In this sermon, the evangelist shares a powerful story of reconciliation and forgiveness. A woman in the congregation was prompted by the evangelist to go and make things right with someone she did not love. She chose to reconcile with the wife of her former husband, leading to a restoration of their relationship. The sermon emphasizes the importance of making things right and seeking revival in the church. The speaker also quotes from the book of Jeremiah and Lamentations, urging the congregation to turn to God and seek renewal.

Hast thou not known, hast thou not heard, that the everlasting God, the Lord, the creator of the ends of the earth, fainteth not, neither is weary, there's no searching of his understanding. He giveth power to the faint, and to them that have no might, he increases strength. Even the youth shall faint and be weary, and the young men shall utterly fall, but they that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength. They shall mount up with wings as eagles, they shall run and not be weary, and they shall walk and not faint. We welcome you again to One Eagle's Wings, revival-oriented ministry. Have you ever thought about why sometimes you feel so weak as a Christian, or maybe even just as a human being? I was just thinking on some things about how sometimes we weaken ourselves by the things that we put into ourselves, just like the athlete can reduce his strength by eating too many sweets and junk food, so we can defile ourselves spiritually by allowing too many things to enter in and weaken us. Today I want to share some things with you on the importance of cleansing. You know, Hudson Taylor shared his secret with us of how he learned to fly on eagles wings, and I might share in a few minutes with you a little bit about that. And then also I want to share a little bit with you from the psalmist. You know, David prayed a powerful prayer when he said, Search me, O God, and know my heart. Try me, and know my thoughts, and see if there be any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting. It's something else to say, It's my brother that needs cleansing, but it takes a whole lot to say, It's me, O Lord. Search me. Don't bother about your brother. Look at yourself. Paul said, I pray God, your whole spirit and soul and body be preserved blameless. One of the things we can't do as a Christian is we can't fool the Holy Spirit, and Annihilation Sapphire could not fool the Holy Spirit. They came into the presence of Peter, and they were defiled, and they reaped the results. Well, I'm Don Corville, sharing with you again today on Eagles Wings. Let me share this whole thing with you. Someone wrote, in regards to the 139th psalm I just read, where David prayed, Search me, O God, and know my heart. Try me, and know my thoughts, and see if there be any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting. Someone wrote, Thou art the God of the early mornings, the God of the late at nights, the God of the mountain peaks, and the God of the sea. But my God, my soul has farther horizons than the early mornings, deeper darkness than the nights of earth, higher peaks than any mountain peaks, greater depths than any sea in nature. Thou, who art the God of all these, be my God. I cannot reach to the heights or to the depths. There are motives I cannot trace, dreams I cannot get at. My God, search me out. I believe it takes a brave person to pray a prayer like that, where you say, My God, search me out. You know, God sees you right where you're at. He sees you in your struggle. He sees you in your triumph. He just sees you. He knows you. There's nothing that can be hid from him. But sometimes I believe that we try to play little games with God. Christians sometimes try to play the spirituality game, which is translated into hypocrisy. The Pharisees that came to Jesus pretending to be so spiritual, He knew them. He was God. He knew their thoughts. He knew what they were up to. And He still knows that about us. You know, cleansing from sin is like opening up a door, and the room has been all dark and shut up inside, and all the light floods in and dispels the darkness. If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us of our sins, and to cleanse us from all wickedness, all kinds of sinfulness, all kinds of defilement, if we confess our sins. Finney said in regards to what is revival, he said it's nothing else than a new beginning of obedience to God. If you've sort of felt like your spiritual life has dropped to a stage to where you need a spiritual tune-up, it begins by being obedient to what God is saying. Maybe we need to have a message some Sunday on obedience. J. Edwin Orr said revival is times of refreshing from the presence of the Lord. You can't have that refreshing, and you can't enjoy, and I can't either, the presence of the Lord if there's defilement in our lives. Arthur Willis said revival is God revealing himself to man in awful holiness and irresistible power. Billy Graham said we need spiritual revival that will put moral fiber in our society. Well, there's no doubt that our society needs it, but before our society will receive what it needs from God, I believe the church needs to be cleansed. We need to see God move in again. Someone said that revival is needed when we are powerless against temptations. We are enslaved to sinful habits. We need revival when we've lost our first love for Christ. We need revival when we lack affection for other Christians, or when we have little concern for those who are not saved. We cannot or will not obey. We need revival. We need revival when we cannot or will not obey what we know to be the will of God. Do you need revival? You can have it. It begins by just drawing the circle around yourself, and getting in the middle of it, and saying, God, the person in this circle has sin in their life. I was talking with a pastor, and I talked to pastors around the country, and this one called me up this morning, and he's a friend of mine, a man I discipled, and he went off to seminary, and is now back in church, and he called up to say that they were having revival in their church, and he is a man that knows what revival is. We're going into this, to the season where we call revivals, where we'll have some evangelists come in for a week or two weeks, and we'll advertise and pump ourselves up, and we'll have meetings, and we'll be there every night, and when the smoke all clears, maybe somebody got saved. Maybe somebody did get right with God, but most of the time, things just sort of go back to normal. Well, this man knows that when real revival hits, that things don't stay the same, and he was sharing how in their church, they'd moved over to another church, and they'd join in with this one, and just last night, one woman got up and went over to another one to make things right, and the evangelist had said, if there's someone in this room that you do not love, then go over to that person. Well, this woman got up and went over to another woman. Well, what she was doing is she was getting up and going back over to the wife of her former husband, and they had a reconciliation of their hatred and their bitterness, and then the husband came back to his wife in his second one. It's sort of a mess when sometimes marriages get messed up and had to make things right, and the pastor went on to share how God was just breaking in on the scene, and things just started Sunday, and there were five preachers at the meeting, and God is working, and he wanted some prayer, and he just said that it's really good to see God move in. Now, wouldn't you like to see that if you're in need of revival? Wouldn't it be good just to see God move in on the scene? To see him come in and cleanse your church? James Alexander Stewart wrote in regards to the church that, and he was pretty strong on this, he said, we have our palatial buildings, our large membership roles, our high-salaried pastors, and popular evangelists, and these are no proof of dynamic Christianity. He said, the early church had none of these elements of success. God must deliver us from the awful discrepancy into which we have drifted. The godly remnant in the book of Lamentations, after surveying the awful condition of Zion, cried out in agony, wherefore dost thou forget us forever and forsake us so long time? Turn thou us unto thee, O Lord, and we shall be turned. Renew our days as of old. That was Lamentations 5, 20 through 22. And he said, all over the world, saints must come to the place of penitence and desperation and cry, O God, forgive us. O God, bring us back to the place of simplicity and power. Oh dear child of God, this would be revival. This would be restoration. This would be recovery. This would be renewal. The church has allowed herself to become the custodian of dead creeds rather than the trumpeteers of living faith. We are playing with the gravedigger's shovel when God wants to give us a resurrection trumpet. Jesus, of course, you remember, he said, let the dead bury their dead, but go thou and preach the kingdom of God. Is your church burdened for souls? Is your church praying for souls? Is your soul itself conscious of the need of others? I was talking to a man yesterday up in Kansas City at a pastor's meeting. And he wanted to ask me about some money. I'd given him some money to help with the work over in Romania with Christians. He'd go over there and take it over and give it to the pastor. And he said that he wasn't going to be able to go if it was okay for another man, another pastor, to use that money and take it. And I said, sure. And he said, you know, there's a funny thing happening. Now that the walls are open, the doors are open, and there's freedom to go in over there, he says, the Christians are wanting to go over there and teach. And he says, the folks over there don't need them to come over and teach. He said, what we need in America is for them to come over here and teach us. They know the power of the cross. They have been living under persecution and trials. And we, I believe, are at the stage of seeing a great persecution move across our land against Christians unless we repent as a body of Christians. And they will be the ones that will be sending missionaries over here to us. Most Christians know nothing about really living by faith, letting God meet your needs. You've got yourself all set up. You're self-sufficient. You've got your savings account. You've got your job. You've got your nice home. What if you lost all of that? How would you make it? Are you disciplined to live by faith? Are you clean enough to live by faith? Isaiah cried out, Wash ye, make ye clean, put away the evil of your doings from before mine eyes. Cease to do evil. Jeremiah said, O Jerusalem, wash thine heart from wickedness, that thou mayest be saved. How long shall thy vain thoughts lodge within thee? In one of the revival meetings, someone gave a testimony. And they said that God brought to mind a situation from years back where I had a very critical spirit which developed into bitterness against a friend. And I'm sure they were very hurt. And I confessed all of this to God and will make restitution with them as God puts it together. How about it? Is there something in your life that's been there for a long time between you and someone else? And as a believer, you've never taken care of it. Is there something between you and God? Someone gave a testimony at a revival meeting that God gave me peace and the joy of my salvation was restored because I have the desire to be completely obedient to the Lord in my daily life. God helped me make restitution with a friend whom I hadn't seen for five years. A wife wrote the Lord helped me to see I needed to be a better wife and also I needed to forgive some people. Also that I need to pray and read my Bible more than I do. I'm so happy the Lord sent you to us. And someone wrote Christ showed me all the sins which so easily besets me, namely the sin of self-centeredness and being self-sufficient. Someone else had said that Jesus Christ set me free. Praise God he set me free from a sin I had taken to the Lord but did not expect that forgiveness. For nine years I desired the power of the Holy Spirit and when I obeyed God and made my heart right with God, wow, the floodgates of heaven opened and the power of the Holy Spirit filled me. Praise God. God has given me the desires of my heart. I'm developing that intimate relationship with Christ that I desired for nine years. You know sometimes Christian leaders even struggle a long time before they learn to walk by faith and let God take care of everything in their lives. Hudson Taylor was one of those men off out in China and he wrote to his friend Mr. Judd that God had made me a new man. He said God has made me a new man. And a friend of Taylor's, John McCarthy, had written him a letter and part of it said, do you know, I think that this striving, hoping, longing for better days to come is not the true way to holiness, happiness, or usefulness. It is better no doubt far better than being satisfied with poor attainments but not the best way after all. I have been struck with a passage from a book entitled Christ is All. It says the Lord Jesus received as holiness begun. The Lord Jesus cherished as holiness advancing. The Lord Jesus counted upon as never absent would be holiness complete. He is most holy who has most of Christ within and joys most in the finished work. It is defective faith which clogs the feet and causes many a fall. I'm sure that maybe there is someone this morning that has never thought about the fact that it may be your defective faith that you need to be cleansed of. There may be someone that's wanting to get saved. You're wanting to go to heaven but you don't know how to do it. The Bible says that we're saved by faith. Could you just right now open up your heart to God? Let him see you, all of it. Even tell him all your sins if you want. But by faith believe that he died on the cross for your sins. And just by faith could you just ask him to save you? And could you just by faith believe that he has just forgiven you and cleansed you and come into your life? The Lord Jesus is waiting for your cry of faith. And even as a believer like Hudson Taylor, he had an area that he needed to be cleansed of, that defective faith. And his friend Judd later wrote regarding Taylor. He said he was a joyous man now, a bright, happy Christian. He had been a toiling, burdened one before. Does that speak to you? With latterly not much rest of soul, it was resting in Jesus now and letting him do the work, which makes the difference. Whenever he spoke in meetings after that, a new power seemed to flow from him. And in the practical things of life, a new peace possessed him. Troubles did not worry him as before. He cast everything on God in a new way and gave more to prayer. And the simple and blessed principle changed his life, and it can change yours also. Taylor wrote, there's no thought of imitation now. It was in blessed reality, Christ liveth in me. And how great the difference. Instead of bondage, liberty. Instead of failure, quiet victories within. Instead of fear and weakness, a restful sense of sufficiency in another. So great was the deliverance that from that time onward, Mr. Taylor could never do enough to help to make this precious secret plain to hungry hearts wherever he might be. Well, my friend, that's why I'm here today. Because God did that in my life too. I remember even reading this back in 1975, I think it was, about Hudson Taylor and writing it in my book and claiming it in my Bible. I wrote it in the back of my Bible. But I didn't experience this until ten years later. But God has set me free. He cleansed me. And he can do that for you today too. That's why we're here, to minister to you. And we want you to write us, if we can help you. You write, if you have a question, a comment, or a story. Love to hear from you. You can write to me here on Eagle's Wings, Box 1100, Webb City, Missouri, 64870. Is God ministering to you? Is the Holy Spirit speaking to you today? I seek to make this just sort of a quiet time in the morning, when we sit and get ready. Many of us are getting ready to go to church. Some of us, you're maybe driving down the highway and you won't hear this program again. But let God meet your needs. Let him lift you up on Eagle's Wings. Let him meet your needs. Isaiah said, Come now, let us reason together, saith the Lord. Though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow. Though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool. One of the things I think that we're capable of doing in a devastating way is not forgiving ourselves when God has. No matter what sin you have committed, you can be forgiven of it. I remember a brother-in-law of mine, when I witnessed to him once many years ago and shared the Lord with him, he said he was too great of a sinner. And I wasn't so great at witnessing at that time. I didn't know what to say. But then I come to find out that there's never been a sinner that was so great that God wouldn't save him. Paul said that he was the chiefest of sinners. So would you let him forgive you of your sin? Would you let him cleanse you? Would you let him lift you up? If you've been the struggling, toiling one, if you've been the one that's been worried and fretting, you're the Martha. And you want to be a Mary sitting at His feet, restful, relaxing, drawing in. But you've been a Martha. You need to be cleansed from that worry, that fear. You need to learn to let Him be the Lord of your life. Give Him every situation. Turn it over to Him. You know, one of the reasons we don't do that is because we're not walking by faith. We're not walking in the Spirit. And the flesh will war against the Spirit and the Spirit against the flesh. And the flesh will get us if we're not walking in the Spirit. Paul said, For brethren, you have been called into liberty. Only use not liberty for an occasion to the flesh, but by love serve one another. And he said, If you bite and devour one another, take heed that you be not consumed one of another. This I say then, walk in the Spirit, and you shall not fulfill the lust of the flesh. For the flesh lusteth against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh. And these are contrary the one to the other, so that you cannot do the things that you would. Well, can you let Him lift you up on eagles' wings? Can you let Him meet your needs wherever you're at? Let Him meet your needs. Let Him bear you. Let Him bear your load. Come to Him right now. Say, Lord, I give you this day. I'm not capable of preaching this sermon without you. I'm not capable of raising these kids today or cooking this meal. Would you guide me in everything I do? Well, it's been good to be with you. And if we can help you, you write to me. I'm Don Corville. This is on eagles' wings, Box 1100, Webb City, Missouri, 64870. Well, until next time, may God richly bless you, my friend.