In this sermon, the speaker emphasizes the need for revival in the church and in our lives. He discusses how Christ is all we need and questions if He is truly all we want. The speaker then goes on to talk about the sins that the Spirit of God cleanses us from, specifically focusing on anger and lying. He encourages the listeners to put off these sins and put on the new man in Christ. The sermon also includes a story about a missionary group praying for revival and experiencing a miraculous healing, which led to a cleansing of the churches.

Well, it's good to be back with you again today on Eagle's Wings. We have a burden for revival for our land. We're trusting that God is going to send an awakening in our land. We need one. We're not looking at all the problems even though we see them. And we know that they're bad and they're serious. We have an international movement of the New Age and some other things that are even working with that, that are as bad or worse. And we are looking at God and not all those things. Well, my friend, I trust that you're living in the joy of the Lord Jesus Christ. If you don't know Him as your Savior, you've missed out on life. He that has the Son has life, the Scripture says. He that has not the Son does not have life. Jesus Christ is life. So many know about Him. So many know a little bit about Him. So many know something about a church or they're a member of a church. But do you know Jesus Christ? He is life. He said, I have come that you might have life and that you might have it abundantly. And that's what we want for you. That you might have this abundant life, learning to live by the grace of God, living by the strength of God, flying on eagle's wings, I like to call it. Letting God live His life through you. You know the disciples in the early church, they said, in Him we live and move and have our being. In Jesus we live. In Jesus we move about. In Jesus we have our very existence. Have you surrendered to Him? Have you surrendered to Him? You know, Oswald Chambers has a little thing in his devotional booklet, My Atmos for His Highest, talking about after surrender what? After surrender what? You know, I believe a lot of our problems is because we've never surrendered our will to Him. Chambers said, surrender is not the surrender of the external life, but of the will. God isn't looking for you to surrender to Him your job or your car or your children, even though that's fine, but your will. If He has your will, He'll have everything. Chambers went on to say, when that is done, all is done. There are very few crisis in life. The great crisis is the surrender of the will. God never crushes a man's will into surrender. He never beseeches him. He waits until the man yields up his will to Him. That battle never needs to be re-fought. The Christian that has the unsurrendered will is continually fighting between the flesh and the spirit. There's continual struggle and turmoil. There's this continual up and down experience until God has your will. You'll never know the love of Jesus Christ. You look in Ephesians, I hadn't planned on sharing this with you, but in Ephesians, in chapter, where was it, back over in chapter 3, that in verse 17, that Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith, that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all saints what is the breadth and length and depth and height, and to know the love of Christ, which passeth knowledge that you might be filled with all the fullness of God. Excuse me for messing up there. Now unto Him that is able to do exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that works in us. I've been saying this, that Jesus Christ is all you need. Is He all you want? He's all you need. You don't need to leave your church, dear Christian. You need your church to change, and you need to change. If we'll get our lives right, and our churches will get their hearts clean, and we'll get right with God, we'll have a revival, and we won't see so much shifting around and church hopping. We won't see so many people pointing their finger at the church and saying, why should I go there? And by the way, my friend, there may be problems with the church, but that doesn't excuse you. You still have to face up to the fact that Jesus Christ died on the cross for you. He shed His precious blood, and you still have to make a decision to reject Him or receive Him. And you are rejecting Him if you know about Christ, and you haven't received Him yet. Oswald Chambers went on to say, Surrender for deliverance. Come unto me, Jesus said, and I will give you rest. It is after we have begun to experience what salvation means, that we surrender our wills to Jesus for rest. You come to Him for salvation of your soul, and then right at that same time you'll give Him your will, you'll enter into His rest. He that has entered into Jesus' rest has ceased from His own works. So it's no more me that live. Paul said, not I, it's not I that lives. I'm crucified with Christ. Nevertheless, I live, yet not I, but Christ lives in me. And the life that I now live in the flesh, I live by the faith of the Son of God who loves me. And he goes on in the next verse to say, I do not frustrate the grace of God. You know, if you're trying to live in the flesh, you're going to frustrate the grace of God. The Spirit of God is frustrated with you. If you're trying to do the living, and He's the one that's been commissioned to do the living in your life. We're to be filled with the Spirit, controlled with the Spirit. And he wasn't talking about an emotionally static thing. He was talking about the Holy Spirit controlling our will, moving in us. In Him we live and move and have our being. So whatever is perplexing your heart or your mind is a call to your will. Jesus said, come into me. It's a voluntary coming. Give me your will. If any man will come after me, let him deny himself. That's dying to your own self-will. The surrender here is of myself to Jesus. Chambers said, myself with His rest at the heart of it. If you would be my disciple, give up your right to yourself to me. That's the heart of the cross. So many times we miss the cross, the crucified life. We miss it. And look in Romans chapter 6. Romans chapter 6, 7 and 8 is the heart of the gospel, the cross. If you don't understand Romans 6, 7 and 8, you don't understand the Spirit-filled life. You don't understand victory. If you would be my disciple, give up your right to yourself to me. Then the remainder of life is just nothing but the manifestation of this surrender. And Jesus is doing what He wants to do in your life. He wants to set you over in a hospital somewhere, then you say, fine, Lord. He wants to set you up in the top of the world on a mountain, then fine, Lord. He wants you in some political position, fine, Lord. He wants you down in the bottom somewhere, it's fine, you're the Lord. But we have so many Christians trying to be little lords, little gods, running around, running their lives. And there's so much frustration and so much fruit of it around that we're all sick of it. We're sick of it ourselves, our friends are sick of it, our relatives. What we're looking for is the fragrance of Christ. And let me tell you, God is doing it in this land. There are pockets of revival going around where Christ is truly Lord. It sort of makes me grimace a little bit when I drive into a town. I just was up north of where I'm at right now a few days ago. And they had this big town sign, Jesus is the Lord of this town. My first thought is doubt. And there's one down in the, over in Missouri too, in a big town there. I go through there a lot when I'm traveling. If He's really Lord of a town, then it's going to look like it. It's going to look like it. When once we surrender, and that's taken place, we never need to suppose about anything. We do not need to care about what our circumstances are. Jesus is sufficient. And that's what I've been saying to you. Jesus is all you need. But is He really all you want? I wonder. And this has to be done daily. I have to do it daily. I'm not any super saint. I go to the grocery store just like you and buy groceries. I've got a little three-year-old that right now is just really testing me. But I have to daily die to self. There's a deeper death that Jesus can take you into that will liberate you from yourself. Have you learned what it means to be bound for death? Chambers says, beware of the surrender which you make to God in an ecstasy. You are apt to take it back again. It is a question of being united with Jesus in His death until nothing ever appeals to you that did not appeal to Him. He says, after surrender, what? The whole of the life after surrender is an aspiration for unbroken communion with God. Are you walking with Jesus? Are you walking with Jesus? Well, I wanted to share with you another little story on revival because I believe you can have revival. And I'm trying to convince you that you can have it if you want it. You can have it in your life. You can have it in your church. You can have it. There's a story about revival in Burma in 1916. Last week, if you remember, I shared with you about the revival in Korea and China. Well, in the book, Beyond the Ranges, James Frazier's biographer tells us of his years of intense striving to win the Lycid tribe of Burma to the Lord. This was in 1916. And these natives were primitive in the extreme, pagan and totally corrupt. They worshiped demons and ate food so vile, Frazier would sometimes have to starve himself before he could eat it. He had prayed long hours for them and had also kept his family and his friends back in England in form so that they could back him in prayer. But in spite of all that, it seemed that the Lycid were beyond hope of salvation. Finally, in desperation, Frazier told the Lord he would make one last trip around his circuit of mountain homes and villages should he see no more interest in spiritual things than he had seen, he would take it as an indication to move to a more receptive field. The first night of his trip, he stayed with a family he had known well. But he went to bed saddened because he saw nothing in their attitude but the usual apathy. In the morning, as Frazier was preparing to leave, the father astounding him with a flat statement that he and his family wanted to turn from demon worship and to go God's way. The missionary could scarcely believe his ears. And after this, first family had made the break, others followed. All during his journey, calls came to him from villages high up on the mountain side or deep down in the canyons. Not only family after family, but entire villages made a public decision to turn from darkness to light. In all, they calculate that some 20,000 of the Lycid came to Christ at that time. Now this is a story about the power of prayer to shake a land. Revival came in the way of salvation. What I'm talking about is we're seeing revival come in churches and the saved in our day, in our cities, the unsaved are getting saved. They want to, they need it, they just don't know where the light is. There's so much darkness and confusion about them. So when a church gets hot and aglow and on fire for God, they say, there's something that's real, and I want it. I was in this church, I guess it was about a week and a half ago, on a Wednesday night. Here I was, in here, praying with new Christians. Six months ago, one of these couples, they were divorcing each other. And right in the midst of the revival, they got saved and went and told the lawyer, we don't need you anymore, you're fired. We're getting back together. Christ has saved our lives. Amazing thing that revival does. Let me share with you another story. This is revival in the Congo in 1929. In his book, The Congo Drumbeat, the elderly Methodist missionary, Alexander Reed, tells about a revival that happened there in 1929. After the gospel had been preached among the Congolese, for years they turned back to their pagan customs. They practiced child marriages, polygamy, idol and moon worship, the use of charms to protect them from evil spirits. Worst of all was their custom of burying a live person with the dead. And here's some paragraphs taken from correspondence with Mr. Reed in 1965. He said, after nearly two years of persistent fasting and prayer on Friday nights, the glory of God fell on multitudes until literally thousands of precious souls prayed through all barriers and overcame all obstacles, and the glory of God flooded the countryside. Many, many times we didn't even get a chance to preach. Conviction was so deep and pungent, wrought by the Holy Spirit, that the altar filled with precious seeking souls. And soon they won the victory and scorers were on their feet shouting the praises of God. This great movement of the Holy Spirit has saved our whole area from a lot of the spurious wildfire movements in these last years. Now, 33 years later, in parts of our tribe the revival continues. Practically every one of our outstanding pastors and lay leaders of our conference are men and women who were blessed of God at a camp meeting altar. This revival extended for hundreds of kilometers in every direction. New churches appeared all over, built by the new converts to the Christian faith. Among them were the witch doctors who had been gloriously converted and who became preachers of the Word of God. And this is from personal correspondence with Mr. Reed in 1971. There's another story about revival in North China in 1932. And this comes from Miss Bertha Smith. She was a long-time Southern Baptist missionary to North China. And she told this story of her experience there in 1932. And I'm working my way up into the 70s through these stories. She said that the mission problems had grown to such proportion that during the mealtimes, now you might just think about this in your church if it would help you out, that during the mealtimes in the mission house they agreed not to discuss all of the headaches. The work in the churches was dead and the evidence of sin among the Christians was everywhere. There were only three students in their Bible institute. And when they were graduated, they voiced all sorts of complaints as to where they would work and how they could possibly live on the salary they were to get. It was at this point that the wife of one of the missionaries began losing her eyesight. She was taken to a specialist who told her husband that the infected eye would soon damage the other one and she would be totally blind. Her husband could not bear the thought of his wife being blind for the rest of her life. And he believed that God was able to prevent it if they prayed. So it was that he invited others of the missionary body who believed as he did to straighten up their spiritual lives and join him in prayer for his wife at the end of the week. When the day arrived, there were five or six in the group and they had the lady sit in a chair in the center of the room. And the plan was to place their hands on top of her head and to pray for God to intervene in her case. And Miss Smith said that as she reached out her hand to put it on the others, she saw that hers would rest on that of one of her colleagues whom she offended deeply some years before. Instantly, she knew that if she prayed with that sin between them, she would spoil the effort of the group. So, just there where she stood, she summoned all of her courage and humility and asked the other lady to forgive her. And when the problem had been settled, they all placed a hand on the lady's head and prayed. And in a very short time, each one in the group sensed the blessed assurance that God was going to answer their prayers. Almost at once, they all began to praise God and to shout and to laugh for sheer joy. It was then only a matter of days until the lady's eyesight was completely restored and remained that way. And this experience served to unite the missionary body in prayer for revival in their mission work. Miss Smith did not say how long they prayed nor how many of them participated, but apparently it was not long before God answered and revival came. The first effect was a cleansing of all the churches. Those who were living in sin could not stand the conviction of the Holy Spirit and withdrew. But immediately, the churches filled to ten times their former number. And there were so many applicants for entrance to their Bible Institute that the high school had to be converted into a Bible Institute. It had room for 150 students. And for years afterward, it was filled to capacity. The Chinese farmers who were converted in the revival, not having work that they could do during the winter, would pair up and walk as far as the neighboring provinces, witnessing and winning souls for Christ. Now, have you seen that happen in your church, in your area? Have you heard of anything happening like that? I was just thinking as I was reading that, about how sometimes some of our prayer meetings sound like a hospital report. The amazing thing here, where God has put us for the time being, and we don't know how long we'll stay here working in this area in revival, is that the prayer meetings, I bet 90% of the requests are maybe more for lost souls, lost friends and relatives and contacts that they're making. I can't even remember last week if there might have been a request. I think there was one for somebody that was sick or something. But we're focusing on that, which is really important. And it seems like to me, if I remember correctly, in the book of Corinthians that Paul mentioned about many being sick and weakly among you. Could it be that as you go to take communion, maybe you took communion last week, that you had something in your life that was not right, and you took it and it was a mockery to the blood of Christ and the body of Christ? It's a serious thing to take communion and have sin in your life. Paul said if we judge ourselves, God wouldn't have to judge us. And that's just where revival begins, when we fall on our face before God and ask Him to search me, O God, and see if there'd be any wicked way in me, cleanse me. I know, Lord, my heart is deceitful and desperately wicked. I'm prone to be bitter. I'm prone to be angry. I'm prone to be selfish. O God, cleanse me from this. When's the last time you were honest with God? When's the last time? I'm sharing these stories with you so that you'd know that if you would get right, your church would get right, you can see revival in an unusual way. It's happening in this country. It's happening around in the world. And our prayer is that enough of us would do it, that we'd see revival break out in our land. Is Christ all you want? He's all you need. But is He really all you want? So much of our lives are lived for self. I've been going through in the last few weeks in the book of Colossians about how Christ is all and in all. He's all we need. Is He all we want? And I finished up last week about some of the sins that the Spirit of God cleanses us from. There's six things that we're to put off in Colossians 3, verses 8 through 11. He says, put off all of these anger. Do you get angry? Boy, I'm tempted to get angry. I don't really consider that I have a problem with anger, but I think I do. I get upset sometimes with my little three-year-old. Boy, three-year-olds. If you can make it through three-year-olds. And you remember last year it was a two-year-old. He's wired hot, 220. And my dad just, he grins. He thinks I'm getting back all that I dished out to him. And I think, boy, if I dished it out to my dad. This little guy, he's just one thing after another. He's a fun-loving little boy, good little boy, except that he's not saved. He has a strong will. He doesn't want to be obedient. And he's always doing something. He's a fifth-born. It means he can't stand to be alone. He likes to be around people. So there's not much peace and quiet around if you're sitting around there. He's going to be around making some noise or doing something. But we love him. But God gives you just the thing that you need. You know what we want to do so many times? We want to kick it away. We want to get rid of it. We want to go hide, move away from that which God wants to give us. And he says, if you've received Christ, you put off all these anger. You know what that is? That's a hot temper. That's mad. Just like when you make jello and you boil it and it's liquid. And then he says, then you put off wrath. Wrath is the temper that's boiling over, unforgiving spirit. And then he says, put off malice. Malice would be congealed anger. You take that and you put it in the fridge and it congeals. Congealed anger. Anger turned to ice. Anger turned maybe to revenge. Is there someone who wronged you and you got angry with them? If you thought of someone just now, you'll never experience revival. You'll never experience the peace of Jesus this day. Or you'll never experience the joy or the power of God until you ask them to forgive you. You can't live a transparent life if you've got clutter in your life. Until you ask them to forgive you for your wrong spirit. Don't worry about what they did, but your wrong attitude or response. You need to deal with that. Forget what they did to you. Just ask them to forgive you and make it right. You'll never experience the beauty of Jesus in your life. You'll never know the love of Jesus. The love of Jesus doesn't flow through a dirty vessel. We have to be clean. Keep yourselves from idols, John said. Keep yourself from sin. And then blasphemy. I think, and this is talking about against God or man. That many of our lives as a Christians are blasphemy against God. Now if you're an unsaved person, by rejecting Jesus Christ, that's a form of blasphemy. You're saying no to the Spirit of God drawing you to Him. That's a dangerous situation to be. The most dangerous place in this world is to be unsaved. To be out from under the protection of God. If you were to die today, do you know for certain that if you were to die that you'd go to heaven? If you don't know for certain, then you may be in a very dangerous position. It may be that you're saved and you just don't have assurance of it. And there's probably a problem with unbelief maybe. If Jesus died for you on the cross and you don't have assurance. You doubt the saving ability of the blood of Christ. That's a form of unbelief. Unbelief doesn't cut it with God. It doesn't go very far. And then blasphemy against God. I remember when I was pastoring my first church. And I had a friend, a young man, 36 years old. And he went off a cliff on a motorcycle and killed himself. We didn't know where he was. And finally after a day, his cousin and I, we went out looking for him. And I found his body. I was shining a spotlight down in the canyons of Wyoming. And I saw his body down there in the canyons of the motorcycle. And I remember that night, standing out on that highway with the lights from the sheriff's car, shining, echoing off the canyon walls, looking down into his bruised face as he lay on that cot before they put him in the amulets and took him off. I remember thinking, he was gone, his life was over. And I went back to the house and the cousin had gone on back and his 19-year-old wife was there. Young wife, 3-month-old baby. And she let out what I termed blasphemy against God. And I don't believe she was saved. I don't believe she knew Christ. It was a hard, hard thing to go through. And her life after that reflected no light. My friend, for someone to go through a tragedy like that and to let out blasphemy is a normal thing, through a tragedy. But what's not normal is for someone to profess to know Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior. But yet, when they go to work, they don't think it's wrong to steal from the boss, from time, take some time or take a little bit of the product. But isn't that blasphemy too? You're mocking the name of Jesus. Or it's not wrong to tell a little lie. As a matter of fact, one of the things here in this passage in Colossians 3, in verse 9, You tell little white lies. I don't know where we get the thing of little white lies. But it's not right. It's sin. Filthy communication comes out of our mouth. Words, unclean, untrue, unkind. When the Bible says, Is it any wonder that the Spirit of God is grieved with this generation? Who is desperate for God to send a revival? Whoever's praying. I've got a letter from somebody in the Joplin area, and they say they're praying for revival. And I appreciate those letters. You keep writing me and encouraging. You write the station owner, and you tell them you appreciate a program that you hear. If you like this program, tell them you like it. Send them a gift. I'm sure they'd appreciate it. It wouldn't turn it away. That which you believe in, you invest in. I'm putting my whole life out for revival. I believe it's revival or ruin. I have a little booklet that I wrote entitled, I wrote that about our church in 85. What God did when He sent revival. It was revival or nothing else. We were ruined. I wasn't going to play games anymore. I was through playing games. Church games. Pastor people games. Lying. That's a deadly thing to say something and not to do it. Here, just a few weeks ago, short weeks ago, about a couple weeks ago, I think, I heard something that happened. Everybody thought it was really funny. My brother-in-law didn't think it was funny, but in his church, there's a man, and he borrowed his car. And my brother-in-law just put new tags, little stickers on the car, and his friend that borrowed his car got pulled over and was given a warning by the state police. And they come to find out that he needed new plates on there too. And my brother-in-law didn't know that. And he'd just thrown the plates up on top of the refrigerator and thought that the old ones were good. Well, anyway, when his friend got back, he sort of spread the word out. Boy, he had to pay a $25 fine. Let it out like he was mad about it. And the word got back to my brother-in-law and he called up the sheriff's department. He was upset with him. I'm going to let them have it. Well, come to find out, they said all they gave him was a warning. So it made him look like a fool. And then he comes back to his friend. His friend says, Hey, somebody's finally believed me. He's always trying to get you on something by saying something. He just thought it was so funny that he told a lie and that they believed him. Everybody believed him. I don't think it's funny. And I don't think the Spirit of God thinks it's funny either. Lie not one to another seeing that you have put off the old man with his deeds and have put on the new man which is renewed in knowledge after the image of him that created him. How are you doing? Do you need revival? Let's pray for it. Father, send revival in our land and start in me. Send it in our lives. Until next week, I trust that God will richly bless you, my friend.