Category: Jackie Calhoun

It is said, “The show must go on!” originated from the circus world of entertainment. When there was an injury in a performer’s act, the ringmaster diverted the attention of the crowd to some other area, to keep the show moving. Patrons had paid for their seat to be entertained and they were sitting there, so “The show must go on!”

What would happen in the church world if when the people came together there would just be earnest prayer, repentance from sin, and calling upon the Lord to fill with his Spirit and guide in his ways. A similar thing happened from time-to-time in the Old Testament, and great deliverances and reformation occurred. But today, you can’t just stop the show and really get things right with God and just pray until God moves. You would lose a large part of your congregation. They are there in their paid seats, in their place and function in the church to do the show. Gideon had a great army, but they were whittled down to only 300 watchful men, and through the direction and power of God, they defeated a great army. Jesus started with training only twelve men. But, they forsook all to just follow him and be trained by him to become effective fishers of men. These are still rocking the world for Jesus. Their obedience led to an upper room prayer meeting that unleashed the power of God on the earth that has not stopped to this day – and that was about 2000 years ago! Thousands were converted, the sick were healed, demons were cast out, and the dead were raised. The gospel spread in an exponential way. It was not man’s plans and programs that did it. It was the power of God manifesting through the lives of the people by the same anointing and power by which Jesus himself operated.  In the revival history of the church, when somebody got desperate enough to stop the show and earnestly seek God until – it was then when reformation and revival broke out. When we can maintain “business as usual” and “the show must go on” in the face of desperate needs all around us, then we are obviously spiritually asleep. We might even know and preach about being spiritually asleep, and still be spiritually asleep ourselves. Yikes! Do you mean the Word really means it when it says he who knows to do good and he does not do it, to him it is a sin that will cauterize my conscience and rock me to sleep spiritually? (James 4:17) Then, I am totally insensitive to the crying needs around me. Then, I can do my own religious thing – without God’s power. There is a better way that starts with each of us personally. Stop the show. Let us do what we need to do for cleansing and hook up with God through the cross and Spirit of the Lord Jesus. Let’s allow God’s power to be seen.

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My son, David, with a team of people, makes movies. Recently they were shooting a PBS movie in Benton for children called “Mystery League”. It is about some children conducting an investigation to uncover some mysteries in a local area. I am fascinated by what it takes to make a movie, so I told Dave that whenever he is shooting one close, let me know and I will come and observe. It is amazing how much planning, work, and detail goes into even the simplest movie, and any given simple scene of that movie. There are about 30 people in the immediate area of the set all fulfilling some function to make it happen. I was on set, standing back out of the way watching a main monitor with a person who was in attendance to that monitor. This girl would watch the monitor and constantly type on a computer keyboard and draw a line through areas of a finely detailed written out plan. When there was a little break in all the busy-ness, I asked the girl what exactly was her function. Her function was to take the plan and schedule and insert notes (with the computer keyboard) as reference points for the editor of the movie. What she was doing was helping to maintain the cohesiveness of sticking to the plan and to help maintain the continuity, making sure there are reference points to maintain the flow of the movie. Without her function the editor would get volumes of snippets and scene footage all jumbled together to try and make a properly sequenced flowing movie out of it. This is just one very specialized function that goes on among many. It all goes into making those scenes which we plop down on the couch and casually watch and say, “Lets watch a movie tonight.” They will sometimes spend hours just making one short, simple scene, every detail of lighting, action, makeup, etc., etc., being attended to. And it’s all very highly technical with computer and electronic devices everywhere – all this to make a simple movie. On the movie set all are intensely focused on doing their part, all are kind and courteous to one another, and if there are differences, they work it out to an agreement and keep on working together to get the job done. If they don’t, the movie stops.

What a picture of how the Body of Christ is to work together to present Christ to the world. We are to use all the “technology” of the supernatural power of God. We are to pay attention to every detail that it be right, keeping the cohesiveness and continuity of God’s plan to reach the world for Jesus. We are to work out the differences so the outreach goes on. We are to stick with the detailed written plan and make sure we are doing it according to the plan. By this, Jesus is presented in power for everybody in the world to see.

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I will prepare a table for you in the presence of your enemies. This is what the Lord told David in Psalms 23 verse 6. From a shepherd’s practice in that part of the world, we know the shepherd will go before the sheep on a plateau of grazing land and check for snakes and other sources of harm to the sheep. He will take his rod and poke it in holes and around bushes and if a snake is discovered he will kill him in protection of the sheep. This is a picture of what the Lord does for us as the Good Shepherd. By our submission to him, we can know he is working on our behalf dealing with the enemy. Our part is to deal with the enemy of our flesh. The Lord gives us grace and understanding, and the power of his Word and Spirit, to enable us to deal with our flesh – to put off the bad and put on the good. With the Lord doing his part and us doing our part, we can effectively deal with our enemies of satan and the flesh to overcome all things and walk in the will of God. We in the western world think of a table as a place to eat. Sometimes we clean up and dress up and go to a dinner. We have an “anointing” of fragrant cologne and we go feast on an abundance of good food and drink, with our cup running over in abundance of goodness.

The basic lesson in either illustration is this: Even in the presence of “enemies”, the Lord can be counted on to make provision for us to be sustained abundantly. We might be facing opposition in some way – from others, from our own weaknesses and faults, from supernatural adversity of satanic activity – regardless of the source, we are promised a feast in the Lord. It might not be a feast in our circumstances or in what we see, feel, think, or hear, but with our mind stayed on Him, we can have peace, joy, and overcoming power. And with that promise, we are further promised that “surely”, without fail, God’s goodness and mercy shall follow us all the days of our life as we dwell in His house, as we abide in Him. This is promised to be forever. What a deal! If I put the Lord first, trusting in Him as my Shepherd, he will take care of me here and now, and forever.

You can’t beat that! To have the Lord Himself caring for you! How could we refuse such an offer? As I dealt with an elderly man today who wanted to know the Lord, he asked how he could turn from sin and have Jesus? I said decide you want to give your whole life to him and do that, asking him to be the Lord of your life. He prayed and did that. He is starting to feast at the table.

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Waylon and Willy are my little 20 pound fur-ball friends that are apparently of a terrier type breed. I rescued them from an eight foot deep dry well they had fallen into as pups, and the owner insisted that I keep them. They’ve been my little friends and part of the family ever since. One day my brother Joe and I were standing behind his house, which was set in the woods, just yakking. Waylon and Willy were exploring just out of sight, down the little hill from where we were standing. Suddenly I heard them carrying on. Joe said, “Sounds like they jumped a rabbit.” I said, “No, I think that is a distress bark.” In another second there was even more carrying on, and with what I was hearing, they were definitely in some kind of trouble. I immediately started running into the woods down the hill toward the sound. In another couple of seconds, here comes Willy high-tailing at full speed out of the woods. In another second Waylon comes into view coming up the hill as fast as he could possibly run. Then in the next second I saw a fox right behind him. As I ran toward them at full speed, I began shouting and flailing my arms wildly to try to head off the inevitable. That fox was right on him ready to take him down. I remember the urgent anger that rose up in me. Without thinking of my own safety or well-being, I remember thinking, “I will tear that thing apart with my bare hands if I have to!” It just rose up in me. Good thing, I got the fox’s attention and he turned back while Waylon ran past me toward the house. Honestly, I think I would have tackled that thing to keep him off of Waylon.

You know, if we as a human will react that way toward a pet that is yelping out, don’t you know how God reacts toward his children who are “yelping out” to him. Jesus said a similar thing in Luke 11 where he was teaching on prayer. He said if a son asks for some bread of any of you that are a father, are you going to give him a rock? Or, if he asks for a fish, are you going to give him a venomous snake? Or, if he asks for an egg, are you going to give him a poisonous stinging scorpion? The answer is no, no, no. Then his point was that if you, being evil (natural), know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more shall your Heavenly Father give  the Holy Spirit, the power and ability of God, to those who ask him (vs. 9-13). Father God does not want us to be devoured by the enemy in any way. He made his power available to us by our yielding our all to the Holy Spirit. All who ask and yield in faith, receive.

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As a kid growing up in the country around Poyen Arkansas, I was familiar with the sport of “coon hunting”. My neighbor, Vernard Webb, took me coon hunting one night. Back then they used a carbide headlamp to shine up in the trees to locate the raccoon the dogs had treed. It was quite an adventure for me to go out into the darkness of the woods with just that little light bouncing around on the trees and vegetation. There was no path. You made your own path by finding the way of least resistance through the woods. Once you hear the dogs trailing and treeing, adrenalin kicks in to get there quickly and find out what they’ve got. At that point you just fight your way through whatever you encounter to get to where the dogs are. I remember fighting my way through all kinds of tangles of vines and low-growing brush. I remember crossing a creek with no hesitation or mind that now the water will be sloshing in my boots with pants legs wet. As we approach the dogs at the tree, Vernard, with the brightly shining carbide headlamp looks up in the tree revealing two eyeballs reflecting the bright light. It was an easy target. The 12 guage quickly put out the two little blinking lights with a bang, then a heavy thump on the ground. For a young guy who had never experienced such adventure it was an exhilarating time which I will never forget. Yes, it was a good time. But, two days later a case of poison ivy started developing on my body that I also will never forget. I did not know the vines and growth I fought my way through in the thrill of the moment was loaded with poison ivy. For me, that was not good. We got the coon, but the coon got me. Sometimes we get ourselves involved in a situation that is a great adventure and thrill for the moment. What we don’t bargain for are the consequences that come out of that “thrilling hunt”.

God’s Word gives us bright light, telling us sin will without fail find us out. It tells us the wages, the payment for sin, is death. If we would just understand that life is filled with poison ivy, and with the headlamp of the Word we can shine on our path and avoid the contact. We might enjoy the pleasures of sin for a season, but there will always be a price to pay in some way. The good news is that by turning from our way and going God’s way of knowledge, understanding, and guidance given to us in the person of Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit, we can avoid the pitfalls. If we have gotten ourselves into a case of the ivy, we can follow the Lord in faith and obedience to heal and restore. By following Him, we learn of great pleasures in Him with no ill consequences.  

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We have a 24’ x 24’ concrete slab behind our house that was once the floor of a carport. It now serves as an open patio with a basketball goal on one side and patio tables and chairs on the other. It is a place of year-round congregating as weather permits. Also parked on one side of the patio are four little bikes with training wheels. Great grandkids also enjoy this “speedway” throughout the year, the concrete surface providing a fine place to race and go round and round on their bikes. There will be a day the little bikes will no longer be used. Some kids use training wheels for a long time. Others skip the training wheel stage, and perhaps after a fall or two, go right into fully balanced riding without assistance. At some point the bikes will have no training wheels, and the kids will go on to bigger and better things, with the whole world of travel before them.

In our walk with the Lord, most of us go through a training wheel stage. We start out wobbly and depending on the guidance of others to keep us heading in the right direction. Then, as confidence and understanding grows, we launch out on our own in different areas. There might be a fall or two, but because we have the desire for God burning within us, we get up, brush ourselves off, bandage the scrapes and scratches, and keep pushing forward to master the challenge to be free to go places and do things in the Lord. We read in the Word of God how Jesus was anointed with the Holy Ghost and power and went about doing good healing all who were oppressed of the devil, for God was with him (Acts 10:38). Jesus had his “training wheels” for a time. Then, when that time was fulfilled, it was time to launch out and ride. And he did that, carrying the presence of God into the lives of the people for deliverance in every way. There is power available to all today. God has provided through his Word and Spirit for each person to roll on and go places and do things in Him. God’s destiny is for us to grow beyond the 24 x 24 concrete patio with our religious training wheels. Jesus promised to pour his Spirit out upon all flesh, baptizing us with the Spirit and fire of God. Jesus promised to immerse us with that same Spirit that raised him from the dead. He promised the Spirit of love, truth, and wisdom to guide us into all truth, supernaturally empowering us, setting us free, and setting all free who will hear and obey him. Each one of us must remove the training wheels and launch out, with balance and determination, to receive all God has for us. As we do that, we don’t know where the journey will take us, but we know in the Lord it will be good.  

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My wife’s grandson, Brandon Wilson, is in commercial flight training. On his first night flight training session, just as he lifted off the runway, a deer ran out of the darkness and the landing gear hit it going 70 miles per hour. The plane was immediately powered back to successfully land back on the runway. Damage was done to the landing gear of the plane, but it could be repaired so the plane could continue to fly. Years ago Brandon made the decision that he wanted to become a commercial airline pilot. His life was focused on that goal. When the reality of it began to be unfolded, he encountered this incident. He could have gotten “spooked” by the deer incident and decided to pursue some other career. But, he has a made up mind. That’s what he is going to be. He did not get side-tracked by the incident and any other adversity. He learns from it all to be a better pilot for it. It is all taken as part of the training.

So many times incidents happen in church that causes “offence”, and people will turn their back on the things of God. I know of an incident where there was a disagreement and a fist fight in a church meeting, causing a person to decide to never set foot in a church again. That’s like if after Brandon hit that deer, he said, “I’ll never get in an airplane again.” What that would show is that Brandon wasn’t really committed to flying. We can be religious, but not really committed to Jesus Christ as Lord. We can be born again but living after a natural point of view instead of living by the mind of the Holy Spirit. This results in being easily offended by incidents and opposition. Some people “quit serving God” because of the death of a loved one. If we have a made up mind to walk with God with a heart filled with the Holy Spirit, even when we don’t understand things, we still have our source of life and peace in the Lord. We will still walk with him. We might not understand things but we know that he does, and as we trust in him and live our life in his presence, we will come to the understanding we need to come to. We must understand that God is good, the devil is bad, life and people can be bad, and every person is responsible to obey the promptings and leadership of the Spirit each day in life. As we each do that, we live in victory even in the face of bad incidences, decisions, actions, and attitudes, and in the face of the devil’s devices. To successfully learn to “fly” in this life, we each must learn to submit all to the Lord seeking to learn from and trust him. He is God. We are not. We must make our mind up to walk with him no matter what.

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My siblings and I have had a good relationship over the years, but we never spent a lot of time just talking on a regular basis. Two are gone and now it is just me and my eldest brother living in another state. It occurred to me over a year ago that one day one of us will be gone, then the other. In the past, we have gone years at a time not communicating. There was no problem between us. It was just each being busy with life as it is. I determined to call him once a month and we were just going to talk. I will text ahead of time to see if it is a good time to talk. For the past year, that has been happening, and we both look forward to our monthly chat. There is no set day, but my determination was to do it in the first part of the month, knowing that if it was put off, a month could slip by and we not communicate. Through our monthly communication we have tapped in on a good thing that we were missing. Sometimes we have talked more than an hour, laughing, exchanging ideas, and reminiscing the pastjust having a good ol’ time – something that was unheard of in the past. And we have had a face time call or two when there was something of interest to be shown and seen. I would encourage anyone to do what you need to do to communicate with family in a positive way. One day the family is gone and we will have missed out on some good things that were available to each of us.

The question has been asked, “Why pray?” We communicate with God because words share ideas, desires, observations, burdens, and questions. With prayer to God we should always have a time when we shut up and just be quiet and listen to hear from God. He can communicate back to us directions, encouragement, reproof, instructions, and solutions. As we of the same family can communicate back and forth, so can sons and daughters of God communicate back and forth with their heavenly Father. If we are busy with life so that we don’t set aside the time and initiate the call, we can go days, months, years, and even a lifetime with no communication. When we fail to be in communication with God, we stand to lose a lot here and now and our eternal soul forever. One day it is all over and we have missed the goodness and benefits that could have been experienced. When this is realized, there is good reason for gnashing regret for not making the call with Father God on a regular basis. Why pray? To open our heart before our heavenly Father who cares for us. Then, hearing his Word to our heart and mind allows him to share his heart with us. Prayer from the heart is always a good thing.

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This Jesus, whom the world celebrates in this season, was a man supernaturally sent and birthed into the world to save us from our sins. He came by the hand of God the Father and he grew up under the hand of God the Spirit teaching and guiding him. The Word declares that he himself is God whose name Emmanuel means “God with us.” As God in the beginning of creation was God and moved and spoke by his Spirit, so did Jesus move and speak by his Spirit. The Word says he was anointed by the Spirit of God to preach the gospel and go about doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the devil. This Jesus came to bring order and freedom in our lives. He gave himself wholly to that mission. He took a terrible beating that left him unrecognizable, and then was hung on a cross to die. Some thought God was afflicting him, but he did this to take our sicknesses away, and to take our sins away, and to give us dominion and authority over the devil. He did all this as a gift to mankind. Did you catch that? He did all this as a gift to mankind. He gave himself and the work he accomplished as a gift to all mankind. He did this to help us with the things we face in life and to be with us when we face death. To receive the gift of him, of his person, by faith, is to receive his life and all that he accomplished for us. Our identification with him is by water baptism. Our power in him is the baptism of the Holy Spirit. Our walk in his victory in this life is by walking in fellowship with the Father through the Spirit of God. This is the way Jesus did it for us. This is the way we do it for our own lives and for others. This Jesus who died for us was raised from the dead and lives today in the heavenly realm. His Spirit is sent to be his presence on earth in our lives. Just as we receive the person of Jesus by faith, we receive the person and operation of the Spirit in our lives by faith. We hear the Word, receive and embrace it, and take action accordingly. It is the same pattern in creation and the same pattern in the life and ministry of Jesus. He moved and spoke by the Spirit. He did it together to accomplish the work of God in the earth. We trust God and we move and speak by the Spirit to accomplish the work of God on the earth. It is living by faith in the Son of God, Jesus Christ. He is God’s gift to all mankind to bring abundant life and liberty in every way. This wonderful gift is offered to you in love. It is extended to you. Will you receive Him?

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Recently a man came up to me after the prison ministry and asked for prayer. In some one-on-one counsel he told me of his apprehension of getting out soon and meeting his Mom. He is a young man around 30 years old who has been in prison for several years. His concern was that he had never known his Mom to be sober. For his whole life, they were either drunk or high together, or both.  Once he was in prison, he got sobered up and had been drawn to the Lord. He started going to prison church regularly and learning about the power of prayer. He started praying for his Mom. With that, his Mom got busted and is in drug court. She, too, has sobered up. Now, he is about to get out and meet her for the first time in his life with them both being sober. He is excited and just sort of scared for who he is going to meet. He expressed that he just does not know what it is going to be like or what to expect. He feels like he is going to meet his real Mother for the first time in his life. We did some praying together concerning the situation, and I encouraged him to be walking in the Spirit by trusting God in the whole thing, and keep the Lord central is his life committed totally to Him. And, we agreed that his Mom come into the things of God with her making a total commitment to Him, also.

I daresay that most of us have not dealt with such a situation in our personal lives. But whether this or some other type situation, there is a lesson that we all can take to heart – never give up hope. With our trust in God and calling upon his name, we can expect and prepare for change to occur. God did not just turn us loose and say “Make it the best you can.” He gave promise that if we call upon him and give ourselves to him, he will be faithful to help us and guide us into the way, the truth, and the abundant life. He is bigger than all situations. Even when it seems impossible, remember, with God, all things are possible. This young man and his Mom have the opportunity to start a whole new life. It is in his heart to help others come into the same new life in the Lord that he is experiencing. I am praying that he stand strong and give a clear witness to his Mom of his commitment to the Lord and the blessings he is experiencing in him, and that she can know him, too. This is what it takes. It takes the power of the Spirit of God in and upon our lives to overcome the patterns of destruction that get set up in our lives. We in ourselves fail, but with God all things are possible.

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