‘The Spirit of the Lord is upon Me, because He has anointed Me to preach the gospel to the poor; He has sent Me to heal the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed; to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord’”(Luke 4:18-19).
This is your acceptable, or as some translations say, “favorable,” year. Go forth in 2009 as a new wineskin! Be who you really are. Be anointed with the spirit of the reformer and change the world you live in!

(The writer is a gifted apostolic and prophetic minister)