Revival Teaching
CCCAG January 3rd, 2021
Scripture- 2 Chron 7:13, Matt 6:9-13
So todays devotional time is going to introduce the sermons series we will be in once we start having meeting in person again. I want to take a moment and speak to why I feel it’s God’s will to move in this direction.
I've had a growing sense that's something it is about to change. I thought maybe it's just what I'm going through personally and going through college and everything of switching job rolls. I thought maybe it was because of the huge upheaval in our nation right now. The best way to describe this feeling is a sense of anticipation- like something be is on the horizon. Whatever this is, it will change everything, and will require us to move into even deeper levels of trust and dependance upon Jesus.
So this morning I want to take a few moments and reorient our thinking. Much of the Christian Church is fractured into various opinions about everything from our government, to the elections, to the coronavirus, or who is supposed to be leading our country right now.
It's my feeling that many of us have subordinated Jesus for one of these opinions.
This isn't really anything new, it's been going on for at least 20 years, and probably even before that. As Solomon said in Ecclesiastes, there is nothing new under the sun what was will be again.
Most of the chaos in our country if not all of it is because the church and it’s members have focused on the wrong thing.
But this isn’t the first time that has happened.-
We know from the Bible that there was another church that did this.
In the Book of Revelation chapter 2 Jesus sends a prophetic word to seven of the churches that existed around Asia minor at that time. The first letter was to the church at the Greek city of Ephesus.
Ephesus had a thriving Christian Church. In our modern terminology we'd call it a mega church. it had a huge influence in their city , was very active in caring for the poor, and very involved in the politics of their local community. they were so busy that they did the same thing that we are doing today and that is mistaking the work for God for the word of God being Jesus.
Jesus complemented them on their dedication to the gospel principles, but had this rebuke for them:
Rev 2:4-6
4 Yet I hold this against you: You have forsaken your first love. 5 Remember the height from which you have fallen! Repent and do the things you did at first. If you do not repent, I will come to you and remove your lampstand from its place.
This is where a lot of American Christianity is today. We are more worried about our comfort here than we are concerned with the proclamation of the Gospel in both word and in deed.
I started off this message saying I have this sense that something big is coming. It reminded me of something that was spoken by Evangelist Steve Hill gave a prophecy during the Brownsville Revival over 20 years ago.
I’m going to play a snippet of it for you this morning
Steve Hill Prophecy
Pretty challenging isn’t it? My heart burns every time I hear this prophecy.
That prophecy was given in 1996, but it rings even more true today then it did then.
I played it for you to introduce the focus for the month of January- revival.
The key to revival in all of our hearts is prayer.
Prayer is simply seeking God. Spending time with Him. Allowing Him to speak to our hearts, and sharing our honest thoughts, needs, fears, and anxiety’s with him.
Many expression or denominations of Christianity teach their people formal prayers to repeat over and over again. It’s not a horrible thing, but it loses what prayer is supposed to be- intimacy with God- crawling up in Father God’s lap and experiencing HIM in all of HIS goodness.
So I want to spend some time this morning emphasizing our prayer lives for 2021.
It’s a peek on what we will be talking about in the coming weeks when we are meeting together again. If you are listening to us by Facebook live this morning, it will be on the audio only podcast which we will post here Sunday afternoons.
So we will begin this morning by covering a scripture we will be focused on heavily this month. It’s a very familiar scripture found from the Old Testament of second chronicles 7:13 and 14.
2 Chron 7:13-15
13 "When I shut up the heavens so that there is no rain, or command locusts to devour the land or send a plague among my people, 14 if my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then will I hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and will heal their land.
Prayer
We are going to break this down a bit, and you will probably hear some of this repeated over the next several weeks.
First let's bring a little bit of context. God is saying this 2 the newly appointed King Solomon. Solomon builds the first temple in Israel dedicated to the worship Of God. Prior to this , Israel had only the Tabernacle , which was a tent in which God's glory dwelt.
Now they have this huge building that they are dedicating to God.
During the dedication time, God speaks directly to Solomon about this temple and gives him some principles regarding how He will now interact with the nation.
So, the application of the promises given here are for the nation of Israel during the time of the temple.
However, there are principles about prayer that are universal that are seen in Gods instructions to Solomon.
Number one: The necessity of humility in our prayer lives
This is what is tripping up many Christians today. They treat God like a genie in the lamp thinking that if they rub him the right way then he is somehow obligated to give them whatever they want.
Let me help you with that a little. God is omniscient. That’s a compound word- omni meaning all-encompassing and science meaning knowledge. Omniscience that means he knows everything. He knows everything from the past, everything in the present, and everything that will happen in the future or any possible future.
God is also omnipotent, meaning all powerful. You can’t twist his arm. I hear some radio or TV guys saying you can tie God in a knot and force Him to bless you if you quote the bible back to HIM in prayer.
If you believe that you can outsmart or out maneuver God- I have to ask you- have you read the bible?
Let me just give you a quick snippet from the book of Job- this is God speaking to Job when Job was calling in question God’s character
Job 38:2-11
2 "Who is this that darkens my counsel with words without knowledge?
3 Brace yourself like a man; I will question you, and you shall answer me.
4 "Where were you when I laid the earth's foundation?
Tell me, if you understand.
5 Who marked off its dimensions? Surely you know!
Who stretched a measuring line across it?
6 On what were its footings set, or who laid its cornerstone—
7 while the morning stars sang together and all the angels shouted for joy?
8 "Who shut up the sea behind doors when it burst forth from the womb,
9 when I made the clouds its garment and wrapped it in thick darkness,
10 when I fixed limits for it and set its doors and bars in place,
11 when I said, 'This far you may come and no farther; here is where your proud waves halt'?
God continues these questions for a few more chapters. God is proclaiming his power in these verses.
So if some preacher on TV starts speaking nonsense about forcing God to do something, turn that off. It’s heresy and it’s nonsense. God knows every single thought you will ever think, so if you think for a second, you’re going to somehow outsmart him….
Think again.
That’s why humility is key. We have to understand we before God are like dust mites to a human. Trying to dictate to God what He should do is like a precocious 2 year old toddler declaring that he is in charge and will be making all the decisions from now on.
Humility is the understanding that God is God, you are not.
Humility- it is the key to prayer.
Number 2- pray and seek God
Seeking God is what prayer is all about. Humanity was created to live in close connection and intimacy with their creator. The reason we have so much garbage in our world today and in our lives is because we have chosen to unplug that plug from God's power source and plug it in to the world's power source. The world's power source is fueled by hell and wants only your destruction.
That's why it's important to seek God. Prayer and seeking God is handing him the plug in for your power source and let him maintain it let him pour himself through it and let him govern what is going on in our lives.
Unfortunately, most people treat God like an absentee spouse. Most people do the bare minimum we can to get by and still stay married,
And I'm not just preaching at you I'm preaching to myself because I can be just as guilty of this as anyone else. it has to do with priorities.
When you live for only your priorities, your life will fall into chaos, pain, and disappointment. Even if for a season, everything seems fine and even successful, the end of it is destruction.
That is why prayer is the priority because it reorganizes everything in our lives to his priorities.
Number 3- turn from your wicked ways
The Bible word for turning from your wicked ways is repentance. the word repentance means to change your direction. It means to acknowledge that you by your own willful decision got on the wrong path and now you are turning around and walking away that God wants you to walk.
That word wicked has been watered down in our culture. To be wicked means to be intentionally evil or morally wrong.
It is the opposite of what God has for you.
Humility, pray and seek God, and turning from wickedness are the keys for revival.
Revival simply means to renew and strengthen what is there. It’s adding fuel to a dying fire, and blowing on the embers to ignite an inferno of love for God and His ways.
Every single revival in history has been predicated by prayer. I could spend all morning giving you example after example. We need a revival in our day to save what is left of American Christianity.
But it will only be accomplished through prayer.
Let me end today by showing you the example of prayer given to us by Jesus. In Matthew chapter 6 during the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus gives us this prayer as a template of how to approach the Father-
Matt 6:9-13 (Jesus said)
"This, then, is how you should pray:
"'Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name,
Worship is key. That word hallowed means to worship and give ultimate worth some something or someone- in this case God.
10 your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.
What does this saying is we are acknowledging it is not my will God but thy will. We acknowledge you as sovereign King and bend our will to yours.
11 Give us today our daily bread.
we acknowledge you as our provider. you give us the strength to work, the gifts and talents that we have, so that we have everything that we actually need in life. there is a difference there between need and greed meaning that he gives us what we need not necessarily what we want. that's a whole another topic to get into but sometimes gods know as far own good because if he said yes it would lead to our destruction.
12 Forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors.
This is one of those keys to prayer in one of the biggest things in the church right now that is holding us back from having more of an impact in our world. we have bought into the lie of us versus them. We have learned to hate someone who does not share our political beliefs, opinions, or understanding off today's news.
The church right now is in a state of learned and deliberate unforgiveness. what this has done his is paint us into simply another group that politicians can pander to instead of the life and soul changing organization it's meant to be.
We need to learn to forgive again, because when we forgive those who sin against us, we are saying that they are more valuable then my opinion. Forgiveness isn't always about changing your mind and agreeing with them, it's about being kind to them as God is kind to you even when you disagree.
This verse of scripture by the way is written as a conditional clause- that means there is a condition that has to be met before something else happens.
In this case- God forgives us the same way we forgive others
I’m going to pause and let that sink in for a minute.
13 And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one. '
this part of the Lords prayer really messes people up a little bit because it's a bad translation of the intention of what Jesus was trying to say. God does not lead us into temptation- I wanna make that very plain. a better way to translate this probably would have been “do not allow us to be lead into temptation”
Or, Please, Father God, don’t leave us to our own devices so that our temptations lead us away from you.
This is the model of how we should pray-
Worship
God’s will not my will
He is our provider
Ask for forgiveness for our sins.
Ask for God to keep us on His path for us.
Prayer
