Please note, also, some of the places that are in bold print...
The Cross of Christ was enough for Baltimore and it's enough for YOU, our readers, no matter where on this earth you live!
Really embrace this word for yourselves, AND for Baltimore. Determine to be men and women of prayer!
This is a word of GOOD NEWS to be ENJOYED, so please...ENJOY! (To Subscribe to the Elijah List subscribe here.)
"Russ Walden: Baltimore Is NOT a Broken City. It Is a BREAKTHROUGH City"
In past weeks, there was a police incident here in Baltimore which provoked a statement that Baltimore is a "broken city." The Father is standing up to say that Baltimore is not a broken city, it is a breakthrough city. When man is at his extremity – God's glory is about to break!
We have not just come into a new year, we have come into a new decade. The Father says that this year is the year of "as in Heaven, so on Earth," and that this decade is ordained for God's people as a "Decade of Prayer." God is calling up, out of the prayer rooms of Baltimore, an army of Holy Ghost shock troops who will travail in prayer for this city until God makes it a praise in the earth.
In the city where Francis Scott Key penned the Star-Spangled Banner, the enemy has laid claim and God says, "Enough is enough!"
Public figures and news outlets around the country have trampled the hopes of this city by their remarks from the safety of their desks, but as the stanzas of the Star-Spangled Banner declare to us:
Where the foe's haughty host in dread silence reposes,
What is that which the breeze, o'er the towering steep,
As it fitfully blows, now conceals, now discloses? Now it catches the gleam of the morning's first beam,
In full glory reflected now shines on the stream...
God says that this is not just about a flag, but about the "full glory" of God's hand being seen in this city, and it will once again be the beacon of hope, life, commerce and testimony that it has been in times past and even more!
Whence Cometh Our Help?
How different would Baltimore look today if the energy expended had been in prayer, on our knees, and looking to God?
My late mother, Ruth Walden, often said that we might get to Heaven and look back ashamed that we lived so far below our privileges. My grandmother was a traveling evangelist in the 30s and 40s, and she mentored my father in the things of God. As a young child, I recall my grandmother exhorting my father with the words that I want to encourage Baltimore and specifically this congregation with: "Much prayer, much power. Little prayer, little power."
What social initiatives and the hand of man cannot do, God is bringing to pass in this city's behalf. In Isaiah's day, things were much the same when the prophet declared:
Isaiah 51:1-3 (KJV), "Hearken to Me, ye that follow after righteousness, ye that seek the LORD: look unto the rock whence ye are hewn, and to the hole of the pit whence ye are digged. Look unto Abraham, your father, and unto Sarah that bare you: for I called him alone, and blessed him, and increased him. For the LORD shall comfort Zion: He will comfort all her waste places; and He will make her wilderness like Eden, and her desert like the garden of the LORD; joy and gladness shall be found therein, thanksgiving, and the voice of melody." (Photo via Unsplash)
The word "comfort" in verse 3 above means to "console, give rest, have compassion." That is what God is all about. Jesus declared in Matthew 11:28-30:
"Come unto Me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take My yoke upon you, and learn of Me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls. For My yoke is easy, and My burden is light."
The heart of God is to ease the burden on the city of Baltimore and to bring its citizenry to "yoke easy and burden light." What does this mean? It means that God places no premium upon human suffering. What does this mean for Baltimore? Consider the following verses:
1 Peter 2:24 (KJV), "Who His own self bare our sins in His own body on the tree, that we, being dead to sins, should live unto righteousness: by whose stripes ye were healed."
Isaiah 53:3 (KJV), "He is despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief: and we hid as it were [our] faces from Him; He was despised, and we esteemed Him not."
2 Corinthians 8:9 (KJV), "For ye know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that, though He was rich, yet for your sakes, He became poor, that ye through His poverty might be rich."
All of the verses are pregnant with the potential to... (continue reading)
This word, while about Baltimore specifically, also extends to every single reader, whether you are from or live in Baltimore or not.
