Strings for Your Harp
Part IV. The Imperatives
B. Revival
"True revival," said dear Dr. Tozer,
"changes the moral
climate of a community." Wet-eyed, heart-broken
revivalists produce wet-eyed, heart-broken sinners at the
feet of a holy God.
The evangelism of the last twenty-five years has been the
most costly in history. High-powered methods have needed
high-powered men with high salaries to get them to
function.
Revival never cost a penny.
It is the Lord's doing and is marvelous in our eyes!
This generation,
rapidly sinking in a morass of materialism
and swept by a blizzard of Satanic cults,
can only be rescued from total loss
by a heaven-sent, Spirit-born revival.
Here in the United States we live like kings
compared to millions in other lands. Our
greatest danger is not even moral, bad as that
is, but spiritual. Prophets, as I have said and
written so often, are God's emergency men
crisis hours. They thrive on perplexity,
override adversity, defeat calamity, bring the new
wine of the Kingdom to burst the withered
wineskins of orthodoxy, and birth REVIVAL.
Let no Christian's heart fall him because it
seems that the enemy has come in like a flood,
that the voice of the prophet is not heard in the
land. God has His men hidden. They will come
forth without price tags; with nothing to sell,
nothing to propagate but
"holiness unto the Lord."
WHAT IS REVIVAL?
Revival is the act of the Spirit upon believers
who have lost their first love.
Revival is the restoration of true doctrine.
Revival is the rekindling of the power of
prayer in individuals and in groups.
Revival is seeing that God must be vindicated
either by His mercy in pardoning - or by judgment!
Revival is the ascendancy of the spiritual over
the material.
Revival is the Spirit's passion within the
believer to know and to obey the total will of God.
Revival is the willingness to forsake all, that
God might be all in all to the individual and
to the Church.
Revival is the "no-time-limit" operation of God
on the saints,
resulting in a moving of God
among the sinners.
Revival is the redeemed sobbing with broken
hearts over a nation of broken lives from
breaking the commandments of God.
Revival is not a luxury, but a necessity for our
nation;
not an alternative, but an imperative.
I am bombarded with talk or letters about the
coming shortages in our national life: bread,
fuel, energy. I read between the lines from
people not practiced in scaring folk. They feel
that the "seven years of plenty" are over for us.
The "seven years of famine" are ahead. But the
greatest famine of all in the nation at this given
moment is a FAMINE OF THE HEARING OF
THE WORDS OF GOD (AMOS 8:11).
I am sure that the main reason we do not have
a national revival beginning with personal
revival is that we are content to live without it.
Will the economy have to break down before
God can break through and revival break out?
The discord in our disjointed society is not
because of the generation gap, but because of
the regeneration gap.
"They that wait upon the Lord renew their
strength."
They that wait upon men usually dissipate
their energies.
America could be transformed in one day if
every professing Christian would live the Bible
concept of Christianity for twenty-four hours.
The dislocation of the status quo
socially and religiously
is guaranteed when spiritual revival breaks.
Apostolic purity, Apostolic piety, and
Apostolic power are the need for today.
The law of revival is simply this:
Going- weeping- bearing (seed);
Coming- rejoicing- bringing (sheaves).
(Psalms 126:6)
Can a polluted source birth a clean stream?
Can wrong men lead a nation right?
Can politicians who break divine laws
establish civil laws
and demand obedience to them?
John Baptist did not raise a dead person.
He did more - he raised a dead nation and a
dead generation.
Excerpts taken from "Heart Breathings"
by Leonard Ravenhill.
Used by permission.
Copyright 1995 by
Harvey Christian Publishers, L.L.P.
United States Address:
Harvey Christian Publishers, L.L.P.
3107 Hwy 321
Hampton, TN 37658
Tel / Fax (423) 768 2297
E-Mail Harveycp@psknet.com
British Address:
Harvey Christian Publishers, L.L.P.
PO Box 510, Cheadle
Stoke-on-Trent, ST10 2NQ
Tel / Fax (01538) 756391
E-Mail jjcook@mac.com
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