In this sermon, the speaker shares his personal journey of seeking God and experiencing revival. He emphasizes the importance of desperation and setting one's face unto the Lord God. The speaker mentions how God dealt with his pride and how he cried out to God for three weeks, searching for the purpose of life. Eventually, he came across Matthew 6:33, which led him to surrender his life to God and experience salvation. The speaker also encourages the audience to seek God through prayer, fasting, and confession, just like Daniel did in the Bible.

It's good to be back with you again today on Eagle Swings. I think it'd be a good day just to sit back and maybe have a little visit about some things. I've been thinking lately about revival. What it is, what it does, how it comes. Been doing some studying on some of the symptoms of revival. As a matter of fact, last night I sat down and started to study out this area and just really had in mind sharing some things with you about the symptoms of revival. And as I got about halfway through what I was doing, I realized that the Spirit of God was leading me to just talk about Jesus. You know, I talk about many different things, and there's so many things to talk about. And when we're only on the air once a week, then we have to be selective and very specific. There's so many things I'd like to share. I have enough material. I've even thought about the possibility of having a radio Bible school where we could even have notes sent out to you or whatever. But we have to be selective. And as God has raised this program up and He's geared this program towards revival, I've been thinking recently about what is revival? Do we really understand what it is? And we want to be an encouragement to you. We want to be encouragement to the pastor. And my wife and I and my children, we try to be a ministry to people. There's so many programs around, and I've found many times that programs can actually just bury you out of sight. And you can be so busy with your programs that you forget even the Lord. You can even forget why you're doing them. But what's revival? What is revival? You know what revival is? It's Jesus again. And I've been thinking about this because we're going into our spring session. And you know what happens in most churches in the spring? Well, we have revival meetings. And actually, they're not revival meetings. They're just evangelistic meetings. And so for once or twice a year, we try to pump things up in the church, get an evangelist in to come in and try to get a few people saved to do what we should have been doing all year long, outreaching people. And it's just sort of like blowing a balloon up. And then after he's gone, boy, we've had some great meetings and God's done some things. There's no doubt about that. Some folks have got saved. No doubt about that. But is that really what God wants of us? And is that really what revival is? Well, in the next few weeks, if God continues to lead me in what he's been doing, I just want to take some time to share with you about revival. One of the things that I've found in revival is that God meets those who are desperate. I was talking with a pastor yesterday up in Sedalia, and we were sharing things about revival. I'd wrote him a while back. He had wrote me, and I'd wrote him back sharing some things about what God had done in my life and in my church and how he's continued. And I was sharing with him yesterday morning on the phone about some things, how personal Jesus Christ becomes. You know, the cleaner that we will get, the closer that we'll be able to walk with the Lord. And God actually wants to be the main thing in your church, believe it or not. Jesus wants to be the main activity. He wants to be the main attraction. He wants to be the sinner. And let me share something with you. It's a secret, so don't let it out, but he wants to be glorified. And I think so many times when we come into our churches, we go off to meetings or whatever, we've seen men glorified. We've seen some old so-and-so get up and strut his sermonic peacock feathers, and that's so many times it's just the glory of God is not there. The glory of man is there. So what is revival? I want to share some things with you about what God's taught me about revival. And I don't claim to be a professional. I don't know much about this area, but I do know a little bit. I've experienced a little bit of revival in my own personal life. And I know it's been such a devastating thing to where it's changed my life dramatically. It's changed my ministry. It's changed my outlook on life. And I've come to see that so much of my past ministry was done in the flesh and not in the power of the Spirit of God. And we can just have a quiet time talking this morning. I don't have to holler. I don't have to yell. But yet the Spirit of God can be amongst us. He can be ministering through me to you. And He can open up your ears to hear. You know, the Bible says, He that has ears to hear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches. There's one main ingredient in revival. And remember, revival is Jesus again. You have to have Jesus first. Before you can get to this main ingredient to have revival, you have to have this one thing, Jesus. You have to have Him as your Savior. Now, the one main ingredient is that God meets those who are desperate. Now, you may be desperate for God, and you've never met Him yet. You've never known Him. You don't know what it's like. You've gone to church, or maybe you've had some experiences. But somewhere along, you've just missed out on Jesus. And there's something missing in your life, in your heart, and you can sense it. And I know what that's like. I was there myself. Many years ago, I was raised in church, went to church all my life. But there was a vacuum there. And it was actually Jesus Himself. And I don't think I was saved till I was almost 20 years old. And I'd had an experience when I was 10. And I was told that I'd been saved. And I had professed to receive Christ. And I went forward for baptism and all like that. But there was something missing. And I actually think I'd missed Jesus. I don't remember praying to receive Jesus at 10. I was told that's when I got saved. I remember going to the preacher. I remember being in his office. But I don't remember actually praying and receiving Christ. And I don't remember any change that came into my life. And it wasn't until almost 10 years later, when I was off in the university, that God met me in a special way. And He brought that meeting about by making me desperate. Destitution. I became dissatisfied with life, dissatisfied with what I was doing, with school. I just began to ask, what's the purpose of life? And through three weeks of struggle, I remember three weeks of intense struggle, I'd come back to my room after class and just cry. I'd go off down to—I was down in Natchitoches, Louisiana. I'd go down to the River Lake. They call it Cane River. And just spend time there alone, searching. And finally, I hid a scripture in the Bible. I was going through the Bible, and it was Matthew 6, 33, where it says, But seek ye first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things will be added unto you. And I don't know what happened or what the time sequence in there was, but I know that one hot summer night in July, I just totally gave myself to God and told Him He could take me. He could do whatever He wanted to with me. I was His. And at that time, at that night, I think Jesus Christ came into my life. I had changed my mind about myself. I was repentant about my life. I was desperate. And God met me and saved me. And I've discovered something since then. At that night, I didn't know much. I didn't know much about the Bible. I hadn't been able to understand it because I don't think I'd been born again up to that point. But at that point, I was changed. And I've discovered that any time that I move away from the cross, it's always downhill. You know, many years ago, I lived over in what we call the Holy Land. I lived in Turkey, and one time I went down to Israel. And God gave me the privilege of going up on top of Golgotha, where Christ was crucified. It's a hill. Any time you move away from the spot where the cross was, you go downhill. After you get off the top of the hill, you've got to go down. And that's the way it is with us in life. Any time we move away from the cross, it's always down. You know, I was thinking about some things I've been reading from a book called Man, the Dwelling Place of God by A.W. Tozer. And we'll just sort of let God lead us alone this morning the way He wants us to go in our time together. I have so many things to share with you, but as I'm talking with you, I'm trusting the Lord to lead us alone. And I was thinking about these things that A.W. Tozer shared. He said, one thing is certain. The call of Christ is always a promotion. Where Christ to call a king from his throne to preach the gospel to some tribe of Aborigines, that king would be elevated above everything he had known before. Any movement toward Christ is a ascent, and any direction away from him is down. Could I ask you a question, just you and I this morning? Which direction are you headed? Are you going up? Are you going down? Are you filled with the spirit or filled with self and the flesh? You know, Tozer said, yea, though we recognize the honor bestowed upon us, there is no place for pride. For the follower of Christ must shoulder his cross, and a cross is an object of shame and a symbol of rejection. You know, we come into the Christian life so many times we don't know much at all. And because we don't know much at all, the devil is sometimes he's able to easily deceive us and to lead us aside and to get us distracted, get us discouraged, get us away from the simplicity of just knowing and walking with Jesus and loving him and letting him lead and provide. You know, walking with Jesus is a very practical thing. Living with him and walking with him, you just ask him what to do through the day, and the Holy Spirit gives you direction and guidance in your spirit. You have to be sensitive to him. Sin can cut it off. But the other day, I was leaving and we needed some eggs, and the wife mentioned picking some eggs up. There's a farmer north of town where we get some eggs, and we just agreed, let's just ask God for eggs, and let's just let him provide. You know, so many times we don't give God a chance. You've been trying to solve your own problems. Maybe you've been going to a psychologist or even a medical doctor, but you've never given God a chance to heal you physically, spiritually, or emotionally. We're always looking to man. And so that afternoon, I was over at the youth leader's house, the youth leader here in this town where we're at, and there's a couple other young men in there, and I was fixing to go out and get the eggs, and I was reminded by the Holy Spirit, better check in with home base. Better call back and see what happened back at home before I go buy eggs. And so I did. I called up and asked her, well, did God bring by some eggs today? And she was all excited and said, yes, the Lord brought by four dozen eggs and even gave us a gallon of milk. Well, I said, praise the Lord. I think God might even have did that to just show those young fellows in there that he's a God that is interested in details in our life. I just brought up last week in church to pray for a tire on our car. We needed a tire. I'm wanting to go down to Kansas City to a pastor seminar on Tuesday, and the one I'm on there is very bad. And we really hadn't been able to afford a tire. And so I had the church pray for us in this area and some other areas too. And would you know that I went in and took that thing in yesterday and was able to buy a brand new tire, about an $80 tire for $22.94. I don't know how he did it. He gave me a discount because he had a sale going on. Then he gave me, he readied that tire out because of the tread left on it. And by the time he was all done, he said the tire was $22.94. And it cost me about $30 by the time they balanced it and got the tax on there and the tire fee and everything. But I was praising the Lord. We can handle that. He brought in the money. God wants to be in your life like that. Walk with him. And one of the most exciting things about every day is to get up and let him lead you through the day and let him bring into your life those that are desperate for God. And you talk to him about Jesus. He just gives you those opportunities. Man is the dwelling place of God. You know, something else Tozer had said. He said, before God and the angels, before God and the angels, it is a great honor to know and follow Christ. But before men, it is not so. The Christ the world pretends now to honor was once rejected and crucified by that same world. My friend, don't get thrown off by those that say they're Christians, by just everybody that goes to church. You follow Jesus. Don't follow the crowd. The crowd is wrong. Most of the time, it seems like. And it's the one going upstream, fighting the current, going against the tide and the ways of man and the traditions, even of the church. We've adopted a lot of ungodly traditions today. And we need to be careful. And everybody says, well, look at that fool. He's going against the tide. He's going upstream. That's the way Jesus was. He was going against the tide, the ways of man. We've been so deceived in so many of our areas that we really don't even know what's going on so many times. We need to get to God and know him and not pretend. It's very easy to pretend. Very easy for me to pretend. It's very easy to pretend that you're spiritual. But the Bible says, by their fruits, you shall know them. Is there the fruit in your life of godliness, love, joy and peace? Is it there? Sure, we know you can put on your Pepsodent grin when you go to church. But what's it like the next morning when you've got to go out to that old dirty factory or go to that job you just can't stand? Or you've got to stay home and do something that's very tough? Is the joy of the Lord there? Are you pretending? My friend, I think we're coming to days when the pretenders are going to peel off, just like the early church. When they received Christ, there wasn't any pretenders around. You wouldn't pretend to be a Christian if you knew that, for being lined up to be a Christian, you might get thrown to the lions. But we've been so deceived into thinking it's all right to pretend. And we've got churches that are just pretending places, where you go and you pretend to worship, you pretend to enjoy the Lord, you pretend to sing joyfully, you pretend to get something out of the message, and maybe the preacher's even pretending to preach spiritual. And what's it profit you? Just like Jesus said, what shall it profit a man if he gains the whole world and loses his own soul? What's it going to get you to be in a show business? God wants reality. So the great saint is honored only after he is dead, Tozer says. You've been looking for honor? You know, a lot of our Christianity that we have today is people wanting to be honored. But really, most great saints are only honored after they're dead. Are you desperate? Are you desperate for God? Tozer said, not many are selfless enough to endure honor without injury to their souls. We're so proud. I received a letter from somebody down south of town a couple weeks ago, saying that they had to continually battle with the area of pride. That's an encouragement, because at least that person recognizes that there's a battle going on. So many of us don't even recognize that there's a battle going on. We think everything's all right. We're at war. We really are. And we need to watch it. In those early Galilean days, Christ's followers heard his call. They forsook the old life. They attached themselves to him, to Jesus. And they began to obey his teachings and join themselves to his band of disciples. And this total commitment was their confirmation of faith. Nothing less would do. We've got different stuff today going on. We're not attached to Jesus. We're attached to denominations. We're attached to trends. We're attached to styles. We're attached to music. We're attached to experiences. But who's attached just to Jesus? Whoever is just attached to Jesus today is going to be the weird one. Are you willing to be weird for Jesus? You'll be the one that has the power of God on your life. You'll be the one that has the spirit of God working in your life. You'll be the one that has the joy of the Lord in your life. And when you go home and you go to bed at night, you'll go to bed with a clean conscience because you can't walk with Jesus through the day without dealing with sin. And if you haven't been confessing things and dealing with them, you've been picking up trash along the way. And many times what revival is is just a major overhaul of going to the dump and getting things out of our heart. But if we learn to live in continuous revival, day by day, dealing with things as they come, then we experience what Jesus talked about as the abundant life. The abundant life is Jesus living his life through us. Man, where are you at? Woman, where are you at? Boy, girl, where are you at? Are you with Jesus at this moment? Jesus calls us to leave the old life and to begin the new. Are you tired of the old life? You know, that's one of the things that brought me to Christ. I was tired of the old life. I was tired of that which wasn't real. And I began to seek him. I began to get desperate. And he began to work in my life. So he calls us to leave the old life and to begin the new. There must never be any vacuum, never any place of neutrality where the world cannot identify us. Peter warming himself at the world's fire and trying to seem unconcerned is an example of the kind of halfway discipleship too many of us are satisfied with. I'm reading from Tozer again. Are you with Peter at the fires of the world trying to look unconcerned, trying to look uncommitted to Jesus? But yet at the same time, when you get around Christians, you try to look committed. It all depends on where you're at. If you're with Christians, you put on your Christian clothes. If you're with unbelievers, you put on your unbelievers' clothes. Where are you at? Are you following Jesus? Are you going up the hill to Calvary? Are you going down away from Calvary? The martyr leaping up in the arena, demanding to be thrown to the lions alone with his suffering brethren is an example of the only kind of dedication that God approves of. Jesus said, you're either for me or against me. He said, you're either with me or you're against me. You're going with me or you're going back. Which way are you going? You know, God meets those who are desperate. I was reading in Daniel. If I might take you back over there, I don't think I even really hardly get into the message today. But I was reading in Daniel, Daniel chapter 9. If you want to get your Bible and turn over there with me, excuse the rustling of leaves. But Daniel chapter 9. Daniel had discovered in reading of what had gone wrong, that they had departed from God, disobeyed his word. He understood by the books. The number of the years, Daniel chapter 9 verse 2. He understood about the captivity. All of a sudden God opened up to him to show them what was happening and how that they had been pre-programmed by God for 70 years of being off out in the desert. Stuck over there in Babylon as prisoners. And so in verse 3, Daniel, and probably it was his desperation for God that drove him to seek God just like in 1985 when I was pastor in a church. And I was just desperate for reality. I'd had an up and down experience. I'm just opening my heart up to you. This is what the way I was before revival. There are some days of victory and some days of defeat. If the crowds were big, then I was encouraged. If the crowds were down, then I was discouraged. And I was beginning to get desperate before God for reality. And I was wanting that in my church also. So I began to pray for revival. And I didn't even know what revival was. I didn't know there would be revival just ripping the bottom out of my life. And God just beginning to come in and cleanse me and show me self. Show me the self-life. And taking me to the cross, Romans chapter 6. Showing me that the old man was crucified. That I had to quit living in those patterns of the past. That I was dead to those things. And showing me all kinds of things. Showed me my bitterness. And God worked in my heart. And he worked in our church. And it went for over three months in our area. Where God just came in in an unusual way. And he used an evangelist, John Musser. And I'd like to encourage you to get him in. Plan on at least two weeks. You know, in our meetings today, we don't want to give God too much time. Four days is about standard. And if we're really spiritual, we'll have a week of meetings. But it really takes the first week just to begin to break the old ice and the hard shell off of our lives. Before God can move in on the scene and really do something. But God moved in and he began to stomp the daylights out of me. And he's continued to do that and show me things. In the last year, he has hit really hard on pride. And I've shared this with you before. But anyway, he meets those who are desperate. And I think God was meeting Daniel at this point. He was desperate. And so Daniel said, I set my face in verse 393 unto the Lord God to seek by prayer and supplications with fasting and sackcloth and ashes. And I've got a lot of things I wanted to share with you, but I don't have that much time today left. But start off by setting your face unto the Lord God. I suggest you just start getting off along with God. My pastor friend and myself, we used to get together in prayer and our wives would get together and pray and seek God. We did it for months. And then so when God visited, we'd been praying as Daniel. We set our face unto the Lord God to seek by prayer and supplication with fasting and sackcloth and ashes. And he said, I prayed unto the Lord my God and made my confession and said, Oh, Lord, the great and dreadful God, keep in the covenant and mercy to them that love him and to them that keep his commandments. In verse five, he says, we have sinned. That's where we start. And have committed iniquity and have done wickedly and have rebelled even by departing from thy precepts and from thy judgments. Neither have we hearkened unto thy servants, the prophets, which spake in thy name to our kings and princes, our princes and our fathers and to the people of the land. And he just goes on down through here talking about it. Verse eight, he said, we have sinned against thee. Verse nine, we have rebelled against him. In verse 10, neither have we obeyed the voice of the Lord, our God, to walk in his laws, which he set before us by his servants, the prophets. And 11, yea, all Israel has transgressed. And he said, we have sinned. We have sinned. In verse 13, he says, we made not our prayer before the Lord, our God, that we might turn from our iniquities and understand thy truth. In verse 14, we obeyed not his voice. 15, again, we have sinned. We have done wickedly. And then 16, because for our sins and for the iniquities of our fathers, Jerusalem and thy people are become a reproach to all that are about us. Really, I believe our country today is in the trouble that we're in, not because of our presidents or not because of Congress, as bad a shape and as full of scoundrels as it is, but because of us, the Church. We have been the ones that have left God. We've left his word. You know, I've been studying on the translations and I've shared with you last week and the week before how God has really got onto me because he showed me how we've been deceived on the translations. I've been doing some more studying on the NIV. That thing is so corrupted. You have the word of God with the King James Version, but these other translations, most of them are trouble. And God showed me how we've been deceived. And we have gone our own way. We've turned to our own way. And we've just gone our own way. We've turned away from the word of God. And next week, I'm going to share with you about some deception and how we've been deceived. I'll start off with Jeremiah, and then I'm going to go into more on revival and being like Jesus. You know, God wants us pure. He wants us fellowshipping with him. He wants the Church pure. The early Church had power when it was pure. And if your Church is powerless, then you look at your purity. They go together. Your life is the same way. There's power. It's the power of the Spirit of God living through you when you're pure. He wants a clean, empty vessel. How are you doing? There's things I want to share with you on vision. You know, we've been believing God to do things. We believe God to do big things. I mean, we're believing God for where we're at right now for a half-million-dollar building. And we don't have any kind of money like that. But we're believing God for that. And it's really separated the men from the boys when it comes down to really believing God for that. And there's been some that just can't even follow it. But my God's big. I believe he can give us a half-million-dollar building for just a little bit that we have. He's big. You know, I have a vision that I've had for probably about 25 years. No, about 20 years. God gave me a vision for a camping ministry. So many times it's when God takes us through the death and burial of our own vision that later on he'll bring a resurrection. And I don't know what he's going to do with it. But about 20 years ago, God just gave me a burden for camping ministry. And in the last few weeks, he's been clarifying that vision of 20 years ago. How if I had a camp, a place where pastors and missionaries and Christian workers, those that are destitute and desperate and tired could come and be ministered to, and we could share the truths with them. And I've got preacher buddies scattered around the country that I know that I can bring in. And they will really minister to a pastor or a missionary. And in a matter of a day or less or a few days, they can minister in a way to where that discouraged brother can be totally revived to have a new life. And God's been showing me how my vision of having a camping ministry many years ago could be so much more powerful if we had a place where folks could come and be ministered to, a place where they could rest and relax and there could be sharing. I don't know what God would do about that. It's up to him. But we need to be ministering to people. We need to be talking to people and meeting them where they're at and seeing how we can help them. My friend, Jesus Christ, is all you need. I share that week after week. And then I always close up with, He's all you need, but is He all you want? And I'm going to close up again today with that. Our time's about gone. Let me challenge you to turn to Jesus. Many years ago, someone said to me, If you can get a man to Jesus, he'll be all right. And that's the truth. Well, until next time, may God richly bless you, my friend.