Recipe for Revival

Recipe For Revival

Sunbury God’s Missionary Church 2020

Mar 9, 2022

Sunbury gmc 2/25/2024

James 5:16 Confess your faults one to another, and pray one for another, that ye may be healed. The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much. [1]

Revival is coming up next month. Revival is a time that we set apart to revive the church and bring new people into the church family and the family of God. While we schedule revival services we cannont schedule revival itself. If we are to have revival that coincides with our scheduled services we must not approach this time carelessly. It is no mere happen stance when revival comes. It takes preparation and purpose. Ultimately it is God who brings revival, there is no formula than we can implement by which we can bring revival. Yet I think it is important to take a look at what scripture and history tell us about our part in preparation to revival. If you take the time to look back through the great revivals of history you will find one constant, one thing that is a part of every single move of God is prayer. Its so easy for us to settle into a routine of “revival” without ever experiencing a true move of God, and slowly getting to the place where we are surprised when God comes. We call evangelist a few time a year, thankful for the change of speaker. The faithful gather each night and listen, then go home. The evangelist leaves, and nothing has changed. This is not a revival. This is not worth the expenditure in either time or money. True revival is marked by the power of God, sinners coming to repentance, Christians being sanctified, saints growing more like Christ, and each one who is obedient finding new heights and depths in their love and relationship with Christ. True revival is not hearing a different voice in pulpit for a week or so, but in a new sense, a new consciousness of the voice within, and of obedience to that voice.

I. The need for revival

Now I don’t think I will get any argument on my first point. We today have a great need for revival. Although I tend toward pessimism I am not one who stands before you and says that time are harder now than they have ever been. We have it pretty good. We still have great religious freedoms, we still have a semblance of decency within and often without the church. The time of Noah was a time far worse than what we experience now. Every imagination of their heart was on evil continually. The world of the early church makes ours look good The Roman empire would soon swallow much of the world, and they worshiped the emperor and truly lived in a time of far worse morality than we do today. The middle ages were marked with a Christianity of money and power. True devotion to God was rare, and frowned upon. The church liked its money, and willingly deceived the masses that they might have more of it with the practice of selling forgiveness for sins for money. So I do not believe that things are that bad today. I believe we still live in great country filled with great opportunity for spiritual growth and most importantly God is still on the Throne!

a) the wickedness outside the church

However, we obviously live in a time that needs great revival. Many people of former generation are heard to say that they are thankful that they were born in a different time. They tell us how sorry for us they are, and that they are glad that they will die before it gets too much worse. I have heard these sentiments enough to be sick of them. If you are of that mindset, I don’t want your pity, I want your prayers, for even in the wickedness of the day, a day in which the gods of money, of power, of fame reign in the lives of people. A day in which the name of the Lord is disregarded and taken in vain without consideration, a day in which the Lord’s day is just like any other, a day in which the god of sports is worshiped instead of the God of scripture, a day in which parents are dishonored far more than they are honored, a day of locked houses and cars, a day in which adultery is almost encouraged if that is what makes you happy. A day of lying and stealing, and all kinds of immorality. Yes we do live in a broken and fallen world that is running fast from God. Yes, maybe it is worse today than it was fifty years ago, yes revival is desperately needed but I don’t want your pity, I don’t want your sympathy, I want your prayers.

b) The apathy within it

Not only do we face great wickedness in the world, we face great apathy within the church. The mainline churches no longer teach the truth, the power of God has left them. The good news of salvation from sin and a victorious life through the power of the Spirit of God is not welcome in most pulpits. But this apathy, this uncaring attitude, the philosophy of survive till I die and leave this broken place has seeped into our churches as well. Can we accept being a lukewarm church? God cannot. Revelation 3:16 says So then because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spue thee out of my mouth.[2] the apathy within the church is more dangerous than the wickedness outside of it. The cold fingers of apathy touch fervent hearts and slowly cool their heat. It makes sin less offensive, evil more palatable, church more of a form, prayer an afterthought, and holiness a nice idea, but don’t get too carried away. If the church is on fire for God then it cannot be stopped by wickedness in the world, but a cool church will slowly die, and assimilate into the world. - Leonard Ravenhill said “As long as we are content to live without revival, we will.”

II. The possibility for revival

Yet revival is still possible. Yes the world is wicked, yes the church is lukewarm, but the time is ripe for revival. If you look again at the revivals of history, they often came in similar times. Time of intense apathy. The time is right, and God is willing. Revival will come. Charles Finney has said, “When sinners are careless and stupid, and sinking into hell unconcerned, it is time the church should bestir themselves. It is as much the duty of the church to awake, as it is for the firemen to awake when a fire breaks out in the night in a great city.” Is it not the time to awake and do something for this world? now I want to focus our thoughts a little more onto our upcoming revival. Yes I do believe, hope for, and pray for a third great awakening of this country, but it must begin in our hearts. Revival is possible, because God is powerful.

III. The recipe for revival

How can we see this revival? Tonight I want to talk about the recipe for revival. What ingredients are necessary for revival? We have a scheduled revival coming up very soon, so what can we do to make this revival a success? One thing is for certain, if we do not prepare, we will not have revival. What are the ingredients, the preparations that we can do now, what is the recipe for Revival?

a) Prayer

I believe the recipe for revival begins with prayer. The text verse for tonight tells us that the effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much. Effectual fervent prayer is the need of the hour. We cannot have revival without it. A. T. Peirson says, “There has never been a spiritual awakening in any country or locality that did not begin in united prayer.” There was a great evangelist was known to have a man go before and pray. The week before he would arrive at a place, a man would arrive to begin prayer. He would stay in the room that the evangelist would occupy, and he spend his time on his face before God. This lead to great outpourings of God's presence. The Welsh revival is one of the great revivals of history. Over 100,000 people in Wales were converted and the revival spread throughout England and Millions of lives were changed. It eventually spread around the world and really was a foundational part of revival here in this country. This revival, like all others was preceded by prayer.

For 11 months in the year 1904 a young man named Evan Roberts prayed from 1 – 5 am. Eventually he felt compelled to speak to the people of his church. When he asked for a service in which to do so, the pastor refused. He did however let him speak after a service. At the end of a service the pastor announced that Evan would be speaking and those who wanted to hear him could stay. Almost everyone left, finally with a tiny crowd made up mostly of his peers, young people like himself, Evan began to speak to the fifteen or so willing to listen. “He shared with those who stayed (how God was moving elsewhere) and what had happened to him. Prophesying that Revival would break out in two weeks, he gave them keys for receiving the Holy Spirit:-

(1) Confess all known sin to God, receiving forgiveness through Jesus Christ.

(2) Remove anything from your life that you

are in doubt or feel unsure about.

(3) Be totally yielded and obedient to the

Holy Spirit.

(4) Publicly confess the Lord Jesus Christ.

Slowly and quietly, Evan spoke of the deep things of God and Christ, the hours passing quite unobserved, while tears coursed uninterruptedly over the cheeks of his listeners.”

At this point he said, we could begin to be used for revival. Not before. We all desire revival do we not? We all pray for revival, I hope, but are we ready to be part of the revival? We have an idea in prayer not to pray for ourselves, but for others, and this is good, but perhaps we ignore beam in our own eye, to pray for the mote in anothers.

b) righteousness

And this leads me to the second ingredient in revival. The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much. God has no obligation to answer our prayers if we are not living righteously. Samuel told Saul in the Old Testament, that obedience is better than sacrifice. A. W. Tozer said, “ Have you noticed how much praying for revival has been going on of late - and how little revival has resulted? I believe the problem is that we have been trying to substitute praying for obeying, and it simply will not work.” I’m afraid we haven't been praying enough either, but prayer can never be the substitute for obedience. It has been said “Let us return to the basic things of the Word of God and prayer and soul winning and revival. Let us pray, "O God, send a revival. Let it begin in me." We cannot expect revival unless we expect it to begin in us. We must each pray first “Search me O God, before we can pray for others. If we each willingly submit to all God has for us, revival will surely follow. If we first obey God, then our prays will be the prays of a righteous man, and they will avail much. Charles Finney also stated “A revival is nothing else than a new beginning of obedience to God.”

Tonight I have given a recipe for revival, but as every cook, baker, and chef knows it doesn't matter how well you follow the recipe if your ingredients are no good. If the ingredients are bad the result also will be bad. For our recipe to take effect, for our prayer to be effective it must be the fervent prayer of a righteous heart. Yet still I am reminded and remind you tonight that we cannot just bake up a revival. It is God who sends revival. Let us pray therefore that He will bless us with one.

IV. What Sort of Revival ought we to pray for?

Yet let us pray with intention. What sort of revival ought we to pray for?

A. A Revival of Love

Every revival must first be a revival of Love. Love for God and love for others. God sent His Son to save us from our sins because he so loved the world that while we were yet sinners Christ died for us. Ephesians 5:1-2 say “Be ye therefore followers of God, as dear children; and walk in love, as Christ also hath loved us, and hath given himself for us an offering and a sacrifice to God for a sweetsmelling savour.” We must walk in Love. Love to God and love to each other. John 13:35 tells us “By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another.” While society has captured and twisted this idea it certainly true that all this world needs is a little love. Loving one another is how those outside the church can tell that we are the disciples of Christ. Love is also a thing searched for by all people. If our love is evident one to another people will be drawn to God.

Yet this is not a point of criticism for our church. I am not saying our church is not a loving church. In fact I want to commend you. I do not know of any infighting or backbiting among you. I do not want to know either if there is! I don’t know about anyone trying to hurt or slander anyone else. I believe our church is a church that loves each other. Recently some teens started attending our church again after attending a church that truthfully probably does the performance of church better. They put on a better show, they are more dynamic and more entertaining with bigger and better programs and more excitement. Yet when they came back they said that the other place did not feel like church. They said that over there the people did not love each other, but here they did. That’s wonderful that we are a church that loves each other.

Yet that love is not maintained with carelessness and lack of effort. We must be careful to be a church that draws people to the Love of God through our love one to another and our love for God.

B. A Revival of true Salvation

A revival must also be a revival of true salvation. Often I feel like Elijah. That we, along with a few other denominations are some of the last remaining places where the gospel is being preached! Surely it is true that God has plenty more protected and growing that we do not know about or are easy to forget. Yet it is vital that we in our churches have a revival of true salvation. Jesus came to save us from our sin, not in our sin. There is an enormous difference. Jesus came to make us more than conquerors not forgiven failures. The last thing I want to do tonight is to discourage a struggling soul. I want to remind us that the entire purpose of Christ was to bring victory. He will! HE will! If we do not have evidence in our churches of the victorious work of Jesus where can people find it? Where can they hear that they can be delivered from the chains of slavery to sin? Let us pray fervently for one another to find true salvation and victory. Let us rely on God’s strength and not our own. Let us resist unto blood striving against sin. God will not deliver and unwilling or uncommitted person, yet no one who fully casts their hope upon God will be cast out! If we are to share the message of victory with the world we must first have victory ourselves! This message is growing faint among us. I think that anyone who has this victory is likely to shout it from the housetops so it must be that fewer and fewer are finding this salvation.

C. A Revival of Holiness

We must also have a revival of Holiness. Again, it seems that message of deliverance from not only the works of sin but the nature of sin is growing fainter every day. Yet Jesus came to save us from All sin, to set us absolutely free. We should pray for a revival of holy hearts and holy lives. Most are taught today that the most we can achieve is a level of suppression, yet scripture does not teach us to suppress the old man but to crucify him. We are at war. That never changes in this life, yet that war within can become a war without. God can cleanse and empower and does. We need a revival of God’s cleansing and empowering.

D. A Revival of the Saints

Finally tonight we also need a revival of the saints. How many are saints tonight? We are often uncomfortable with such a word yet it simply means sanctified or holy ones. Why would the sanctified or holy ones need revived? Even they can grow sleepy and careless without proper attention their souls.

I have heard the accusation all my life that we only preach about salvation and sanctification and that we do not preach about growth in Christlikeness after sanctification. I reject this notion entirely for a couple of reasons. First, I do not think it does any good as preacher to stand up front and say that the preachers of yesteryear made this or that big mistake. Remember when we do that we are criticizing the servants of God. Even if they were imbalanced in their emphasis I do not think it is helpful to point that out every chance we get. I also believe that just like those before us did not do everything perfectly, neither do we. I want to give them the respect they deserve for what they did well rather than lambasting them for what they did poorly, and I hope the next generation will do the same for us. A critical spirit only breeds strife and contention which ought not to be in the body of Christ.

The second reason I think that the preachers who raised us are falsely accused about ignoring life in the Spirit is because the majority of messages I have heard fit this topic! Maybe I have had a unique experience but just because a preacher does not start his message with the words “This message is about the sanctified life and is for the particular edification of sanctified saints” does not mean that the message was not for those people. Any message that deals with how we ought to be, to live, to act, to feel, to think is a message for the saints and how they ought to live in the Spirit.

All that being said, let those who are sanctified not rest easy during revival. Do not bring a pitchfork to revival with you so you can take the truths being preached and toss them over to this one or that one who needs it. Listen for what God has for you. Growth in Christlikeness is not finished at sanctification. It is begun. Until that point you are focused upon the fight against sin. Focused on fighting against the old man, or the carnal nature. Once that guy is good and dead, then can you focus on becoming more like Christ. That is not to say that before entire sanctification there is no growth or that after entire sanctification one is not tempted to sin. No indeed, the war rages until we reach our homes in heaven. Yet the most growth is done after cleansing. Nor can one grow into cleansing. What we call sanctification, entire sanctification, the second work of grace, being made perfect in love, etc. is in scripture often referred to as the baptism of the Holy Ghost. Now baptism is not a continual thing. This is not original with me but “a continual baptism is not only ludicrous it is lethal.” This is a work that is completed. Yet like I said, when it is done is truly the time for growth. Now it is time to begin to take the meat of the word. Now is the time that God most carefully and graciously guided the actions and attitudes. Now the voice of God can be heard more clearly than ever correcting mistakes, informing ignorance and shaving off the rough edges. All things alive are either growing or dying. To be spiritually alive is no different. We must continue to grow in Christlikeness or we will begin to die. What has God shown you recently? How has he corrected you? In what way has chastised you? In what area have you grown? You see revival is not just for the sinner. Its not just for the carnal. It is also for the saints.

I preached a message awhile back entitled Wandering Thoughts on Love. I suppose tonight ought to be entitled Wandering Thoughts on Revival. We need revival so let us realize that revival is for each of us individually and for all of us collectively. Let us obey God and let us fervently pray that He blesses with His presence in our upcoming revival services that we may truly see revival.

[1] The Holy Bible: King James Version. (2009). (Electronic Edition of the 1900 Authorized Version., Jas 5:16). Bellingham, WA: Logos Research Systems, Inc. [2] The Holy Bible: King James Version. (2009). (Electronic Edition of the 1900 Authorized Version., Re 3:16). Bellingham, WA: Logos Research Systems, Inc.