We just had 4 days of revival meetings, but the question still lingers, "when will revival begin?". I wish I had an answer.
This past Sunday evening was the lowest point in my ministry. Not just the lowest point at New Winchester, but the lowest point ever. I never felt that bad. Months of preparation was behind, promotions were done, hours of prayers were just finished, expectations were high. We had one of the greatest speakers we have ever had. We had great music. The spirit was great. But everybody stayed home. We worshipped other gods. And as the Book of Judges says, "Everybody did that which was right in his own eye."
What would you do to truly have Holy Ghost revival? What would you do to have this place full every meeting, not just Sunday morning, but Sunday evening, and Wednesday Bible Study? What would you do? That is a good question.
I have labored here in New Winchester for 3 years. I have traveled thousands of miles over the country side visiting members, calling on people, visiting the sick, visiting the nursing homes, visiting the hospitals. I have prayed and studied. I have labored over newsletters and bulletins. I have taught Sunday school classes. I have had Bible Studies. I have helped with the youth. I have painted and cleaned and repaired and installed. I have loved you and prayed for you and held some of you, when you could not stand on your own.
I have shared Jesus with multitudes, and some have been led to the Lord. I have baptized your children and your adults. I have preached the Word, taught the Word, studied the Word.
The conclusion I have come to is that I do not have enough faith. It is the only conclusion I can come to. As God's chosen, I am suppose to be God's undershepherd for this congregation. I can't even lead the spiritual leaders of this church. And if I cannot lead the leaders, then what chance do we have. In summary, I have failed you. I have failed God.
This was the straw that broke the camel's back. If I had enough faith I could say to this mountain, move and it would move. The mountain didn't move. The people still worship their idols. During the time of Judges God sent in the enemy to be the oppressor. One famous person has said, "I have met the enemy and it is us".
God said to his church at Laodicea: "And unto the angel of the church of the Laodiceans write; These things saith the Amen, the FAITHFUL and true witness, the beginning of the creation of God; {15} I know thy works, that thou art NEITHER COLD nor HOT: I would thou wert cold or hot. {16} So then because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spue thee out of my mouth. {17} Because thou sayest, I am rich, and increased with goods, and have need of nothing;" (Lord, I'm okay, I've got my life in line, You and me Lord, we're just like this [2 fingers together]) "and knowest not that thou art wretched, and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked:" (Not me Lord. I have not sin. You must have me mixed up with someone else)
Rom 3:4
"God forbid: yea, let God be true, but every man a liar; as it is written, That thou mightest be justified in thy sayings, and mightest overcome when thou art judged."
John 8:44
"Ye are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father ye will do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and abode not in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own: for he is a liar, and the father of it."
Not me Lord. No not me. But God said;
{18} I counsel thee to buy of me gold tried in the fire, that thou mayest be rich; and white raiment, that thou mayest be clothed, and that the shame of thy nakedness do not appear; and anoint thine eyes with eyesalve, that thou mayest see. {19} As many as I love, I rebuke and chasten: be zealous therefore, and repent. {20} Behold, I stand at the door, and knock: if any man hear my voice, and open the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with me. (He says, My son, I want to come to you, that you might have revival, that you might be revived. And on being revived, that you might overcome the world, and all its idols)
{21} To him that overcometh will I grant to sit with me in my throne, even as I also overcame, and am set down with my Father in his throne. {22} He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith unto the churches. (Rev 3:14-22)
My friend the Lord is speaking. He is saying that we do not have faith, and that we are in sin. And because we are living in sin, we are not overcoming. That's you, that's me.
Rom 14:23
"And he that doubteth is damned if he eat, because he eateth not of faith: for whatsoever is not of faith is sin."
Are you walking in faith. Are you living a faith filled life. God says if you are not walking in faith, you are walking in sin. The devil has us where he wants us. Full of sin and ineffective in this world. We have not overcome evil, evil has overcome us.
Rom 12:21
"Be not overcome of evil, but overcome evil with good."
John 16:33
"These things I have spoken unto you, that in me ye might have peace. In the world ye shall have tribulation: but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world."
God never intended for us to be overcome by evil. He intended for us to subdue and conquer the world and everything in it.
Gen 1:28
"And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth."
How long has it been since you led someone to Christ? How long? Why? Peter tells us in 2 Pet 2:19, "While they promise them liberty, they themselves are the servants of corruption: for of whom a man is overcome, of the same is he brought in bondage."
When is revival coming. When we get right with God. When we begin walking in faith. We are not walking in faith. I don't mean to sound cruel, but we are not walking in faith. We have not walked in faith since I have been here. Everything we have done, we have done it when we could see the end. We knew we had the money, we knew we could do it. We could pay the bill. We could finish it. That, my friends is not faith. Faith is beginning a work, a work that we cannot finish, a work that God has called us to and it is only with His help that we can finish it.
Faith is walking down a path that you cannot see the stepping stones. Faith is being Christlike. Not to walk in faith is to sin. And I have been sinning, for I have not walked in faith. I have worried about finances, and worry is the lack of faith. I have worried about your spiritual condition, your lack of faith, your unrepented sin, your lack of faithfulness. That, my friends is sin. Not being Christlike.
Most Christians only engage in Spiritual Warfare with the hope of either relieving a present destress or attaining a "normal" existence. However, the purpose of all aspects of spirituality, warfare included, is to bring us into the image of Christ.
NOTHING, not worship nor warfare, neither love nor deliverance, is truly attainable if we miss the sigular objective of our FAITH, Christlikeness.
Let us recall that the Lord delivered the ancient Hebrews OUT of Egypt so He could bring them INTO the Promised Land. Likewise, we are delivered OUT of sin, not that we might live for ourselves, but that we might come INTO Christlikeness.
Christ walked in faith, doing His Father's will. Walked in faith. And Romans 14 says that if you are not walking in faith, you are walking in sin. That is the reason our Lord never sinned, He walked in faith.
I remember some years ago a black comic by the name of Flip Wilson. One of his characters was Gerodine. And one of her favorite expressions was, "the devil made me do it". That's not true. The devil never made you do anything you didn't want to do. He may have planted the seed, but you wanted to do it.
We must realize that it is not Satan who defeats us; it is our OPENNESS to him. Satan is tolerated for one purpose: the warfare between the devil and God's saints thrusts us into Christlikeness, where the nature of Christ becomes our only place of rest and security.
God uses the devil to drive us to Christ. The Father is more concerned with the coming forth of His Son in our lives than He is in defeating Satan. He wants us to be like Christ, walking in faith.
Leonard Ravenhill says in his book "Why Revival Tarries", that revival tarries "because we lack urgency in prayer." A famed preacher entered a conference some time ago with these words, "I have come to this conference with a great burden for prayer on my heart. Will those who will share this with me, please raise their hands; and let none of us be hypocrites." There was a good response. But later in the week when a half night of prayer was called, the big preacher went to bed. Not much of a hypocrite! Integrity has passed away! All is superficial! The BIGGEST SINGLE FACTOR contributing to delayed Holy Ghost revival is this omission of soul travail. We are substituting propaganda for propagation. HOW INSANE! The New Testament adds a valuable postscript concerning Elijah when James 5:17 says "he prayed"
Ours is the hour for men and women of faith. In the OT the 3 Hebrew children had a defiant faith. They cried, "Our God...is ABLE to deliver us from the burning fiery furnace." Of God's ABILITY they had no doubt, thought of His PLAN they were not quite sure. As a matter of fact God did not choose to deliver them FROM the furnace but IN it. Their faith, however, had gone beyond getting into the fire.
They said, "Our God...is able to deliver us from the burning fiery furnace, BUT IF NOT, be it known unto thee, O king, that we will not...serve thy gods nor worship the golden image." Their faith believed when it could not see. In the NT days, iron gates yielded to an angel's touch when prayer was made without ceasing unto God for Peter.
Faith honors God. God honors faith and goes wherever faith puts Him. Faith, Biblical faith, can do all that God can do. We are told a story of a man who came asking for a light bulb. His request was granted. But days later, the man returned, downcast, for the bulb was useless, he said. The other man went to the man's room to investigate why this almost new bulb would not light. The answer was not hard to find. The innocent man had taken the bulb and had tied it with a piece of string to the ceiling in the room. He had no electric current; therefore his bulb had no contact with the power supply.
The light bulb for us Christians is prayer, and God has the power. But it is faith that makes the connection. Our prayers are powerless if we have not faith. Faith makes it happen.
When we sin, and its a terrible thing, however to God there are no sizes to sins, there IS sin. Sin IS. But we have seen it with our earthly eyes as big and we can see no way God could ever forgive us of such a big sin. The fact is, God has already forgiven you of the sin, it is only you, through faith, repentance and prayer that must appropriate it. Every answer to every prayer is there, answered, in God. But we must have faith. We must believe that our prayers will be answer. He has already answered the prayer, now He wants to put it into action.
Andrew Bonar puts it this way, "O brother, pray; in spite of Satan, pray; spend hours in prayer; rather neglect friends than not pray; rather fast, and lose breakfast, dinner, tea, and supper - and sleep too - than not pray. And we must not talk about prayer, we must pray in right earnest. The Lord is near."
Revival is imperative, for the gates of hell have opened on this degenerate generation. We need (and we say that we want) revival. Yet, we wish revival would come to us as it came in the Hebrides," said a pastor recently. But revival didn't come to the Hebrides by wishing for it. It didn't come from denominational headquarters. It didn't come from Ron Meyer. It didn't come from the Cinn. Reds. It didn't come because somebody simply asked for it. It comes becomes God's saints, the church of Jesus Christ, PRAYED IN FAITH for it.
The Church of our day should be pregnant with passionate propagation, whereas she is often pleading with pale propaganda.
The preacher and church, too busy to pray, are busier than the Lord would have them be. If we will give God time, He will give us timeless souls. The church has advisers by the carload. But where are her agonizers? Where were the agonizers for revival on the evening and morning before the revival. Tell me how serious we are when we could not find 12 persons to pray for revival. I'm too tired. I'm too busy. I'm too whatever to pray. Than we are busier than God would have us be.
Friends, let us put away all trifling. Let us forget denominational issues. Let us "give ourselves continually to prayer and the ministry of the Word." "for faith cometh by hearing and hearing by the Word of God".
I have failed you so far, but no further. I will live by faith, I will pray in faith, I will WALK IN FAITH. My brothers and sisters and some that I would like to call brothers and sisters, those of you who have not yet heard the voice of the Lord, I will pray for you, night and day. In earnest I will give mayself to you in prayer. I will no longer worry because I know that you are living in sin and will not repent. I will pray in faith for your repentance. So if you hear the Lord knocking at your door and you are looking for someone to blame, blame me, cause I will be praying for you.
It took a HEARTBROKEN, MOURNING Moses to cry, "Oh, this people have sinned a great sin...Yet now, if thou wilt forgive their sin--; and if not; blot me, I pray thee, out of thy book which thou hast written"!
It took a BURDENED, PAIN-GRIPPED Paul to say, "I have great heaviness and continual sorrow in my heart. For I could wish that myself were accursed from Christ for my prethren, my kinsmen according to the flesh"
If John Knox had prayed, "Give me success!" we would never have heard of him; but he prayed a self- purged prayer -- "Give me Scotland, or I die!" --and his prayer scored the pages of history. If David Livingstone had prayed that he might split Africa wide open, as proof of his indomitable spirit and skill with the sextant, his prayer would have died with the wind of the forest; but he prayed, "Lord, when will the wound of this world's sin be healed?" Livingstone lived in prayer, and literally died upon his knees in prayer.
For this sin-hungry age we need a PRAYER-hungry Church. We need to explore again the "exceeding great and precious promises of God." In "that great day," the fire of judgment is going to test the SORT, not the SIZE of the work we have done. That which is born in prayer will survive the test thru faith. Prayer does business with God and thru our faith God answers. Prayer and faith creates hunger for souls; hunger for souls creates prayer. The understanding sould prays; the praying soul gets understanding. To the soul who prays in faith, the Lord gives him strength. Oh that we were men of like prayer as Elijah--a man subject to like passions as we are! Lord, let us pray.
And when you pray in faith, in Christ Jesus, and He in you, you will have victory over Satan. "These shall make war with the Lamb, and the Lamb shall overcome them: for he is Lord of lords, and King of kings: and they that are with him are called, and chosen, and faithful." (Rev 17:14)
1 John 2:14
"... because ye are strong, and the word of God abideth in you, and ye have overcome the wicked one."
1 John 4:4
"Ye are of God, little children, and have overcome them: because greater is he that is in you, than he that is in the world."
We look forward to serving our Lord in faith and prayer. I am no longer serving as a cheer leader. I will serve the Lord as His called servent, which is my assignment, in faith and prayer. Not doubting, but believing. I will not be decouraged because you chose not to show up on Sunday evening as you should. Or that you are not here on Wednesday as you should. But, I will pray that God will quicken your spirit, and that you will give up the IDOLS of this world for the RICHES of His world.
When will revival begin, when we walk in faith, not sin.
1 John 1:10
"If we say that we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us."
1 John 2:4
"He that saith, I know him, and keepeth not his commandments, is a liar, and the truth is not in him."
1 John 4:20
"If a man say, I love God, and hateth his brother, he is a liar: for he that loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, how can he love God whom he hath not seen?"
