We come today to what could be called
the sequel to our previous message on revival.
In our last study, we looked at the
possibility of judgment that we as a people
seem to be facing, but we also considered
that even though we deserve judgment, our God
delights in mercy, and therefore the possibility exists
that God could, even at this late hour,
revive the church and awaken many in this
world to their need to salvation.
We saw that both the character of God,
He being reluctant to judge and anxious to
show mercy, and history, particularly that of Israel
and our own nation, give us a basis
to hope for the possibility of revival and
awakening in the future.
Today I want to consider the steps that
we as Christians must take if we're to
have any hope that there could be brighter
days in the future for our country and
for the world at large.
I'd like to draw our text from a
familiar passage, 2 Chronicles 7, verse 14.
In this particular text, God Himself gives us
what I believe could be called the steps
to revival.
God shows us what we are to do
when conditions around us develop like they've developed
at the time in which we're living.
And so this is what the Lord said,
verse 14, if my people, which are called
by my name, shall humble themselves and pray
and seek my face and turn from their
wicked ways, then will I hear from heaven
and will forgive their sin and will heal
their land.
This is probably one of the most misapplied
texts in all the Bible.
I have on several occasions heard people apply
this text to the country at large, to
the United States, implying that we as a
country are the people of God and we
need to turn back to Him and so
forth.
That isn't a totally accurate understanding of the
passage.
You see, this message was originally given to
Israel.
Israel was what you call a theocracy.
A theocracy is a kingdom under the direct
rule of God.
Now, since the time of Israel's theocracy, there
has never been another theocracy.
And even though the United States of America
and other countries have had a Christian influence
in their government, and in our case, in
the establishing of our nation, yet we could
never see ourselves or say accurately that we
are a Christian nation.
The theocracy in the world today is the
church.
God began a new work after he set
aside Israel because of their unbelief and he
raised up a new nation, not a particular
geographical or ethnic nation, but a nation called
the church that spread throughout the whole world
and made up of a variety of different
people.
But we are that holy nation.
We, the church, are God's people.
And so this is a message that's really
directed not to any nation at large, but
to the church of God, the church of
Jesus Christ.
This is a message for us.
And as I said, I believe that this
is the road to revival.
These are the steps.
If we want to see a fresh work
of God in our midst and an overflow
of that into our society, we have got
to take these steps ourselves.
It begins with us.
There are four steps to revival.
According to this passage, they are number one,
acknowledgement of sin.
Secondly, repentance from sin.
Thirdly, complete devotion and fourthly, prayer.
So we want to look at each one
of these points here today.
First of all, the acknowledgement of sin.
If my people will humble themselves, that's really
what the Lord is getting at here when
he talks about humbling ourselves.
He's talking about us acknowledging ourselves, our sin.
You know, there is a human tendency, and
I don't think that we as Christians are
completely free from it.
It's the tendency to point the finger at
other people.
It's the tendency to blame others for the
circumstances that we find ourselves in.
And quite often when we are assessing the
situation, we are quick to point out all
of the different people that are to blame.
We hear so often, oh, it's the government.
It's the fault of our government.
They've departed from God and brought in all
of these policies that are anti God, and
they're the ones that are responsible for the
condition of the country.
I would say that that is true to
a certain extent.
Others say, well, it's the liberal media.
It's their constant barraging of liberal ideas through
the newspapers and through the news programs and
all of that.
That's why we're in the state we're in.
It's that liberal influence coming from the media.
I would agree that they have contributed to
the problem.
And then sometimes we hear it's Hollywood.
Hollywood is the culprit.
They're the ones that are bringing down the
country.
They're the ones that are polluting the world.
I would agree again that they have made
a major contribution to the problem.
But here's what we need to realize.
We are not ourselves without culpability.
We have a part as well.
We have failed.
We have not been the people that we
should be, have we?
And I have to look at myself honestly
and say, you know, I haven't been the
godly man in every case that I ought
to be.
I haven't really sought the Lord with all
my heart.
I haven't devoted myself totally and completely to
seeking him in prayer and those kinds of
things.
I have to recognize that I'm guilty as
well.
And that's where it all begins.
God said, if my people will humble themselves,
there is that tendency to overlook our own
problems.
The Laodicean church was addressed by Jesus.
He reiterated their own evaluation of themselves.
And then he told them what his perspective
on their situation was.
He said, because you say, I am rich
and increased with goods and have need of
nothing and do not know that you are
wretched, miserable, poor, blind and naked.
I will spew you out of my mouth.
Do you see how easy it is for
us to have a view of ourselves that's
not totally accurate?
We can easily deceive ourselves.
We can easily fool ourselves into thinking that
everything's OK.
I don't have any problems.
It's their problem.
I think of David, David, who had sinned
grievously, who had committed the horrific sin of
adultery and then compounded it by having the
husband of the woman Bathsheba put on the
front lines in battle so he would die.
David had sinned so horribly, but yet he
was going about his business as king.
He was going about his business as the
spiritual leader of Israel and, you know, just
suppressing that conviction and trying to pretend like
nothing was wrong in his life.
And then Nathan, the prophet, comes to him
with a parable.
David didn't know it was a parable at
the time.
He was thinking that the story that Nathan
was telling was a story of an actual
occurrence in his kingdom.
And Nathan's telling the story about a great
injustice that's taken place in David's kingdom where
this wealthy man, he comes and he takes
advantage of a poorer person.
And and all of this, as David's listening,
he becomes enraged.
He can't believe that such injustice would go
on in his kingdom.
And he becomes filled with anger and he
says, that man shall die.
And Nathan turned to him and he said,
David, you are the man.
You see, he was blind to his own
state.
He was quick to point the finger.
He was quick to pronounce a judgment, but
he's blind to his own condition.
Of course, we know David was a true
man of God.
And when the message came, he humbled himself
at that instant.
He said, I have sinned.
But that's just that that tendency seen there
in David, that we all have that tendency
to point the finger somewhere else.
I think of Isaiah the prophet in the
early stages of his ministry.
He went about pronouncing woe upon the nation.
And it's interesting to read the first five
chapters of Isaiah and to find how many
times he pronounces a judgment upon the nation.
He says, woe unto the wicked.
Woe unto those who rise early to follow
after strong drink.
Woe unto those who draw iniquity with cords
of deceit.
Woe to those who call evil good and
good evil.
Woe to those who are wise in their
own eyes.
And there Isaiah is going throughout the kingdom
and he's pronouncing these judgments.
He's pronouncing woe on the sinners in the
land.
And then we come to the sixth chapter
and an interesting thing happens.
We read this in the year that King
Uzziah died, Isaiah said, I saw the Lord.
He was sitting up on the throne.
He was high and lifted up.
And the train of his robe filled the
temple with glory.
And the cherubim were crying, holy, holy, holy.
And then Isaiah said, woe is me.
You see, he was quick to pronounce woe
on everybody else, but he hadn't included himself.
But then he sees the Lord.
And if we can't see our own fault
and the contribution that we've made to the
problem, then it's probably, probably because we haven't
seen the Lord.
We haven't had a clear picture of him
because the moment we see him like Isaiah,
we must cry out as well.
Woe is me.
I am undone.
I am a man of unclean lips.
You see, we are responsible partially for the
problem.
And that's where we must start.
We must start with ourselves.
We look out there and I think, you
know, sometimes it's ironic, you know, that sometimes
from our pulpits, we're, you know, we're preaching
to those people out there who aren't listening.
They don't hear what we're saying.
We're telling them that they need to quit
doing this and they need to get right.
But we've got to start with ourselves.
And that's who the message is to here.
If my people who are called by my
name will humble themselves.
Now, just one more illustration here.
I think of Daniel.
Now, if there's anybody in the Bible that
you could say was not to be implicated
in the sins of the people, it would
be Daniel.
He's just an extremely godly man.
And as you read the account of his
life, it's hard to find any inconsistency in
him.
As a matter of fact, my oldest son,
when he was younger, he was reading through
the life of Daniel and he came to
me and he said, he said, dad, I
know the Bible says all of sin, but
what about Daniel?
And I said, you know, it doesn't appear
that he did.
Does it?
But of course he did.
But yet, you know, he, he was an
upright man.
He was a man of tremendous integrity and
faith and commitment to God.
But even Daniel, a man like that, as
he prayed, he said, Lord, we have sinned.
He didn't say, Lord, they have sinned, get
them.
He said, Lord, we have sinned.
And that's where we must start today with
our own sins, with our own shortcomings, with
the fact that we have not really lived
up to the call of God upon our
lives.
That's where we've got to start.
That's where it all begins.
If my people who are called by my
name will humble themselves, that they will acknowledge
their sin and we need to come to
God today and we need to say honestly,
Lord, search me.
You see, because we can deceive ourselves, we
can think that we're doing just great.
That's why David in Psalm 139, as he
finishes up the Psalm, and as he's talking
about that perfect hatred toward the ungodly, he
says, search me, oh God.
He says, I'm pronouncing judgment upon them and
rightfully so.
But what about myself?
Search me, oh God, know my heart.
And that's where we need to be at
today.
Search me.
And I'm certain as we ask God to
do that, we will find areas in our
life that are out of sync with what
God is wanting to do and what he's
called us to be.
And that's where we need to take the
next step that's laid out for us here.
And that's the step of repentance.
If my people who are called by my
name will turn from their wicked ways.
You see, it's not good enough to merely
acknowledge that we're sinning.
We must turn away from our sins as
well.
Now we're living in a time when sin
is dominating the lives of so many Christians.
Sin is rampant in the church today.
It's out of control, not just the Catholic
church.
They're getting all the publicity, but you know
what?
The evangelical church is full of sin as
well.
They could do reports and articles on the
sexual immorality and infidelity in evangelical churches.
It's something that's happened where we've just developed
a high tolerance for sin today.
And there are many sins that are affecting
the church, many sins that are affecting our
church here.
These are the prevalent sins in our culture
today.
Idolatry, sexual immorality, divorce, hatred, jealousy, selfish ambition,
slander, gossip.
These are the things that you find unbelievably
as relatively common in Christian churches today.
Idolatry.
Now you might say, wait a second, we
don't have any statues around here.
I don't have any images that I bow
down to.
I don't burn incense before any image.
What do you mean idolatry?
Well, you see, idolatry has a number of
manifestations.
Bowing down to images is just one of
them.
Idolatry is a matter of the heart.
A person becomes idolatrous when they allow something
to take the primary place in their life.
As Pastor Chuck has said many times, the
master passion of your life becomes your God.
If the Lord God of the Bible is
your master passion, then you're right where you
ought to be.
But if something else is your master passion,
if something else has taken over and is
driving you, then you are caught up in
idolatry.
Three manifestations of idolatry that are common around
us today are number one, the love of
self, number two, the love of things, and
number three, the love of pleasure.
Many, many Christian people are caught up in
one or all three of these things, the
love of self, the attitude that says it's
all about me.
And maybe you don't come out and verbalize
it because you know that would bring a
lightning bolt up on your head.
But yet that's the way you really conduct
your life.
It's all about me.
Everything revolves around you and what you want
and your agenda.
And basically, you are on the throne of
your life.
And for you to utter the words, Lord
Jesus, it's a contradiction.
Because you're calling him Lord, but you're not
doing at all what he says you're doing
your own thing.
Then there's the love of things.
I want this.
I want that.
I've got to get this.
And boy, living in an affluent culture, how
we can easily get caught up in this.
The love of things and things come in
and they take the place and we don't
have time to devote ourselves entirely to God
because we've got to devote ourselves to our
three jobs so we can get more things.
That's idolatry.
Materialism is idolatry.
We don't talk about materialism too much, sort
of a taboo subject.
Don't want to offend the rich.
It's a reality, idolatry, loving things, living for
things, loving pleasure.
As long as it feels good, that's all
that matters.
A lot of people in the church conduct
themselves by that philosophy, indicating that they're involved
in the love of pleasure, idolatry.
It feels good to me.
It doesn't matter.
Nothing else matters as long as it feels
good to me.
And then, of course, we have the issue
of sexual immorality rampant in the church today.
Adultery is becoming so commonplace in the Christian
church.
It's not only happening with people in the
congregation.
Quite often, it's the people in the pulpit
that are involved in adulterous relationships.
And we've lost the understanding of the seriousness
of the sin of adultery.
Remember, under the Old Testament, it was a
capital crime punishable by death.
And God has not changed his attitude on
adultery at all today.
And yet we find that it's tolerated in
the church.
It's just swept under the carpet so often.
We see many times people in ministry, as
I said, falling into the sin.
And the most important thing, the big issue
is let's try to get them back into
ministry as quick as we can.
That's the wrong approach.
This is a grievous sin before God.
And then we have the issue of fornication.
The difference between the two is the difference
between being married and unmarried.
Fornication is sexual activity outside of the marriage
relationship.
And in our churches today, we have much
of this going on, people involved with one
another sexually, but not committed to one another
in the marriage relationship.
And many times this is just being overlooked,
swept under the carpet.
And we're living in such a distorted time
spiritually that we've even relegated these kinds of
things now to psychological disorders.
And you read today about the sex addicts.
They've gone off to the Christian psychologist who
told them, you know, you're not really responsible
for the adultery or the fornication.
You are a sex addict and you can't,
you know, be freed from that.
That's a lifelong addiction and we'll just, you
know, help you through therapy and medication.
And, you know, but you've got to live
with this addiction.
No, this is just sin deeply rooted in
our lives.
And then, of course, there's the plague of
pornography contributing to the fornication and the adultery,
no doubt the plague of pornography, how prevalent
it is.
Again, we have to take a look at
ourselves.
We're always pointing all those people in the
pornography industry.
Yeah.
Well, who's buying the stuff from them?
Who's surfing the web and going to those
sites?
So often it's people in the church, it's
people sometimes in leadership in the church.
These are sins that are dominating our lives
as Christians today.
And there are things that God himself does
not tolerate.
And then we come to the great and
grievous sin of divorce.
Do we remember that divorce is a sin?
I don't know that we remember that today.
People just so easily step into it.
And it's almost one of those kinds of
things that we're afraid to even talk about
in the context of sin today.
And I think in some cases, some preachers
are afraid to mention divorce from the pulpit
as a sin for fear that half their
church will leave.
But listen, when I'm talking about divorce and
divorce is a sin, but I want to
clarify what I'm talking about.
There are certain circumstances under which divorce is
allowed by God.
And I don't want anybody to get the
wrong impression or to think that you're being
condemned when you're not guilty.
Maybe you've been divorced.
But if you were divorced before you became
a Christian, the Bible says, if anyone is
in Christ, they are a new creation.
So we're not talking about you.
If you are divorced because your husband or
your wife were unfaithful to you and that
led to a divorce, we're not talking about
you.
If you are divorced, say, as a woman,
because you had to flee for your life
because of the abuse of your husband, we're
not talking about you.
If you are divorced because you were married
to an unbeliever and they decided to depart,
we're not talking about you.
This is who we're talking about.
We're talking about those today in the church
who are coming up with things like, well,
you know, he doesn't really meet my needs
anymore.
And because my needs aren't being met and,
you know, my needs, I've prayed about it
and the Lord has shown me that because
my needs are not being met, that I
can get out of this marriage.
Do you know how many times we hear
that in counseling sessions or we hear it
from the man?
Well, you know, she's not satisfying me anymore.
When I married her, she was thin and
good looking and look, she's gained all this
weight.
And, you know, I, I just feel like
God is releasing me from this.
And, you know, as a matter of fact,
as a matter of fact, I don't even
know if it was ever God's will for
us to get married.
I know it's been 25 years, but, you
know, I've been thinking about that.
I don't think it was God's will and
God showing me is really this is the
kind of stuff we hear.
You wonder what we do all week, we
sit behind desks listening to this kind of
stuff.
So if there's a little cynicism in the
pulpit, you can understand why sometimes.
But this, this is the kind of stuff
I'm talking about.
This stuff should not be.
This should not be a woman came to
me years ago and I knew her well,
she was in ministry.
I knew her husband.
Well, she came, she said, I'm divorcing my
husband.
I've been released.
The Lord has freed me.
I said, on what grounds adultery?
I said, your husband hasn't committed adultery.
Nobody's thought about it.
And the Lord's shown me that I'm free.
No, I'm sorry.
The Lord has not shown you that that's
your own desire leading you astray.
We have to remember that divorce is a
great sin.
And it's a sin that needs to be
repented of in the church.
If you're in a divorce process and you
don't have a biblical basis, you better stop
it.
You need to stop that process and get
right with God.
God will heal your marriage.
But you've got to get right with him.
And then we have many other sins that
are very prevalent in the body.
We have hatred toward others, other believers.
We hate them for some reason.
We just carry around this animosity or we
have jealousy.
We see somebody who's all that, you know,
disgusted because it's, you know, they've got something
that I should have or something like that.
We've got the selfish ambition, people trying to
climb the ladder to power.
We've got slander and gossip.
These are the kinds of things.
And this is what God said.
If my people will turn from their wicked
ways, you see, it's not enough to just
acknowledge these things.
We have got to stop it.
We've got to turn from it.
And I think one thing that would help
us is if we if we stopped and
realized, you know, God hates this stuff and
God is going to hold us accountable for
these things.
I think we've deceived ourselves into thinking that,
hey, it's all grace.
You know, we're saved by grace.
We don't have to worry about this.
No, we need to consider this because God
is going to bring everything into account.
And the New Testament tells us that one
day we're going to stand before Christ and
we're going to be judged for the things
that we've done in the body, whether good
or bad.
Now, that's not a judgment to determine where
we spend eternity, but it sounds to me
like it's a serious judgment.
We need to realize that.
So if there's going to be any change
in our nation, it's got to begin in
our churches.
It's got to begin in our lives.
We have got to humble ourselves and repent.
We've got to turn away from our wicked
ways.
And then thirdly, God said, if my people
will seek my face now, this is a
way of describing a hot pursuit of God,
intense passion for him.
Seeking God's faces is just a way of
describing a person who is going after God.
You know, the Bible says regarding David, he
was a man after God's heart.
People say, well, how could that be?
Look at how he messed up in life.
Well, what that means is that David was
a man in pursuit of God.
He did fail.
Yes, but he did repent.
And as he repented, he continued to pursue
the Lord.
And that's what we're talking about.
And I just want to say this, too,
in regard to the sins, idolatry, the sexual
immorality, the divorce, these things don't get the
impression that you God's finished with you.
If you're involved in these things, God will
forgive you.
But you got to repent.
You've got to confess.
You've got to turn away from those things.
And there's plenty of mercy from God and
compassion and willingness to heal and restore.
And then God gives us those opportunities to
pursue him.
He calls us to seek his face.
And what we're talking about here is total
devotion to the Lord, complete devotion.
Now, we find God in the pages of
Scripture.
God is not stuck in the Bible, but
this is the place where he primarily reveals
himself to us.
And so in our devotion to God, in
our seeking of his face, it means that
we are going to be spending much of
our time in the scriptures, reading them, meditating
upon them.
The Bible is to be the rallying point,
the gathering point for the Christian church.
And it's to be that gathering point for
me as an individual.
If I'm seeking God's face, it's going to
be manifest by the fact that the Bible
is a priority in my life.
There are millions and millions and millions of
books that have been written.
But there's only one book in the world
that is the inspired, inerrant, authoritative word of
God, and that's the Bible.
And we of all people in all of
history are greatly privileged because we have Bibles.
We have more Bibles than you could imagine.
But what we have is brought us into
an accountability.
Many years ago, a man wrote a book
entitled Sodom had no Bibles.
The implication is that if God judged Sodom
without a Bible, what's he going to do
for those countries that have access to the
Bible freely?
But God has blessed us extremely in giving
us his word and allowing us the freedom
to read it, to study it, to teach
it, to proclaim it over the airwaves.
A great privilege, but also a great responsibility
comes with it.
And so when the Lord said, if they
will seek my face, he's talking about people
getting into his word and pursuing him and
making that the passion and the priority of
our lives individually.
Now, we all have jobs, we all have
a life, we all have to work.
We're not talking about you just quit everything
and go be a hermit somewhere.
We're not talking about joining a monastery.
What we're talking about is just bringing the
scriptures into every aspect of our lives and
that our great passion and desire would center
around the word of God.
You know, in the early days of this
work of God here at Calvary Chapel, one
of the interesting marks was not just that
people brought their Bibles to church, which we
still do for the most part.
Some churches don't even do that anymore, but
that people were found all throughout the community
carrying their Bibles with them and reading them
publicly and discussing them publicly.
I believe that God wants to do something
like that again.
We are called to seek God's face, Bible
reading and meditation individually, collectively Bible study and
fellowship.
Now you say, OK, well, what are you
telling us that for?
Look, we're all here this morning.
Great, I am so glad you're here.
You're going to be here this week to
all the different opportunities we have throughout the
week.
You see, it's not just a Sunday thing,
it's not just gathering on Sunday to get
that fix for the week and then dragging
yourself back in here from Sunday to Sunday.
The person who is seeking God's face is
taking advantage of every opportunity to gather around
the word of God.
And so we come together, this is a
priority.
We come to Bible study and fellowship, not
sitting home watching the idiot box, that mindless
piece of electronics.
You know, I just marvel at what people
will take as a replacement for the eternal
word of God.
I'm not saying you can never watch TV,
but, you know, so many people, that's the
priority.
That's life.
Oh, I can't go to Bible study.
This shows on, you know, it's not even
real in the first place and it's filled
with all kinds of vileness and corruption to
just corrupt you.
Bible study and fellowship and praise and worship,
you see, these are the things that these
are the outward marks of a person who
is seeking the face of God.
We're seeking God's face.
We want to know him better.
We want to understand him more.
We want to not only know and understand
him for our own benefit, but so we
can benefit others, so we can help others,
so we can answer their questions and steer
them in the right direction.
And so if my people will seek my
face and then fourthly, if my people will
pray, if my people will pray, prayer has
got to be.
It has got to be the greatest of
privileges, but at the same time, the most
neglected.
I mean, think about it, this prayer, this
is access to God.
Sometimes we think as we look around at
the problems in our society, maybe we think,
man, if I could just get to somebody
at the top, if I could just, you
know, talk to them and and tell them,
hey, look, this is what we should do.
This is how we can straighten out that
problem.
But, you know, that rarely happens.
And even if you get to them, they
don't necessarily care what you have to say.
They don't respond.
But you know what?
We have the incredible privilege of Christians as
going to of going to God.
The the maker of everything, the sustainer of
everything, the governor of the whole universe, and
we can go to him and we can
say, Lord, did you see that that's going
on there?
Lord, what do you think about that?
Lord, what do you want to do about
that?
Lord, we should do something about that, shouldn't
we?
Yes, we should.
And then God gives us direction and he
begins to work.
That's a privilege we have.
But tragically, we neglect that great privilege.
The prayer meeting is the most sparsely attended
meeting at most churches today.
But listen to what history tells us about
the importance of prayer in regard to spiritual
awakening in a little pamphlet written by Dr.
J.
Edwin Orr, entitled The Role of Prayer in
Spiritual Awakening.
He says this.
He says in September of 1857, a man
of prayer started a prayer meeting in the
upper room of the Dutch Reformed Church in
Manhattan.
In response to his advertisement, only six people
out of a population of a million showed
up.
But the following week, there were 14 and
then 23 when it was decided to meet
every day for prayer.
By late winter, they were filling the Dutch
Reformed Church, then the Methodist Church on John
Street, then Trinity Episcopal Church on Broadway at
Wall Street.
In February and March of 1858, every church
and public hall in downtown New York was
filled.
Horace Greely, the famous editor, sent a reporter
with horse and buggy racing around the prayer
meetings to see how many men were praying.
In one hour, he could get to only
12 meetings, but he counted 6,100 men
attending.
Then a landslide of prayer began, which overflowed
to the churches in the evenings.
People began to be converted.
Listen to this.
Ten thousand a week in New York City
alone.
Ten thousand a week in New York City
alone.
The movement spread throughout New England.
Then the church bells or the church bells
bringing people to prayer at eight in the
morning, 12 noon, six in the evening.
In one year, more than a million people
were converted.
In 1904, a group of missionaries became deeply
concerned that the church had not been established
in that land in the way that they
knew God long for it to be.
Korea had been known as the hermit kingdom,
literally folding her mountains about herself and warding
off any infiltration of Western ideas or religions.
Only in subtle ways, such as through medicine
or schools, could the gospel be preached.
Consequently, there began noonday prayer meetings.
Missionaries of every mission station in Korea, by
common consent, knelt for one hour to pray
for victory in that land.
After a couple of months, a missionary at
one of the stations spoke up.
We will call him an efficiency expert and
we have plenty of them.
He said, we have been praying for a
long time, but I've seen nothing radical happen.
I would suggest that to save time, we
dispense of these noon meetings and pray privately
at our own devotions for revival in Korea.
But another missionary gave a quick response.
I believe God has not answered our prayers
because we are not praying enough.
I recommend we continue these new meetings and
spend an hour in the evening as well.
The plan was adopted unanimously.
Word got around to other mission stations and
soon every mission group in Korea was spending
two hours a day in prayer for revival
in that land.
In a matter of weeks, a lightning bolt
of revival struck and like a rolling prairie
fire went the length and breadth of Korea.
More than 50,000 converts were added to
the church.
And that incredible.
But what has happened in the past, I
think, is just.
A promise of what God will do in
the future if we will take the steps
to revival, if we will begin to pray.
And I think about it for a moment
with me.
What if we decided ourselves as a church?
What if we decided we're going to set
aside an hour a day at some point
to pray that God would pour out his
spirit?
And what if we said, OK, one evening
a week, we're going to get together with
a couple of friends and we're going to
pray and just begin to ask God to
part of spirit.
You know what?
I'll tell you what will happen.
God will pour out his spirit.
God will do a work because that's the
promise of God.
As we read there in our text, it
goes on to say that when this happens,
when we follow these steps to revival, as
we're calling them.
God said, then I will hear from heaven,
forgive their sin and heal their land.
God promises to respond.
As we.
Take his call seriously, as we acknowledge our
sin, as we turn from our sin, as
we begin a fresh day of seeking his
face, as we begin to call upon him
in prayer, we can anticipate healing coming from
God.
Now, is this going to result in a
worldwide revival?
We don't know.
Will it result in a transformation of our
national life?
We don't know.
But here's what we do know.
We know this for sure.
It'll result in the transformation of our lives.
It'll result in the transformation of lives around
us as well.
It'll result in the transformation of families, the
restoration of families.
It'll result in a fresh sense of the
presence of God in our churches.
And as that begins to happen, it'll flow
over into our community and our communities can
be transformed.
And then perhaps we don't know for sure.
God might move things out.
Touching.
The whole nation going around the world in
each one of the great revivals in history,
they have not been isolated to one location.
In each of the great revivals in history,
things would start in a place and move
from place to place.
And what you would find is simultaneously you
would have outpourings of the spirit of God
in various places all over the world at
the same time.
But it's got to start somewhere.
And it can start with us.
Matthew Henry said, when God intends great mercy
for his people, the first thing he does
is set them a praying God set us
a praying God gives the promise.
And again, I don't know.
On what scale God might work, but I
do know this, that God will work, I
think of Elijah, the prophet and the situation
at his time, there was a great drought
upon the land.
The people were caught up in sin.
They were caught up in idolatry.
And you remember the Lord sent Elijah to
them to say that the drought was about
to end and to call them to repentance.
And they repented that day.
And Elijah said an interesting thing.
He was talking about physical rain.
But I think there's a spiritual lesson there.
He said, I hear the sound of an
abundance of rain.
You know, rain and water are oftentimes used
in the scripture symbolically of an outpouring of
the Holy Spirit.
And so Elijah said, I hear the sound
of an abundance of rain.
And then he sent out his servant to
see if there was any indication that it
was going to rain.
He came back.
He said, I don't see anything.
The sky's blue.
It's crystal clear, not a cloud in the
sky.
And you know what it says?
It says Elijah bowed down.
He put his face between his knees and
he prayed.
And he prayed seven times, the number seven
indicating a fullness of prayer.
And then he said to his servant, he
said, go and see now.
And so he went back and he looked
out over the Mediterranean and he came back
with this report.
He said, I see a cloud the size
of a man's hand.
And Isaiah said, tell Ahab to get down
because a storm is coming.
And it wasn't long before that little cloud
the size of a man's hand turned into
a dark and threatening sky.
And the heavens opened up and the rain
began to pour out upon that land.
And I believe that a similar thing would
take place in the spiritual realm.
And I believe that we're seeing.
Things move in that direction, there's a cloud,
it's small, it's the size of a man's
hand, but it might not take long before
it grows.
And as I mentioned in our last week's
message, I personally am having the privilege of
observing in the lives of some of the
young people around the church here, a turning
to God.
And these kinds of things are happening, an
acknowledgment of sin, a turning away from sin,
they're gathering together, they're seeking God's face, they've
got their Bibles open, they're taking their Bibles
with them wherever they go.
The other morning, my son got up early
and left, said, where are you going?
He goes to a prayer meeting at Starbucks.
The 19 year old boy is going to
have a prayer meeting at Starbucks.
I'm encouraged.
God is doing something.
Is revival coming to the church and an
awakening to the nation?
Well, I think to some degree that depends
on what we do with God's call to
us.
I think to some degree we will determine
that.
For he said, if my people who are
called by my name, that's the big question,
if will we do it?
Will we do it?
Will we be serious?
God, help us to be serious.
God, help us not to hear this message
today and just walk away.
God, help me not to preach it today
and walk away and go, all right, that
was a great message.
OK, now here we go.
You know, back to that.
That can happen easily.
You see, hearing it is one thing, but
we need to put it into practice.
God, help us to do it.
Whether or not there is a worldwide revival
coming, I don't know.
Whether or not there's a nationwide revival coming,
I don't know.
I'm going to continue to hope and pray
so.
But I do know this, as we've said
many times already, that revival will come in
our lives if we will do these things.
If my people will do these things, I
will hear their prayer and I will heal.
Let's pray.
Father, here we are today.
Lord, as your people.
And Lord, we pray that you would search
our hearts.
Lord, we know that in so many ways
we've fallen short.
We thank you that you're a God of
mercy.
You're a God who delights to show mercy.
You're a God who wants to pick us
up and dust us off and send us
on our way in pursuit of you.
And so do that with us today, Lord.
Oh, Lord, may we not harden our hearts.
Lord, and the sin that's in our lives,
may we repent of it today.
May we turn from it.
May we understand that you hate it.
And Christ died to deliver us from it,
and may we no longer be stuck in
it.
Pull us out, Lord.
Give us a heart to seek your face,
Lord, to go in hot pursuit of you.
To set aside those distracting things, those worthless
things, to give ourselves entirely to devoting our
time and energy to you.
And Lord, help us to pray.
Help us, Lord, to take advantage of the
greatest privilege that anyone could have, access to
the king of the universe.
And Lord, we pray that you would have
mercy upon us.
Upon our families, upon our church, upon our
community, upon our nation, and upon our world.
Send an abundance of rain in these days,
we pray.
In Jesus name, amen.
Let's stand together.
May God bless you.
May he fill you with a passion for
him and a heart for prayer in Jesus
name, amen.