Revival Conference Victoria 2010

Well, greetings from down here in the United States, and what a privilege it is for me to join you by way of this video to share with you a little bit of my heart and passion and excitement about what God is doing and what I'm believing God to do in the immediate future. I've been in revival ministry now for 35 years. And when I heard that there was another gathering of leaders taking place there in Vancouver for the purpose of seeking the Lord for an outpouring of his spirit, my heart again just leaped with joy. I direct life action ministries. And now for nearly 40 years, this organization has sent teams all across North America. They have been broadcasting across the radio waves to millions every week. They have been going onto campuses. They've been gathering leaders together. We've been doing everything we know to do to educate and to motivate and to mobilize God's people to seek his face for another visitation from heaven by way of revival. The reason I am so encouraged that you're together and you're meeting together to seek the Lord is because I've been planted recently in the first few chapters of Acts. And I've been trying to study and learn and in my own heart and understanding grow to what it really takes, what would be the prototype, the template in scripture for another movement of God in revival today. You see, I believe Pentecost is a beginning of a great work of God, but there are echoes of Pentecost that have been scattered and planted throughout history. And I believe that one of the characteristics of a movement of God is that those disciples began by not moving. They began by gathering together there in the upper room to pray, to look together in the word of God and to trust God together for his promise to be fulfilled. And when I hear of believers and especially leaders like you pastors and those of you gathered there are meeting together and you're praying and you're seeking the Lord before you ever begin to see a witness or a believe God for an outpouring of his spirit, I'm encouraged, I'm blessed because I believe that every movement of God begins by those who don't move. You know, I'm sure it's true up there like it is here. And sometimes I grow weary, even our own organization has grown to be larger than I ever anticipated. But sometimes we think better programs or more activity or better strategies or bigger budgets and more facilities and more equipment might just be enough to see a revival. But all I know you share with me, the recognition and realization that there's never been a revival in the history of the world that has not either been given birth to, cradled or nurtured in prayer, that that is the one ingredient. So I'm grateful that you're gathering together as leaders to seek his face and to spend time praying together. But there's something else that excites me about you meeting together. And that is that there in the second chapter of Acts, I discovered that really movements are experienced before they're ever exported. Movements are experienced. We must first experience a move of God in our hearts as leaders first before we could ever expect it to be marketed by the Holy Spirit of God. And so I am grateful for every opportunity our ministry takes. I am grateful for the increasing number of gatherings here in the States. And now for you all gathering there in Vancouver to experience a fresh work of God in your own hearts. I believe it's when you're revived. I believe when God revived my heart and when he continuously revised my heart that we are then best postured for God to do his great and mighty work. There's a definition of revival. It's been burning in my heart and it goes like this. The revival is simply the accelerating, intensifying, multiplying and magnifying work of God. That when he moves, he accelerates what he does. And you've heard it. God can do more in 10 seconds with his manifest presence than 10 years of meetings like that or meetings we have apart from his manifest presence. But all when he comes, what he can do in accelerated fashion, the intensifying conviction of the Holy Spirit of God. Oh, how desperately in North America we need to see the intense conviction of the Spirit of God to deal with the moral depravity, to deal with the greed, the selfishness, the pride that so permeates so many of us in churches today. But then all the multiplying work of God so evident there in Acts and all the magnifying work of God. And as you meet together, I'm praying as you gather there that God will meet with you as you have taken time out to just wait up on him. And as a result, God will move with such intensity, accelerating power and might, and it would multiply and it would reach down here to the States and who knows, God just might begin the next great awakening right there in Vancouver. And the whole world would be touched. I pray that it would be so. Recently, I looked at that first great awakening. They say as much as one sixth of the population here in the States came to Christ on the heels of what God did in the hearts of his people. And I begin to imagine what if that would happen right there in Vancouver? That would be two or three times the greater Vancouver population would be swept into the kingdom of God if a revival were to take place. And I pray that it might. And I pray that it might begin while you are meeting together. And I pray that Vancouver would be touched, all of Canada and all its provinces would be touched and we would be touched. And once again, together, we'd be able to say, God visited this continent in a revival. All may it be so. Thank you for being strong in the battle. Thank you for crying out in your heart for God to come. And thank you for asking him as you're gathered there together to begin in your own hearts. I'm praying God will do that for his glory and for your ministries and for his name sake. Thank you.