Daily Devotional for Wednesday October 24, 2007
In the Heat of the Battle for the Souls of Men
(I Samuel 17:46-47)
"This day the LORD will hand you over to me, and I'll strike you down and cut off your head. Today I will give the carcasses of the Philistine army to the birds of the air and the beasts of the earth, and the whole world will know that there is a God in Israel. All those gathered here will know that it is not by sword or spear that the LORD saves; for the battle is the LORD's, and he will give all of you into our hands." 1 Samuel 17:46-47
In the heat of the battle for the eternal souls of men! In the 78 days since I shared with you on August 7th the vision to reach even more lost souls ( http://www.liveprayer.com/ddarchive3.cfm?id=3019 ), satan's legions were been unleashed and have come after me personally and Liveprayer non-stop. It has literally been 78 days of relentless warfare. I realize most people are simply living their lives, just dealing with the day-to-day problems we all face and rarely are exposed to the intense, heated spiritual warfare that takes place on the front lines in serving the Lord. It is like watching a football game on television, or even in person. Unless you are actually on the field, in the trenches, you can never really appreciate the speed and violence of each play. For those who have served our nation and have actually been in combat, you understand and have experienced the heat and raw emotions of being in combat and taking live fire.
This message today has several purposes. The first is to encourage you to keep fighting, especially if you are in the heat of life's battles. The second is to help you realize that satan is a very real foe whose clear and stated goal is to kill, steal, and destroy. The third is to bring you up to speed on Liveprayer and all that has been happening here over these past 11 tumultuous weeks. Lastly, is to help you understand that while satan is a very real foe, he is also a very defeated foe! If you have put your faith and trust in Jesus Christ you are assured of being on the winning team. The end of the book says that Jesus will rule and reign along with His followers while satan and his followers are destined for the Lake of Fire for all eternity. That knowledge is what gives followers of Christ the ability to go into battle for the Lord and fight on no matter what the odds may look like, since we already know the final score!!!
With just 68 days left in 2007, this has been the most amazing year yet for me personally and for Liveprayer. Between the door God opened with Howard Stern right after the year began, the bold and visible national stance I have taken against having the member of a satanic cult as our next President, the battles with those who follow the false religion of Islam who want to silence me, Liveprayer has become nationally recognized in the public square and a huge target for satan and his minions to try and destroy. One reporter said that "Liveprayer has gone from white hot to nuclear." It has clearly demonstrated what I have been telling you for over 8 years now, that Biblical Truth which was once accepted by most people just 40 years ago, is now considered in the year 2007 as "hateful," "intolerant," "narrow minded," and "bigoted," by most who have chosen to reject the Bible as Truth. What used to be the commonly held beliefs by most people is now a minority opinion that even many who claim to be Christians don't even share!
Let me update you on the 4 areas of focus I talked you about in that August 7th Devotional. The first is my relationship with Howard Stern. I am sill in touch on a weekly basis with Howard's key person, however, we have not been able to finalize any new opportunities on Howard's program or Sirius channel. The key issue that we have gone back and forth about is the content of any new programs I would do on Howard's channel. While I am out to reach his listeners, I am not going to let Liveprayer or myself be turned into a joke or one of his radio gags. I believe we may be close to coming to an agreement on some new Liveprayer programs soon, so be praying. I still to this day am getting emails from his listeners, looking for prayer and counsel. It was an amazing opportunity to reach an audience that needs to hear God's Truth and the hope there is in Christ, so I am not surprised based on the content of Howard's program the devil is doing all he can to stop any future Liveprayer programs. The bottom line is satan unleashed one of his agents on me and Liveprayer and it backfired on him big time!!!
The second is the Florida State Fair which is just 16 short weeks away. While there is still lots of work to do, everything is on track. Liveprayer is going to be a title sponsor of next year's Florida State Fair in February. You do not understand what a HUGE deal this is. First of all, the Florida State Fair is run by the State of Florida. Because it is a state-run operation, there is the typical issue over any affiliation with a religious organization. However, because of our presence last year, God gave us great favor with Fair officials and we will be coming on board as a title sponsor for the 2008 Fair. What that means is that Liveprayer and our logo will be on every TV, radio, and print ad for the 2008 Fair. We will be on the millions of pieces of printed material the Fair will put out. In addition to that exposure and visibility, we will have a 50x100 (5,000 SF) structure in the heart of the Midway that will be called the "Liveprayer Gospel Tent."
At the LGT, the front will have a huge multi-media display to tell people about Liveprayer and challenge them in their daily lives. Like last year, we will hand out lots of promotional materials to Fair visitors. Inside the LGT will be a stage with state-of-the-art sound and lighting and seating for 400. All 12 days of the fair we will have live music at 2, 5, and 8. There will be a time of prayer after each performance, however, after the music at 8 p.m., we will have an old fashioned camp meeting type service where I will bring a message each night dealing with issues everyone faces and challenge those who come to make a commitment of their heart and life to Christ. Last year, over 500,000 people attended the Fair! What an incredible opportunity to bring Christ to this world in a bold and visible way!!!
The third is bringing Liveprayer to cell phones. We have found out that the technology in the United States for video over cell phones is still years away from being something most people can access. It has been widespread in Europe and Asia for years, but the United States cell phone market is many years behind those parts of the world. All of the various opportunities we have looked at all include us charging people to access our content and I am simply not going to do that. For several years now people have been able to access the Daily Devotional on their cell phones and other wireless devices by going to : http://wapdd.com . Every day we get hundreds of emails from cell phones that have the ability to send text messages to my email address, bkeller@liveprayer.com. We send our response back to the email address that ties in to the phone it came from. It would be nice to bundle all of our Liveprayer content into one icon on people's phones, but most new phones can go to the website, get the Daily Devotional, send and receive emails, without me having to charge them.
The fourth area and the one that has been under the most ferocious attack to literally take it out has been the Liveprayer TV program. In the August 7th Devotional I shared with you our plans to continue our late night program on the CBS owned Tampa affiliate we had been on for 4 1/2 years and add a new morning program on another station. It was within only a week after that Devotional came out we found out CBS was canceling our late night program due to pressure they received from the extremist Muslim group CAIR. But God's hand was on the program since we did our last program on CBS Friday night August 31st and our first new morning program the following Monday.
It was 2 weeks into our new morning program on the Sinclair Broadcasting owned station that I received a call telling me the Sinclair corporate attorneys said we would no longer be allowed to take live phone calls, the hallmark of the program since we started. The people at the Sinclair station in Tampa who negotiated with us a 2-year contract knew full well we took live phone calls, and they were now telling us they had a corporate policy that stated no program can take live phone calls. So for the past 5 weeks I have had to do the program without being able to take any calls from the viewers, which of course has always been the key ministry component of the TV program and why we do it live. It is also why it is called LIVE PRAYER!
Despite satan's attacks and efforts to destroy this TV program that for 1212 programs now has brought Biblical Truth to the secular TV airways and has without shame or compromise told people that their only hope in this life and for all eternity is a personal relationship with Jesus Christ, God has kept His hand on this unique outreach unlike anything that is on TV today. There is NOBODY on secular television today taking the Biblical stand we take every day on Liveprayer and while it has caused those who are the enemies of God to come against it, it has brought hope to millions over the years and seen tens of thousands of people we know of come to the saving knowledge of Jesus Christ by faith!
Here are the exciting plans for the TV program. We will do our last morning program on the Sinclair station Friday November 2nd. Monday, November 5th we will move the program to the "i" Network affiliate in the Tampa market. It will still start at 7:30 a.m. as it does now, but will only be on for a half-hour due to network commitments that start at 8 a.m. WE WILL BE BACK TAKING LIVE PHONE CALLS! This is a short-term solution to get us through November and December and keep the continuity of the program until Monday, January 7th when we are planning to end the morning program...and be back on nationwide on the "i" Network live from Midnight to 1 a.m. every Monday through Friday!!!! SATAN IS A LIAR AND A LOSER!!!
*Please be in prayer with me for the person or people God is calling to help me with the $3 million we need by the end of November, that will enable the Liveprayer TV program to be back on nationwide January 7th. We proved last year in jsut 10 weeks that this program will bring hope to millions of lost and hurting people while helping to lead this nation back to God and Biblical values. Oprah became the most powerful woman in the entertainment business and worth over $1 BILLION dollars from a single TV program. Imagine a program whose motives and goal isn't money and power but the eternal souls of men and the soul of this nation!!! I assure you that this program is satan's worst nightmare and why he is stopping at nothing to destroy it! Please be praying with me as God brings the right person or people to help me in the coming weeks to take this critical step that will give this nation a live, daily voice for God's Truth in the marketplace that the world won't be able to ignore! If God is calling you to help me, please contact me right away at: bkeller@liveprayer.com
I love you and care about you so much! My word for you today is this. Don't give up, don't ever give up! No matter how fierce the battles get, DON'T EVER GIVE UP! God will see you through to victory! I know most people simply are not called to the front lines. We all have our roles to play. This is where God has called me to do my work for the Kingdom, literally battling for the souls of men 24/7/365! I don't have the luxury of giving up or quitting. This is the life I've been called to and committed to live. There is no turning back for me. When the battle is most fierce, when things are not looking good in the natural, that is when my faith must become real. Faith is believing God can and will do what He has promised in His Word. God promised He would fight for us. God promised that the battle is His. What everyone else sees as impossible, I hold to the promise that ALL things are possible with God. God's Word tells us that we are the victors and not the defeated!
With just 68 days left this year, despite all of the attacks and battles and frustrations, it has already been the most productive year ever for Liveprayer as far as the number of people we have reached, the number of emails we have received and responded to, the number of praise reports we have received, and most important of all, the number of people we know of who have accepted the Lord as their Savior. We heard from right at 50,000 so far this year who have accepted Christ into their heart and life by faith. That my friend is what this is all about. That is why I go through all I do each day. To not just bring God's Truth back into the marketplace, but to bring His hope to the hurting and the love of Christ to the lost. The battle I fight on the front lines each day is literally a battle for the souls of men!!!
While God may not have called you to the front lines, He may be calling you to help me as I fight each day with satan for the souls of men. We have brave men and women in Iraq and Afghanistan this very moment fighting to keep our nation free and safe. They can only fight because they have the resources they need to fight with. If our government didn't supply them with their weapons and everything else they need, no matter how committed they were it would be impossible for them to do what they were called to do. I am in that same position. As committed as I am to the Lord and the call He has on my life, I can only fight each day because of the love, prayers, and sacrifice so many in the Liveprayer family make each day to make that possible! It is amazing how God has raised up this one website to not only reach millions of people around the world, but to bring a small group of people together who love Jesus to make a huge impact on the eternal souls of men and this world!!!