This sermon emphasizes the need for personal revival and surrender to God, highlighting the importance of being willing, available, and teachable for God's use. It discusses the characteristics of a revival leader, focusing on humility, faithfulness, and reliance on God's sufficiency. The speaker encourages drawing a circle around oneself symbolically, signifying a commitment to be an instrument of revival and to seek God's will above personal desires.

I don't know about you, but I feel like for the last two days I've been not drinking from a fire hydrant. I feel like I've been standing at the bottom of Niagara Falls trying to catch all the water, and especially today. Bob, while you were talking this morning, I sent a text message to Ken Jenkins. He's one of our refresh speakers, and I said, wasn't somebody in your family involved in the Cane Ridge Revival, and James McCready led his great-great-great-grandfather Samson Jenkins to Christ, and Samson Jenkins established the Cumberland Presbyterian Church on the river, and there's all this history that he went up and discovered about a year ago. He said some distant relative said, you know, you're related to people from that crazy revival that happened out there in Kentucky. So I tell you, the streams of God's blessings just flow in a lot of places that we don't understand. I'm blessed to be here. I'm really mad at Bill and Byron because they put a Baptist after a Pentecostal, and that's just not fair. It's just not fair. I mean, I got to start running three days ahead of time to catch up with Doug, but boy, I tell you, what insight into how we need to pray just all day long. I mean, my cup's just been full of what God wants to do, and I pray that he will use tonight. I pray he'll use it again in my life. I need to hear from God tonight. I want to talk tonight about the man that God uses in revival. We're in the book of Exodus, the man that God uses in revival. Bill and I were in a prayer event not long ago in Atlanta with some key leaders in our denomination and about 30 pastors, and Alvin Reed, who is one of the professors at Southeastern Seminary, who has written an incredible book on revival called Firefall 2.0. It studies revival from the beginning of the Old Testament revivals all the way up through and past the Jesus movement. Phenomenal study on revivals, and Alvin has a real heart for revival, but he said something that I think shook all of us. He said, based on the history of revival, the age of Martin Luther, the age of John Knox, the age of Evan Roberts, he just went down and named the ages of all of them. He said, most of us are too old to lead a revival, but we're not too old to kill it. And you know, the danger in revival is it could be like the days of the Jesus movement, when the church wasn't ready for a bunch of hippies with long hair and flip-flops and navy bell-bottom blue jeans and tank tops walking into their church saying, that we don't want that, because it didn't look like what they wanted church to look like. My own church didn't understand what revival looked like. The deacons had to vote. We had a youth prayer meeting in my home church, and at one point there were 300 young people on Monday night, Tuesday night, Thursday night, and Friday night, praying from six o'clock at night to sometimes two or three o'clock in the morning, and watching people walking off the street and be saved. We had to get permission from the deacons to use the auditorium, because they had not budgeted for the use of electricity that many nights in the week. They were men full of faith in the Holy Spirit. Men of whom the world was not worthy. But I want to talk for a minute about this man that God uses, and I want to use Moses as the example, and here's what you know. I'm speaking to the choir tonight. You know that if we could have done and had an experienced revival in the power of our flesh and by programs, we would have been living in it for the last hundred years instead of looking for it. But we've gotten caught up because we're worried about what the world thinks about us. We're more concerned about image than integrity, and we're more concerned does he have a seminary degree than rather is he living a sanctified life. We get caught up in the superficials, the things that don't matter in eternity. We get worried about things that God's not worried about. I mean, I can't find one person among the prophets that ever went to college and seminary, but they were sure used by God. And we limit God when we say, God, these are the parameters of the kind of person that you can use. The reason that I'm a pastor today, I was in youth ministry for 15 years. The reason I'm a pastor today is because a church in Oklahoma had a man stand up and preach and say, the reason you can't find a pastor is because you're looking for Saul and his qualifications, and you need to go find a nobody like David that his own dad doesn't even believe in, and that's your pastor. And so that was me. That was me. I was there in three weeks, and that was me. You know, I mean, I'm the least likely person of all to be here. And I know that I'm only here by the grace and the goodness of God. It is not of my works that I'm saved, and it is not of my works that I get a chance to preach. It is the grace of God that gives me that opportunity. But I, you know, when I look at who God uses, God typically uses the last person that the world would choose. The problem is, he also uses the last person that the church would choose. You know, my pastor had the spiritual gift of discouragement. He pulled me aside after I'd answered a call to ministry and said, you know, Michael, you're never, this is my pastor now. He said, you're never going to amount to much, so you just need to settle for being whatever you can be. You know, that helped me along. That encouraged me. But you know, apart from the grace of God, I never will amount to much. Anything that I have and anything that I am is by the grace of God, not because of any gifts or anything else. It's all by the grace of God. But the world, the world looks for somebodies and God looks for nobodies. I love those words in 1 Corinthians, not many wise, not many noble. According to the flesh, the world looks at the flesh and says, now that's somebody that God could use. And God says, no, no, too full of themselves to be full of me. God is looking for men. When I wrote The Power of Desperation, I was looking back through it again this week and I found this sentence, only when our hand is forced do we yield. When our back is to the wall and our fleshly attempts at deliverance are all washed away. Here's what I believe I understand about revival is that God is always looking for nobodies who are not in it for themselves or for their fame, their reputation, their agenda, or anything else. He's just looking for nobodies that he can use and that he can fill. And typically nobodies are people who are desperate. They're people who are desperate. They've come to the end of themselves. And I've wasted a lot of my life trying to help God out. I don't know about you, but I've gone out and gotten busy and done things and told God that I was going to help him out. And God said, well, fine, go without me. See how far that gets you. And I've discovered it's a humbling trip back to the altar when you try to do it in the strength of your flesh. You see, the establishment doesn't look for prophets, nor does the established religious crowd look for prayer warriors. In fact, establishment doesn't look for revival. I can't find many places in the Bible where the prophets got an invitation to come tell the established religion what was wrong. They just showed up. You know, sheep herders from Tekoa just show up. Hey, I got a word for you. You know, the prophets just walked in and said, this is what we're going to have to do to get back to God. They didn't ask permission. They didn't get an invitation. They didn't have an RSVP. They just showed up and said, this is what God wants to say to you. And so I want to look at Moses. If you look at the book of Exodus, in chapter 1 in verse 8, there's a reference to a new king. In chapter 2 in verse 23, there's the death of a king. And even in the context of this message, before we dive into it, chapter 1 in verse 8 and chapter 2 verse 23 reminds me that in the context of world events, God can break through. In those world events, the new king and the death of the king, there were opportunities. And so you read Exodus 1 and 2, you're familiar with it. And the people are in Egypt. They're in Egypt individually. They're in Egypt collectively. They have now become a threat to Pharaoh. The very people that were responsible for Egypt surviving a famine are now not appreciated. Sound anything like the country we live in? And so Pharaoh is putting pressure on these people. And at the same time, God is supernaturally preserving his people in the midst of bondage and oppression and abuse. And at the same time, he's got an old boy out there in the wilderness that thought he could do God's will his way, and he's refining in him, he's pruning him, and he's squeezing the Moses out of Moses so he can get God inside of Moses. Moses' problem was he thought he could help God. And so he had to spend 40 years in the wilderness. So here, God raises up this man who will dominate the first five books of the Bible. His name will dominate. He's one of two that appears on the Mount of Transfiguration. He is the symbol of the law, as Elijah is the symbol of the prophets. And when you look at the life of Moses, he was protected in his birth. I mean, Pharaoh says, kill all the male children. Sound like anything in the New Testament? Let's kill them all. He was protected in his birth. You know, we don't give Moses' mom and dad enough credit for risking their lives for their son. He was protected in his birth. He was preserved for the purpose of God. But then there's one more thing. He was protected and he was preserved, but he was prepared. He was a prepared man, but not the way he thought he was going to be prepared. He thought in his flesh, I'm being prepared. I've been raised in the house of Pharaoh. I'm educated. I've got the nicest chariot. I've done all these great things. I'm wise. I know how to do things. And then he went out and tried to kill the Egyptians one at a time. If you tried to do that, you're going to be killing Egyptians for a long time and trying to find a place to bury them. And then he ran for his life and he fled. He was a failure. Any way you slice it, by the world's design of what a man should be, Moses was a failure. He failed as a leader. He failed as a liberator. He's banished into exile, but God is sovereignly presiding over his failure to use him in a great way. You see, God allowed him to be in the wilderness to prune him, and God allowed the people to be in bondage to get them to a point of desperation. And when their desperation reached a pitch, a high pitch, and when Moses had been pruned to the way that God wanted him pruned, God said, I'm going to bring this together now, and I'm going to do something. And I'm going to do something that no leader nation in this world, most powerful nation in the world, nobody can stop what I'm about to do. Exodus chapter 2 and verse 23. Now it came about in the course of those many days that the king of Egypt died, and the sons of Israel, I want you just to underline some words here, sighed. They sighed because of their bondage, and they cried out, and their cry for help because of their bondage was heard, and it rose up to God. I love verse 24. So God heard their groanings, and God remembered his covenant with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and God saw the sons of Israel, and God took notice of them. Now Moses was pastoring the flock of Jethro his father-in-law, the priest of Midian, and he led the flock to the west side of the wilderness and came to Horeb, the mountain of God. And the angel of the Lord appeared to him in a blazing fire from the midst of a bush, and he looked, and behold, the bush was burning with fire, yet the bush was not consumed. So Moses said, I must turn aside now and see this marvelous sight, why the bush is not burned up. And when the Lord saw that he had turned aside to look, God called to him from the midst of the bush and said, Moses, Moses, and he said, here I am. Then he said, do not come near here, remove your sandals from your feet, for the place on which you are standing is holy ground. And he said also, I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob. Then Moses hid his face, for he was afraid to look at God. And the Lord said, I have surely seen the affliction of my people who are in Egypt, and have given heed, we've already seen he said that in chapter two, given heed to their cry because of their taskmasters. And I am aware of their suffering, so that I have come down to deliver them from the power of the Egyptians, and to bring them up from that land to a good and spacious land, to a land flowing with milk and honey. Verse nine, now behold, the cry of the sons of Israel has come to me. Furthermore, I have seen the oppression with which the Egyptians are oppressing them. Therefore, come now, and I will send you. Isn't that interesting? I've come down, and I will send you. When God comes down, he always finds somebody to send. I've come down, and I will send you. Isn't that what he did with John the Baptist? He sent a forerunner. Here's what's about to happen. Repent, the kingdom of God is at hand. I will send you to Pharaoh, so that you may bring my people, the sons of Israel, out of Egypt. First thing is this, does God still hear our cry for revival? I mean, that's a question people ask. Some of you in this room have been in ministries and been talking about revival for decades and decades. And sometimes you just wonder if it falls on deaf ears. You just wonder, is anybody listening? Is anybody paying attention? Is what I'm saying any good? Is it doing any good? Is it doing any good for us to pray? Or have we just shrugged our shoulders and said, okay, you know, one cry, that's good. But, you know, hey, we've all been crying out for a hundred years, and God hadn't answered. Well, God's not on our timetable. But crying out is still on his timetable. The words in chapter 2 define the character of God. Look at it. There are four action verbs in verses 23 and 24. God hears. God hears. What did he hear? He heard their groans and their sighs. There are only two times that you see that Jesus sighed. He sighed when he saw human suffering, and he sighed when the Pharisees would not believe what he could do. You think God's sighing because the church doesn't believe what God can do? We've lost our faith in God, and God hears this graphic language, their cry of anguish rose up to God, their wails before God. God was silent, but he wasn't inactive, because God says to Moses, I hear. I'm not deaf. I hear what's going on down there. But then it says God remembers. What did God remember? God remembered his covenant with Abraham. God still remembers his covenants. God still remembers the thousands of promises in his Word. God remembers. God does not have to be reminded. He remembers. He looked down, and he said, you know, those are my people. I made a covenant with Abraham, with Isaac, and with Jacob. God hears. God remembers. God sees. That's like seeing with a deep sense of knowing and fully understanding. God wasn't looking at it from 35,000 feet. God was in the midst of his people. God sees what's going on, and God knows. He took notice. He is acquainted with our grief and with our suffering. He sees every blow. He sees every injustice. He sees every act of hate. God sees, and he knows. He says, I have seen the affliction of my people. Does God still hear our cry for revival? I think the answer is yes, he does. Yes, he does. I don't think what we're doing, I don't think this symposium is a waste of our time and energy. I don't think calling people to prayer is a waste of our time and energy, because God sees, and God hears, and God knows. We don't have to tell God how bad, you know, we don't have to get up and say, God, did you read USA Today? Do you know what's going on in this world? Do you know the mess that's going on in this world? You know, here's our problem is our churches are full of religious moralists that think that politics is going to fix our problems. And what we do is we watch Fox News and yell at the television and turn to the people in the house and say, can you believe we're acting like this? And it's easier for us to watch the news and get mad than it is to watch and pray for one hour. When we start crying out to God with a desperation that says, God, you're the only hope, and I mean when we really believe that, then God will do something. God heard, he remembered, he sees, he knows, and what do you do? Does God have a man for revival in this hour? The answer is yes. I think he does. I think he does. One of the men that was significant in the days of the Jesus movement was a student at the college that I went to several years before me, and he prayed one night in his dorm room. People heard him crying out to God, non-air-conditioned dorm, and it's hot in the room, and he prayed one night, and this was his prayer. Oh God, if you get to the bottom of the barrel and you can't find anybody else to do your dirty work, reach down in the bottom and get me, and I will do whatever you ask me to do. God hears prayers like that. God listens to prayers like that. The Bible history and the history of revival says the answer is yes. Here's the thing. The people were crying out to God. They were groaning before God, and in a prayer environment, God raised up a man. Now I'm sure they were crying out and looking around at everybody building all of Pharaoh's little projects and going, you know, I wonder if he's a guy. I wonder if he's a guy. They would have never said, God send Moses back. We know you've got him out there somewhere. They weren't asking for Moses. They were asking for deliverance, and for deliverance to come, they needed a deliverer, and Moses was the answer to their prayer. This always kind of reminds me about when the church was praying for Peter in prison, and he got out and knocked on the door. They said, it can't be Peter. We're praying. What are you praying for? Peter to be released. Well, he can't be there. I mean, we pray asking God to do something, and then we're shocked when he does it. So God raises up Moses in this moment, and he calls him out, and revival is a time when our prayers and God's timing intersect. When the prayers of God's people and the timing of God and his plan intersect, that's when revival hits, and I'm convinced that God knows the revival before the man of revival knows that he is. You know, Moses wasn't walking around saying to his wife, you know, honey, just wait. My day's coming. My day's coming. You know, I've been out here 40 years at just about time. I'm just waiting. You see, here's a guy who's been forgotten from a miraculous birth, and a miraculous deliverance, and a miraculous protection. Now he's a nobody. Moses was pastoring the flock of his father-in-law in the boondocks. Boy, talk about a job. Your father-in-law's telling you you got to go out for the lowliest job on the planet following sheep around. And so he's out there in the backwoods in this menial job, and it's got to be circling around in his head. You know, I bet back in Egypt they're asking, whatever happened to Moses? Boy, that boy had so much potential. He had so much to offer. He was so sharp. I mean, he looked just like Charlton Heston, and he just was, he was so sharp. Whatever happened to old Moses? And Moses is out pastoring the flock. I don't think Moses got up that morning and thought, boy, I'm going to have an encounter with God today. Something happened he wasn't expecting. Moses got up, and after 40 years, he had resigned himself to be a lowly shepherd, and he went about and shuffled among the sheep. I don't think there was any expectation in his heart, but it was in God's heart. You just think about that day. You've been in the wilderness, and I'm telling you, you know, we think of wilderness, we think get lost in the woods. Wilderness there is just 120 degrees and rocks, and Moses is out there just trying to find places with a little grass to feed the sheep and then move them on and move them on. But he's out around the mountain of God. The sun comes up that day. There's a haze in the air. Same old, same old, same thing he's been doing for years, for decades. Go out, walk with the sheep, find some grass, lead them to some water, lay down for the night. No angel touched Moses on the shoulder and said, hey bud, today would be a good day to look out for burning bushes. Just a normal day, just a usual day. You know, when revival hit at Wheaton, it was just a normal day. When revival hit at Asbury, it was just another day, but it was God's day, and on this day, God decided to speak to a servant that he had been preparing for 40 years. And so here's Moses, and he hears a voice. Moses, Moses, you realize that that broke 40 years of silence. He hadn't had one other Jewish friend that we can find that he had talked to. 40 years of silence, and all of a sudden, he hears his name being called. Moses, Moses, take your shoes off. You're on holy ground. I think one of the reasons it's hard to find men for revival, it's hard to find men who want to be holy. When you're in the presence of God, you're on holy ground. And here's Moses on this holy ground, and God reveals himself to him as I am. Now, there's several things about that revelation. First of all, it was a revelation, not a discovery. It was a revelation, not a discovery. This is not done of scientific research or philosophical study, or the study of world religions. God just showed up and said, guess who you're talking to, bud? It's a revelation. God has to reveal himself to the person of revival. Nobody says, I'm the person. God says, that's the person. It's a revelation, not a discovery. Secondly, it's a revelation of grace. Moses had not done one thing to deserve that position of leadership. Not one. It was a revelation of the grace of God, that God took a man who saw himself as a failure, as a lowly shepherd, as a nobody, as somebody long forgotten, and God revealed grace to him. And then it's a revelation that was profoundly simple. The Egyptians had multiple gods. God says, I am. I am. Now, I think it's, my number may be off a little bit, but I think it's 170 times that the name I am appears in the Old Testament, and 71 of those 160 or 70 times are found in the first five books. Moses knew God as I am. He revealed himself simply. It was a revelation that was profoundly simple. It was declarative, and it was descriptive. Moses, I know you spent 40 years in Egypt, and they had gods on every corner, and they had little shops where you could buy idols, and you could worship all these false gods, but I want to tell you, I am. I'm it. I'm the one. It was descriptive of who he is. I am anything and everything you need. You see, God's looking for somebody that might be the next great revival leader, and we need to be careful that we don't push them aside because they don't fit our description or our idea about what a revival leader would look like. I'm reminded, I found this not long ago. You know, Spurgeon's probably the greatest English-speaking preacher that ever lived. I mean, his memory, his mind was incredible. He just preached out of the overflow on Sunday nights, and read thousands of pages a week. He was a man who could have easily stood in his own intellectual power, but it is said that when Spurgeon walked to the pulpit that those closest to him could see his hand shaking and hear him muttering under his breath, I believe in the power of the Holy Spirit. I believe in the power of the Holy Spirit. You see, God's looking for a man. God's looking for a woman. God's looking for somebody, and God opened Moses' eyes and his ears to a call. I think we all get busy in our ministries. I do. You do too. I've really been convicted by the Lord these last few years. I've got, I mean, I'm 62 in December, and I've really been convicted by the Lord. I've got to start walking slowly among our young people. And I've got to stop and hug our children more often, because the next Evan Roberts may be walking by me, and I didn't take time to be sensitive enough to God to sense that. I need to walk slowly. Every Sunday night, about five or six, sixth graders come and hand me prayer cards that tell me they're praying for me, and half of them every week say, we are praying for revival. Now, folks, I don't know what that means to you, but it makes me want to make sure that I'm working on reaching the next generation for Christ. And it makes me remember that these young people, there's one somewhere, maybe in your circle, maybe in my circle, but there's a young person somewhere that God's ready to raise up. But, you know, if we don't take time to talk to them, and if we don't take time to encourage them, and if I become that pastor that looks at a kid and says, you know, that kid's never going to amount to much, if I become that pastor, I may quench what God's trying to do in a young heart, and he may end up in a wilderness he doesn't have to be in because I quenched God's work in his life. We need to walk really slowly through the crowd, and we can judge people by externals and by where they are. I want to tell you something. I'm glad none of you knew me when I was 16 years old, because I had a PhD in being a jerk when I was 16, but I had a youth minister that believed in me and loved me and put up with me. He knew I was playing games. He knew I was playing church. He knew that I was faking it on Sundays, and he never stopped loving me, and he's a major, major influencer in my life. I wonder, is the next revival leader born yet? Don't know. Is he a child? Is he a young person? Is he a college student, a seminary student? He could be working in an oil field. He could be working in a coal mine. God has found a lot of people in places we wouldn't look for a revival leader, and we certainly wouldn't go to the backside of the desert to look for one, but notice what it says. Psalm 103.7 says, he made known his ways to Moses. It says, when he turned aside, he forgot about the sheep. When literally means at the same moment. Just get the picture. What the Hebrew is saying here is that the moment that Moses made the first turn, the first time he moved that shoulder, he made that turn, God spoke. God didn't wait and said, well, I'm going to see if he's really serious and get all the way over here. He said, when Moses thought, and God knew what he was thinking, when Moses said, that's interesting, I'm going to turn aside, and the moment he made the move to turn aside, he heard his name called by God. That's pretty good. Moses. At the very moment, God's looking for a man that is over himself, enough to be used by God, whose heart is soft toward God, whose heart is tender toward God, who's broken, who's desperate, and God called him personally, Moses. I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Now, Ron Dunn used to say, God sometimes puts things in the Bible while I'm asleep at night and then open it up and say, well, I never saw that before. I can't tell you how many times I read this, and I would read, Moses, I'm the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. But there's something right for that. I am the God of your father. Hey, Moses, I knew your daddy. I knew your daddy. I know what your dad did to save your life. So don't think that as an 80-year-old man, you are without purpose. It just took me 80 years to get you ready. Don't think you're without purpose. I know your daddy. I know your family. I am intimately acquainted with your life. I know every sheep. I know every hill. I know every rock. I know everything you've been through. I know what's going on in your life. I'm the God that your father served. Here's where I just want to stop for just a minute. God will never use a man who is flippant and chummy and casual with God, because He didn't say, hey, I know your daddy, and Moses said, that's really good. Let's sit down and have a talk. You know, did you ever come to one of the family reunions, and I just didn't see you there? He said, take off your shoes. I know your daddy. Take off your shoes. Remember who you're dealing with, son. I'm not like these other gods. I am the God. God will never use a man that's chummy or casual or flippant about who God is. Yes, we can boldly approach the throne of grace, but we better remember what we sang tonight. He is holy, holy, holy, the Lord God Almighty. We don't sashay into His presence on our terms. We come by the grace of God, and remember who we're talking to. Yes, we can call Him Abba Father, but that did not remove the fact that He is a holy God. Yes, we have intimacy. Yes, we can go directly to throne. Yes, we are heirs and joint heirs with Christ, but that doesn't change the fact that God is holy, and we are not. And the only thing that allows us to approach God is the grace of God, the salvation through the blood of Jesus, and the Holy Spirit living inside of us. And so Moses has this encounter with God, and here's what I believe. I believe that a man of revival knows his place before God. He knows, hey, you know what? He's God, and I'm not. Tom Milliff has a phrase that I borrowed a lot, like, God's running the show. God's running the show. I'm not running the show. It's not my church, not your church, not my ministry, not your ministry. God's running the show. And Moses hid his face out of reverence and respect. Here's, and I love, I love praise music. I mean, I love it. If you knew how many songs I had on iTunes, you would say I've got an idol in my life, but I'm afraid that in our desire to sing intimate songs to God, we have forgotten the reverence that God is due in our worship. I said to our young people, I preach youth camp this, I drank a lot of Red Bull. I preached youth camp this last summer, and I said to our young people, I said, you know, I really don't know who you are. I don't know if you're the youth group that's down at the mosh pit jumping up and down, or you're the kids that are standing in church on Sunday mornings with your mouth closed and your arms folded. You need to decide who you are. You know, get all in or get out. You know, but don't be this emotional yo-yo that goes up and down. Decide you're going to put your hands to the plow and walk with him and stay with him. Yes, there's intimacy. Yes, there is a precious relationship that we have, but at the same time, we need to remember who we're dealing with. You see, when you fear God, you fear nothing else, but he that sees God sees nothing else. We don't look around and worry about what anybody else is doing. Well, if they'll go, I'll go. If they'll do it, I'll do it. I got to thinking about it, Moses was afraid. He had reverence. John on the Isle of Patmos, now you think about John on the Isle of Patmos. Here's the disciple whom Jesus loved. There was nobody that was more intimately acquainted with Jesus than John, but when he saw Jesus on the Isle of Patmos, he fell on his face as dead. When John saw Jesus on the Isle of Patmos, he didn't say, Jesus, hey, whoa, boy, I tell you, let's talk about some of those good old stories from those camp days when we're out there in the hills and multiplying fish and raising the dead. He saw Jesus in his glory and he fell on his face and like he was dead. Remember Simon Peter? Simon Peter sees Jesus. He's been fishing all night and caught nothing, which means he was a good fisherman. Jesus says, try the other side and you know, Peter can, whatever. Then he realizes it's Jesus and he says, Lord, depart from me for I'm a sinful man. Let me tell you the man that God will use in revival. God will use the man in revival who knows how to be on his face before God, who is emptied of self. John Blanchard says, we will never crave to be filled until we are convinced that we are empty. So the last thing is the man God uses in revival is a willing yet reluctant vessel. Who's going to lead the next revival? You know, Evan Roberts, I mean, he could have been a rock star, but he withdrew and just devoted himself to prayer. Why? Because he didn't want to be around about him. You know, about the time that Evan Roberts showed up at a meeting and he asked him if they'd come see Evan Roberts and he left. This is not about me. My wife, Terry, when she was in high school, she grew up in the first Baptist church in a town I won't name, but she grew up there and it was dead as a hammer. I mean, it's dead like the Baptist church I grew up in was dead. It wasn't until I was out of college and I went to a conference and I heard Manly Beasley, Bertha Smith, Ron Dunn, and Peter Lord and Jack Taylor all in one week. And that's the first time I'd ever heard the Holy Spirit mentioned. I was 22 years old. Nobody ever told me about the Holy Spirit. Vance Havner said that we're so afraid to get out on a limb, we won't climb the tree. And two young college students came from Asbury, showed up on a Sunday night, asked the pastor if they could speak. The pastor said, yes. Terry said, I was 16 years old. And she said, they spoke for about 20 minutes, told what God had done in Asbury. And she said, for the first time in my entire life, I saw deacons and Sunday school teachers and young people. We were all on our knees as close to the altar as we could get because God had come down on that room. And she said, none of us knows their names and we don't know when they left. Same thing happened to the church I was in in Ada. Two college students showed up on a July night, asked if they could speak. They spoke. Hundreds of people came to the altar and somewhere when people started moving, those two students slipped out. Nobody in that church knows the names of those two students, but they do know that God showed up one night. So here's some questions that I ask when a man is going to be used in revival, he's a willing yet reluctant vessel. I have to ask some questions. Does he seek the limelight? Does he seek the limelight? Does he have an agenda? You know, is he trying to build something around himself? Does he have to be on the program? I mean, you know, for preachers, some of us, if we're not on program, we're not going. I took a sabbatical back in May and I told Terry, I said, here's how we're starting the sabbatical. We're going to the cove and I'm going to sit on the front row and I'm going to listen to Jim Cymbala for three days. That's what I'm going to do. And every time I go, I've been to the cove about 25 times. I've spoken three. The other times I've been in a participant and, and this is, I go to be fed because I need God to speak to my life. And too many preachers miss moments when God could work in their lives because they look and say, hmm, they didn't ask me to speak. I'm not going. You see, some of us are just too big for God to use. We're just too big for God to use. Am I on the program? Can I give you my brochure? And I'd love to come to your church. It's amazing what making movies does for brochures from people. We just, I'd love to come to your church. I just feel led to come. You know what? I believe God's big enough. If he wants us to have somebody, he'll let us know. I don't need self-promotion. You don't need self-promotion and revival doesn't need self-promotion. Moses said, here I am. I'm not qualified. I'm a failure. I know my weaknesses. You know, most of the people that God use didn't have titles. They didn't have positions and they didn't have platforms. My mentor for the first 15 years of my life, saved life. I got saved out of high school. And my mentor was Vance Habner and marked my life. I think I'm still bruised in a couple of places, but he's a wiry old twangy voice, North Carolina preacher got called to preach and ordained when he was 12 years old. So short, he had to stand up on a stool and his dad stand on one side of him and a deacon stand on the other side of him in case he fell off the stool. Never finished his sophomore year of college, but he wrote 39 books, never had a secretary, never had a brochure, never sent a mail out, never asked to be on any programs. He died when he was 85 years old. And according to his calendar, he was booked solid for the next five years after he died. Never lacked a place to preach, never lacked an opportunity. Here's what Vance Habner taught me. He said, Michael, you never have to chase key men when you know the one who holds the keys. Boy, if we could teach a younger generation of young men and women in ministry, you don't have to chase key people. You don't have to kiss up to people. You just get with God and God will open the doors that he wants to open for you. God revealed himself and he gave Moses an assignment. Therefore, verse 10, come now and I will send you to Pharaoh so that you may bring my people, the sons of Israel out of Egypt. This wasn't about making Moses a great man. This was about making God's people a great people. God revealed himself to Moses, and here's what I think were the three characteristics of Moses. In that wilderness, he had learned three things. He had become fat, faithful, available, and teachable. You know who the person God's going to use in revival? They're faithful, they're available, and they're teachable. You know, he used to sing an old song, I'll go where you want me to go, dear Lord, but I'd really like to live on the beach. I'd go where you want me to go, dear Lord, but I'd really like, you know, to stay in this kind of hotel. I'd go where you want me to go, but I need a minimum amount of money if I'm going to go and speak there because the reality is we don't believe that God knows our needs. We just don't believe that he knows our needs or that he cares. Moses, got a job for you. You talking to me? Yeah. And Moses starts making excuses. He sounds like people being enlisted to serve in a Baptist church. He starts making excuses. Well, you know, I'm busy. I got a lot of things. I'm in Kiwanis, and I got Rotary Club, and you know, I volunteer to stripe the baseball field on Thursday nights, and I can't do all that. I just can't get involved in that. And we either respond that way by making excuses, or we respond with what Mahoney said are the seven last words of the flesh. I will do it for you, Jesus. And that was Moses' problem 40 years before. He's going to do it for God. God said, no, you're going to do it my way this time. There's a danger of serving God in the flesh. That's the old Moses. There's a danger of trying to talk God out of your calling. That's the burning bush, Moses. The God that and Moses got together in a broken and humble man. Now there are five different complaints that Moses gives. And I want to tell you, the man that God calls to revival, to lead revival, will be a reluctant leader, because they will know their own unworthiness. They won't say, well, I'm glad somebody finally noticed that I'm the one. That person won't be used. Five complaints. Number one, who am I? Moses said, I'm inadequate. I'm inadequate. Here's a guy that was highly trained, and he says, I'm inadequate. Who am I? What shall I say? He pleads ignorance. Educated in the house of Pharaoh, he pleads ignorance. I don't know what to do. I don't know what to say. You see, the wilderness had broken him of his pride. Who am I? What shall I say? They will not believe me. Moses said, I won't be effective. I'm going to be ineffective. If I go there, it's going to fail, and you're going to look bad, God. It's just going to all fall apart. I'm not eloquent. He says, I don't have the capacity, incapacity. I'm not eloquent. I can't do what you want me to do. And then he does, you know, Lord, hear my sin, somebody else. Get somebody, how about my, get my brother, have you ever noticed that he started saying, well, I can't talk, I stutter, you know, and God finally puts up with that long enough, says, who made your mouth? And you know, he said, God says, okay, look, I'll, I'll send Aaron. You ever noticed that Moses hardly ever let Aaron do anything after he got there? I mean, he just, he did it all. Why? Because he finally realized that God was sufficient. Here's what, God did not accept one of his excuses, and God gave himself to Moses as a pledge. God didn't give Aaron to Moses as a pledge. God gave himself to Moses and God's sufficiency will match any need in my life. Who am I? Stripped of his pride, stripped of his self-sufficiency, stripped of his ego. I can't herd sheep. I can't lead people out. I love this statement by F.B. Meyer. As long as a man holds that he is easily able to do some great deed of heroism and faith, he is probably incompetent to do it. But when he protests his inability and puts away all the pretense and admits helplessness, he's the right person for God to use. God didn't take away one of Moses' issues. God just said, I'm sufficient. And isn't that what God says to us in the New Testament? I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me. When I am weak, he is strong. All the things that God says to us that he can do for us, listen, God can equip the called to do what he calls them to do. God's power would be evident in his life. Just a closing thought and then an illustration. The man of God that is used in revival is a shaken man, a sanctified man, and a sent man. He is shaken by the awareness of the call and the presence of God. He is sanctified by the burning of the Holy Spirit in his heart. And he is sent in the power of the Holy Spirit to do the job. Ernest Wadsworth in a book, Will Revival Come? said, when God's truth is as fire in our bones, thoughts and utterances will be painful because the spoken feels the burden of the word of the Lord. It is one thing to know the truth, another to understand it, but a rarer thing to feel its power. You have a piece of chalk. I want you to hold on to it for a minute while I tell you this story. I think I told this story at Revival Week in 2010, but it bears repeating. One of the men that influenced my life as much as anybody was Ron Dunn. Ron Dunn was a hero to me. I think he was probably one of the greatest expositors of the 20th century. He did 16 straight revival conferences, Bible conferences for us, three in Oklahoma and 13 in Albany. Manly Beasley said Ron's book on faith was the greatest book on faith been written in the last hundred years. And for a guy that I believe lived every moment of his life by faith, that's a pretty big statement. Ron Dunn had a son that killed himself on Thanksgiving Day and lived with bipolar manic depression and walked in more victory than most church members I've ever met in my life. Hardest day of my life was the day I preached Ron's funeral, and there's not a day that I don't miss him. But I found myself at times, this subtle thing began to happen in my life. God would put people in my life to influence me, to prune me, and to work on me. And all of a sudden, I wanted to be them. You know, so I wanted to be Vance Havner. And when Vance Havner died, almost to the moment, the month that Vance Havner died, Ron's path and my path crossed. And from 1985 until when he died in 2001, he's one of the greatest friends anybody could ever have. But I found myself wanting to be like Ron. So, you know, I just kind of get in my flesh and think, now God's blessing Ron. So I get up behind the pulpit and I go, huh, well, it's good to see y'all tonight. All right. And I get Ron's sigh down, you know, I just, and he called me one day, he overslept. Ron could not sleep at night. And so he's preaching at our church and he's doing Habakkuk in the mornings. He's doing noonday sessions, he's doing the book of Habakkuk. So he's doing three messages out of Habakkuk, which were phenomenal messages. And I'd heard them several times. And so it's five minutes till 12 and Ron hadn't showed up yet. And Kay wasn't with him. Well, when Kay wasn't with him, you better check because he may have been up all night and just gone to bed at 10 o'clock. So I'm in there and, you know, where's Ron? So I go down to the phone and it rings about 15 times. Hello? Ron, where are you? What time is it? I said, it's five minutes till 12. He said, oh, I got up and I fell back asleep. I said, well, I can, we can sing two more songs. Can you get here? He said, oh, Michael, look, you know the outline. He said, it's this and this and this. He said, just, just you preach it. You know it as well as I do. Just go ahead and preach it. So I got up at the service, you know, we got visitors in there, people who've come from out of town to hear Ron Dunn. I got up and I said, well, we're here for the third message in the series. And I did about 10 minutes of just talking like Ron. You know, I wanted to be like Ron. I wanted to be like manly. I just didn't want to go through what they went through to be who they were. I just wanted to get the positive side of it. And one day Ron told me the story and you probably heard it, but he, Ron told me the story about when he was ordained Fort Smith, Arkansas, J. Harold Smith and 16 years old. He said, I'm sitting down on the front row. And he said back in when I was 16 years old, they called me Ronnie. He said, I hated them to call me Ronnie, but they called me Ronnie. And he said, J. Harold looked down at me and said, now Ronnie, God doesn't want you to be Billy Graham. And Ron said, hmm, that's my first choice. He said, now Ronnie, God doesn't want you to be W.A. Criswell. He said, that's my second choice. He said, Ronnie, what God wants is Ronnie Dunn full of Jesus. And Ron said, I thought to myself, who in the world wants to be Ronnie Dunn? But I'll tell you what, God used Ronnie Dunn full of Jesus. And can I tell you, God doesn't want us or the next leader of revival to be another Evan Roberts or another Timothy Dwight or another James McCready. God wants whoever it is to just be whoever it is full of Jesus. That will be the person that God uses in revival. So here's my invitation to you. Everybody familiar with the chalk from One Cry? Take the circle, draw it around yourself. Every person inside this circle needs revival. I got an 80-year-old Sunday school teacher that sits behind me on Sundays, and she walked in a couple of Sundays ago. We're doing the One Cry book in Sunday school. She walked in a couple of Sundays ago. She had her chalk. We were on the week with the chalk. She had her chalk in her hand. She said, I made a circle in my carpet, and I brought a piece of chalk to every lady in my Sunday school class. I said, God, let her tribe increase. Here's the invitation for us tonight. I wonder if we're willing—don't draw on the carpet, Byron, we'll get upset—but I wonder if we would just symbolically on our knees take this chalk and draw a circle around ourselves tonight and say, God, whatever you have to do in my life to make me the man or the woman that you could use in revival, I want you to do it. I want to be an instrument of revival. And remember what I started with. Most of us are too old to start one, but we're not too old to kill one. And when God does it, however God chooses to do it, what Doug has seen God do, and what Bob has seen God do, and what Byron has seen God do, and what Mark and Bill and others have seen God do, listen, it's going to be different, but it's going to have common characteristics. But it's going to be different, and God's going to use somebody that we're going to look at and go, well, that's not who I would have picked. Well, you're not on the selection committee. You're on the prayer committee, and you're on the availability committee. My job, whoever it is, Baptist, Methodist, Pentecostal, I don't—at this point, I don't care. I just want them to use somebody, somewhere, sometime, and the sooner the better. My job is to say, I've asked God to make me usable. I've asked God to use me as an instrument of revival. How can I help you do what God has called you to do? So would you pray with me, please? And would you just take that chalk, and would you just, in your heart and in your mind, just draw a circle around yourself and say, Lord, here I am. You've got my life. You've got a call on my life. You've got a purpose on my life, but God, here I am, and the person inside this circle, I want to be a tool and an instrument of revival. Lord, it may be that the person that you use is going to have to be led into the wilderness that you might humble them and test them and show them what is in their hearts to see whether or not they will obey your commands. For some, it will be a pruning. For others, it will be a refining, skimming off that which doesn't look like Jesus, which doesn't honor Jesus. For some, it will be a prioritizing, a renewing of the mind, a changing of habits, choosing better over best. God, I don't know what you need to do in each life in this room or those who are watching on the live stream. I don't know what you're needing to do in their hearts, but, God, I pray that for each of us, whether there is a individual that you raise up in this land for revival or many individuals, Lord, find people that will give you glory. Find people that can be used by you to bring honor to your name. That don't have any other agenda, but that Jesus be magnified. That have no other purpose but to live their lives for the glory of God. That fame and prestige and the applause of peers does not matter anymore. The only thing that matters is a well done from the throne of heaven. God, at the end of tomorrow, we're going to leave this place, and we're going to go back to our ministries and our fields of service and our responsibilities. And you've already spoken to our hearts, and you've already touched our lives. But, God, revive us again. Fill each heart with your love. May our souls be rekindled with fire from above. Hallelujah, thine the glory. Hallelujah, amen. Hallelujah, thine the glory. Revive us again. Lord, we have mercy drops, but we need a shower. We need you to rain down on this land. God, tonight, would you see, would you hear, and would you remember, and would you know? We know you do, but, God, somewhere in a youth group meeting tonight, in a prayer group, on a job, at a factory, in a coal mine, I don't care where it is. God, somewhere, find a revival leader and raise them up for your glory. Set their face like a flint. Give them the hide of a rhinoceros and the heart of a lamb. Make them emboldened to stand before anyone and anything and preach repentance, but give them compassion for those that believe. God doesn't love them, and, God, when you raise that person up, remind us it may not be in our denomination. It may not be our way. It may not be our style, but remind us that tonight we knelt and ask you to use us as instruments, and in agreement, we will pray and partner with the one that you raise up. Will you raise up? Yes, for in the last days, you're going to pour out your spirit. And so, God, before we get messed up in our eschatology, let us get right in our revivalology and seek your face. Lord, rend the heavens, and come down, that the mountains might quake in your presence. Lord, we don't need a band-aid. We're hemorrhaging. We need a holy infusion of power, and only you can give it. In Jesus' name, amen.