Christians must take time for spiritual cleansing, Anne Graham Lotz told the crowd present at the Tuesday evening session of the State Evangelism Conference. “Sometimes when we’re in ministry, we’re so busy, busy, busy we forget ourselves to come to the cross.”
Lotz, daughter of Evangelist Billy Graham and founder of AnGeL Ministries, explained that in Isaiah 6, the prophet’s wake-up call was the death of King Uzziah. When that tragedy struck, Isaiah looked up and saw the pre-incarnate Jesus seated on the throne, where He had been all along.
“When something unwanted or unplanned … causes you to doubt that Jesus is on the throne, look up and get a fresh vision of the position of Jesus and the power of Jesus,” Lotz said.
Isaiah also got a fresh vision of Christ’s purity, she explained.
“And once his eyes were opened to the holiness of Christ, his eyes were also opened to the helplessness of his own condition.”
The prophet recognized that he was ruined — that he made a living by his lips and that his lips were unclean, Lotz said.
“He realized he was not worthy to be in ministry … that he was no better than the people he was preaching to,” she said.
After being cleansed by having the searing-hot coal touched to his lips, Isaiah got a fresh vision for his mission, Lotz said, inviting all those in attendance to stand and confess to God any sin He revealed in their life. “The bottom-line problem is sin, and the bottomline solution is a Savior,” she told the crowd.
Praying for cleansing was an unintended theme of the conference, said Sammy Gilbreath, director of evangelism for the Alabama Baptist State Board of Missions.
“Speaker after speaker during the conference came with a common thread of prayer and a fresh anointing,” he said. “The most moving thing about the conference was when people came and prayed — men of God weeping aloud and their brothers and sisters in Christ huddled around them in prayer all over the building.”
Noting that the conference is designed to encourage all Alabama Baptists, Gilbreath said, “Several ladies approached me in tears after Anne Graham Lotz spoke and said, ‘Thank you for having something specifically for us — we need to reach our world, too.’”
Women attending the conference also had opportunity to hear Lotz during the Ministers’ Wives Luncheon, hosted by Alabama Woman’s Missionary Union on Feb. 24.
“In ministry, you somehow begin to take more and more of the burden on yourself,” Lotz told the crowd of about 200. “I want to remind you of who the Holy Spirit is in your life.”
Speaking from John 16:5–16, she said the Holy Spirit is like “Jesus without skin” — that He loves people just as God the Father and Jesus do.
He also gives us the gift of His presence, she said.
“Acts 1:8 says you will receive power when He comes upon you, and He hasn’t lost His power. You and I have the power of God in us.”
That power, however, can be held back like water by a dam when we have sin undealt with in our lives, Lotz told those at the luncheon.
“God’s people are so bottled up with sin that He’s hindered from what He wants to do,” she said. “We need to bring it back to the cross … repent of our sin … and be holy like Jesus is holy.
“What the Church needs more than anything is a fresh vision of the holiness of our God,” Lotz said.
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