Revive ME Again!

Let's join forces as Christians and start a Jesus Christ revival!  Press like if Jesus is your Savior.

The well-meaning (if not well thought out) post showed up on my facebook page just one time too many the other day.  THIS time, I couldn't decide whether to scream or cry.  In the past, I just silently and sometimes sarcastically told myself how wonderful it would be if a spiritual awakening could be started by "liking" ANYTHING on facebook...if a simple motion of one's index finger would fix the state of the church and change the hearts of God's people.

By the way....if anyone knows how to block these types of things, 

including recipes, "how many colors can you name that don't have the letter e in them",

 "like if you love your daughter, son, cat or dog", etc. PLEASE let me know!

V. Raymond Edman, a former president of Wheaton College, once said, "It is one thing to wish for revival, but it is something else to be willing for revival at any cost."  I suspect that the cost of revival is higher that most of us are willing to pay.  Humble ourselves?  Seek His face?  Wait?  Pray?  Intensify our time spent in the Word?  Gather together with fellow, passionate believers?

As much as I resist the role of human effort when it comes to issues of the soul, I can't get past some of the "If/Then" statements of God the Father & God the Son in the Bible.  One of the better known is 2 Chronicles 7:14:  "If my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and I will forgive their sin and will heal their land."

The National Day of Prayer in the United States is scheduled for this week.  Much emphasis, time and money have been placed on communicating the  "pray" part of this verse.   Less attention and effort seem directed to the humbling, seeking, and turning parts! God, help us--and not just as an event, but as a lifestyle!  God, give us grace.  God, be merciful.

A revival is nothing else than a new beginning of obedience to God. (Charles Finney)

Revival is a new discovery of Jesus. (Professor James Steward)

A revival is a sovereign outpouring of the Holy Spirit upon a group of Christians resulting in their spiritual reviving and quickening, and issuing in the awakening of spiritual concern in outsiders or formal church members; an immediate, or, at other times, a more long-term, effect will be efforts to extend the influence of the Kingdom of God both intensively in the society in which the Church is placed, and extensively in the spread of the gospel to more remote parts of the world. (R.E. Davies)

You cannot revive something that has never had life, so revival, by definition, is first of all an enlivening and quickening and awakening of lethargic, sleeping church members. Suddenly the power of the Spirit comes upon them … they are humbled, they are convicted of sin … then as a result of their quickening and enlivening, they begin to pray. New power comes into the preaching of the ministers, and the result of this is large numbers are converted. So the two main characteristics of revival are, first, this extraordinary enlivening of the members of the church, and, second, the conversion of masses of people who have been outside in indifference and in sin.  (D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones)

 Revival awakens in our hearts an increased awareness of the presence of God, a new love for God, a new hatred for sin and a hunger for His Word. (Del Fehsefeld Jr)

Revive Us Again!

Revive ME Again!