We're going to continue our study this morning
in getting back to basics.
A series that I have subtitled, The Stewards
of the Dunamis.
We're now in chapter 6, and I want
to talk this morning along this thought, Survival
of the Revival.
Survival of the Revival.
How many of you know that a lot
of revivals have come and gone?
A lot of revivals have come and gone.
A lot of people have awakened out of
their slumber.
They have sat right back down and fallen
back, as it were, asleep in their spiritual
condition.
And they end up, after a time, being
exactly where they were before God sent revival
into their lives.
So I want to talk this morning about
several different issues that go along those lines.
We will probably jump around a lot more
than we normally do.
But I want to cover a lot of
different areas this morning.
Do you really want revival?
You know, Jesus said that we should count
the cost.
Because there is a cost associated in our
life with having revival.
It means that there are things in our
life we're probably going to need to get
rid of.
It means there's going to be a lot
more devotion and dedication to God.
There are a lot of things we have
to consider when we count the cost, and
ask ourselves, do we really want revival?
Revival begins when God sovereignly begins to place
an urgency within the hearts of His saints
to awaken them out of their spiritual slumber
and repent of all of their ungodly deeds.
You know, God has to do it sovereignly.
The fact is, you just don't wake up
one day and think, well, I think I'm
going to repent today.
And awareness comes over as people of the
times and conditions in which they live.
The saints of God are carried along with
the tide of worldliness.
If they are not careful, they will find
themselves falling in step with the behavior of
impenitent sinners.
It's not difficult to do, especially when we
allow a lot of things in our life
that influence us, and we begin to act
just like the world acts.
I remember saying this several times that my
generation, Generation X, is the first generation, probably
in the history of the church, that did
not believe you need to live like a
Christian in order to call yourself one.
And we have only gone downhill from there.
God calls His people to repent.
The word repent is used in connection with
the seven churches of Asia in the book
of Revelation eight different times.
Revival begins when man rightly responds to God's
call to repent.
See, we have to rightly respond.
We can either harden our heart and stiffen
our neck and be cut off without remedy,
or we can yield to what God is
wanting to do.
McClinton and Strong defines evangelical repentance saying it
begins with conviction of sin, accompanied by sorrow
for it, confession of it, hatred to it,
and renunciation of it.
We need to hate our sin, and when
we hate our sin, we'll turn from it.
The author, as well as the object of
true repentance, is God.
Man and of themselves do not desire to
repent.
It is initiated by God when He sends
His ministers to preach repentance to the people.
The Bible said, How shall they hear without
a preacher?
God will awaken certain individuals, and it will
be up to them to begin to bring
the message, and it spreads like wildfire from
a few.
The Holy Spirit begins to convict of sin,
righteousness, and judgment.
It is up to the hearers whether they
will submit themselves to God or resist the
Holy Spirit and stiffen their necks.
The Spirit of God, Genesis 6, tells us
that He will not always strive with man
because they were also flesh or mortal.
In other words, we have another option.
We can serve sin if we want.
God gives us that.
Man's response to the call of repentance answers
the question if they really want revival or
not.
How do you respond to the message of
repentance?
That will dictate whether you really want revival
or not.
Some will heed the call to forsake all
their sin and the objects of their sin,
while others will continue to believe that they
can manage their compromise, and in the end,
will finally believe a lie, Scripture says, and
be damned.
You know, there's a danger when we get
to the place where we enjoy our sin.
Sin is deceptive.
When we take pleasure in our sin, 2
Thessalonians 2.12 said that they would believe
that lie.
Short-term repentance.
Some people initially repent because they're in a
crisis, or they see danger looming and they
repent to avoid judgment or to ease the
punishment that's associated with it.
If their heart is not changed, replaced, listen,
their foolishness will only be driven far from
them as it is found in the heart
of an impenitent sinner.
You know, children are like that.
Children, until they reach an age where the
Spirit of God can transform them through the
born-again experience, has foolishness bound up in
their heart.
And the only thing you can do until
they are changed is to drive it far
from them.
That's true even in adults who have never
repented and been born again.
God has to send calamity into people's lives
a lot of times to get their attention.
When the goodness of God doesn't work, He
will send calamity.
And what will happen is that people, one
of two things, they will decide to repent
and turn to God, or that situation will
just drive their foolishness far from them for
a time.
And then what happens?
We see them come to the altar, they
cry at the altar, they get back up,
and in about four or five weeks, we
don't see them again.
The reason that is, is the situation only
drove their foolishness far from them, and when
they got relief, they fell back into their
situation.
Their heart was never changed.
It was temporary repentance.
If their heart is not changed, their foolishness
will only be driven far from them as
it is bound in the heart of the
impenitent.
When relief from the trial comes, they will
soon forget their pain, and their foolishness will
return and take center stage in their life
once again.
And you won't even be able to tell.
As a matter of fact, they'll probably be
worse than they were before.
True repentance used to be preached, I believe
this is Spurgeon, but don't quote me on
that, as follows, it must be haughty and
not timid.
It must be total and not partial.
It must be permanent and not temporary.
If the repentance does not follow this pattern,
it is not true biblical repentance.
When those who temporarily repented sinned, listen, they
felt no shame.
Think about it.
They didn't feel any shame.
When was the last time you ever seen
a person who was wildly in sin showing
shame for their behavior?
Have you ever seen a drunk person?
Shame is far from their mind.
Huh?
I've never seen a person yet get drunk
that didn't embarrass himself.
Have you?
Before the night was over, I've never seen
a person that didn't embarrass himself.
They felt no shame.
But yet they were ashamed to openly repent.
Think about it.
They were ashamed to openly repent.
They were haughty sinners and timid repenters.
That can't be, church.
I'm here to declare to you this morning
that that cannot be.
That cannot be.
And it should not be.
They sinned with a fist in the air
with all matter of shameless high handedness.
But they repented silently and hid themselves as
though they were ashamed to be seen repenting
and accepting the Lord.
Excuse me.
I don't think so.
I just don't think so.
Jesus openly rejects this when he said, But
if you're ashamed of me before men, I
will be ashamed of you before my heavenly
father.
What wrath must burn in the eyes of
Christ when he bore our sin in his
own body on the tree laid bare before
the entire world?
Yet a temporal repenter won't even acknowledge that
they sinned and caused it.
The fact of the matter is our repentance
needs to be total.
It must be serious.
How is it that we can embarrass God
and all the host of heaven and then
refuse to embarrass ourselves by openly repenting?
How is that?
We can embarrass God?
You don't think God was embarrassed, church?
Did you know that the devil accuses you
before the Lord day and night?
Did you know he comes before the throne
of God with all manner of accusations that
you have done?
Get up and just acknowledge I have sinned
against the Lord.
Everybody, I've sinned.
Just tell everyone you know I've sinned against
the Lord.
And I repent of that sin.
I've embarrassed God with my behavior.
Show me a person embarrassed to repent and
I'll show you them at their house in
six weeks on Sunday morning.
Dangers of short-term repentance.
Pharaoh remains as the great example of what
happens when you resist the Holy Ghost and
the judgment of God that brings repentance.
I notice this.
This is important even in our young people.
It's almost like each time I have gotten
up to minister over the last several weeks,
it's been stage one, stage two, stage three
message.
Stage four, we are fastly getting to the
doorpost and the blood and the Passover.
Hear what I'm saying this morning, church.
When God is telling His people to repent
and they refuse to, He will step the
situation up each time.
And judgment comes.
We've already seen judgment last week hit some
young people.
But we're in the lower stages of judgment.
It's going to escalate each week.
I don't know what's going to happen in
the end.
As God stepped up the judgment, Pharaoh resisted
the Holy Spirit and God hardened his heart
all the more.
Finally, when the judgment reached its apex, Pharaoh
agreed to allow the children of Israel to
go, but later, listen, he pursued them to
his own destruction.
Not even destroying the firstborn caused him to
turn.
It only made him harder.
And as soon as he found relief, he
got up in his chariot and he rode
out after God's people.
This is how people are.
They have no intention to repent until the
situation is at maximum judgment.
And by the time they repent, they think
they've done God a service, but all they've
really done is hardened their own heart.
That's all they've done.
They've hardened their own heart.
They've told the Holy Spirit, You're not welcome.
And when the moisture in something leaves, what
happens?
It dries up.
It hardens.
The clay pot hardens.
Why?
Because the Spirit of God is leaving.
When you tell God He's not welcome, He'll
leave.
That's when hardness comes.
And that because as soon as they find
relief, they pursue their old sin as though
they felt it slipping through their fingers.
Kind of like when you saw your ex
with a new boyfriend or girlfriend.
You thought, Oh, they're slipping away.
And you run after them.
That's what happens when people see their sin
slipping away.
Sometimes they're looking.
Am I going to pick God or my
sin?
God or my sin?
Short term repentance is not repentance at all.
And it will be revealed in the end.
It'll be revealed.
See, you can only fake it for so
long.
You can only live this Christian life in
the flesh so long.
Pretty soon, you run out of steam.
Repentance means forsaking sin and the means of
the sins.
It is not really repentance until the high
places and the groves are thrown down.
Did you know as long as there were
high places and groves left in Israel, the
devil always had a route back into the
people's lives.
He always had some stepping stones back as
long as the groves and the high places
were still there.
Jehoshaphat was one of the great kings of
Israel.
It was said of him that he would
always have the Lord before his eyes.
In 2 Chronicles 17, 6 we read, And
his heart was lifted up in the ways
of the Lord.
Think about it.
The devil's heart was lifted up in pride.
But this man's heart was lifted up to
do the will of God.
Moreover, he took away the high places and
the groves out of Judah.
When our hearts are truly lifted up to
do the will of God, we will destroy
the high places in our lives.
Christians all over the nation have severe strongholds
of the devil that have been built up,
and yet they refuse to let God destroy
them.
But you know what?
If the devil has a stronghold in your
life, you can ignore it, you can try
to put it in the closet, but you
know what happens?
As soon as you get weak, the devil
will launch an attack from that thing into
your life.
You get a little bit cold, you get
a little bit sick, you get a little
bit tired, as Charles Stanley says, you get
tired.
He's got a whole list of things that
happen.
And then you become vulnerable.
And when you become vulnerable, if you have
stepping stones back to that sin in your
life, you're going to head back to it.
The enemy has built sin or sins in
their life that the person keeps running back
to over and over again.
True repentance is when we burn the bridges
back to our old sins.
That's when true repentance is.
This may mean getting rid of things that
serve as stepping stones back to our sins.
As long as you think to yourself something
like this, well, if anything goes wrong, I
can still go back to thus and such.
I had a young person that I used
to work with, and he got saved, in
quotes.
And he took all of this heavy metal,
you know, death metal, demonic music it was,
and he put it up in his attic.
And he says, you know what?
Or he was going to do that, he
said, next time.
He said, because I threw it all away
and every time I backslide, I got to
go buy it all again.
Next time I'm going to put it up
in my attic so I can save myself
some money.
That's not burning bridges, church.
That's almost premeditated backsliding.
True repentance is when we take hold of
the plow, we refuse to look back.
True repentance is when you do as did
Elisha, and kill the oxen, and burn the
yoke and the plow.
That's true repentance.
The revival will last as long as the
repentance lasts.
You hear what I said?
The revival will last as long as the
repentance lasts, and no longer.
When the people fall back into their old
ways, revival is over.
When the newness of repentance is worn off
and the zeal to do God's will is
wearing thin, there is a danger to falling
back into a spiritual slumber.
When the people don't get into the Word
of God and pray, and they don't begin
to witness, they'll be running on the same
dead battery that they had before.
God may jumpstart the people.
Hear what I'm saying.
Imagine Him, He's putting the jumper cables on
you.
He's giving you the sense of urgency.
He's giving you enough juice to get your
motor turned over, okay?
Follow me here.
With the sovereign act of revival.
But then He expects us to stir up
the gift of God that is within us
from there on out.
See what happens.
We shut the motor off, and we didn't
make sure the alternator was working.
Then she wouldn't restart.
Thermonuclear revival.
I like this one.
Thermonuclear revival.
It's not what you think either.
There comes a point when God is sending
revival, that the people keep taking in and
taking in and taking in, but they're not
giving out.
God has empowered them for service, and they're
using that power as a means for a
new spiritual experience, rather than to do God's
will.
Think about what I'm saying.
I like something Brother Andrew said.
Listen.
Revival is not the top blowing off the
church.
It's the bottom falling out.
This is where many people and many revivals
blow up.
People start seeking a deeper experience in the
Lord in some mystical way, and they end
up ready, listen church, for the funny farm.
They start weird now.
Happens in almost every revival.
Instead of coming to the revival thinking, I'm
going to get on fire for God and
take this message somewhere else, they come seeking
an experience and they start weirding out.
And when their weirding out begins, pretty soon
the revival ends up in chaos.
People get the wrong concept of what revival
is.
It's not about manifestations, church.
It's about empowerment for service and holy living.
That's what revival is for.
Instead of allowing the Spirit of God to
empower them for service, they keep seeking more
and more and more spiritual blessing until they
just lose it all together.
They just lose it.
The pressure and drive to minister becomes so
volatile that they nearly explode like an atomic
reaction from the pressure.
You know, there's something so many times you
can ask God to anoint you and you
not go do something before you flip out.
I'm just being straight with you.
I'm just telling you what I've seen from
practical observation.
There's just so many times you can say,
God anoint me, anoint me, anoint me, and
not go do something before you start weirding
out.
That's what happens in a lot of revivals.
It's what gives a lot of revivals black
eyes.
Pretty soon people start barking like dogs.
Doing birthing pains and weird kind of stuff.
Calling it God.
No, it's not God.
Somebody hung around when they should have been
out in the fields.
And they stayed back at the threshing floor
until they flipped out.
Anyone seeking an experience with Christ, apart from
knowing Him and the power of His resurrection
and the fellowship of His sufferings, what's that
mean?
All they who live godly in Christ Jesus
will suffer persecution.
If you're not living in such a way
that you're being persecuted, if you're not ministering,
bringing persecution, you don't know the Lord and
the fellowship of His suffering.
Being made conformable unto His death, you're headed
for Flakesville Church.
The anointing of God is for service.
I remember Brother Burch saying that.
As young people, we would come to church
and we'd have these awesome prayer meetings.
Awesome prayer meetings.
I remember him one day getting up behind
the pulpit and gave us a real word
of knowledge.
The anointing is for service.
It's not so I can weird out and
jump three pews and see if I can
put my head through the wall or make
a new door over here.
Anointing is for service.
That's what it's for.
And so oftentimes we come and we just
shout the anointing off.
We shout the zeal off.
We leave out of here.
Man, I'm wore out.
When you should have left out of here
on fire for God.
We need to learn this, church.
When God sends revival, suck it up and
go out and do the work of the
Lord.
An experience with God that is genuine causes
us to want to share the faith with
others and conform to pure religion.
A lot of things have been blamed on
the Holy Ghost that we're not God at
all.
People don't bark in the Holy Ghost.
You know what?
People used to cast that stuff out.
People get to roaring.
Man, somebody would say, hold them down.
Grab the anointing oil.
But instead of doing that, because we're so
far out in Flakesville, we don't even have
discernment, we start calling everything up God.
When people don't use their anointing to minister
and they keep seeking more and more and
more power and blessing, they open themselves up
to devils.
That's what you do.
God brings revival.
Use it for what He brought it for.
Take to the fields.
Do the work of the Lord.
Live a holy life.
Don't keep seeking more and more deeper mystical
experiences in God.
Protecting the ground that God has given us.
It is impossible to be full of the
Holy Ghost and not greatly desire to minister
to the lost.
It's impossible.
When you get full of the Holy Ghost,
you're going to be full of the very
heart of God, and that is to reach
the lost.
It is impossible to be full of the
Holy Ghost and continually struggle with sin.
The more full you'll be, the more out
of, let me put it this way, you'll
be out of the devil's tractor beam.
The closer you get to this world here,
this is going to suck you right in.
How many of you have ever seen Star
Trek?
You know, if you stayed at a reasonable
distance away from that tractor beam, you could
probably pull away from it.
But the closer you get to it, the
more vulnerable you are.
And so it is.
When we're full of the Holy Ghost, sin
is manageable, church.
Oh, the desire may still be there.
You're going to still have to resist, but
it's not going to be like if you're
half full, lukewarm, or anything else.
You're going to be in a street fight
if you don't stay full of the Holy
Ghost.
It is that simple.
It is impossible to be full of the
Holy Ghost.
Now when I say full of the Holy
Ghost, I mean it in the Book of
Acts sense.
Not in the Spirit-filled-life Bible type
of thinking.
That just because you spoke in tongues once,
you're full of the Holy Ghost.
I'm talking about full of the Holy Ghost
until you speak the Word with boldness.
Full of the Holy Ghost until there's a
change everywhere you go.
It is impossible to be full of the
Holy Ghost and not love your neighbor as
yourself.
It's impossible.
He that loveth not knoweth not God, for
God is what?
And if you're full of God, you're full
of what?
It's the fruit of the Spirit.
When God sends revival into our lives and
into our church, serious changes begin to take
place.
People begin to hear and feel the heart
of God and they want to witness.
They begin to live holy lives that are
separate from sin.
That's why God wants to bring revival.
He's coming back for a church that's without
spot or blemish.
Their life is characterized by godliness.
When we begin to wax lazy and begin
allowing the enemy to offer us alternative entertainment
for our spiritual walk with God, trouble is
on the way.
When you seek to be entertained, just mark
it down.
Just remember I told you this so you'll
know why it happened.
Trouble is on the way, especially in the
hour in which we live.
See, there was an hour when you could
get into a lot of foolishness and it
may not have the effect it does today,
but not today.
The spirit of antichrist is so strong in
the earth.
I like what Brother Tony said one time.
He said, you can't even take a morning
off from God.
Don't even take an hour off from God,
church.
Because you might give the devil one hour
and he might make an inroad just that
quick.
Pretty soon you don't even realize what happened
to you.
Revival according to Atkins.
Amen.
How many of you know what the Atkins
diet is?
Yeah?
Protein diet.
The revivalist diet is one of strong meat
and very little fluff and nonsense.
Many people believe that they can turn God
on and off like a switch.
They can shift into spiritual mode or compromised
mode.
It will.
I've had people actually say that.
I don't even know where I heard it,
but it got back to me one day.
It's like, man, that's amazing how I can
turn on the anointing and turn it right
off like that.
Like, man, I don't know what anointing you're
talking about.
The spirit of the Lord comes upon me.
Maybe I can't even sleep at night.
I'm up at two o'clock in the
morning and can't go to sleep.
I can't shut that off.
However, anyone who has ever done anything meaningful
for the Lord lives with a high level
of consecration to God.
Hey, listen.
You're not going to get anywhere with God
until you get to a level of consecration
where God can use you.
You know, John the Baptist, he didn't even
go into the city.
Now, I'm not saying move out to the
country and live out in a cabin, okay?
But listen, he lived away from the people.
He got away from them.
And when the people came, they came to
him and they came outside the city.
You know why that was?
I'll tell you why I believe it was.
Because he probably knew with the sin nature
he had, walking up and down the street,
he couldn't stay focused with God like he
needed to, listen, to bring that message.
Because listen, you don't just live any old
way and bring that message.
You don't just live any old way and
bring that message.
You just don't live any old way and
get your head cut off and brought in
a charger.
You don't just live any old way and
go before the king and tell him what
you're doing is sin and not repent, knowing
it's going to cost you your life.
See, if he'd have been mingling with the
people and just kicking it with his people
and all of that, you know what?
He wouldn't have had nearly the message he
had.
They were often misunderstood and disliked.
They said of John the Baptist, he had
a devil.
This guy's got a devil.
He never says anything positive.
He's got a devil.
No, they were the ones with the devil.
They seemed to be dull and boring.
This is because, listen, impenitent sinners measure their
beliefs by their fleshly standards and not by
the fruit of the Spirit.
What a sinner hates, a believer loves, they
cannot understand spiritual things.
How could it possibly be that you could
get any kind of anything out of going
to the nursing home?
How is it possible you could get anything
out of standing up there with the eight
-foot sign that said repent, pass out 192
Bibles when people are acting in every single
way from giving you an untimely sign all
the way up to saying bless you, brother,
because it is our meat to do the
will of Him that sent us.
That's why.
That's what fulfills us.
An on-fire-for-God individual has a
different diet than a person who is half
backslidden or lukewarm as a Christian.
Notice what I said.
They have a different diet.
Too often we forget that Jesus rejects lukewarmness.
We were half in.
If we're half out, He spits us out
of His mouth.
When we get into a condition, this condition,
listen, we need to be taught again spiritual
truths that we once understood.
There was a time when you could readily
witness.
There was a time when you loved to
talk about the Lord.
There was a time when you could sit
down and just go and flow and flow
and flow in the things of God.
You say, well, I've only been saved five
years.
Listen, there are young people that I have
encountered in the last three months that are
as learned in Scripture as probably I am.
24-year-olds.
But He knows the Word of God.
He knows the Word.
For when for a time you ought to
be teachers, you have need that one teach
you again, which be the first principles of
the oracles of God.
I've become such as have need of milk
and not of strong meat.
As a newborn baby grows up in Christ,
they begin to apply the Word and their
understanding moves from the milk to the strong
meat.
Milk, Scripture tells us, not raw words.
Scripture is for new converts.
And when it is needed again among aged
Christians, it is evidence that their senses are
not being controlled and all manner of sin
is being let in to their heart and
mind.
Sin comes in and just starts hitting the
delete button on everything you know about God.
It's like a virus.
Man, I used to know that.
Man, I used to...
Man...
I remember talking...
You know what's happening to you?
You're not exercising your senses.
You're letting the devil come in and steal.
That's what he does.
Steal the seed of the good Word.
Finally, drowning in chocolate milk.
Drowning in chocolate milk.
Hebrews 5, 14 and 15 reads, For everyone
that uses milk is unskillful in the word
of righteousness for he is a baby.
But strong meat belongs to them.
They're of full age.
Even those who by reason of its use
or practice have their senses exercised to discern
good and evil.
What's that mean?
They just don't look at any old thing.
They don't just listen to any old thing.
They don't just do any old thing with
their body.
And because of that, they live on the
meat and not the milk.
The use of meat has less to do,
listen, about education than it does with our
walk with the Lord.
Hear what I said?
It has less to do with our education.
And it has more to do with our
walk with the Lord.
Many people in the time of Christ could
not read and write, but they could exhort
the meat of God's Word.
Think about what I just said.
They were far less educated than we are,
church.
And they could exhort the Word of the
Lord at will.
In Acts 4, 13 we read, Now when
they saw the boldness of Peter and John
and perceived that they were unlearned and ignorant
men, they marveled.
And they took knowledge of them that they
had been with Jesus.
Think about it.
They hadn't been to the school of the
prophets.
They hadn't sit at the feet of Gamaliel,
like Paul the Apostle.
They hadn't sit in the school of Hillel
and Shammai.
They hadn't been there.
They had been fishermen.
But now they are expounding the Word of
the Lord, the meat of the Word, with
great boldness.
Why?
Because they had been with Jesus.
On the contrary, someone who has not been
with Jesus may have multiple degrees and not
know the first thing about the truth of
God's Word.
Dr. Fahrenheit, don't know a thing about God.
The Word of God is not intellectually understood,
though it's somewhat intellectual.
Don't get me wrong.
It is spiritually discerned.
God hid His truths from the wise and
the prudent and revealed them unto His children.
Strong truth has little to do with human
wisdom and much to do with being born
again in simple obedience.
The more light that we have and we
walk in, the more light that God will
give us to see with.
If you'll walk in the light God gives
you, He'll give you more light.
Pretty soon, the path will be clear through
the Word of God.
But we've got to walk in what we
know.
Otherwise, we're holding the truth in unrighteousness and
God's not going to keep giving you more
truth until you walk in what you've got.
If there's no years, if there's no hunger,
rather, or thirst for righteousness, men and women
will eat the strong meat of sin and
iniquity for years and they will sip the
milk of God's Word.
Oh, they can tell you all about technical
things.
They're real articulate in their field of expertise.
But they expound the milk of God's Word
and it has nothing to do with intelligence.
It has everything to do with whether or
not we've been with Jesus.
Soon it will get so bad, listen, that
the only thing they will drink is the
chocolate milk of God's blessings and promises.
What a meal.
Steak and potatoes, sin washed down with the
chocolate milk of God's promises.
That's where we're at today, church.
This circus, as it's been called by many
people now, and I'm taking up the word
and using it, eats steak and potato sin
and washes it down with the promises of
God.
This is the preferred meal of modern Christendom.
And it's a mockery of God, worse than
the impenitent sinners that are on the streets.
People trying to use God's promises to assist
them and they're serving the God of mammon.
Think about that.
We already serve the God of mammon in
America, but then your messages are predominantly nothing
but prosperity and blessing.
Excuse me.
We live in a day opposite.
Now this is what I really want you
to remember.
And I want you to really take this
home and think about this.
Because I read this in a book of
Dave Wilkerson's that he wrote called The Vision
way back in 1973.
I'm just borrowing this quote from him and
it just shocked me to the core.
Listen to what he said.
He said we live in a day opposite
of the book of Job.
It's as though Satan approached the throne of
God and he demanded that God bless His
people until their vats were full so He
could sift them to see if they would
serve God or mammon.
Instead of going before the throne of God
and saying, take their stuff, take everything, take
it all, take it.
He went before and said, bless them with
all you can bless them with and then
we'll see if they still serve you or
if they'll turn to the God of mammon.
Now that's a radical thought.
You think about that.
You think about mass blessing coming in your
life to sift you.
What will you do with it?
Will you serve it?
Or will you make it serve God?
Will you serve it?
Or will you make it serve God?
I thought that was pretty radical.
That's a radical thought.