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Text Sermons : Classic Christian Writings : God’s Power In Revival By Sammy Tippit

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Edited from a message delivered at the "Heart-Cry for Revival" Conference near Asheville, North Carolina, May 23-27.

There are dangers in talking about God’s Power, especially in relation to revival. There are three dangers I want to mention to you.

The first is, when speaking of the power of God, people often emphasize the power of God rather than the God of power. We must always have our focus on the God of power and not focus on the power. Power can corrupt the best of people. Throughout this country, one of the greatest problems you find in churches, when the church is not revived, is a power struggle. Someone is wanting the power. The pastor may want the power; or the deacons want the power; the women or the men want the power. Everybody’s vying for power.

Power can be a very dangerous thing. Pride can come in if power is not centered in God Himself. Pride goes before a fall (Proverbs 16:18). We must be careful when we talk about the power of God in revival, and not speak of the power of God only, but the God of power.

Secondly, when we talk about the power of God in this generation, it is dangerous because we are living in a generation that seeks signs and wonders. I believe God works miracles today. I believe every time God forgives sin and saves a soul, a miracle takes place. I believe in a miracle-working God. But we must be very careful not to seek after miracles and signs and wonders, but to seek after God Himself, and seek to obey the Word of God.

I don’t find anywhere in the Bible where we believers are to run after signs and wonders and miracles. What I find in the Bible is that we are to be preaching the Word of God, teaching the Word of God, obeying the Word of God. Signs and wonders follow us. We don’t chase after them; they chase after us. What we have to be concerned about is doing the will of God, and if we do the will of God, God will do the rest.

The third danger is that we become so familiar with the terminology of all that surrounds revival that we can talk about revival, we can teach it and preach on it--and yet we find that our pulpits and our pews are powerless. We find our own lives standing in need of revival.

The Divine Enabling

There are two words for power used in the King James Version of the Bible. The word I am speaking about is dunamis. Robertson, in his study of the New Testament, writes of it as "divine enabling." When I speak of revival I am going to speak of it as a new walk of obedience to God. When we speak of the power of God in revival, we are talking about a divine enabling to do the will of God in our lives.

Our Scripture passage is Luke 24:44-49. Here Jesus is speaking. He had been three years with His disciples, and had told them over and over again, the Son of Man must go to Jerusalem; He must be crucified; He must be buried; three days later He will rise from the grave. Although He had told them this, they lacked understanding as to what was going to transpire. And then it happened: Jesus was crucified; buried in a borrowed tomb, and three days later He arose from the tomb; He appeared to more than 500 people. Just before He ascended to the right hand of the Father, He appeared to His disciples and He spoke these words to them:

"These are the words which I spake unto you, while I was yet with you, that all things must be fulfilled, which were written in the law of Moses, and in the prophets, and in the psalms, concerning me. Then opened He their understanding, that they might understand the Scriptures. And said unto them, Thus it is written, and thus it behooved Christ to suffer, and to rise from the dead the third day: and that repentance and remission of sins should be preached in His name among all nations, beginning at Jerusalem. And ye are witnesses of these things. And behold, I send the promise of My Father upon you: but tarry ye in the city of Jerusalem, until ye be endued with power from on high."

Jesus had taught His disciples from the Law, from Moses, from the Psalms, from the Prophets. Everything in the Old Testament had been pointing to this one great day when the Christ, the Messiah, would come and lay down His life for the sins of the world. He would be crucified, buried and three days later rise from the grave. Everything in all their history was pointing to this one great event. Then He said to them in effect, "And you have been witnesses of these things. You have beheld it; you have seen it with your own eyes; you have handled these things. Now, you bring this message of repentance, of forgiveness of sins, to all men and all women, to all tribes and all nations, all people everywhere." Then he said something very interesting: "But before you do that, wait for the promise of the Father. Tarry ye in Jerusalem, until you be clothed with that power from on high."

Look at the New Testament Church. The Church was born in a state of waiting before the Lord, of seeking the face of God. All through the Book of Acts we find this to be the pattern of the Church. The Church is praying in Acts chapter 1. In Acts chapter 2, the Church is proclaiming. In Acts chapter 3, Peter and John are going to a prayer meeting and a layman is healed and then the word spreads throughout Jerusalem. In Acts chapter 4, they are in another prayer meeting with the Church and as they prayed, they proclaimed the Word of God. In Acts chapter 13 there is a great missions movement and the Gospel is going to go around the world, to the non-Jewish community.

The whole thrust of this missionary movement began in a prayer meeting where prophets and preachers and teachers and leaders were gathered together seeking the face of God. Out of that waiting experience, the Church became the dynamic Church it was, taken from this timid, fearful group of men and women and made a dunamis, a powerful and explosive group of people.

They were common, ordinary men and women, like you and me. It was said of them in Acts chapter 16: "These who have turned the world upside down have come here also." They literally shook the Roman Empire for the glory of God. There was dunamis in the Church; there was power that permeated the life of the Church that was explosive, that caused them to see things happen, that caused them to bring life to multitudes. God moved and worked, and the Church was revived in a tremendous way. All through the Book of Acts we see God moving, working, cleansing, breaking, filling, sending His people, and we find that they shook their world for Christ.

Looking at the evil in our present-day culture and then looking at the Church as it is today, I get discouraged. I see the Church doing all of our little things, playing our games, and having our shows and going through all our little rituals and the things that we do, and we say, "O God, can You do anything?"

I believe that if we need anything, we need to understand what Jesus was saying in this passage of Scripture: "But tarry in Jerusalem until you be endued with the power of God upon your life." If we are going to affect this society, if we are going to reach our nation and the world, it’s not going to be by the business as we are doing it today. It’s going to take nothing less than a divine intervention in the affairs of human history. It’s going to take God moving and God working. It’s not going to be a great personality, nor a great orator; it’s not going to be a great ministry nor a great organization.

It is going to be God coming and visiting His people! If I did not know that God has done that in the Scripture, and that God has done that throughout history and that I’ve seen God doing that on occasion with my own eyes, I would be discouraged and ready to give up. But Jesus said to His disciples that He would endue them with power from on high.

Where Is The Power?

The question I want to ask and to answer from this point on is, where is that power? What is that power that Jesus was talking about? There are three things that I want to suggest to you about the power of God in relationship to what Jesus was talking about.

The first is: The power of God is in the message of the cross. In 1 Corinthians 1:18 Paul writes: "For the preaching of the cross is to them that perish foolishness, but unto us who are saved, it is the dunamis of God." It is the very power of God. I have watched something take place in this country and around the world over the past ten or fifteen years, and that is, we have ceased to believe that the power of God is in the preaching of the message of the cross.

We preach everything else; we do everything else; but we do not confront men and women with this message of the cross of Jesus Christ, and all the implications that are in the Word of God about this great message. If there is going to be a release of the power of God in our churches in this nation or in any nation, we are going to have to go back to preaching the old-time, old-fashioned message of the cross! It is the cross that deals with sin. It is the cross that deals with self. It is the cross that transforms lives. It is what Jesus Christ did on the cross that is the very power of God. When we proclaim the message of what He did and how it affects the lives of men and women, it is the very power of God released.

I recently came back from overseas, where I preached a city-wide meeting. It was supposed to be an evangelistic meeting, but it was more of a revival meeting for Christian people than for those who do not know Christ. During those days the pastors of all denominations met together and we prayed together and talked together about what revival is and about how to reach the city for Christ. As we discussed some of these things, I asked them, "What have you had here?" This is what they told me, and by the way, most of this is exported from United States and Canada.

They said, Sammy, all we have had is shows. On the charismatic side, they come with signs and wonders and miracle shows, and very few lives are really changed. On the evangelical, non-charismatic side, they come in with their shows, too, but their shows are musicians. They bring in big-name, Christian singers and we find very few changed lives.

The people in that nation find themselves in a state where their country is in peril. It is in upheaval politically, and the church is powerless because there has been very little proclaiming of the message of the cross.

Everywhere I go I get the same story. There is very little preaching of the simple message of the cross, which is the very power of God to change lives. I don’t know of any other message that will transform lives, that will heal hearts, that will forgive sins, that will set the captive free. I don’t know any other message but the message of the cross of Jesus Christ. It is the message of the cross that the world needs and that the churches need. We need to preach the old-time, old-fashioned message of the cross!

In 1990, one year prior to the collapse of the former Soviet Union, I had the opportunity to preach in the national stadium of the Republic of Moldova, which was one of the Republics of the Soviet Union. I went there at a unique moment in their history. They had never had anything like this meeting. I was concerned whether we were going to have it at all. I had been arrested in Leningrad, when there was a Leningrad, for witnessing to university students and sharing Christ with them. So when I was asked to go into Moldova when it was still in the Soviet Union and preach in the stadium, I really didn’t think they were going to give me permission to do that.

I told the church leaders, "There are two things I need. First, I need an official invitation from you, and secondly, I need an official invitation from the government," and I really didn’t think the government would give me an invitation. That day we received the telex into our office granting permission, I couldn’t believe it. I knelt and gave God the glory.

We went to Moldova and nobody knew what to expect. They had never had an evangelistic meeting. Thousands of people came to the stadium that Sunday. It was broadcast nationally on television.

A journalist came up to me and asked a perceptive question. She said, "Mr. Tippit, do you really think that people’s lives are going to be changed by you standing on the platform and saying some words?" That’s a pretty good question, especially if you grew up in an atheistic country.

I looked at her and I said, "Yes, Ma’am, I am convinced 100% that lives are going to be changed. Not because I’m speaking; not because I’m a good orator, not because of any such thing, but the one reason is that the message that I am going to speak has supernatural ability, and it will penetrate the hearts of people, and it will transform the lives of people."

That was in 1990, ten years ago. I have been back there several times for national conferences on revival, and I am going back again in August of this year. I’ve had enough time to see if I was telling that journalist the truth or not. There is a lady who walked into that stadium that Sunday an atheist, and she walked out a born-again Christian changed forever. Today she is the chief editor for the only and first Christian news magazine in the nation of Moldova.

There are at least ten who are now missionaries I know, who walked into that stadium that day unsaved, and they heard this wonderful message of the cross of Christ preached by a foreigner who could not even speak their language and had to have an interpreter, and they walked out as Christians. Today they are traveling throughout their nation of Moldova as missionaries, proclaiming the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

There is power in the message of the cross! The power of God is not in preaching signs and wonders. The power of God is not in making everybody comfortable. The cross was not comfortable for Jesus Christ. The cross was a place in human history whereby outside Jerusalem 2000 years ago, hanging between two thieves, suspended between heaven and earth, was the Lamb of God. From one end of eternity came the very wrath of God, and Jesus took upon Himself all of the wrath. Why? Because of your sin and my sin. And from the other end of Eternity came the love of God. The wrath of God and the love of God collided on the cross 2000 years ago, and it left a dunamis, an explosion, so that when we speak of what Christ did in relationship to our sins and our self and our rebellion, when we speak the message of the cross, there is the power of God!

The message of the cross is the message that is going to bring revival to our churches. Our churches are filled with sin and with self, and the cross deals with sin and with self. Our people need to fall in love with Jesus again--not the things of Jesus, not the power of Jesus, but with Jesus and what He did on the cross, understanding that my sin put Christ on the cross! Not Jews, not Romans, but my sin put Christ on the cross. When I see that and understand what He did for me, I fall on my face before God and say, "O God, have mercy upon me, a sinner! O God, look what I have done to your own Son!"

The message of the cross brings revival. The message of the cross sets the captive free. The message of the cross brings forgiveness. The message of the cross brings reconciliation. The message of the cross transforms lives. It is the power of God. Paul said, "For the preaching of the cross is to them that perish foolishness, but unto us who are being saved, it is the power of God."

We are not going to have the power of God without the message of the cross. The cross must be central. It must be foremost in our lives. The message of the cross must burn in our hearts and souls. It must be the message we proclaim. We must be consumed with what the Saviour did on the cross, and we must teach it; we must preach it; we must explain it, for there is the very power of God in it.

The Yielded Life

The second thing I want to say about the power of God in revival, is that the power of God is in a life wholly yielded to the Holy Spirit. In Acts 1:8 Jesus said, "But you shall receive power (dunamis), after that the Holy Ghost is come upon you: and you shall be witnesses unto Me both in Jerusalem, and in all Judea, and in Samaria, and unto the uttermost part of the earth."

The power of God is not in what man can do. The power of God is not in human abilities. It is not in great organization nor in great strategy, wonderful as strategy is. The power of God is not in a superstar preacher or singer. The power of God is in the Holy Spirit of God, and it is the life that is absolutely yielded to the Holy Spirit that will know the power of God. You shall receive that dunamis, that divine energy, and you shall be witnesses unto Me. There have been many times in my life when it was Sammy and not God. Revival is when God comes. Revival is when God does it. Man can manipulate. Man can try to get people to do things. But the power of God is when God’s Spirit comes and visits and moves and works among His people. God is looking for men and women whose lives are completely surrendered and totally yielded unto Him.

The filling of the Holy Spirit is that which enables us to become like Christ. It ought to be the goal of every Christian to be like Jesus. We cannot of ourselves become like Christ. There is no good thing that dwells in our flesh. The only way we can become like Christ is for the Holy Spirit to make us like Him. That is why we must yield ourselves daily unto Him, unto His fullness, allowing Him to take control of our lives and make us the persons He wants us to be.

But the anointing of the Spirit is that divine enabling to do the work of God. Many times we talk about revival, we preach about revival, and yet we have very little of that divine enabling for God to move and to work. "Not by might, nor by power, but by My Spirit, saith the Lord of hosts" (Zechariah 4:6). It is not that we are eloquent or are able to accomplish this or that, but it is the divine enabling of the Holy Spirit of God that does the work of revival and the saving of souls.

Power Comes Through Prayer

One last thing I want to say about the power of God, the power of God comes through protracted prayer. This goes back to Luke 24:49: "But tarry ye in the city of Jerusalem, until ye be endued with power from on high," with divine enabling. Every great revival in the history of the Church has been preceded by holy, humble, praying men and women. There is no shortcut to revival. I’m convinced this is one reason we don’t have revival in this country. We want to have a prayer meeting and then expect that tomorrow there’s going to be revival.

If we’re going to have revival that shakes our churches and our communities, we’re going to have to get a group of people somewhere, sometime, somehow, to pray. I’ve discovered that when the wind of God blows, it always blows across a praying people. We can’t twist God’s arm to send revival, but we can get in a position to receive it, and the position to receive it is prayer. That’s what Jesus was telling His disciples: "Tarry ye in the city of Jerusalem, until ye be endued with power from on high."

Genuine Spirit-sent Revival

Perhaps my closest heartbeat to genuine Spirit-sent revival has been in the nation of Romania. I started traveling there in 1980. I was a pastor in Germany when I went into Romania, and I saw something I had never seen before. I went into the city of Oradea. Here were Christians who were persecuted, Christians who lost their jobs, Christians who went to prison for their faith. I went to preach in a church there and God was moving. I had a singing group with me, and we arrived about two hours before the church service was to start to set up the sound equipment. Scattered throughout the church were people praying--weeping, crying quietly in pews all over the church, calling out to God. As I walked in, there was a sense of "God’s here!" By the time the service started, there wasn’t room for the people. They stood around the pulpit and outside on the streets to hear the Word of God.

In early 1984 I went back to that church again, and I stood in that church and preached. The place was packed; people were standing down the aisles. Many came to know Christ that night. After the service was over, one of the leaders of the church came up and said, "Brother Sammy, did the Lord work?"

I said, "What do you mean, ‘Did the Lord work?’ Why are you asking me this? Didn’t you see how many people were here? Didn’t you see what happened? People came to Christ. Why are you asking me, ‘Did the Lord work?’"

He said, "O, you don’t understand. I was not in the sanctuary. I was in another room with 100 men and we were praying the whole time you were preaching. There was another room with 100 women, and they were praying the whole time you were preaching." Up until that time I had never been anywhere where there were 100 men and 100 women praying the whole time I was preaching.

He said there was a pastor who came to that church who taught the people to pray. He did two things: he taught the people to pray and he called for repentance. In Romania, in Eastern Europe, believers are called "repenters." The pastor’s message was, "The repenters must repent." The church actually entered into a covenant of repentance. They repented of the sins that were in their lives, sins that were in the church. They were broken before God and entered into a covenant of repentance.

Then they began to pray and there was an explosion; there was a dunamis which took place. Within the next six months there were 200 baptized. In Eastern Europe, during the days of communism, to be baptized was very dangerous. When God began to move, that church began to grow. A great revival took place. It spread throughout the whole northwestern quadrant of Romania.

The pastor taught the people to pray in an unusual way. He said, you pray that one day we will stand in the great stadiums of this country and we will proclaim the Gospel of Jesus Christ. You pray that one day over the radio and through the newspapers we will proclaim the Gospel of Jesus Christ. You pray, you pray, you pray. And the people prayed, and they prayed, and they prayed. And the more they prayed, the darker it got and the worse it became. God was preparing a people.

In 1988 I was going into Romania. The train stopped. The soldiers came and took me off the train and held me under guard. I was deported from the country. They said, "You will never, you will never, you will never put your feet on Romanian soil again."

My heart broke, because I loved these Romanian people. I had such a wonderful relationship with them. But I knew that though communists had deported me, they couldn’t deport the Holy Spirit, and they could not deport the prayers of God’s people. I received a message from one of my friends that simply said this, "Sammy, keep praying. Remember, the glory of God comes through much suffering. Keep praying."

In December, 1989, I was visiting my mother at Christmas, and my son came in from watching the CNN News and he said, "Dad, you need to see what’s on the news. Something is happening in Timisoara (Romania)." As we investigated we learned that an evangelical pastor was to be arrested. The believers from all the churches went to his apartment and made a circle around it and tried to protect him from being arrested by the Secret Police. The Secret Police came and began to fire into the crowd, killing innocent men, women and children.

When the blood of the martyrs began to flow in the streets of Timisoara, there was a release of the wrath of God on the evil Ceausescu regime, and a release of the glory of God on the people of God. An estimated 200,000 people gathered in the main square. They were all atheists. They were all trained from kindergarten to the postgraduate university level in scientific atheism. They were taught there is no God. The pastor of the First Baptist Church stood up before the crowd and began to preach. As he preached on the cross of Jesus Christ, a dunamis took place.

The crowd of about 200,000 people, all of whom were trained in atheism, began to shout, "Existe Dumnezeu! Existe Dumnezeu!" (which translated means, "There is a God! There is a God!") Faith erupted in the whole population. This spread from one town to another town to another town.

A friend of mine from Ohio called in automatic redial for 16 hours to get in touch with a friend of mine in Romania, Titus. Finally he got through to Titus, and he said, "Titus, are you okay? Is your family okay? What’s happening?"

All Titus could say was, "The glory of God has come to my people! The glory of God has come to my people! Tell Sammy that for which we have prayed for so long has finally happened. Tell him he must come back."

I left everything I was doing, got on a plane and flew to Vienna, Austria. Friends picked me up in Vienna and we drove across Hungary to the Romanian border. We prayed the whole way, because we knew that my name was in the computer. Before the revolution, the first question they asked at the border was, "Do you have any Bibles?" and if you had Bibles you were in trouble.

We arrived at the border that night. The revolution was still in process. It was cold; it was dark; it was snowing. We were the only car. Soldiers came up to the car. They said, "Get out." We got out. And they asked this question, "Are you Christians?" My heart began to beat hard. I looked at that soldier and I said, "Yes, sir, we’re Christians."

For the rest of my life, until I die, I will never forget what happened next. That soldier threw his arms open wide and he said, "Welcome to the new Romania!"

My friend Titus was waiting in the customs building. He had been pushed into the new transitional government. He came out and embraced me, and on the very spot where they told me, "You will never, you will never, you will never put your feet on Romanian soil again," we knelt and gave glory and honor and praise to Jesus Christ!

We went into Romania, and I saw things with my eyes I had never dreamed I would see. The last time I was there, when we would go to some Christian’s home, we would have to park our car far away late at night and have to walk around in a way to disguise where we were going to go into the home to have a meal with him. Now it was not that way.

As I walked on the streets, people who didn’t know me but could tell I was from the West, throngs of people on the streets--not church people, but people on the streets--would gather around and would begin to shout, "Existe Dumnezeu! Existe Dumnezeu! Existe Dumnezeu!" (There is a God! There is a God! There is a God!) The theme song of the days of revolution was a song about the second coming of Jesus Christ. I’m not saying the whole country was converted, but there was a visitation of God upon the nation in which the spirit of atheism in one divine moment was blown out of the country.

God, Send a Dunamis on America!

I know that we’ve got problems in this country of America. I know we’ve got secularism and humanism and materialism and all those things that are encroaching on our nation and are destroying our young people and destroying our churches. But I want to say to you, in one divine moment when God comes, He can blow it away by the dunamis of God! It came in Romania through years and years and years of prayers ascending to the Throne of God, by men and women who were willing to sacrifice their lives for the sake of Jesus Christ. Oh, how we need the God of power, of dunamis!

Might we come to the cross. Might the Lord break us, bend us and melt us and strip us. Might everything that is of the self life be exposed by the light of the cross. Might we not just talk about revival, but might we pray until God will send revival to us. We cannot work up revival. We cannot bring it down. Only God can send revival. Let us ask God to search our hearts and do in our hearts what He needs to do.





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