Revival

Revival

By Pastor Keith

You hear people say today, “We need revival in the church”, but do they really know what is required of them.  Revival is not like a bowl of instant oatmeal; empty the packet into the bowl, pour a cup of boiling water into the bowl, stir and voila you have a bowl of oatmeal ready to eat. 

You ask people, “What are you doing to bring revival to your church?” The answers are always the same and spoken with an indignant tone; “Well I go to church on Sunday Morning” or “I give some money in the offering” or “I sing in the choir” and the list goes on. But what are they doing the other 166 hours of the week?

Their day starts in a fury.  Get up and get ready for work, get the kids off to school, work 8 hours a day and take the kids to their sporting practice or events.  Don’t forget ballet, music, pageantry, then it is off to our second job, supper whenever we can get it (families no longer eat together), and then we come home and as we fall across the bed we thank God for the day, we ask Him to keep us safe and help us get a good night sleep.  On the night we don’t have all of this going on we are watching our favorite show on TV or off of the DVR.  We come in on Sunday Morning 15, 20 or even 30 minutes late and then sleep through  half of the sermon and the other half we are on our smart phone perusing the Internet, Facebook, checking our e-mails or texting our friends.  As we go out the door we tell the pastor great sermon and hope he didn’t see us sleeping or looking at our smart phone.

Our prayer life consists of,

“God is good, God is great,

Now we thank him for our food . . .”

or

“Now I lay me down to sleep

I pray the lord my soul to keep

If I should die before I wake . . . “

Our Bible reading is even worse.  We make excuses for why we don’t read; it’s boring, I fall asleep, the names are hard to pronounce and so on.  We state that the preacher reads the Bible on Sunday morning and that is all we need, we don’t ever take a Bible to church. 

We don’t fast because we get headaches or it causes some other problem.

And we wonder why we don’t have REVIVAL!

Revival Requires More From Us Than Most People Want To Give.

Revival requires us to stop filling our mind with things that are not of God.  Paul writes, “Finally, brethren, whatever things are true, whatever things are noble, whatever things are just, whatever things are pure, whatever things are lovely, whatever things are of good report, if there is any virtue and if there is anything praiseworthy--meditate on these things.”  Philippians 4:8 (NKJV). 

This means the comedy sitcoms that we watch need to be turned off because they promote; GBLT, adultery, fornication, foul language, ETC and all while making you laugh.  The drama shows are just as bad and need to be turned off. Besides the thing above they promote; Satan worship, witch craft, murdering, and much more.  We listen to secular music that talks of divorce, premarital sex, living together, hate, anger, revenge, plus all of the above and it gets worse. I don’t think Paul had this in mind when he wrote Philippians 4:8.

The Church will need to return to its roots before it sees revival. 

Prayer

First we need to revive Prayer in the church.  It has to be more than the childish prayers we learned when we were little.  It will take praying from the heart and in the spirit.  This is not going to be a 1 to 5 minute prayer some are a custom to, it will be praying and crying out, till we break through to God.  It will take us finding a quite spot to be alone with God with no distractions that means on cell phone, computers, laptops, tablets, ETC. Once we are there we have one goal touching Jesus like the woman with the issue of blood, Matthew 9:18-22.

The children are going to have to learn the importance and art of praying first also, then if there is time left over they can play sports, music, ETC.  GOD MUST COMES FIRST!!  Family prayer time and devotions will keep the family together.  There is too much divorce, marital problems and family issues in the church and this will stop or almost stop when families begin to prayer together.  Marriage and family life take work and lots of prayer to keep it together and in harmony.

Does the church of today feel that a 5 minutes prayer or the benediction at church is sufficient enough when in years gone by the church would pray for hours just to see a soul saved or a healing?  Instead of church people being 10, 20 or 30 minutes late for service, they would arrive 10, 20, 30 or 60 minutes early to prayer and prepare for the service.  They didn’t show up to talk, chew the fat, gossip, see their friends and family or catch up the latest news; they came to get hold of God for that service, for souls and for a great out pouring of the spirit.  The praying would be so intent, sometimes the service would start late because the people were caught up praying for an out pouring from God on the service.  Miracles, healing, deliverance and salvation would happen on a regular basis because of the prayer of the saints both at church and at home.

These same saints had active prayer lives at home not just at the church.  They were ready for anything that God would asked of them, “Spiritual Minutemen.”  They knew the voice of God which many church goers today would have no idea what they were talking about.  The only thing that was important to them was pleasing God and doing what he asked of them.  But prayer was only part of the equation.

In the Second part of Revival we will look at the importance and need for the Word of God.  The Word of God was not just another book in the library it was the only book in the library and was respected and reverenced even when it was read.

God Bless

Pastor Keith

September 22, 2015