Revive us again

How do people define a revival? Is it a series of meetings with a speaker like Billy Graham and a host of people making a first-time commitment to Christ? In contrast to that idea, I’ve heard that no one can re-vive something that was not alive in the first place. That is, a mass event of personal salvation in many lives is a great thing, but in the history of revivals, the great changes that happen are because of renewal in the lives of God’s people, a restoration to that first love for Jesus Christ.

Again, past revivals began in the church, in the people who already know God. For whatever reasons, spiritual life has become dull and praise to God is lacking. Then, one person or a few begin to pray for renewal. The psalmist put it this way:

You forgave the iniquity of your people; you covered all their sin. Selah You withdrew all your wrath; you turned from your hot anger. Restore us again, O God of our salvation, and put away your indignation toward us! Will you be angry with us forever? Will you prolong your anger to all generations? Will you not revive us again, that your people may rejoice in you? Show us your steadfast love, O Lord, and grant us your salvation. (Psalm 85:2–7)

Tozer makes the same plea. He says, “We need a revival! We need a revival of consecration to death, a revival of happy abandonment to the will of God that will laugh at sacrifice and count it a privilege to bear the cross through the heat and burden of the day. We are too much influenced by the world and too little controlled by the Spirit. We of the deeper life persuasion are not immune to the temptations of ease and we are in grave danger of becoming a generation of pleasure lovers.”

I understand. We once visited a church where a prayer sheet was handed out. It was letter-size, covered both sides with prayer requests in fine print. Close to 100% of them were health issues. No requests for spiritual growth, or salvation for family and friends, or that God would be glorified. They were asking for the comfort of health. Not that wanting good health is necessarily wrong, but when that occupies the value system in God’s people, it usually indications they have strayed away from what is most important to God.

The prosperity gospel has been popular too. In our love of abundant life, how easily we slip into thinking that God wants us healthy, wealthy, and always happy. Deep in our hearts we know that if we are going to follow Jesus, we may not have everything that our world declares good. Jesus didn’t own anything. He was joyful, yet at one point agonized to the point of sweating blood. We know nothing of the suffering the Apostles or what many Christians endure for the sake of Christ in current times.

Tozer asks that God raises up people who will consult their pleasures less and the great need more. That great need is not ‘heaven on earth’ but the wonder of having eternal life right now, before we die, before we know the joy and total peace of eternity. This good news is seldom shared by a complacent church or one caught up in temporary needs. In the New Testament, the Gospel was spread the most when God’s people suffered the most.

If revival means suffering, no wonder comfort-loving people are not praying for it. If revival means admitting deadness, no wonder proud and self-sufficient people are not interested either.

^^^^^^^^^^^

Lord, I need to be careful about being critical of those in need of revival because three fingers point back at me. For a vibrant and normal Christian life, I need You. For the desire to tell others about the wonders of You and redemption, I need You. In earlier revivals, I’ve heard that when Christians were merely passing others in the street, Your Spirit was so evident and overwhelming that those others were immediately on their knees crying to You for mercy. Revival is costly — but so also was redemption that gave us new life in the first place. We have it; we are safely Your children, but we need the kind of re-do that conforms us to every part of Your will with great energy and confidence. Revive us again.

Necessity & Power of Self-Discipline

UFO is the acronym quilters give to an unfinished project. This year, I am entered in a UFO contest. I gave my list of unfinished objects to a chair person, and have determined to finish as many of them as I can. I know my goal and I know what I have to do (and not do) to get there. This requires determination and the sacrifice of other things. No sitting in front of the television this summer. No starting new things, only to leave them unfinished.

Goal setting is important. Paul used another metaphor to describe spiritual goal setting. He took the language of athletic sports familiar to the people of Corinth and told them what he was doing and why.

So I do not run aimlessly; I do not box as one beating the air. (1 Corinthians 9:26)

Paul had clearly defined goals. He knew that perseverance was needed to achieve them. He used words (later in this passage) to describe how he prepared for his race or fight, and expressed how he must force himself to maintain the strenuous and consistent effort needed for success. The name of this game is self-discipline, but I don’t see much of that in the people around me.

My devotional writer says that a hundred years ago President Theodore Roosevelt predicted that “prosperity at any price, peace at any price, safety first instead of duty first, the love of soft living, and the get-rich theory of life would eventually destroy America.”

Was he right? Both our nation (Canada) and the one south of us have certainly gone in the direction Roosevelt describes. For instance, I sometimes read the business section of the newspaper and wonder how I can better manage my money, but I know that even the best efforts of one person cannot turn around an economy.

This is only one area that is falling apart. What about the spiritual state of the nation? It does not look good. When I am praying, I sometimes feel despair. My own spiritual life is a challenge, and even if it were not, could one person change the way a nation is going?

God reminds me that from all indications, every spiritual revival that I know of started with one person. History shows that each time of renewal, both here and abroad, began with someone on their knees, someone with a focused dedication to turn from sin and be consistent to discipline their own life. In each case, one person found that through the self-discipline given to them by the Holy Spirit, they had a renewed power in prayer. To their discipline, God added a heartfelt love for the people around them. Then that one person prayed fervently and consistently, God heard and answered, and thousands of lives were changed.

I’m sad because not only the unsaved people of the world around me have given in to “prosperity at any price, peace at any price, safety first instead of duty first, the love of soft living, and the get-rich theory of life.” Many Christians have fallen into a worldly lifestyle that is characterized by lack of self-discipline in many areas of life too. Paul wrote, “For bodily exercise profits a little, but godliness is profitable for all things, having promise of the life that now is and of that which is to come” (1 Timothy 4:8). We have become far too soft in the exercise of godliness.

A pastor once said concerning discipline, “Begin small, clean off your desk” yet I am finding that isn’t as helpful as the discipline of keeping short accounts with God. Confessing sin immediately rather than making excuses or rationalizing it goes much farther in helping me keep a godly focus. When I know the will of God and have His resources to reach His clearly defined goals, then the discipline to do it is also His gift to me. My UFOs are only an example. I’m not talking about making quilts, but that God-given desire to make a difference.

Making a Difference

A sandy beach was covered with starfish that had washed ashore with the tide and were stranded. A young man walked along the shore, picking starfish up at random and tossing them back into the ocean. Someone approached him and laughed. “What good is that?” he said. “There are so many of them. What you are doing makes no difference at all.”

The young man picked up another starfish and threw it out to sea, saying, “It makes a difference to this one.”

This familiar story came to mind when I read a few verses from Isaiah 26 this morning. It says:

Yes, in the way of Your judgments, O Lord, we have waited for You; the desire of our soul is for Your name and for the remembrance of You. With my soul I have desired You in the night, yes, by my spirit within me I will seek You early; for when Your judgments are in the earth, the inhabitants of the world will learn righteousness.

The author describes how the people of God long for God, and how he also desires God and seeks Him. I noticed how the pronouns shifted from “we” to “me” in two sentences. Then in the next sentence he shifts to the people of the world and they become the benefactors of his desire for God.

Sometimes I think that my life doesn’t matter very much. There is more need in the world, even in my small part of the world than I can do anything about, and the little that I am able to do often seems insignificant. Yet the prophet Isaiah knew that if the people of God held up and maintained the judgements of God, the people of the world would learn righteousness.

Sometimes I long for a revival, a giant-sized moving of God’s Spirit whereby all of humanity is affected. In the history of revivals, some large and world-changing, individual beginnings are not always known. What is known is that some of them did begin with one person praying, one person desiring renewal, one person on their face before God saying, “Lord, change me.”

Isaiah gives the pattern. Wait for God, don’t move ahead of Him. Desire God and seek Him early; desire Him to the point that when I wake up at night all I think about is the will of God. Uphold truth. Uphold the gospel and the judgments of God.

No person can make a revival happen; this belongs to God alone. Yet these verses tell me what my role is, and I must do what I can with the small tasks God gives me. Even if what I do has no effect on the multitudes washed up by the tide of sin and their spiritual lostness, it will make a difference in my life, and maybe to one or two others.