In this sermon, the speaker discusses what holds back revival and encourages listeners to examine their own lives. He highlights several factors that hinder revival, including unbelief, neglect of prayer and prayer meetings, and a lack of love for souls. The speaker emphasizes the importance of sharing the gospel with others and being a positive influence in one's neighborhood. He also acknowledges the need for repentance and asks for God's mercy and the outpouring of the Holy Spirit on the nation. The sermon emphasizes the need to trust in God's power and not be critical, and also mentions the importance of financial support for spreading the gospel and supporting missionaries.

Well, we're glad to be back with you again today on Eagle's Wings. Isaiah said, from the Lord, For thus saith the High and Lofty One, that Inhabited Eternity, whose name is Holy, I dwell in the high and holy place, with Him also, that is of a contrite and humble spirit, to revive the spirit of the humble, and to revive the heart of the contrite ones. Heavenly Father, we just bow ourselves before you and confess that we are needy. And we pray for any that do not know Jesus as their Savior. They are eternally in danger of being eternally lost, and we pray for them. We pray that you would draw them to the Savior. That they'd see their need to repent of their sins and receive Christ as their Savior. And now, Father, your word tells us, But as many as received Him, to them He gave the power to become the sons of God. And so we pray that they would confess the Lord Jesus Christ. Whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved. We pray for your leading on this program. That you would touch our hearts today. That we'd be open to what the Holy Spirit is saying to us in Jesus' name. Amen. Well, if you were with us last week, we shared a little bit of history. I hope it wasn't too boring to go back to 1985 and share with you what God did in a small way. Really, though, whenever God shows up, it's not small. But because of being in a small church in a rural area, it was a big thing to us to have the Lord visit us in a fresh way with a fresh anointing. And as a result of that, many lives were changed. Many lives were changed permanently for the good. Some went into the ministry. And many lives have been changed in several different countries. Dozens of countries, as a matter of fact, as a result of this revival. I've got letters for several years from Africa and India. Because this little booklet that I read last week, Revival of Ruin, went out into about 60 countries in the world through the evangelists. Some of these people would write me, Well, India, these guys were wanting Bibles and books and Africa also. And the evangelist, John Musser, is still working over there in these countries. Very heavy. As a matter of fact, if you have some extra money you'd like to give for a revival ministry and a ministry that's really doing a lot, there's several ministries. I know John Musser would be encouraged. If you wanted to send a gift to him, I could send it on to him. Many ministries are being used by God today to deeply touch the lives of nations. One ministry that I know of that God is using mightily among leaders in the land is Mr. Gothard's ministry. He's received a lot of criticism from people that don't understand his ministry and what he's doing. But God is opening up to him nations. And so you need to pray for ministries. God didn't put any of us down here to be critics. We need to pray and believe God to work. Now last week I shared this little story that I'd written out in a booklet on Revival of Ruin. Today is our 9th anniversary of being on the air on Eagle's Wings. We're glad to minister here to you. We've had to learn many lessons. One of the things back at the first, I remember because of my deep training in how to raise money, I was trying to get money for funds all the time. Slip in this and that. Since, I hope we're learning this. It's just to look to the Lord for this ministry. And we're grateful to you. From time to time, somebody will give us a gift. And we're so grateful to you that you care. And we know that your church, the churches need the money. Actually we need money to be getting out the gospel. And we reach out to missionaries. We reach out as much as we can to share with others that are getting the gospel forth. I believe in putting money out in the areas of those that are winning souls to the Lord. Those that have an evident working of the Spirit of God in their lives. Now I'm going to share with you today in a few minutes. I better not wait too long here and get into that message on what holds back revival. We wanted to thank you for the nine years that we've had with you. And if the Lord would give us another year, maybe we'll have a tenth year celebration and get together or something. But I'm going to share a message that we gave here a few weeks ago in a church in this area on what holds back revival. And I trust the Lord can use this to encourage you in a small way. So here's the message. Recording this message, Ms. Harbinson asked me to share a few verses with you. And we're going to record this. And we know that she listens to the radio station. So we may play this little message on the radio. I don't know if it will be this Sunday, but somewhere in the future. We've been here before, about two years ago. That makes this place, this church, about 127 years old. A little bit older than most of us here. Some of us may feel like we're 127. I have a couple or three verses I'd like to share with you. And I have a question. I was asking myself this question this afternoon. What holds back revival? What would hold back God's blessing? Or what would be the result of a church, a fellowship, having God's blessing in the past and losing it? I believe there's a key. Because we've seen in revival, we've seen God come again. And revive the fires that had almost dwindled out. We've seen Him do it. As I think it was Charles Finney, an old revivalist, who said there were certain spiritual laws. And if we would follow these, the blessing would come. I was reading in Isaiah 57 and verse 15, which I believe is one of the keys to us finding this key. You see, I believe the key is us. Then there's a key that we have to find to unlock the blessing of God. And Isaiah said, For thus saith the High and Lofty One that inhabited eternity, whose name is Holy, I dwell in the high and holy place with Him also that is of a contrite and humble spirit, to revive the spirit of the humble and to revive the heart of the contrite ones. The kids, when they were quoting the first 12 verses of Matthew chapter 5 called the Beatitudes, if you'll notice, there were several things that had to do with humbleness. There was the poor in spirit. There was those that mourn, those that are meek, those that hungered and thirsted after righteousness, the merciful, the pure in heart, the peacemakers. As we go along, year after year after year sometimes, we could be like the old woodcutter who year after year after year his wood piles would get smaller and smaller and smaller because he had lost his file along the way and he could not sharpen his axe anymore. Now, we are, so to say, old woodcutters. It's the Word of God that is the file. But if we refuse to use the Word of God in such a way that it will continually cleanse us, the Bible says if we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. I believe it's sort of like getting a slow leak in our tires. Sometimes we don't notice it till one morning we come out and we say, ah, my tire's flat. Or one day we wake up and we just say, wait, what's happened? Our church is just dead. Or I'm dead. The way back, I was looking at the Psalms. The Psalmist said this on the way back. The Lord is nigh unto them that are of a broken heart and save as such as be of a contrite spirit. The way back is to fall before God and say, God, I don't know about everybody else, but I want You to do a work in my heart. Start here. Start here. A number of years ago when I was pastoring a church up in the western states, I had gotten like that. And I began to cry out for God to send a revival. For God to send a revival in my heart and to start in me. And He did. I was praying, some others were praying, and when God showed up, it wasn't what I expected, but it was what I needed. And I believe one of the keys for us to grab a hold of is faith. We come back to God and we say, God, I want You to do something in my heart and then do something in my church, do something in my community, do something in my nation. We all know that our nation is in sad shape. Our moral decay has just about sunk the ship. But we as the church, we have been the ones that have let the morality go. We have refused to stand up and be like Isaiah. Isaiah said in Isaiah 58 that the prophet was to cry out. If I can get back to that verse, listen to this. Cry aloud, spare not, lift up thy voice like a trumpet and show my people their transgression and the house of Jacob their sins. There's two problems. One, sometimes God's people don't want to hear about their sins. Two, the prophet may be too afraid to cry out. We need to pray that God will raise up the prophets to cry out again and say, listen, this is not right in our church. This is not right in my house. This is not right. How can God bless us when we are turning our back on the Word of God? We are allowing this and that to go on and it's not according to the Word of God. So we need to pray that God will raise up the prophets to come. Psalms 85.6. Another good verse. I don't have this one marked, but I want to read it to you. There's some good passages in the Psalms in regards to revival. Wilt thou not revive us again? Why would you want God to revive you again? Well, ultimately it would be for His glory. But the psalmist said, Wilt thou not revive us again that thy people may rejoice in thee? Remember the seven churches in the book of Revelation? And I remember them well because I used to live among those seven churches when I was in Turkey. But the very first one was the Ephesian church. And God came along and He told them all the things that they were doing right. Unto the angel of the church of Ephesus write these things, saith He that holdeth the seven stars in His right hand who walketh in the midst of the seven golden candlesticks. I know thy works, and thy labor, and thy patience, and how thou canst not bear them which are evil. And thou hast tried them which say they are apostles and are not, and hast found them liars, and hast borne, and hast patience, for My name's sake hast labored, and hast not fainted. He has all that. And then the Lord comes back and He says, nevertheless, I have somewhat against thee because thou hast left thy first love. We begin to love ourselves more. We begin to love our programs more. We begin to love our church more. We begin to love our activities, our busyness, more than actually loving Jesus. And we're off the track. And we're like the old wood cutter. We may still have an axe, but it won't even cut butter. It's so dull. Remember and repent. Those two things, Jesus told the church. Remember and repent. Remember the days when God had visited here? Remember the days in your church? We have several churches represented here. Remember the days in the past when the glory of God was there? People came and they got saved? Remember when there were testimonies of the reality of Christ living in the life? Remember those days? Would you like to see them again? You can. But you have to grab a hold of God for your own heart first and then believe Him to do it. Believe Him to do it. God is waiting for a challenge. I wonder if we don't bore Him to death sometimes with some of our prayer meetings. We have a miracle working God. If He can turn back a red sea for the children of Israel to walk through, He can do what needs to be done. But the thing that hinders Him is unbelief. We know the Scripture says Jesus couldn't do many miracles in one spot because of unbelief, and He went away. They could have had the blessing. Listen to this passage in Hosea. Hosea chapter 10, and verse 12. So to yourselves in righteousness, reap in mercy, break up your fallow ground, for it is time to seek the Lord. What time is it? Is it time to have a party? Well, that's alright. But if it's time to seek the Lord, then it's time to seek the Lord. Till He come and rain righteousness upon you. If we're going to see God do a work in our land, we must first believe God to do a work in our heart. It's just like a missionary. He's called to the mission field. And the mission board will ask him, have you led anybody to the Lord in your neighborhood? Well, no. How about at school? Well, no. How about anywhere? Well, no. How come you're going to go off to a foreign field and think you're going to lead people to Christ and you haven't even done it here? Any mission board with any savvy to them will be right on that right away. Spending thousands of dollars on a missionary that won't even do what he's supposed to do on the field at home. So, I believe we're the key. We're the key to God doing a work. I had a list here, and I'm not going to go through everything because time's getting a little bit late, but a list of sins. There are sins of commission and sins of omission. Sins of omission. These are sins like this, of ingratitude. Are we grateful to the Lord for what He's really done for us? Sins like we read about the Ephesian church of just losing our love to the Lord. Neglect of the Bible. Do you love this book? First thing you grab in the morning is a cup of coffee or your Bible. Maybe it's been weeks since you grabbed your Bible and just sat down and read it for an hour. You read your newspaper more than the Word of God. You see, this is the kind of thing that will bring revival when we go through things like this. Unbelief, we mentioned that. Neglect of prayer. Neglect of prayer meeting. Lack of love for souls. We have a song about souls. We didn't know if we were going to sing it tonight or not. Lack of love for the souls of our neighbor. Have you ever shared the Gospel with your neighbor? I believe if you live in a neighborhood any length of time you should have some kind of impact for Christ on your neighborhood. Doing kind deeds will open up doors for you to share your testimony. And maybe you don't have a testimony because you haven't been saved yourself. We can get a little bit touchy. But this is where the Gospel goes. It hits your heart and you're excited about Jesus. Until you die, you should stay excited about Jesus. But we backslide and that's why we need revival. There was a lack of care for the heathen. We don't care many times about that. Neglect of a real spiritual input and concern for our family. Those that will die and go to hell without Christ. When's the last time you fell on your face before God and prayed for somebody that you knew was lost in your family? See, that's why I'm saying this is why God's not blessing because we it's me, oh Lord, standing in need of prayer as the old spiritual song says. Neglect of other duties. Sins of commission are these. Worldly mindedness. Pride. Envy. Bitterness. Slander. Lying. Cheating. You see, all these things stack up and they count. The Holy Spirit is grieved and He's quenched in our lives. Hypocrisy. This is why the world is not basically in America people are not turning to Christ too much because of hypocrisy. Church people where they're Christians on Sunday but the rest of the week they're just like anybody else. It gets pretty hot and hard. Robbing God. Not giving our tithe to God. A bad temper. Hindering others from being useful. We could go on and on and on. But the key is for us to search our heart. And then if your heart is clean and you're pure, then you can have power with God and then you can start praying for your neighbor, your church and going out to our world to our nation. We're going to come back now and share a little bit more with you but before we do let's just have a word of prayer. Father have mercy upon us. God have mercy upon me. We just pray that you would do a work in our hearts. Do a work in this church. Do a work in this community. Do a work in our churches as several are represented here. God that you would break down barriers of pride and hypocrisy in our hearts. That we would be clean before you. That we might have power in prayer before you. We're going to believe you to start a spark tonight that's going to make a difference. We lift up our land. We know that it starts right here in our heart and goes all the way up to our capital. That our nation has turned back from you and we're in a dangerous situation. We ask that you have mercy upon us. You pour out your spirit upon us and that we would be broken for our sin. We thank you for this opportunity to come tonight and to share, to sing and to play the instruments. And we're believing you to do something of significance through this because your word says, now to him that's able to do exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask or think according to the power that works in us. In Jesus name. Amen. The critical need of the hour I believe is the need of a true heaven born, God authorized revival. I believe that's the critical need of the hour. You've been listening to John Eagle's Wings and before we close up today I'd like to ask you four questions. Number one Do you need revival? Number two Do you want a revival? Number three Do you know what a revival is? And number four Have you ever experienced a true revival? You know the scripture says And there arose another generation after them which knew not the Lord nor yet the works which he hath done for Israel. Judges 2.10. It's possible that we are raising up a generation now that does not know what holiness is, does not know what the presence of the Lord is because the influence of so much rock music and so much modernization into our churches You know Webster's defines revival as a return, a recall or recovery to life from death or apparent death. He says revival is it's a return to activity from a state of lancour. So revival is not something that's never lived at all to have it you have to have life in the first place. This is why some will not experience it because they've never had life in the first place. In Isaiah in chapter 64 in 1 through 3 I was just looking through these verses if I can get back over there. Isaiah said this Oh that thou wouldest rend the heavens that thou wouldest come down that the mountains might flow down at thy presence as when the melting fire burneth the fire causeth the waters to boil to make thy name known to thine adversaries that the nations may tremble at thy presence when thou didst terrible things which we look not for thou camest down the mountains flowed down at thy presence for since the beginning of the world men have not heard nor perceived by the ear neither hath the eye seen O God beside thee what he hath appeared prepared for them that waited for him. We're waiting for the Lord to come back and take us to heaven but while we're waiting we're not just idle. While we're waiting we should be working, diligent to be carrying on the task that the Lord has given to us to do waiting, watching and praying and we're praying that the Lord will bless you and that the Lord will keep you and that the Lord will make his face shine upon you and that the Lord will be gracious unto you and that he'll lift up his countenance upon you and that he will give you peace. The Lord bless you my friend.