According to Brian Edwards book Revival!, before true revivals sent from heaven, there will be people anticipating for God to move in powerful ways. Edwards writes that such people "have met with God in a powerfully personal way and have a burning passion for the glory of God and a life of holiness" (pg. 48).
Am I such a person? I want to be.
Bryan
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3 comments:
Hey Brian, nice blog!
I've just been browsing through your posts and want to encourage you to keep on blogging!
What is revival? I think it is getting ourselves back to the beginning; where we were willing to let go of everything we wanted out of this life and offer our whole bodies to God. This level of commitment in Christianity is rare (that I've seen) and I believe it's because we've watered down what it means to be a disciple of Christ. Disciples are "consumed" by God, drink from Christ Himself and rivers of living water flow out from them (John 7).
A burning passion comes from the deep understanding and conviction of God's love for us in giving up his Son and the filling up of the Holy Spirit ("...be [continually] filled with the Spirit")
A life of holiness is a product of going through the wilderness (i.e. Exodus) where God teaches us to listen to the Holy Spirit and we learn to let him shepherd us. Jesus went through this same journey (Matt 4) identical to the nation of Israel. Many people (most whom I've met) believe that following Christ means staying in the wilderness, but the wilderness is just the beginning of the Journey!
The wilderness is the first stage after you are saved "out of Egypt" and is absolutely necessary, similar to boot camp for a soldier. The primary purpose of boot camp is to discipline your body and to train you to immediately obey your commanding officer without question. Likewise, the purpose of the wilderness is to teach us to follow God and "only do what we see him doing". Until we learn this, we are limited in our ability to partner with God in advancing his Kingdom.
This flies in the face of the WWJD movement. The answer to that question is always the same. Jesus would listen and obey the Holy Spirit in whatever the Spirit is doing "at that moment". In Jericho, amid massive crowds, he ignored everyone and picked out one man to eat with (he would have flunked most of our evangelism programs!). Many people think he did that because he was God, but it was only because he was listening to the Holy Spirit (Philipians 2).
To me the best way to revival (besides intercessory prayer) is to lay it all out on the table :). Challenge what people signed up for. Speak plainly what this divine life really is and the high cost to enter into it. And teach people how to listen to the Holy Spirit (my sheep hear my voice) before we dump all the doctrines and theology on them.
Jesus showed us this in John 6. What is more important? A large crowd of half committed people or a small group of devoted followers. The church at large needs a new paradigm of Christianity.
Thoughts?
--Stephen
btw.. it looks like spammers are posting comments on your blog. You should contact blogspot to see if anyone knows how to prevent these.
yeah I know. I turned on the word verification tool. Hopefully, that will help
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