As Jesus prophesied in advance "lawlessness will abound, the love of many will grow cold" (Matthew 24:12) and the Holy Spirit explicitly expressed through Paul that in the last days perilous times will come: For men will have a form of godliness but denying its power (2 Timothy 3:1-9). Whenever I read these prophecies, I won't skip through as though this portion is not applicable to me. Rather I fear before God, without God's mercy and grace I will also fall into same category. When the world is getting darker and darker, God want His children becoming brighter and brighter. Now how to keep ourselves moving in God's direction consistently like Enoch walked with God and finally he was no more. Few principles I am learning from the life of Godly saints. They are(1) Though Jesus promised that "I have come that they may have life, and that they may have it more abundantly (John 10:10)". Why then many of us don't enter into abundant life in Christ. Reason for that "There is a saying in India, milk is only for the child who is crying." There is few Christians only, who consistently get alone with God with an open bible and asking God to search his/her heart with His penetrating laser beam and allowing Him to take the scan of his hidden parts. Like David said "Search me, O God, and know my heart; test me and know my thoughts. Point out anything in me that offends you, and lead me along the path of everlasting life." (Psalm 139:23-24, NLV). There must be a deep sense of longing to press forward, such person will receive fresh light from God which will lead him to experience fresh renewal.(2) John 7:36-38 On the last day, that great day of the feast, Jesus stood and cried out, saying, If anyone thirsts, let him come to Me and drink. He who believes in Me, as the Scripture has said, out of his heart will flow rivers of living water. Here Lord put only condition, we have to thirst for the life of God to overflow from our innermost being.(3) Exodus 2:23-25 "Now it happened in the process of time that the king of Egypt died. Then the children of Israel groaned because of the bondage, and they cried out; and their cry came up to God because of the bondage. So God heard their groaning, and God remembered His covenant with Abraham, with Isaac, and with Jacob. And God looked upon the children of Israel, and God acknowledged them." In this portion we can see that God remembered His covenant covenant made with Abraham, with Isaac, and with Jacob only when He heard their groaning because of bondage. This is another reason for not experiencing personal revival there is no groaning to be delivered from the power of sin.(4) Acts 3:19 "Repent therefore and be converted, that your sins may be blotted out, so that times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord." Repentance is not an one time experience, it is a continuous process in the life of a person who is beholding the glory of Jesus. Such a person will discover new areas where Jesus hasn't conquered yet or still under darkness. These revelation about himself will make him to put his face on the dust before God and weep. God of mercy will visit such a person with revival fire.This is God's will that we should experience personal revival consistently. Around seven months back I had been blessed by listening to the messages of A.W. Tozer on "How to Get Out of a Religious Rut" series. These messages had tremendous impact on my life. If you haven't heard this series, I encourage you to listen to it. This series is available in Sermon Index.In Him,Shibu
_________________Shibu Clement
[b]Committing to Personal Revival by A.W. Tozer[/b]One consequence of our failure to see clearly the true nature of revival is that we wait for years for some supernatural manifestation that never comes, overlooking completely our own individual place in the desired awakening. Whatever God may do for a church must be done in the single unit, the one certain man or woman. Some things can happen only to the isolated, single person; they cannot be experienced en masse. Statistics show, for instance, that 100 babies are born in a certain city on a given day. Yet the birth of each baby is for that baby a unique experience, an isolated, personal thing. Fifty people die in a plane crash; while they die together they die separately, one at a time, each one undergoing the act of death in a loneliness of soul as utter as if he alone had died. Both birth and death are experienced by the individual in a loneness as complete as if only that one person had ever known them.Three thousand persons were converted at Pentecost, but each one met his sin and his Savior alone. The spiritual birth, like the natural one, is for each one a unique, separate experience shared in by no one. And so with that uprush of resurgent life we call revival. It can come to the individual only. Though a visitation of divine life reaches seventy five persons at once (as among the Moravian Brethren at Dusseldorf), yet it comes to each one singly. There can exist no collective body of believers that can be revived apart from the units that compose the body.Understood aright these are truths full of great encouragement and good hope. [b]Nothing can hinder you or me from experiencing the revival we need. It is a matter for God and the solitary heart. Nothing can prevent the spiritual rejuvenation of the soul that insists upon having it[/b]. Though that solitary man must live and walk among persons religiously dead, he may experience the great transformation as certainly and as quickly as if he were in the most spiritual church in the world.[b]Prayer[/b]This day take full control, Lord. Show me what needs to be confessed and discarded. Fill me and change me, Spirit of God!
There must be a deep sense of longing to press forward, such person will receive fresh light from God which will lead him to experience fresh renewal.
Nothing can hinder you or me from experiencing the revival we need.
_________________Diane
One consequence of our failure to see clearly the true nature of revival is that we wait for years for some supernatural manifestation that never comes, overlooking completely our own individual place in the desired awakening.
_________________Ed Pugh
[b]Heart Hunger by A.W. Tozer[/b]In nature everything moves in the direction of its hungers. In the spiritual world it is not otherwise. We gravitate toward our inward longings, provided of course that those longings are strong enough to move us. Impotent dreaming will not do. The religious urge that is not followed by a corresponding act of the will in the direction of that urge is a waste of emotion. The awe-inspiring power of a discharge of lightning may dissipate itself in the atmosphere and accomplish nothing, while a flashlight battery may provide illumination for a miner hours on end. One is a dramatic display of immense power without direction and the other a quiet application of modest energy to an intelligent purpose.It is my conviction that much, very much, prayer for and talk about revival these days is wasted energy. Ignoring the confusion of figures, I might say that it is hunger that appears to have no object; it is dreamy wishing that is too weak to produce moral action. It is fanaticism on a high level for, according to John Wesley, "a fanatic is one who seeks desired ends while ignoring the constituted means to reach those ends."[b]Prayer[/b][i]Lord, I do want to be satisfied by You but I seem to lack intensity of hunger and thirst for You. Help me, Lord![/i]
[b]Revival Conditions By A.W. Tozer[/b]Our mistake is that we want God to send revival on our terms. We want to get the power of God into our hands, to call it to us that it may work for us in promoting and furthering our kind of Christianity. We want still to be in charge, guiding the chariot through the religious sky in the direction we want it to go, shouting "Glory to God," it is true, but modestly accepting a share of the glory for ourselves in a nice inoffensive sort of way. We are calling on God to send fire on our altars, completely ignoring the fact that they are our altars and not God's. And like the prophets of Baal we are working ourselves into a frenzy as if we could by violence command the arm of the Almighty.The whole error results from a confused notion of revival and a failure to recognize the moral laws that underlie the kingdom of God. God never moves whimsically; His ways are never impulsive or erratic. He never sends judgment unless there has been a violation of His laws, nor does He send blessing apart from obedience to those laws. So precise are His movements both in justice and in mercy that an intelligent observer, aware of the circumstances, could predict with complete accuracy any visitation of judgment or grace God might send to a nation, a church or an individual.Of this we may be certain: We cannot continue to ignore God's will as expressed in the Scriptures and expect to secure the aid of God's Spirit. God has given us a complete blueprint for the Church and He requires that we adhere to it 100 percent. Message, morals and methods are there, and we are under strict obligation to be faithful to all three. Today we have the strange phenomenon of a company of Christians solemnly protesting to heaven and earth the purity of their Bible creed, and at the same time following the unregenerate world in their methods and managing only with difficulty to keep their moral standards from sinking out of sight. Coldness, worldliness, pride, boasting, lying, misrepresenting, love of money, exhibitionism--all these things are practiced by professedly orthodox Christians, not in secret but in plain sight and often as a necessary part of the whole religious show.
