Revival
Why Doesn’t Revival Come
October 28, 2007
2 Chronicles 7:14
When I arrived in Cut Knife many months ago, I prayed for a vision for Good Shepherd Community Church and for this community. The vision God gave me was for revival – awakening God’s people. God’s call to me was to awaken the spiritual eyes of this church to focus its gaze on Jesus. So, given this vision I promoted your participation in the Sutera twins revival meetings in North Battleford, and Marcy and I took in their 18 days of teaching. Then, in March, we invited Ken Graham to speak to us again on revival through repentance. And throughout those times and to this day, I prayed, as Paul did in Ephesians 1:17-18, that God would open the eyes of your heart – would infuse you with excitement about spiritual matters. For many of you, I am still praying that you will open the door to Jesus and let Him be the ruler of your life.
And now for the big question: What have I achieved? Or, more pertinent, “What has God achieved at Good Shepherd?” Has my vision for revival come to pass? Has God revived you? No? Why not? Why hasn’t Revival come to this body of believers? That is the question we will examine this morning.
Many Christian scholars believe that revival is delayed when the essence of Jesus’ preaching is neglected. What was the essence of the preaching of Jesus? When you see Jesus preaching, you are looking at the heart of the Father. Jesus said, "…I do nothing of Myself; but as My Father taught Me, I speak…" (John 8:28). "…all things that I heard from My Father I have made known to you" (John 15:15). As the Son of God delivered the message from the heart of His Father, the first word out of His mouth was, "Repent" (Matt. 4:17). This was the essence of Jesus’ preaching. Repent!!!
Who was Jesus speaking to at that time? He was speaking to God’s people. John 1:11 says, "He came to His own, and His own did not receive Him." Did He then say, "I am not going to preach to them anymore"? No, He kept on preaching to them because it was a life and death message. He knew how critical the message was. Our problem is that when people do not listen to us, we quit, or when things get tough, we quit.
As a pastor I see myself as a spiritual physician. I work for perfect spiritual health. I see sick Christians all the time. I don’t get upset with them. I simply say, "That’s why God has me here." God has given me the gifting to be a spiritual diagnostician. Let’s pray: “Lord, help me to know how to diagnose what is happening and then address the root cause." I find that when the root cause is resolved, all of the symptoms disappear. And the root cause is summed up in Jesus’ message for us – to repent. Again, I ask, have I delivered the message to you? Did I say it strong enough? Did I say it often enough? Have you believed it and received it?
I have never yet known God to place anyone in a difficult situation where He didn’t have all the resources to bring us, His people, from where we were to where we ought to be. When you are healed spiritually, then the joy of the Lord and the power and the presence of God will fill the life of the church family. If we repent!
When our Lord came, He had that very specific message for His people. There is, these days, a terrible neglect of preaching repentance to God’s people, and so God’s people don’t repent. Consequently they are full of sin. Yet they cry for revival, and God essentially says, "No, no, no! You are full of sin. I want you to know that My arm is not short that it can’t save; My ear is not heavy that I can’t hear, but your sin has come between you and Me, so I will not hear" (Isa. 59:1). Does He not say in Psalm 66:18 that if you regard and cherish sin in your heart, the Lord will not hear you? Surely a pastor should say, "I had better deal with sin in the life of God’s people." Have I been neglectful in preaching repentance? I know I’ve preached it, but have I preached it enough? Has it been preached to the extent that you see how important it is? If I have been neglectful in this duty, I ask for your forgiveness. If I’m not guilty, then you will already be familiar with what God has led me to preach today. I urge you to pay close attention; I urge you to take notes (if you have no paper, take notes in your Bible). Why am I saying this? It’s simple: Until we as individuals and corporately as a church, repent – that is, turn away from the direction we’ve been going, and start following God’s direction, we are only playing church. Until we repent, we will not be the people He wants us to be; we will not be used by God to any great degree, we will not change Cut Knife; we will not grow spiritually; we will not grow numerically either. We will continue kidding ourselves that we are godly people. God wants us to repent; He wants us to surrender; He wants us to hunger for His Word; He wants us to have a passion for His Son; He wants to be absolutely number one in our lives; He wants us to grow daily in His Word; He wants us to be prayer warriors. Yes, He wants all of these things, but first He wants us to repent. So the question is this – do we want what He wants or will we settle for wasting our time playing church? The answer to this question determines the course your life will take. If He is number one in your life then everything in your life will be subject to Him – how you think, what you say, what you do with your time, your talents, your money, your possessions. It’s a huge commitment, isn’t it? But His Word assures us that making this decision will be the wisest decision we will ever make! Those are pretty strong words, aren’t they? Do you believe them?
Some people feel that praying for revival is a substitute for repentance – that somehow God will be pleased if we ask Him to come in power. God says something like this: "I have been here all along, and I didn’t leave My power in heaven. The problem is not with Me. It is with you. You do not know how to recognize My power and my presence. All the power of God, all the fullness of God, dwells in His Son who is the head of this church. So our church is at all times filled with the fullness of God. The problem is that we are not appropriating His power. Remember Ephesians 1:3? “Blessed is the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly realms in Christ.” We have every spiritual blessing! It is like Christmas. Under the tree is a load of gifts from God and they all have our name on the tag. All we have to do is receive them. Take them. Use them. We have been blessed with every spiritual blessing. Let’s return to the heart of Jesus’ teaching.
The first word out of the heart of Jesus to His people is always "Repent!" The most positive word from the heart of a God with perfect love is "Repent." That is not a negative word. It is the most positive word from the heart of God because God always accompanies it by saying, "Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand." In other words, "Repent because the entire kingdom of God is right under that Christmas tree waiting to be unwrapped and put into your life." Although it is the most positive message from the heart of God, it is one of the most neglected. As long as God’s people won’t repent, revival will not come.
Prayer is not repentance. Confession is not repentance either. Confession is the first step toward repentance. Confession acknowledges that I believe my sin is as bad as God tells me it is, and therefore having confessed my sin, I must repent. You need to let your confession lead you to genuine repentance, which is an awareness you are going in the wrong direction and must change course. Do you know why there is no power in your life? You are going in the wrong direction. You may not be 1800 of course. You may only be 50 off course. But we are all off course if we are not following God and experiencing supernatural power in our lives. It is spiritually impossible to be going with Christ and not experience the power of God.
The disciples had to leave what they were doing and go with Him, did they not? Peter couldn’t experience the power and the almighty presence of God and stay at his fish boats. He had to go with Jesus and be where He was. The reason that many of us are not experiencing the presence and power of God working clearly, observably, is because we are going in a self-centered direction and asking God to join us. Picture this: Here is the road. God is standing here, beckoning you to come. You are standing there, beckoning Him to come.
Jesus said to the people, "He who is not with Me is against Me" (Matt. 12:30). The average Christian does not believe that. He or she would say, "Lord, I am not going against You; I am just not going with You." But Jesus would say, "If you are not going with Me, you are going against Me." And then He added a very significant truth: if you are not actively gathering the people of God, you are actively scattering the people of God. So Jesus turned to the people and He said, "Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand" (Matt. 4:17).
Hear that same note in an awesome way, delivered at the close of Jesus’ ministry when He was with His disciples. It comes in Luke 24. Use these verses as a spiritual plumb line to measure your own personal walk with God. However, I need to warn you: the culture in which we live equates religious activity with relationship with God. Our culture believes as long as we are actively in the prayer meeting that we are in fellowship with God. That is not true. You can be in a hundred prayer meetings and be out of fellowship with God. It is not religious activity. It is relationship, and the relationship may produce activity, but the activity rarely produces the relationship. Don’t stand on that road beckoning Him to join you. GO! Join Him.
Here is what you hear in Luke 24:45, because He was going to give them His final instruction before He went back to the Father: "He opened their understanding, that they might comprehend the Scriptures." Is that happening in your life? Are you spending significant time in the Word of God where God can open your understanding so that you come face to face with Jesus? Are you understanding Him as He reveals Himself in His Word? Are you letting God touch your mind and heart with the Scriptures? Henry Blackaby calls this an encounter with God. When your understanding is opened it will feel like a veil lifting, or a light bulb suddenly being turned on. You will see meaning you’ve never seen before it is a supernatural touch from God.
The Lord Jesus felt that if there were some last things He would do to prepare His people for the mighty global activity of the Father, it would be that you must understand the Scriptures. You must see the activity and purpose of God. And it is all recorded right here in His Word. If you are His child, this is His love letter to you. If you are not His child, then understanding may not come. You may be reading someone else’s mail! If reading the Bible is a chore for you, pray Ephesians 1:18 “that the eyes of your heart have been enlightened--so that you may know what is the hope of his calling, what is the wealth of his glorious inheritance in the saints, “ The Bible is the key to understanding God. Many Christians function more on what I call evangelical Christian humanism. That is when evangelical Christians reason out of their own heart and their own head with no Scripture, without reading the Bible. That is called evangelical humanism. I have said it before and I will say it again, the world doesn’t need our best thinking; the world needs God’s revealed thinking. I have heard many groups of individuals mention how they have come to decisions, what they are planning to do for God and how God made His will known to them. As I listen to them, there will be no Scripture given. When a person comes to me and tells me what God said he or she ought to do, the first thing I ask them is, "What Scripture did God use to bring you to that conclusion?" Often they have an embarrassed look and a fumbling for words; they haven’t had a word from God. God’s Word reveals God’s heart.
Here is what Jesus did: He "opened their understanding that they might understand the Scriptures. Then He said to them, ‘Thus it is written, and thus it was necessary for the Christ to suffer and to rise from the dead the third day’" (Luke 24:45-46). When I read it I began to say, "This Christ is living out His life in me, so there is going to be something that looks very similar to this in my own life." Paul put it this way: "I have been crucified with Christ" (Gal. 2:20). He didn’t just say Christ was crucified for him. He said, "I have been crucified with Christ." But He also added: "Nevertheless, I live." Did Christ die? Was He raised again? Did you die? Has the living, resurrection life of Christ flooded your life? Did God release any power in the cross to give you victory over the consequences of sin and to give you victory over the power of sin? If there is no resurrection power, then sin has won. But Christ was raised from the dead, and there was released that same power that raised Jesus from the dead. This same power is given to everyone who believes (Eph. 1:18-21). Are you experiencing resurrection power?
When I read this, I began to apply it. I found the Spirit of God saying, "Dave, that is an absolute necessity in your life also." If you are in union with Christ, you are going to experience what He experienced. Then notice what Jesus said must be preached: "Repentance and remission of sins should be preached in His name to all nations, beginning at Jerusalem" (Luke 24:47). That is the heart of the message of God. That’s the heart of the message of Jesus. Repentance and the remission of sins must be preached. Remember our key verse? 2 Chronicles 7:14: “If my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn away from their wicked ways ….” That’s repentance. “Then I will hear from heaven and forgive their sin and heal their land.”
You have to get your life aligned with Him. The heart of God’s dealing with you and me is to deal with our sin. That is the reason He died.
I want to divert for a moment because I think there is something in the heart of the Lord Jesus that is often missing from us and that’s why we do not preach on repentance with a passion. I sensed not long ago that you cannot understand John 3:16 unless you understand the word in that verse, "perish." Why did God’s love go to the extent of laying down the life of His Son? It is because God knows what happens when a person goes out of this life without a saving relationship to Him through Jesus Christ. He knows that they perish!
What are some of the pictures that Jesus gave about a person who perishes? That person goes out into "outer darkness" (Matt. 8:12), totally devoid of any light whatsoever – forever with no relief and no turning back, utter outer darkness. He will be cast "into the everlasting fire prepared for the devil and his angels" (Matt. 25:41). Everlasting is never ending. Fire doesn’t sound too inviting either, does it?
Is that a popular message in our day? “You’re going to hell.” Hellfire and damnation messages are out of vogue. No one wants to hear them. Too negative, they say! We only want to hear positive messages. Well, I can give you a positive message: I am positive you are going to hell without Jesus. Is that positive enough? Do you know why people don’t respond to the message of hell? They have no fear of God or of the reality of what it means to perish. Do you know why our society is casual and careless about how we live and behave, and why we don’t pursue our own children who are not walking with the Lord or family members who are still lost? We’ve forgotten what it means to perish, and when one of those goes out into eternity without God and without Christ, they perish forever!
God intends to give you all the fullness of His presence, but the alternative is that you perish. Think through some of the Scriptures where it mentions outer darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth (Matt. 8:12; 22:13; 24:51; 25:30; Luke 13:28), where the fire will never be quenched and where the worm does not die (Mark 9:44-45), both soul and body cast into hell (Matt. 10:28; Luke 12:5), where the lake burns with fire and brimstone (Rev. 21:8), where there is torment day and night (Rev. 20:10). And then Jesus said in a parable, "There is a great gulf fixed, so that those who want to pass from here to you cannot, nor can those from there pass to us" (Luke 16:26).
But in Ephesians 2:12 there is an amazing sequence of words saying that a person who is without God and without Christ is also without hope. The only provision God made for eternal salvation is Christ. If one goes out into an eternity without Him, and without God, there is no life whatsoever.
Henry Blackaby relates this account: “It seems in the mercy of God that He let my life encounter a great many people without hope, and they were standing just a breath away from suicide. When people get to the point of suicide, they have come to the point where they see two alternatives: either to continue in this awful hell that they’re in or take their life and get out of it. What they need is a third alternative. I have helped hundreds of people avoid suicide by bringing to them this third alternative. Before I could get to some, they ended their life. Yet when I could come to them with God’s good news, I said to them, "You are going in the wrong direction; turn around. Let the living Christ whom God has provided be the One who radically transforms your life. Go with Him from this moment on and you will experience all the fullness of God."
Blackaby continues, it’s not human reasoning that turns a person around; it’s God and His Word that turns a person around. I always shared the Scriptures, and then I literally saw the Spirit of God take the Word of God and bring a radical transformation in that person’s life. He saw the truth. Jesus said, "If you abide [continue] in My Word, you are My disciples indeed. And you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free" (John 8:31-32). I was present when I saw the truth of God setting souls free. They were never the same again, but were radically different.”
Romans 6:23 says: "The wages of sin is death…." The writer was speaking to God’s people. We have applied that passage to lost people and you can, but don’t neglect to apply it also to God’s people. If you keep on in you sin, then everything in your life will die. The payoff of sin is death.
And that is what I would say to a couple who is struggling in their marriage. It has never crossed my mind that two Christians had to divorce. I don’t care what the psychologist said; I don’t care about incompatibility. I know that the power of the living Christ can set God’s people free and marriages free and keep them together. One of the great neglects of our day is that we don’t tell people that they are going in the wrong direction and then help them to see what God’s direction is.
Do you know what happens when a husband repents? It creates a highway for the healing of his marriage. Right now one of the great disasters among God’s people, even leaders, is pornography, but almost nobody is willing to talk about it. Pornography is one of Satan’s greatest tools to destroy the life of a Christian man. It will destroy your marriage, your children, a ministry and a church. Don’t go in that direction! It will kill you. Turn around and go in the right direction, which is to unite your life with Jesus Christ and let Him bring into your life all the incredible presence and power of God.
When I began my ministry, one of the things that I read in the Scripture was when Jesus said, "This is the will of the Father who sent Me, that of all He has given Me I should lose nothing" (John 6:39). It is still the will of the Father that of all He gives you, you should lose none. As a pastor, that should be an absolute, and it is. But it is a command that applies to all believers – we need to find the straying sheep. Scripture says God adds to the body as it pleases Him, and they are His. He entrusts them to us, and He is not willing that we should lose one of them.
People will say, "That is amazing." And I’ll say, "No, that is biblical." That is God’s plan and God’s purpose, and when that is displayed before a watching world – how we love one another, and pursue one another, and hold on to one another, and forgive one another, and are patient and kind with one another – then the world is attracted to the Savior who is creating that in our hearts.
What about us, our church? Do you have people who used to be here but aren’t here and nobody cares? Let me ask you, if Christ is going to live out His life in you, what do you suppose He will do when He knows one is missing? He will affect your feet and get you pursuing. You say, "But it creates so much hurt." It does. Your feet will bleed and you will be bruised and broken, but there will be a moment when you hear the bleating of that little sheep and when you call out, there will be a huge sense of excitement: "Somebody has found me!" When you pick up that bruised and bleeding sheep, and put that one on your shoulder and bring the straying one back to the fold, God says the whole of heaven breaks out into rejoicing over the one sheep that returns (Luke 15:7). We need to refuse to let any be lost from the flock. We need to pursue them, and redeem them when they return. We need to love them back into the fold.
God is a shepherd who pursues His own and He wants to do it through us.
So I have said, "Lord, is there anything I need to repent of? Have I taken the counsel of the world and gone after it? Have I become self-centered and forgotten to be God-centered? Then I need to repent. I need to forsake the ways that hinder revival."
What facilitates a revival is a cleansed and a returned people of God. Revival is when the fullness of God returns to the people of God because they have repented from where they had been going to where God now wants them to be - with Him. When you get right with God, you will experience the incredible presence and power of God. Do not ask God to come in power if you are not first going to ask Him to cleanse you and to make you holy and to make you the kind of person He could bring others to. If you are not seeing the power of God working in your life and through your life, there is something from which you need to ask God to deliver you and set you free. Is it your mind? your heart? your actions? What is it that doesn’t match the holiness of God?
Repentance is a deep sense of grief over our sin and a new freshness of what it means to perish. Repentance means to say, "O God, don’t let me be casual or careless in my walk with You. Don’t let me ever be satisfied to live without Your presence and power in my life. Whatever is hindering You from working, reveal it to me? And immediately I will repent of that."
The question now is not what do you think about this message, but what are you going to do about it? The easiest thing to do is to continue being complacent and comfortable, but where will that lead? God’s Word is pretty clear that you will end up in a place you don’t want to go. Or, will you walk in obedience. Will you repent, will you grow, will you completely surrender, will you allow God to use you for His purposes. Will you allow Him to use you as He changes this town of Cut Knife? It won’t be easy, but the rewards will be eternal. They will be great. They will be a reflection of God’s pleasure. In the end, the decision is yours. I pray that you will each choose wisely.
God has been speaking to me about these issues for some time now and has burdened my heart with a need to speak to you about them. He has not called me to Cut Knife to amuse or entertain you. He has not called me here to tell you what you want to hear – tickle your ears. Absolutely not! He has called me here to, firstly, make sure that every one of you knows Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior and, secondly, to guide you into living lives that are pleasing to Him – that is, lives that are holy and righteous, lives that bear the fruit of the Spirit, lives that are transformed into the image of Jesus Christ. That’s why I’m here. To desire less would be to dishonor Him. I pray that these desires are yours. I pray that you will commit the rest of your lives to becoming like Him. I pray that everything you do will be proceeded by the question, what would Jesus do?
Let’s pray, Father in heaven, You know what awaits every life that is wholly released to You, those who suddenly realize their life has not been experiencing the power and realize maybe it’s because they are going in the wrong direction. With all of their heart they turn around and say, "Lord, I want to go with You!" Father, You are the only one who can create that desire within us, and You do. Jesus, You cried out to the people of Your day and in just a few short years those who responded came to experience what it is like for the whole kingdom of God to work through them and the whole of the Roman Empire was turned upside down. Father, You don’t make it complicated. You just say, "Will you go with Me?" The disciples who were fishermen immediately joined You, and for the first time in their life, they experienced what it was like to be present when Your kingdom came to open blind eyes and to heal the lepers, and to still the storms.
O God, we want to be with You, so we release ourselves to You in ever-increasing measure that it may be evident that we have heard You, we have turned back to You, You show us what we need to repent of. Then a watching world will begin to see what happens when You revive Your people and attract a lost world to a Savior that they see in us. Would You bring a special anointing on each one whose heart has been opened to You? We ask it in Jesus’ name. Amen.