My soul surveyed the nation.  I took in the entire national crisis and prayed “What is the best thing to do now?” 

THE BEST THING TO DO NOW

By Mario Murillo

(Preached at Bethel Church Redding Sunday March 19th 6 PM service.)

I stand before you tonight on the heels of a great dealing of God—perhaps the greatest dealing of God besides my conversion.  God said, “Raise $1 Million—choose 10 cities—invest the money in those cities for a specific outreach and I will start a youth movement.”  The ten cities had to be places that are open wounds.

This mandate led to a personal revelation that I am sharing here for the first time.   My soul surveyed the nation.  I took in the entire national crisis and prayed “What is the best thing to do now?”

There are many candidates for the title of best thing to do.  

Unity is a great choice.  Healing the division in the Body of Christ is a great choice for best thing.  No matter where I go, people have an issue.  The Body is so entrenched in their own camps.

Wouldn’t it be a powerful thing if all of the camps in the Body of Christ would realize that their theology is incomplete and find common ground to pool strength and hit the nation with a tsunami of compassion?

Another great choice is anointed worship music.   Music gets in where sermons cannot.  Music is the only art form that bypasses the brain on its way to the heart.  We saw it with Andrae Crouch, Hosanna integrity, Hillsong, and the Bethel music that has gone global from this very room.

The right choice must be prayer.  How could anyone consider anything to be above the power of prayer and the urgency of prayer?

The fact that none of these is what I feel in my spirit is the best thing to do now.  So if none of these worthy candidates is the best…what is?

To find out we must first ask, “what does now look like?”  Now we have a divided and often lukewarm American church—a church that is long on experience and ignorant of scripture.

Now let’s look outside the church walls:  We have an entire generation raised without church.  Judges 2:10 says, “Judges 2:10 When all that generation had been gathered to their fathers, another generation arose after them who did not know the Lord nor the work which He had done for Israel.”

That—thanks to our universities—is our current problem.  Our classrooms create easily offended, intolerant, fearful students.  They hate free speech if it disagrees with them.  They believe violence should be applied to silence an opposing viewpoint.  Their credo is now: With sticks and stones I’ll break your bones because your words have hurt me.”

They are the generation that can end America.  I call them generation fatal.

Liberalism run amok has unleashed a spirit of violence and lawlessness. I said in a recent blog:  “America is the only nation in history where those who control the money, the airwaves, the press, and the universities, fancy themselves an underground resistance.

We are supposed to believe ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, The New York Times, The Washington Post, Google, Apple, Microsoft, Hollywood, every Ivy League school, plus the Democratic Party have been driven into underground revolutionary bunkers. We have come to a sad and inexplicable madness where the “Freedom Fighters” are fighting against, well, freedom.  The anti-fascists are the fascists.  In the name of liberation, they are taking dead aim at the Bill of Rights…not just some of it—but all of it.”

This is what now looks like.  Now is pandemic drug addiction.  Now is a crime wave that has reduced inner cities into killing fields.  Now is tyranny in the news media.  Now is duly elected president under siege.  I am not here to burst your blessing bubble but:

-If we refuse to see it because we think it betrays our view of the goodness of God, we can’t obey God for a solution.  We have lost our nation by default.

-If we let a cheapened view of grace weaken our holy resolve and fire.

-If we turn retreat into victory with spiritual self-entitlement…we are not only in sin but we will have to apologize the millions of oppressed Christians around the world.

So what is the best thing we can do now?  It is what I learned one night after having tried everything to reach a riot-torn intellectual bastion called Berkeley.

MARIO MURILLO PREACHING ON THE BERKELEY CAMPUS OCTOBER 4TH 2014

Having tried all of the aforementioned candidates for best thing to do I went on campus late one night.  God was trying to give me the answer but I wouldn’t listen.  I did not know that death awaited me.

It was a dark night on Sproul Plaza.  I approached a flower child, thinking this was easy pickings.  As I witnessed to him a 6 foot 5-inch behemoth grabbed me and proceeded to choke me.  Murder was in his eyes.  It was demonic.  Intellectual debate was useless against this monster.

Instantly I knew where I was wrong and what to do.  It was as I was having the life choked out of me that I discovered the truth that I am going to relate to you.  The power of God—out of mercy—gave me wisdom and boldness.

Somebody else took over my body—words, not of me tumbled from my lips.  I ordered him to take his hands off of me.  I ordered him to back off.  He did.  As he did, he stopped staring at me.  He gazed at something behind me.  It was way taller than him.  He looked startled.  I ran.

As I sprinted home a verse kept roaring in my soul: “not by might nor by power but by My Spirit says the Lord.”  The best thing that could ever happen—the best thing for me to do—was to allow the power of God to collide with the power of Satan in a public place.

Thus began our Saturday Nights of Miracles.  Miracles blasted U.C. Berkeley open.  We even broke through to use the coveted Pauley Ballroom.

Miracles sustained for 10 years and now I must tell you—by the numbers—the best thing to do now:

-The best thing to do now is to break the lie that the miracles that happen in Asia, Africa, and Latin America cannot happen here.  Just as He raises the dead in plain view and multiplies food and water there—it can happen here.  The best thing is to break the glass ceiling we have created for miracles in America.

-Living Proof is the name of our crusades because it will take miracles to the mainstream of American culture.

From every angle our best move now is to be totally grateful for every miracle God has done and be totally starved to see more and greater miracles and to see them where they matter.

Now let me show you from different angles the absolute proof that this is our best move now.

The greatest Christian intellectual who ever lived had just seen—while arguing on Mars Hill in Athens—the futility of debating intellectual culture.  On his trek from there to Corinth a conviction was emblazoned in his soul.  Notice what he said:

1 Corinthians 2: And I, brethren, when I came to you, did not come with excellence of speech or of wisdom declaring to you the testimony of God. 2 For I determined not to know anything among you except Jesus Christ and Him crucified. 3 I was with you in weakness, in fear, and in much trembling. 4 And my speech and my preaching were not with persuasive words of human wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power, 5 that your faith should not be in the wisdom of men but in the power of God.

Miracles put a deep foundation in new converts: What I hope will hit you is this: Our best move now is to but a supernatural foundation in new converts—a foundation that cannot be destroyed by a professor, gang leader or a politician.

Miracles force anti-God government to back off:  Acts 4: 14 “And seeing the man who had been healed standing with them, they could say nothing against it. “

When the greatest mind the church ever produced concluded that nothing was to be compared to the miracles of Jesus when combating a perverse culture, it should settle it for us.

These are the miracles that will ignite unity:  Acts 3:11 Now as the lame man who was healed held on to Peter and John, all the people ran together to them in the porch which is called Solomon’s, greatly amazed.

New songs: Psalm 96: 1 Oh, sing to the Lord a new song! Sing to the Lord, all the earth. 2 Sing to the Lord, bless His name; Proclaim the good news of His salvation from day to day. 3 Declare His glory among the nations, His wonders among all peoples.

Prayer: Now I want you to get ready to pray.  Not just any prayer—but the prayer that Peter prayed that let loose a gusher of signs and wonders:  Acts 4: 29 “Now, Lord, look on their threats, and grant to Your servants that with all boldness they may speak Your word, 30 by stretching out Your hand to heal, and that signs and wonders may be done through the name of Your holy Servant Jesus.”31 And when they had prayed, the place where they were assembled together was shaken; and they were all filled with the Holy Spirit, and they spoke the word of God with boldness.”

Miracles are best for neutralizing persecution and the overreach of government.  When Peter left the council who ordered the church not to speak he knew what his best move was.  It is also our best move against the political correctness that has morphed into blatant tyranny.

Note that one thing he wanted was a special boldness.  His precise plea reads like this: Give me the special boldness that comes while you do signs and wonders.

This is the best thing we can do now.  It will crush the ramparts of Satanic power that are killing our country.

Finally, do you think I am being idealistic and naïve? Do you not see that the prime directive of Christ for those charged with spreading His Gospel was exactly what I say we need to do?  Jesus said, John 14: 12 “Most assuredly, I say to you, he who believes in Me, the works that I do he will do also; and greater works than these he will do, because I go to My Father. 13 And whatever you ask in My name, that I will do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son. 14 If you ask anything in My name, I will do it.

Let’s retrace our steps to a childlike hunger and desperation—only this time let it be with an irrefutable passion to let miracles–undeniable confirmed miracles flow in the mainstream of American culture.