To my PBI Friends and Facebook Family…

I want to encourage some of you today.

I want first of all to give thanks unto The LORD for the way He has helped me these past few days. Never did I dream I would be writing these words or singing here.

I am eternally grateful for all the support and encouraging words I have received on this site. The way God works is really beyond what we can comprehend.

My word to you in this note is just this, “God is not through with you yet!”

It’s been said to me several times right here, just in the last two or three weeks. “Hang in there, God is with you!” is ringing out and I’m holding on to that promise.

Some of you think you’re washed up, all done or ready to retire from the work God gave you to do. To those who are fixed and riding the waves of success, I say God bless you, keep going strong.

But to so many who seem to have lost their direction or you made a decision to back up and let others take your place, I have a word for you. Don’t “give up” but, “get up!”

God did not invest so much in you that one day He would cast you aside or no longer need you for his work . I’m telling you He needs you now more than ever before.

I don’t care what’s happened in your life, what kind of changes or trauma you’ve gone through or even how many mistakes you’ve made.

God is running this show whether we think so or not. It’s His Church, not ours and not theirs. We are the members of one body, not a bunch of splintered off groups going in different directions.

There’s only one direction we all need to be going in and that’s up! You still have a song to sing, an instrument to play and a talent to be used.

Think about it, if the world is in the mess we think it’s in and dark clouds are everywhere, wouldn’t God want or need a stronger, even mightier army than ever before?

Do you really think He intended to just sit back and allow Satan to take over the world he created and everything in it. That’s a lie that’s crept in on us, a trick to convince us to sit back and give up and just let it happen.

We’re supposed to be shining brighter than ever, not waning or being more weakened down!

Where in the good Book did it say that after The LORD gave you precious gifts of music, singing, preaching and teaching that a day would come when you were no longer needed and you would just hang your harp upon the willow and let others run the ship?

I came to realize something a couple of days ago. I’ve been waiting for God to stir up some of us and cause us to move again.

Then I remembered something Paul told Timothy. “Stir up the gift that is within you.” He told Timothy to stir himself.

We are waiting for God to stir us when we’re supposed to be stirring ourselves. I will say again, that many very talented people are sitting on everything you’ve worked for.

You spent years developing your skills to sing, play and speak and you have a life-time of experience. You also felt it was time to set back and let the younger generation take over.

Who told you that? It wasn’t God.

God bless our younger generations and everything they have done. But there’s things you know they don’t. You have seen deeper moves of God and witnessed things some of them have never known before.

And to those who have failed, or been kicked out or run off or whatever. Your fellow Church peers did not take you name off of the Lamb’s Book of Life. They can’t.

Jesus said, “They are mine and nobody can pluck them out of My hand.” He meant that.

Shake yourself. Straighten up whatever you need to straighten up and get back in business doing what God intended for you to do.

If they won’t accept you where you were before, find another place that will. God is about to turn our status quo upside down in ways they never thought of.

People are hurting and crying for Christ’s sake and they need real people who know how to love and minister to them.

Forget task masters and harsh Lords. We can love people without them having to be a carbon copy of us. Go sing in a nursing home, or at a funeral or while you’re sitting on the front porch folding clothes or raking the yard.

Somebody’s going to hear you. Go to the jail for God’s sake and sing and play the accordion the way we once did. You are you. Nobody can compete with you.

I’m telling you, the greatest singers in our movement are mostly siting on benches. I am all for modern technology and musical advancements, but we don’t need that to sing and praise The LORD.

My Lord, remember how we played every kind of piano there was in tent revivals, on the back of trucks, and most of them were out of tune, or we sung without music. It didn’t matter then, and it won’t always matter now.

The Spirit has been lost in too much that’s going on. We need once again to be depending on God and His Spirit rather than light shows and the latest keyboard.

And we need to sit down and stop juking all the time. Let the Spirit speak and run the service like we used to!

Oh I know, I can feel it and just about hear it…. “Who does he think he is…. Just look at him, calling so much attention to himself. He’s got the nerve to be talking about someone.”

Well you’re right. By all rights I should have nothing to say. I know I’m nothing, a broken down piece of clay that maybe should have been discarded long ago and I thought I was.

But there’s a problem with that. God won’t let me alone. There’s something from long ago that is moving so that I can’t stand it.

I have to sing. I can’t keep quiet any longer. I have to speak. That which was placed within me so long ago will not let me rest.

I thought it was over, that I was finished, totally disqualified forever. And I grieved about it. Then along came Facebook and YouTube and bless God, all of a sudden there is a place for me, there is someone who needs to hear what I want to say and the general board cannot throw me out.

I can sing again. Oh, you have no idea what that means. I know in my spirit that some of you out there are so sad because you can not sing and minister to God and his people the way you once did.

And I’m telling you to get up. Forget everybody else. Let them stay like they are. They’ll get done whatever God has for them to do but your work, your calling and your gifts are not over yet.

I want to hear you sing. I want to hear you speak. I’m telling you if I can do it so can you.

LORD, I know one particular dynamite guitar player who hasn’t played in years because modern ways of praise and worship said he wasn’t needed.

You forget who you were supposed to be playing for to start with. Okay, I know I have to end this but it’s hard.

One more time, remember that old song “Just as I am.”

Tell God one more time, “Hear I am, with all my mistakes, failures, short-comings and total life changes, use me wherever you can.”

And just watch what’s going to happen. It’s in you. And it will never be taken from you because the God of Glory put it there and He never took it out.

Pray for me. I love you much………

First published: May 1, 2010.

~ Robert Blackburn

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Robert Blackburn

 

 

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