In this sermon, the preacher emphasizes that it is possible for individuals to experience a revival in their personal lives. He encourages listeners to trust in God and rely on His grace to overcome discouragement and bondage. The preacher shares stories of a revival where people confessed their sins, made amends, and experienced personal spiritual victories. He also highlights the importance of reconciliation and love among believers. The sermon concludes with a powerful moment where a pastor and his daughter reconcile, prompting the preacher to urge the congregation to settle any conflicts they may have.

We welcome you again to On Eagle's Wings. We trust that God is very precious to you. I was just reading a passage in Psalms 57, verse 1, where the psalmist cried out, Be merciful unto me, O God, be merciful unto me, for my soul trusteth in thee. Yea, in the shadow of thy wings will I make my refuge, until these calamities be overpassed. I will cry unto God, most high unto God, that performeth all things for me. You know, it's a hard life if you have to be the one to perform for yourself. Just last Sunday, when we left church, my family and I were rejoicing in the Lord Jesus Christ in a tremendous way. You see, we had a great need the next morning, a great financial need, and we live by faith. We've chose to live by faith. But when we came out to our van that morning, we found a couple of things inside of it. One was a plate of goodies with an envelope wishing us Merry Christmas. But the other was another envelope with a Christmas card with a check in it for $500. We rejoiced, and as we drove home, I told the children, you know, isn't it wonderful that we have God to take care of us? Don't you feel sorry for those that are around us that are striving and struggling to take care of themselves? Because it's an empty, vain thing to do. We can never provide for ourselves. Well, we welcome you to On Eagle's Wings. This program is geared for revival. We are here to be an encouragement for you. We want you to know that you can experience a revival in your personal life. You can come to know God in such a way to where you don't have to trust yourself anymore. He's all you need. As I say many times, Christ is all you need. But is He all you want? We're having a tremendous time as we're ministering up here. We don't know how long we'll be here. We move where God tells us to move. We minister where He tells us to minister, and He takes care of us in whatever way He wants to. Like Paul, we know how to be abased, and we know how to abound. We don't always come out victorious in the being abased part. We're trying. We're human, but we're learning. We're continually learning that God is able to take care of us. You know, this is the Christmas season. My little kids are all excited. I think I shared with you how one of them wanted a Christmas tree, and I told her, well, honey, if you want a Christmas tree, you're going to have to ask God for it. Well, the next day in the mail was $24 with a Christmas tree drawn on the front. Boy, she was excited. We get from God what we want, what we need. Don't always get what we want, but we do always get what we need. Jesus coming into this world, you know, I have a sermon I was going to share with you on His coming. But I think today I'm just going to share with you a little bit about His birth. And then I want to share some more about revival stories. And I'm building up to getting this pastor of this church to share with you about the revival that started last April in this town and that has continued until now. And just this week, I became aware of how much this revival is affecting another church in this town, mainly because they're getting the overflow from this one. There's a lot that don't stay around here because it's so real. When you come in here, people are dealing with their sin. They're making restitution. They're rejoicing. They're sharing testimonies. It's alive. If they have sin in their life, they can't keep it in their life around here. The Spirit of God convicts. And they're going out soul winning. They're coming out for visitation. They're coming out and praying. They're taking care of one another. They're watching after one another, praying with one another. If someone, if a family's having troubles, no matter what kind of troubles, the body of Christ gets concerned. And there's a lot of new believers in this fellowship. A lot of them, they're just coming out of the hard, old core world where they were drug addicts, workaholics, wife beaters, running around on their mates. Some were in the divorce court and the proceedings right when the revival went on and stopped it. Got their lives right with the Lord. And they're ministering to one another. And those that come in that don't want to go with the program and be alive and let Jesus do what He wants in their life, if they still have rebellion in their life and they're not wanting to deal with it, they go over to another church. And so I found out one of them's really growing. And some people don't like to be crowded in because we need a new building and we're not going to go out and just finance one. We're believing God to provide, saving up our money here. But it's exciting. I want to share with you a little bit about how you can have it. I've been sharing with you some stories on revival. And there's a secret. And it's just prayer. You can have it. And I want to share with you in a few weeks, get the pastor in here, Pastor Ostrander, and just talk. Interview him. Some of you pastors have been listening. Some of you folks have been listening. Some of you have been writing in. Some of you are encouraged. Let me know how you're doing. You can have revival. I'm praying for you. I've got a map of the Joplin area. Looking all around that area. And I've got little circles of those of you that have responded to me. Also, before I forget it again, I'm offering a booklet. If you can send a donation of $5 at least. If you want to send more, that's fine. But a booklet on rock music. How it affects your life. How it affects your church. How it's used to draw demons. And you might want to get this. If you have trouble with some of the music that's being played and you've got some questions, you write to me and I'll get this booklet to you. Well, anyway, let's talk a little bit about Jesus. A little bit about His birth. And as Oswald Chambers said, His birth and our new birth. On December 25th, if you have your chambers, there's a good little devotional in Oswald Chambers, My Utmost Forest Highest. I think I'll just share with you this morning a little bit about His birth, His coming. Aren't you glad He came? I am. My life was a mess without Jesus. I was a psychology major on my way to the bridge to jump off. That drove me nuts without Jesus. Life is like that. There's no meaning without Jesus. There's no purpose without Jesus. But wherever you are, and you're about at the end of yourself, call out to Jesus and He'll hear you and He'll save you. The Word of God says, Whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved. But what about His birth and His coming and our new birth? You know, the prophet Isaiah said, Behold, a virgin shall bring forth a son and they shall call His name Emmanuel, which being interpreted is God with us. And in the account of Matthew, that's what it says, that Jesus was called Emmanuel, God with us. Chambers said His birth in history. Therefore also that holy thing which shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of God. Luke 1.35. Jesus Christ was born into this world, not from it. He did not evolve out of history. He came into history from the outside. You see, you and I, when we're born, we're born into this world. We're from it. Our roots are here in this world. My father and your father, my mother and your mother, and on back, all the way back to Adam and Eve, we came from this world. But He came into this world from the outside. Jesus Christ is not the best human being. He is a being who cannot be accounted for by the human race at all. He is not man becoming God, but God incarnate. And in that stable in Bethlehem many years ago, my friend, that was God. They came into this world in the form of a baby and they called His name Jesus. He is not man becoming God, but God incarnate. God coming into human flesh, coming into it from outside. And you might ought to make very sure that you understand why He came into this world. His life is the highest and the holiest entering in at the lowliest door. Our Lord's birth was an advent. And by the way, it was the humblest advent that you could imagine, to be born in a stable, an old smelly stable. Now, I've been around ranch life quite a bit of my life. Married into it. They stink. A barn stinks. A stable stinks. It's got manure all over the place. And probably the cleanest place that Mary could find to lay, the Lord Jesus was in the manger. A feed trough where the animals feed and slobber and lick it. And the hay that's put in there is dusty. The circumstances were humbling. Nobody thought anything about it. There was no room for Him in the inn, which is probably just a bar. Drinking, partying, loud noises. Probably a lot quieter and peaceful in that smelly old stable. Why'd He come? Well, my friend, He didn't come just to give you a good example in me. He came to die on the cross for our sins. The cradle, the purpose of the cradle of that manger was that He would get to the cross and die for our sins, which brings us to what Chambers said, His birth in me. Galatians 4.19, Paul said, Of whom I travel in birth again until Christ be formed in you. You see, one of the things that we have in our world is we have a lot of people that know something about the Bible, know something about church, and know a little bit about God. But there's a lot of us around, and I'll say us to include myself in there, that have lived our lives without a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. And for the first 19 years of my church life, I was like that. Religious but lost. Christ had never been formed in me. I knew a lot about Him, but I wasn't loving Him and living for Him. He was not my personal Savior until I invited Him to come in. Just as our Lord came into human history from outside, so He must come into me from outside. Jesus, remember He said, Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If any man will hear my voice and open the door, I will come into him and will fellowship with him and he with me. A passage from Revelation where actually Jesus is trying to get into His own church. Which might well be the way your church is. So many of the churches that we have today, the programs have it all planned out. There's no room for the Holy Spirit to break in on the scene. No room for anything different. No room for Jesus to come in and take over. Just as our Lord came into human history from outside, so He must come into me from outside. Have I allowed my personal human life to become a Bethlehem? Chambers said. How about it? Have you allowed Jesus Christ to come into your life for your life to be a Bethlehem for the Son of God? I cannot enter into the realm of the kingdom of God unless I am born from above by a birth totally unlike natural birth. You must be born again, Jesus said. This is not a command. It is a foundational fact. The characteristic of the new birth is that I yield myself so completely to God that Christ is formed in me. Immediately, Christ is formed in me. His nature begins to work through me, Chambers says. And then he said, God manifests in the flesh. That is what is made profoundly possible for you and me by the redemption. How about it? Has He been formed in your life? Life is hard without God. Life is a great joy knowing God. I've been on both sides. I've been there where it's so hard you don't want to live. It's so hard you don't have an answer. Why not at this time invite Jesus to come into your life? If it's empty, you say, well, I go to church. Yeah, that's okay. Everybody goes to church, but that doesn't get you saved. You say, I've been baptized. That's fine, but it doesn't get you saved. I give to the church. I've gone a long time. I'm a faithful member. That's all right, but it won't get you to heaven. The Bible says, he that has the Son has life. He that has not the Son does not have life. These things have I written unto you that believe on the name of the Son of God that you might know that you have eternal life. Are you sure you're saved? You see, you can live this whole life. You can live a hundred years. You can save a lot of money. You can have a big family. Have a big home. Have a lot of property. Do a lot of traveling. Have a lot of friends. Do a lot of good deeds. Be a very kind, loving person. But if you don't have Jesus, when you die, you'll go to hell and not heaven. Because, you see, He came into this world. Christmas is about His coming into this world to die for your sins. And if you don't receive Him as your Savior and confess to Him that you are needy, that you're a sinner, then you won't make it. It's all been empty. You know, we have churches around that need revival, that aren't preaching the gospel, that aren't seeing people saved. The church is to be a lighthouse. The church is to be a place where people can come and get saved, where they can have fellowship with other believers and share their needs and pray together and talk. And that's why we're saying, if you're experiencing a dryness at this period of time in your life or in your church, you can have revival. What we're praying for in our land is an awakening. But we're seeing spots of revival on this continent. And some places in the world, they're seeing a major revival happen where thousands of people are getting right with the Lord as Christians. And, of course, let me tell you again that the natural outcome of a church that's experiencing revival is the unsaved getting saved. We see that happen. There's several. Every week is saved in this church and through the ministry of this church. Every week. I've been here and just been watching and helping out for now almost three months. There has not been a week that somebody has not been saved that I know of. And sometimes many have been saved. You know, I shared with you a while back about the revival in the Solomon Islands. You know, in 1970 they had another revival. And the amazing thing is that the leaders, when they began to see, even though they had 15,000 in their church, in their mission, they realized that they were getting dry again. They realized that they were going back to the old ways again. And you know what? They discovered that the problem again was the same. It wasn't the hardened and indifferent islanders so much as it was the sins that had crept into their own lives, slowly over a period of time, into the lives of the believers. The so-called little things they discovered such as adverse attitudes, bickering, criticism, jealousy. These were the things that were hindering the work of the Spirit. And so what they did, they began to recognize these things as sin. They began to confess them again. Fellowship was restored. And then they began to pray. You see, if you're harboring things, you won't be praying. You won't have any power in prayer. If you have bitterness against somebody, if you have fear in your life, you won't be free to pray. But they went to prayer, and they prayed for over a year, and they prayed earnestly, and the prayer increased. And in 1970, a letter was sent out to nearly 300 churches urging the people to pray every day for revival. And in a quiet way, the islanders were convicted of resentful thoughts. The Spirit moved among them and hurt feelings and jealousies, and they began to openly confess these things and ask for forgiveness and true brokenness. And then an evangelistic team came in, and in the congregation as they preached, just 600 of them began to cry. At the end of that time, the leader gave an invitation for those that would like to come forward and pray, and the whole congregation rose and prayed. And that spread until thousands and thousands of people were affected. And they got up into thousands of people, and it swept the island, and it did some marvelous things. Now, I don't know if I have enough time to get started on this or not, but you know, we had a revival on our continent in 1971. And the account I'm reading from is taken from Christianity Today, and the date was December 17th, 1971. And I'm building up to take you up to 1990 in the next few weeks. But it all began when Evangelist Ralph and Lucitaire, they were 37-year-old twins from Mansfield, Ohio. They arrived at Ebenezer Baptist Church in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, for a 10-day crusade. And that had been the subject of prayer for two years. They'd prayed about it. And the people were crowded into the building, and then they began to crowd to the altar night after night, confessing their sins and voicing their praises, making amends with people, vowing renewed dedication, relating how God had given them personal spiritual victories. They threw their arms around one another. They began to love one another and be concerned for one another. And one night, two brothers, Sam and Arnold Dirksen, they hadn't spoken to each other for two years. They were reconciled. Now, these are true stories. There's a book put out by Moody Press that Erwin Lutzer wrote called, Flames of Freedom, that will give you all the details on this revival and how it went. Anyway, this revival started, I think it was in September. It went on into October. And then it kept going into November. And what happened, many people from many denominations began pouring into the meetings in the churches. And people were continuing to get things right. And they had to get bigger buildings. And they kept trying to get bigger buildings and bigger buildings. They'd have several meetings a day if they couldn't get them all in. That was one of their biggest problems, having big enough buildings to seat everybody. One pastor, Dr. Donald Loveday, said, In 35 years of ministry, I've never witnessed such a spiritual movement as this. Now, let me share this little story with you. One of the men that experienced renewal was a truck driver. The next week, he was out on his route. And he was from home quite a way. So on Sunday morning, he decided just to stop at a church on his way and attend their services. So he parked his truck, took his Bible, and in his working clothes, he climbed the steps and went into the church. And one of the men there met him and shook hands with him and asked him where he was from. And when the man told him he was from Saskatoon, he said, Oh, do you know anything about that revival? We hear it's going on up there. And he said, Sure, I know about it. I got revived in it. And with that, the man took out a pencil and a paper, and he scribbled a note on it. And then he hurried away and took and gave it to the pastor. The pastor just glanced at the paper for a moment, and then he said, Folks, we have a gentleman here with us this morning who says he's from Saskatoon and that he knows something about the revival that's going on there. I'm going to ask him to come up here and tell us about it. So the old trucker in his trucking clothes climbed up there on the platform. And with the pastor at his elbow, he began telling how he had been wonderfully revived in his spiritual life and the tremendous change that had come over him and his church and the whole community was now filled with love, he said. But you know what happened? All of a sudden, he sensed that the preacher wasn't at his side anymore. So he turned around to look, and to his astonishment, the pastor was kneeling at the end of the platform. Just then, he saw an attractive girl come down the aisle, almost running. She came and knelt beside the pastor and put her arm over his shoulder. She was the pastor's daughter. And apparently the two had had some sharp differences to settle. For a moment, the old trucker was at a loss for words. He didn't know what to do. And then he recovered and he shouted, Now the rest of you, if you have anything between yourself and someone else or between yourself and God, here's the place to get it straightened out. Come on down here. And you know what happened? With that, the whole congregation rose and moved forward to kneel at the altar on the front benches. And so the speaker took his Bible and he went over and sat down on the edge of the platform and began helping the pastor to find peace. And the pastor and the father got things right, and then they got up and they went around helping one another out. And that continued all the way into the mid-afternoon. It can happen in your church. You can see God cleanse you. Why do we go on pretending that things are just fine? We sing nothing between my soul and the Savior, but yet we've got bitterness in our heart. We don't see souls saved. If you're seeing revival in your church, and you're seeing souls saved, and you're seeing God working in genuine power, and it's not just an emotional type thing, but God is really working, He's being glorified, that's great. But I'm in a lot of churches and I don't see it very often. Are we too near the Second Coming to expect revival? Somebody says we're too near. Man, I'll tell you what's going on in the Mideast right now, but over in Kuwait, this is exciting. It's scary. I don't like the thoughts of what's going to happen maybe to our country, to humble us. We're praying for an awakening. But my friend, we've turned our back on God. Unless we see an awakening and a turning back to God, we've had it and you know it. We're in trouble. Where are the Christians at? Are they praying and on their knees? No, we're not. We're cold. This is why I'm saying to you, you can have revival. You can have it in your life. And the key is prayer. And I'm going to have to close up now, my time's about gone. But the key is prayer. And I can share with you, I have some quotes from some famous men, Duncan Campbell and R.A. Torrey. But the key is prayer. Just to begin to pray. One Bible prophecy speaker back in the 1940s predicted that the coming of Jesus Christ was very close. If he said it in 1940, what's it now in 1990? Suppose that Jesus Christ was to come today. Are you ready for him to come? Are you ready for him to come? Suppose he came today. Is there someone in your life that you need to make things right with? Is there somebody in your family that's not saved yet? Are you ready for him to come? If you're not, you better get ready, because he's coming soon. I don't know how soon, but he's coming soon. What if he were to come today? You know, the Lord said, occupy till I come. He didn't say, relax, forget all those that are on the outside. You're saved, just cruise. Cruise on into the kingdom. Let him know, he said, work. Occupy till I come. We may not be able to revive a vast area or your city. There's no reason why, though, you cannot pray for and expect a revival in your own local church. From there, who knows where that revival fire might spread. We're believing God to do something in this town. To turn it upside down. There were a thousand people that prayed last spring, during the ten weeks of revival here. Ten thousand people in this town. One thousand people prayed that the evangelist counted. How many of them got saved, for sure? I don't know. But that's how many prayed. What would happen if ten percent of your town prayed to receive Christ? I think it might have the same effect that it had here. It shook the town. Are you ready? Are you ready? Don't give up. Don't despair. Believe God to work. Pray. Pray. Believe Him to work. It can happen. And in your own personal life, you can see God lift you up out of the sloth of despond. He can lift you up out of your discouragement. You can learn to walk by faith. You can learn to fly on eagle's wings. You can learn to live by the grace of God. You can be set free. The Lord Jesus said He came to set the captives free. You know, there's so many things that bind us up. When Jesus came and walked on this earth, the Pharisees, the scribes, and the doctors and lawyers had the people in bondage to their laws. I read this little poem to you before on eagle's wings. Run, run and do the law commands, but gives me neither feet nor hands. Better news the gospel brings, it bids me fly and gives me wings. Do you have your wings? You know, I was in the Air Force for four years. When the young cadet comes out and graduates, he gets his wings. He's a pilot now. Do you have your wings? Have you learned to fly? Have you learned to live by the grace of God? Those that wait upon the Lord shall mount up with wings as eagles. They shall run and not be weary. They shall walk and not faint. You know the passage. However you say it, it's true. It works that way. Well, I'm going to have to go now. Until next week, I'm going to trust that you'll have a truly Christ-filled Christmas. And that you will know that He came for you. He came to die on the cross for your sins and to set you free. He also came to give you life. And life more abundantly. So until next time, I trust that God will richly bless you, my friend.