Today I’m going to start a new series of messages. “REVIVAL.”
In these last days the Holy Spirit has been telling my heart that we need REVIVAL! The Church of Jesus needs revival, and you and I also need revival at a personal level!
In the past God has brought revivals over whole nations, cities and churches. People were visited by God in a powerful way, and I believe that God can visit us with the same great revival, impacting our church, town and nation.
What is revival? Revival means to bring back to life.
Why is revival important? Because it’s about bringing the dead back to life, which means that something has died to begin with.
When something is lost in the Church, revival is needed to bring it back. That’s exactly what it is!
Most words starting with “RE” talks about taking something back to its original intent, to how it was originally destined to be.
Redemption, renewal , restoration, resurrection, reconciliation, restarting, regeneration, redemption, returning, etc. All these “re” words talk about reshaping something to its original, intended state.
Every time you hear the word “revival”; it’s referring a return to life.
In the book of Acts we can see what the church once had and then lost. If we look back at many churches and even our lives we see that were on fire and lost the fire that had in the past.
“Will You not revive us again, That Your people may rejoice in You?”
Psalms 85:6 NKJV
Will You not revive us again?
We need to be revived when we die!
The Church lost the spirit of God and revival must come to restore all things that are dead.
Let me give an example from the book of Habakkuk
“O Lord, I have heard Your speech and was afraid; O Lord, REVIVE Your work in the midst of the years! In the midst of the years make it known; In wrath remember mercy.”
Habakkuk 3:2 NKJV
I have prayed this prayer since I came to Ireland. For 16 years I have prayed this prayer in my personal prayer time and in our morning prayers in the church.
Lord, REVIVE Your work in the midst of the years! In the midst of the years make it known
Will You not REVIVE us again, so that Your people may rejoice in You?
What is revival?
Revival is about restoring what the church once had and lost.
A revival of God is necessary to bring the church of Jesus Christ back to life.
There are so many churches and ministries that were once alive but are now dead. There are many believers that have spiritually died, they’ve dried up so we must bring them back to life.
What is revival for? Revival is to bring the dead back life!
Where there is life, there is growth, where there is life, we will see deliverance, we will see change, we will see repentance, we will see people abandon their addictions, we will see people turning back to God and to their first love.
If God doesn’t bring revival, the people die eternally, people stay dead, people stay in their sinful lives and they live meaningless existence.
“Revival is the visitation of God which brings to life Christians who have been sleeping and restores a deep sense of God’s presence and holiness. Thence springs a vivid sense of sin and a profound exercise of heart in repentance, praise, and love and a great desire to preach to the lost.”
- I. Packer
Outpouring of the Holy Spirit and Revival
In the Book of Acts we see an outpouring of the Holy Spirit that came upon His people. People started being touched, changed and transformed.
The outpouring comes from the external, it comes from the inside-out, however Revival starts within.
In order for you to change the person that you are , you don’t change from the outside, you must change from the inside.
All revival starts in the heart. Why? Because the heart is the place of the indwelling presence of God in men.
If your heart is right with the presence, your life will be alive.
But if your heart is broken, grieved, tormented, hurt or offended, His anointing cannot bypass the heart .
Revival does not start with miracles, revival starts within the heart!
If revival changes the heart of a person, a changed person can transform a family, a changed family can transform a city, a changed city can transform a nation and a changed nation can transform the world.
The primitive church started with an outpouring of the Holy Spirit; they started speaking in tongues and their revival came as result of their changed heart.
If your spiritual life is revived there should be two evidences:
1- Your relationship with God and with the presence of God.
I know you are alive in God and that you’ve had a personal revival if you have an intimate, close, continual relationship with God.
2- Your relationship with the Body of Christ.
The outpouring of the Holy Spirit transformed their hearts and as the result they would often gather all together in the temple and in house meetings.
“44 Now all who believed were together, and had all things in common, 46 So continuing daily with one accord in the temple, and breaking bread from house to house, they ate their food with gladness and simplicity of heart, 47 praising God and having favour with all the people. And the Lord added to the church daily those who were being saved.”
Acts 2:44, 46-47 NKJV
“Now the multitude of those who believed were of one heart and one soul.”
Acts 4:32 NKJV
Revival transformed their hearts, it gave them simplicity of heart, all believers were one in heart and mind and as result of their hearts’ transformation the Lord added many people to the church and many signs and miracles were performed by the name of Jesus as the result of their transformed heart.
Revival starts with the heart, a changing of the heart, the transformation of the heart, the healing of the heart and after our hearts have been healed, the presence of God will be manifested among us.
All revivals produce spiritual awakening.
When revival comes in the heart of men, God cleanses the heart, God heals the heart, restores the heart !
When our heart is in the right place, God has somewhere to dwell in.
The Holy Spirit’s job and assignment in the end times is changing the heart of men.
If your heart has not been transformed, you will became a religious person, but if your heart is changed you’ll become alive.
God wants to start with your heart.
Most of the churches (denomination churches), began through a revival, their life was once so alive.
What did the Church have that got lost?
What the church once had but lost is the presence of God. ICHABOD.
“She named the boy Ichabod, (which means “Where is the glory”) saying, “The Glory has departed from Israel.”
1 Samuel 4:21 NIV
We could call many churches nowadays Ichabod.! They have “good” preachings, there is good motivation, there is money, there is a nice building but there is no Higher presence.
When the presence of God is not present in a church it becomes a mere house of men, it’s not the house of God.
“Jesus said: My House should be called house of prayer” Matthew 21:13
“Every true revival from that day to this has had its earthly origin in prayer.” ~ R. A. Torrey
All the revivals we’ve ever seen in the world began with the people of God praying!
Jesus said that His house will be called a house of Prayer! Without prayer we will not see Revival!
“Don’t pray when you feel like it. Have an appointment with the Lord and keep it.” ~ Corrie Ten Boom
All the revivals we have ever had in the world began with the people of God praying!
This is why I’m always calling you to come to prayer meetings! This is why we have prayer meetings in the mornings, we have 12 hours of prayer every month, we have prayer meetings before our service starts but the majority of you are too busy for prayer.
Prayer should be such an obvious part of the gathering of Christians that people should be calling the church “a house of prayer”.
Every Christian should have their private time of prayer with God but prayer with the “body of Christ” is just as essential. However, it seems like the Church has lost their sense of what truly matters, and as a result the church has lost the presence of God and became a religious organisation. It became dry and dead; just a nice building, with nice music, nice preachings but void of the Holy Spirit.
There is no presence of God where there is no prayer!
We need revival because we’ve lost some essential things:
“They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer.”
Acts 2:42 NIV
They listened to the teachings of their leaders, they had fellowship with each other, they ate together and they constantly prayed together.
The Condition of the Church
The loss of revival has led the church to be in dire conditions. That’s why the church desperately needs a revival!
The church is no longer spiritual, we now seek “things” more than spirituality.
The church wants carnal (fleshly) things more than it wants spiritual things.
The presence of God is no longer desired, respected or revered.
Not even the worship in Church is no longer respected, people come to Services whenever they want, they do not give priority to God anymore, they arrive late to meetings, they talk during the service, they talk during the preaching of the word (when God is speaking).
We need to return to our first passion, we must seek reverence, commitment and the fear of God, because we seem to have lost it.
Unfortunately, the church has lost the passion and teachings of the apostles and they now reject the action of the Holy Spirit.
When we don’t understand something, we tend to reject it, because we want everything to be understood by the mind and reason.
The church is now structured to question the supernatural. Most Bible Schools deny the supernatural and many churches think that the supernatural is something of the past and they have come to reject it.
Some denominations think the supernatural is something mystical, superstitious, magic, something that is not real.
The global church lacks hunger, they are spiritually stagnant because they have compromised the Truth. Most denominations reject the Holy Spirit and in some churches the absence of the presence and power of God is taken as the norm.
In other words: being dead has been normalised. People attend church without any expectation of the supernatural.
They just come to hear the message! They come to church late and with any expectations. They stay stagnant and don’t surrender or worship the Lord in spirit and truth.
Your Praise and worship determines how your relationship with God will be! That is why worship is boring for a person who doesn’t have a close relationship with God.
The majority of churches don’t see the necessity of the Holy Spirit, of the baptism in the Holy Spirit or His anointing because they are looking for options.
Some preachers know a lot about theology but they don’t know the Holy Spirit.
They teach about God but they don’t know God. They teach the “doctrine of excuses”: Why do miracles not happen nowadays?
We are in the end times and we will see these two things side by side: Revival and Apostasy!
We are going to see the true church of Christ growing and advancing and at the same time we are going to see more and more churches that don’t believe in miracles, don’t believe in the Holy Spirit or the power of God.
So we need to seek and pray for revival!
We need to cry out and ask: Revive us Again !
We need to return to the Word, return to Prayer, return to the Truth because the truth is a person: the truth is Jesus!
When we compromise on the Truth, the Holy Spirit leaves that place, the Holy Spirit must flee from a place where the Truth is negotiable!
You may be serving God, you may have been baptised, you may be inside the church, but still be breaking the principles of the Word of God, and for that we need to repent!
When you compromise the Truth the Holy Spirit will remove Himself from your life. God will remove His light.
“Look how far you have fallen! Turn back to me and do the works you did at first. If you don’t repent, I will come and remove your lamp-stand from its place among the churches.”
Revelation 2:5 NLT
Where you fell, where you sinned, look back now, repent yourself and go back to the works you used to do. God says: repent, if not, I’ll remove your lamp-stand.
We desperately need a revival!
May your prayer from now on be: Lord Revive me again!
May God bless you and may the flame in your heart glow ever brighter.