Preparing For Personal Revival Part 2 Series

Ps 86:11 “Teach me thy way, O LORD; I will walk in thy truth: unite my heart to fear thy name.”

Introduction: A couple of weeks ago we began a series on preparing for personal revival. I think it’s important that we realize every single one of us needs to make sure our experience with God is fresh and renewed.

There’s none of us that are so spiritual that we don’t need to experience personal revival from time to time. No one here tonight is so spiritual that you don’t need to spend time in prayer. No one here tonight is so spiritual that you don’t need to spend time in the word. No one here tonight is such a spiritual powerhouse that they don’t need to spend time in the presence of God.

We all need times of refreshing. These messages are not just for those who are doing poor spiritually. But these messages are a wake up call to all of us that if we don’t to care, we’ll find ourselves growing cold and indifferent in our relationship with Christ.

There’s a lot of believers who are in that condition. All they care about is whether or not they’re going to make it to heaven. But what they don’t realize, if we don’t maintain ourselves spiritually, they may not make it to heaven.

Think about some of the prevailing attitudes in the church today. I’ve seen people just looking around when an alter call is given. There’s people who show no reverence to the Holy Spirit when the gifts of the spirit are in operation.

We need to realize something, God’s not going to waste His time or waste His power on people who do not care. We talked about what Jesus meant when He said that the church at Ephesus had left it’s first loved. He was meaning that their fervency for Him had left. They were still doing spiritual things, but the love they had for Christ was growing cold.

That’s why we need to keep ourselves in check, and spiritually in tune so we don’t grow cold on God.

Let’s look quickly at some of the things we covered last time to refresh our memories.

1. We need to pray the prayer that David prayed in Psalms 139:23-24 “Search me, O God, and know my heart; try me and know my thoughts; and see if there be any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting”

This was a very honest and open prayer by David. All of us are in process. God is still wanting to work out things in our lives that should not be there. If we don’t want to know or listen to God concerning areas in our life that isn’t where they should be, then we start getting in trouble. Do not expect blessings where we allow sin to rule. We can not serve God and the world too!

We’ve got to be honest before God and allow Him to show us sin and short comings in our life.

2. Next we saw that we need not only to allow God to reveal sin in our life, but we need to agree with God about each area He shows us, confess it and repent of it.

3. Next we looked at the importance of living in the Word of God. We fall short if all we do is just read the Word. We must meditate on it and apply it to our lives.

4. Then we started looking at some questions we need to ask ourselves, not just once but I believe we need to ask ourselves these questions on a regular basis. The first question was concerning salvation and we asked “have you ever genuinely repented?”

Repent means to turn away from or change directions. When Christ really comes into your life and you repent of your sins, there’s going to be a change in you.

If there’s been no change in your life then you really need to take a close look at your salvation experience.

If any man is in Christ, then the old creature is gone. If your still acting like and living like you did before you asked Christ into your life, then the old creature is still around.

When Christ comes in, and the old nature’s gone, there will be such a change in your life that people around you will notice.

Let’s look at the next question…

Is all my trust in Christ? What a heavy question. It’s easy to trust Christ when everything is going good but when bad times comes, we then try other solutions other than trusting Christ for the answer.

I want you to see three things the Psalmist teaches us

Ps 37:3-5 Trust in the LORD, and do good; so shalt thou dwell in the land, and verily thou shalt be fed.