Falwell: God uses dry brooks to take us higher

By Jerry Pierce
February 11, 2007
No Comments

EULESS?If Jerry Falwell has an early favorite in the 2008 presidential race, he left no clues behind during a Feb. 5 sermon at the Empower Evangelism Conference. Instead, the veteran pastor and icon of cultural conservatism delivered a sermon aimed at weary pastors and ministry leaders that was nearly void of any mention of politics.

Falwell is perhaps best known for helping mobilize millions of voters to embrace conservative, right-to-life political candidates in the late 1970s and early 1980s after founding The Moral Majority.

But on this night the founding pastor of Thomas Road Baptist Church in Lynchburg, Va., and chancellor of Liberty University was strictly pastoral.

He reminded those attending the conference at the First Baptist Church of Euless that despite the dried-up brook that the prophet Elijah experienced at Cherith, God’s purpose always is to take his children to a higher level of usefulness.

He began his sermon in Jeremiah 29:11, which says: “‘For I know the plans I have for you’?[this is] the Lord’s declaration?’plans for [your] welfare, not for disaster, to give you a future and a hope.'”

Noting the active ministry of the man who preached before him at the conference, longtime Southwestern Seminary professor Roy Fish, who in retirement age is serving as interim president of the North American Mission Board, Falwell said: “There is nothing wrong with physically stepping aside from physical demands. Industry requires that.

“But there is not a word in the Bible about retiring from the Lord’s work ? Roy Fish, he’s busier now than he’s ever been.”

Falwell continued: “I want to chat with you about moving to a higher level. Some of you have become weary in well doing. I know you haven’t quit ? but there is not the fire in your belly like there used to be.”

Falwell shared how for years he has risen each morning at 5:45 a.m. and tackled the day, beginning in his early ministry when he planted Thomas Road in 1956 by spending an hour each morning meeting with God. He knocked on doors all over Lynchburg, offering the gospel and prayer for anyone who would listen, he recalled.

“I had the whole city laid out in a radius of 10 blocks, Jerusalem, 20 blocks, Judea, 30 blocks, Samaria, and out into the counties?the uttermost part of the Earth.”

Knocking on 600 doors a week, “You know what happened? We went from 35 to 864 in one year,” he said.

The church now averages more than 11,000 people in weekly worship, where Falwell serves alongside his son Jonathan, who is his executive pastor and who filled the pulpit for Falwell during an extended illness two years ago, he said.

During the first three months after moving into a new, 6,000-seat auditorium, the church saw more than 1,000 people come to Christ, Falwell said.

“And this ol’ boy’s first-love fires start burning again,” he said.

“Where are you? Really, has there ever been a time in your ministry when your zeal was higher than it is right now? Has there ever been a time when your zeal level is higher than right now? Has there eve