Preparing For Personal Revival Part 1 Series

Hosea 6:1-2 “Come, and let us return unto the LORD: for he hath torn, and he will heal us; he hath smitten, and he will bind us up. After two days will he revive us: in the third day he will raise us up, and we shall live in his sight.”

I believe that we are living in a critical time for the church. It seems that major ministries are constantly trying to come out with a new “Word from the Lord” or a new theme to try to get people to buy into their ministry.

I’m persuaded though what God is really trying to say to His church is “it’s time to get down to business.” We in America have it so easy and we’ve let the people determine the course of the church and not God. Most churches have become like Supermarkets trying to have a variety to please everyone who comes.

The church is not in the people pleasing business, it’s God’s business. We’ve gotten to the place where we’re afraid to offend anyone because they may quit coming or quit paying their tithe. So many have diluted the message of the cross and try to make ourselves more presentable.

We as a church are going to be held accountable for what we do before God. I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to be found wanting or lacking when it comes to the things of God.

What’s missing in our churches is passion. There’s a lack of passion from the pulpit to the pew. What’s needed in the lives of the pastors and members is personal revival. If personal revival doesn’t come to each of us, we’re in danger of raising up a generation that knows not the power of God.

I want us to look at tonight on how to prepare for personal revival.

We’re going to begin to look at 17 areas that we need to be brutally honest in as we compare them to our life. If you’ll be honest in answering these questions and make changes in your life to line up to the Word, you’ll find personal revival sweeping your life. And when you really get on fire for God, it’s going to affect those around us.

Let’s look first at how to prepare for personal revival.

I. First we need to pray a prayer of searching

Psalms 139:23-24 says “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.”

Before there can be any change in our life, you first must be willing to allow God to examine our life and secondly we must be willing to listen to God as He shows us our hearts as they really are.

Many times there are things in our lives that we’ve grown so accustom to them being there that they are oblivious to us. They’re there and others may be able to see them but we don’t see it because we just have grown to accept it as part of our life.

It’s sort of like your jewelry that you wear. If you have any gold jewelry most likely it’s 10 or 14 carat gold. The lower the carat number the less gold it has. Unless you’re a specialist when you look at your ring you don’t think anything other than it’s a gold ring. You don’t see any of the impurities in it.

But that gold ring that you have isn’t pure, it has other metals in it, and that’s what makes it hard. Pure gold is soft and pliable.

Many of us may look okay from the outside, but our life is full of impurities that makes our hearts hard. Our hearts are full of impurities such as hurt, bitterness, anger, resentment, strongholds, and sometimes things in our heart that’s just down right displeasing to God and they all work together to make our hearts hard.

We need to let God remove those impurities so our hearts will be soft and pliable before Him. That’s what the psalmist prayer was all about. He wanted to be honest and open before God.

He cries search me and know my heart. This is not an easy thing to do because it’s easier to go around thinking that everyone has problems and I’m just as good as the next person. So everything’s all right in me.

None of us like to admit faults and failures, we would like to think we’re always good and perfect. That’s why we don’t honestly pray that prayer. We may pray it to sound spiritual, but no searching will happen until you mean that prayer. It’s at the point, when we mean that prayer, when we really decide to get down to business with God. God’s searching process is a necessary step in your preparing for personal revival.