Are You Ready For Some

Are you ready for some Revival? 6/4/2005

Psalm 138

All of us came remember on Monday nights, Hank Williams coming out and singing are you ready for some football. It is a joyful song for many football fans around. Finally something good to watch on Monday nights.

And Friday night at the wedding rehearsal Don Kinder, who is preaching at our revival, and his wife Kelly, who was singing in the wedding, were there. And Chris came up to Don and asked him this question, “Are you ready for the revival?” It was Don’s answer that God used to inspire my sermon. Don’s reply was this, “It is not a matter if I am ready; the question is are you ready for it?

I though how true was that statement. Evangelist are different than pastors. Pastors usually plan and prepare different sermons for each service, or at least that is what I do. Evangelist often will preach the same sermons over and over because they stand behind different pulpits.

So sometimes they will preach a sermon at one place and not receive any response. But then they can take that same sermon and preach it somewhere else and many respond to the alter call.

What is the difference? The difference in not in the deliveror, you have the same person with the same sermon. But rather the difference is with the receiver. Some are ready to receive Gods words while others are not. Like the old saying goes. You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make him drink.

I want us to be revived; I want hearts and lives to be changed. Some think that a pastor has a revival so that he can have some time off, but the truth of the matter a revival is more work, not less. I am doing it for you and for me. I need to be feed too.

So tonight I wanted to look at this question of, “Are you ready for revival"? And look at what we need to be doing to be ready for it.

What is Revival?

In order to be ready for revival, we must first know what revival really is. When I think of revivals, it brings to my mind those lead by Jonathan Edwards in the 1700’s. Charles Finley in the 1800’s; and one of the most recent ones in the Brownsville revival in Pensacola, Florida.

But even in this church there is a history of great revivals. Back in the 90’s I remember when we had a group of teenagers, where two accepted Christ and many joined them and they huddled in a circle and cried and prayed and worshiped God. I think about the first revival that Don Kinder did here in 2002 where people were saved, people were baptized and many lives were changed for the Lord. It was a great healing in this church.

So what exactly is a revival?

Webster defines it as a meeting whose purpose is religious reawakening. It is a word that you will not find anywhere in the Bible. The closest word to it would be revive. The Greek words for revive means to flourish anew or to live again.

When you think about it in that sense, it makes me think of the word revive in a medical term. You hear about people who had stopped breathing and had to be revived. You even hear about people who were clinically dead and were revived back to life.

So let us look at this word revival in a medical sense for our spiritual sickness.

First of all let’s talk about those who have stopped breathing. That is one necessity to life. You have to breath. You can hold your breath for a while, some for several minutes, but eventually without air you will die.

So when I think about reviving someone spiritually, I think about that person who has been saved; they have received Jesus Christ as there own personal Savior, but they have lost that fellowship with Him. Backsliding is the Baptist term for it.

You see after you receive Christ your relationship should be one that matures. If you are not as close to the Lord as you use to be or you should be then you need revived.

James 2:17 Thus also faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead.

We are not to be dead in Christ; but alive in the newness of the new life He has given us.

So revival is a time for us to who are saved to get things right with God and be brought back to life again so that we can do His will.

The second part is for those who are dead and have to be bought back to life.