I wasn’t sleeping! (Revival) II Chronicles 7:11-16
One particular Sunday a preacher was preaching a powerful sermon on hell and how terrible hell would be. In the congregation there was this one fellow who fell asleep every Sunday. The preacher came to a point where he pounded the pulpit to emphasize how bad hell was, and said if anyone wants to go to hell let him stand up right now.
Well the only part that the sleeping guy heard was the "stand up right now" so he did! He stood there for a few moments and looked around and noticed an uncomfortable silence as everyone looked at him.
Then he said" Well preacher, I don’t know what we just voted on, but it looks like you and me are the only ones for it."
There are times when I have been sleepy in church, other times when I felt board by the message. I am going to resist asking if any of you ever feel that way….I know I would get and answer. Or at least that is what I am afraid of.
But, I guess I have always felt like the reason to come to church was to be re-energized and sometimes fired up. Perhaps, I came to find comfort, peace and some Sundays I really needed to be reminded about God’s Grace and what that meant for me.
Some people seemed to be affected by church in a different way. Some find it tiring, and even exhausting. For them church is more of a burden that needs to be done. Some people will say “ I am too tired to go to church” and we don’t see them go at all.
So for most lethargic Christians there needs to be some kind of new change.
From time to time, we all need for God to relight the flame in our hearts and soul.
We might call it an attitude adjustment. I can’t say I liked to hear the phrase from my dad, “you need and attitude adjustment….I knew that I was minutes away from some memorable moments with my dad.
But after that special time, I at least for a while would be more attentive to my duties around the house and perhaps offer more respect.
In a small way, correction by my parents often had a sense of revival.
For me going to church is a weekly revival, luckily it has less of a sense of conflict.
Often churches will pray for revival and I am not sure that they know what they are asking God for.
So the question is what is revival? First let me tell you what it isn’t!
REVIVAL IS NOT A SET OF CHURCH MEETINGS.
A lot of us grew up saying that our church is going to have a revival on such and such date. It is part of the year’s schedule, like Christmas or the church yard sale. We advertised it and invited preachers that were sometimes blunt or harsh, preachers that pushed the people for some kind of a response.
Holding a “revival” is a good thing to do, but it isn’t really a revival.
The thing that you need to understand about a revival is that real revivals come from God. When God starts a revival….WE…have almost no control over what is going to happen.
-- It is like the attitude adjustment from my parents, once I went across an invisible line, there was going to be no negations, no deals, what was going to happen happened whither I wanted it or not.
The definition of the word revival hints that something is alive but at a minimum or lower level. It hints that there is some form of vival already present.
So re-vival indicates that the person or activity or thing is not living up to full potential. It is struggling with life and needs to be awakened or strengthened, or encouraged.
As a Christian there is a good chance that during the course of our Christian lives we will need a few revivals. It is human nature to become distracted and need some redirection from time to time.
So what is a revival…..
Revival is when God Visits! Maybe more specifically, it is when God acts. God hears the prayers of repentance by his people and does something even bigger than forgiving us.
It can happen in many different levels. For example, Revival can happen at the group level, at the community level, and even the national level, but it always seems to start at the at the individual level.
With 1 or just a few people that God uses to start the fire.
One of the most famous revivals in the last century was the Wales revival where 100,000 people came to Christ in five months.
This revival was so powerful that they started closing down bars because people stopped going to them. They had to let the guards go at the prisons because there was no one to put in jail. The whole nation was having revival. The most amazing thing I read was that the mines were having trouble getting the mules to work because so many of the miners were converted to Christ.
The mules only knew how to work when they were cussed at. The bad language has become part of the commands. When the miners stopped cussing and the mules didn’t know what to do.
That revival washed over a country and changed thousands of people. The event was out of the hands of the people experiencing what was happening.
--- In our scripture today, we have a description of God talking to King Solomon.
He has finished the temple and God tells him it is acceptable, that because the people are currently right with God, he will hear the prayers.
However, he warns that when they drift away and bad stuff happens, he will hear their prayer in the temple. When the people pray in the temple He will know that the people want to return to Him. Then He will again respond.
The scripture goes on to tell what will happen if the people choose not to return to God. If they chose to worship false Gods. If they worship money, entertainment, lust in all forms… God will eventually remove all his blessings.
If the people of Solomon’s day forget about God and go after the normal temptations they will eventually come into big trouble.
We are no different today. As a nation, I just wonder where we are within this definition. Are we in the first stage, of wicked ways that if we repent that it will all be made right?
I hope so. Because if we go longer and fail to repent, to the point that God removes his blessings, we will have an extend period of hardship.
We will have to be brought back into a relationship by complete brokenness of our nation. I don’t even want to imagine what complete brokenness of our nation would be like.
From this scripture, it is clear that God knows our nature. He knows how humans, his creations make choices. He gives us the opportunity to repent.
As individuals, we must recognize as part of a nation we have to respond to any problems we might have in God’s sight.
If we have quenched the spirit we need to let it go and be revived by God.
Unfortunately, changing ourselves is next to impossible. But an even bigger problem is allowing God to change us. We don’t like change. We don’t like noticing our sin. We don’t like admitting that we have problems in front of people.
It is pretty easy to say that we want revival but, it is pretty hard to really mean it.
The problem is that when revival comes, some great things will happen.
God’s people will have a new passion for prayer and for worship and for God’s Word. You are not going have to beg people to come to church they will miraculously start showing up.
When revival comes you are going to see a renewed confession of sin and a real renewed commitment to holiness. And a lot of the things God’s people used to tolerate they won’t tolerate in their lives anymore.
In response to revival we admit to and actively change with God’s help.
Then you are going to see an increased burden…..We will care for the lost and hurting people that have no relationship with God. In an emotionally painful way. I am talking about deep grief with tears for people we have never met.
Real revival is almost always followed by great numbers of people coming to Christ. When God’s people are revived, we become an acceptable place for God to send people searching for him that don’t have a place to go.
But revival cannot be manufactured or planned or forced. If it could, I would have already bought the kit and started using it. Because I really believe I would like to witness God moving like that.
However, Revival is sent from heaven and is not man made. God chooses the time and the place and the people to be used as the fire starters.
So revival is a sovereign visitation from God where He reanimates and restores life into his weak and sleeping church.
But, I am still stuck on the question. Do we really want revival?
Are we willing to endure the changes that will be required of us?
How will we respond to extra sinful and lost people that walk through our doors….?
Maybe the question we must ask first is do we need Revival?
I say YES, because we are prone to take our love for God for granted.
We can to easily let the relationship become stale and one way. People are so predictable, it is like the relationships we have with other people. We have friends, dear friends that we don’t call anymore. The just live down the road and yet we don’t ask them over for dinner.
We will tell any one that asks that they are our friend but, they have to ask.
We get comfortable and the fire of relationship cools.
We take people we love for granted and It is likely that the do exactly the same thing with God.
There was a little church in rural Tennessee. They had a revival meeting every spring and an old guy in town would come every spring and renew his life to God every year. But in the fall he would begin to cool off and by winter he would get cold and not be seen around church for weeks at a time.
But in the Spring at the yearly revival he would get fired up again.
In the first night of the revival he would come in and sit on the back seat. The next night he is up about two rows. The next night about two rows more. Then by the 4th or 5th night he was on the front seat saying fill me Lord.
There was a little lady who knew him well who was heard to say, "Careful Lord, he leaks."
Our problem is that we all tend to leak. The Lord fills us up with the Holy Spirit and he starts a fire in our hearts, but after a while that fire just doesn’t burn as hot as it once did.
So the question is this, how can we know that we need revival?
What are some signs that the fire is burning low?
Ask yourself if these apply to you.
- Prayer is no longer a vital part of your life. It’s just something you do occasionally when you need something.
- You have grown content with your Biblical understanding and you don’t hunger anymore. You have gotten all the knowledge of the Bible that you need.
-You don’t find that reading the Bible speaks to you or changes your attitudes anymore.
- gatherings of God’s people are not eagerly anticipated. You can hear the preacher talk about being here for Worship on Sunday, The special Sunday night study of angels and prayer service on Wednesday night, and you know in your heart that you have absolutely no intention of going.
It is not even important to you to even THINK about going.
- certain sins can be indulged in your life and it won’t bother your conscience.
-You can easily mouth songs and scriptures and nothing happens in your heart.
-You can hear God and his standards mocked with no indignation.
-You can listen to, read and watch morally degrading material in the name of entertainment.
- Injustice and human misery in this world almost never cross your mind.
- You never notice the cars parked in the drive ways on the way to church and wonder if they have really heard about Jesus.
- Never think about or sense God’s presence in your life.
I don’t know if any of that hits you or not but, the list could be a lot longer.
With these signs it seems to me that some Christians act like they are in an arranged marriage to God.
Someone decided a long time ago that you and God ought to get together. Now there are some good things in that relationship but there is no passion and no love.
---- Revival is not just your changing behavior but falling back in love with God.
And the thing is that God always wants to save the marriage, His live is strong and timeless.
In our scripture, revival is promised when we return to God.
Every revival in the Scripture contains an intense and intentional turning back to God. And God has said that if you will turn back to him he will light the fire again.
He said in Malachi 3:7, "Return to Me and I will return to you."
God wants revival more than any of us do.
He wants to see you wake up as well as to see his church to wake up.
And even though we can’t plan the exact time we are to experience spiritual revival that is no excuse for you not to ask your own revival right now.
All Glory be to God!
