I am going to dedicate 2006 to doing everything I can do to allow revival in this church and within the church body. It won’t be any old revival, either. It will be a revival for our Lord, Jesus Christ, and it will reach out into our community to do things this church has never seen before! But to allow revival, we must understand what revival is made from. For todays’ message, I will use the analogy of a rope.
What is a rope used for? It is used to keep things together, or united, isn’t it? Have you ever noticed how strong a rope is? It is strong because it is made up of several strands, woven together. When the rope is pulled and put under pressure, it becomes taut, and each strand is brought closer to the other strands, and start to rely on each other, and in so doing - they become as one.
Christianity is made up of several elements too. Today, I am going to cover four of these elements (or strands). When these strands are woven together properly, we become very strong in the Lord, and so is a church that uses this rope. And Christians who use these elements in their personal lives become those who are able to create a revival for Jesus Christ from within the church.
These four strands are;
· Giving
· Praying
· Fasting, and
· Communion
Most Christians have a wrong perception of what each one of these really mean, and most of us do not understand just how important these are in our personal walk with the Lord.
A wealthy older man recently married a lovely young lady. He asked her if he lost all his money, would she still love him, and she said she would still love him, but she would also miss him.
Let’s start by talking about …
1. GIVING
When a person hears about giving to a church, the fist, and sometimes only, thought they have is money, and that immediately strikes a bad chord with many. Before we make our minds up on what we are supposed to do in this area, let’s see what God wants us to do.
MALACHI 3:7-11 [Christian Standard Version]
‘Since the days of your fathers, you have turned from My statutes; you have not kept them. Return to Me, and I will return to you,’ says the Lord of Hosts. But you ask: ‘How can we return?’
‘Will a man rob God? Yet you are robbing Me!’ You ask, ‘How do we rob you?’
By not making the payments of 10% and the contributions. You are suffering under a curse, yet you – the whole nation – are still robbing Me. Bring them to Me,’ says the Lord of Hosts. ‘See if will not open the floodgates of Heaven and pour out a blessing for you without measure.
I will rebuke the devourer for you, so that it will not ruin the produce of your ground, and your vine in your field will not be barren,’ says the Lord of Hosts.
In verse 7, it tells us to return to God, and He will return to us. What does that mean? It means that we have the responsibility of going to God first. And once we go to Him, He will respond by coming to us.
I think the one thing that hinders God from doing that is actually brought about by us; specifically our inability to obey. In verse 7, it tells us that we have not obeyed God. It goes on to give an example of how we disobey Him. He said for us to give, and we don’t give. And since we have disobeyed Him, we hinder His ability to give us His blessings.
A man died and went to Heaven. St. Peter is showing him around and as they walk down the street paved with gold, they pass many beautiful and great buildings and St. Peter explained what each building was. They finally passed a big beautiful building and the man asked what that one was. St. Peter told him he didn’t want to know and tried to hurry him past the building, but the man was adamant and insisted on knowing what that building was for.
St. Peter became sad and told the man to follow him as he walked up the beautiful steps and opened the door. As they went in, the man saw thousands upon thousands of beautiful gifts, all wrapped in heavenly papers and bows. The sight was almost too beautiful to look at. The man asked St. Peter who they belonged to, and St. Peter told him they could have belonged to him.
The man asked what he meant, and St. Peter told him that they were gifts that God wanted to give to him, but they man never gave God the key. “What key?” asked the man. St. Peter responded with tears in his eyes, and said, “Why, the key to your heart, of course.”
God wants us to give to Him, and He wants us to do so out of a humbled and softened heart. When we give Him that, he will start giving us some of the gifts He has in store for us.
In verse 8, it says we are actually robbing God by not giving Him our 10%. In verse 9, it says that we are under a curse because we are not giving Him the required 10%, but we don’t even realize it.
Let us back up and look at it from another perspective. God is our Father. He has told us to do something. We have refused. It isn’t that we didn’t hear or didn’t understand. He said to give Him 10% of all we have and we have refused to do so. And as long as we refuse to do what our Father tells us to do, we will be punished. That is how we are under a curse.
Let’s read verse 10 in relation to today’s church. It tells us to bring the full 10% into the storehouse so that there may be food in His house. We can use that to explain that we, as a church, need your 10%. So we can have food could mean so that we could have resources to keep this church alive. In other words, people get upset when they start thinking about giving money to the church, but they forget that a church also needs to pay for gas and electric just like you do at home. We need to pay for our telephone lines, just like you do at home. We need to pay for insurance just like you do at home. So, as far as the money part is concerned, your church needs your tithes to operate.
In verse 10, God says that if we do bring our 10% into the church, He will bless us with so many blessings we won’t have any room for them. And God even invites us to test Him on that! Did you know that this is the only place in the Bible that God says it is okay for us to test Him? In verse 11, God says that if we do what He says, He will even keep us safe from the enemy.
Why did Jesus preach so much about money? Money has the power to make the best of us do things we shouldn’t do. A man called a church once and asked for the Head Hog of the Trough, meaning the preacher. The secretary sharply told the man that was not the way to address the pastor of the church. The man said he wanted to talk to him about donating $10,000 to the church. The secretary said, “Hold on, I think I see the big pig coming in now.”
Giving God His 10% is talking about money, but it is not talking about “just” money. We are to offer Him 10% of everything we have. That includes 10% of our attention; 10% of our love; 10% of our time; 10% of our talents, etc.
There are 168 hours in a week. How many of them are we willing to give to God? It is estimated that the average person talks the equivalent of 9 hours a day. How much time do we pray each day? Do you see what I am getting at? We are to give God a minimum of 10% of everything we are and everything we have.
Now, if I talk about giving of our talents, we really don’t have a problem with that, do we? If I talk about giving of our love, we don’t have a problem with that either. In fact, we don’t really have a problem giving to God. That is, we don’t have a problem until it comes down to our money. Do I hear an AMEN on that?
I talked before on the need for us to get excited and feel real emotion towards growth in this church, yet too many of us continue to come to church out of tradition rather than out of love and excitement. Do you remember your first date? I do. I was so excited I could barely comb my hair! That is how we are supposed to feel about doing things for God’s House.
Last week, 53 of you came forward at invitation to publicly state your vow to help grow this church in 2006. I will warn you now, that you will not be able to fulfill that vow unless you feel excited about doing so. We must remember the old saying; ‘Get on fire with excitement and people will come from miles around to watch you burn!’ There is an old saying among salesmen, and that goes like this; ‘People will not quickly spend their money on something they need – but when they see something they want, they will go broke trying to get it.’
Do you want to attract people to this church? All you have to do is get excited about this church. That’s all.
When we give 10% of everything we have, and of everything we are, then we will be ready for the next strand in the chord, which is …
2. PRAYING
An old farmer lived way back in the woods of Kentucky. He contracted to have electricity run to his home. After six months, the electric company noticed that there was barely any usage, so they sent a troubleshooter to the farm to make sure it was all hooked up correctly. After verifying that all was okay, he asked the farmer if they ever used it.
The farmer said they sure did. He said they turn it on every night to see how to light the coal oil lamps and then turn the electric lights back off. He believed in the existence of electricity; he went to great lengths to get it; he was always around it; but he failed to understand it; therefore he didn’t know how to use it properly.
Many Christians believe in prayer. They know that is how we talk to God. Many go to great lengths to pray with the right words, and have even become very good at doing so, but without a true understanding of prayer, it cannot be used properly.
Jonah was trying to get out of doing what God wanted Him to do, so he decided to get on a ship and sail the other way. God had to get Jonah’s undivided attention, so He had Jonah thrown overboard and then had him swallowed by a fish. Once he was in the fish, Jonah cried out to God. And what did God do? The Scripture says God responded! And when we cry out to God in our despair, God will respond, also!
In MATTHEW 26, we see where Jesus went to the garden to pray. He told those with Him that His soul was swallowed up in sorrow. He knew what was about to befall Him. In the next verse it says Jesus fell facedown on the ground and cried out to God. And what He did and said is the key to our finding proper prayer in our lives.
Jesus humbled Himself before God Almighty. And in verse 39 Jesus said,
‘My Father! If it is possible, let this cup pass from Me. Yet, not as I will, but as You will.’
When we humble ourselves before God, we are acknowledging Him over our lives. Some people say they can pray just fine, they don’t need to get on their knees to pray, and some of them even look down on those of us who do. My thought is that people who do not see the ‘need’ to kneel before God in prayer, are probably the ones who need to do it the most, because their hearts do not appear to be humbled. And when our hearts are not humbled, all we know about God is the cold, hard facts about God, not the warm soft love of God.
Jesus prayed that if it were possible, take the cup from Him. That shows that we are to ask God for those things we want. But, when we do, we must also let God know that it is most important to have His will done, not ours.
For about a month, I have been trying to make an appointment with Brad Noe Volkswagen in Tulsa to take Diana’s ‘bug’ in and have the mirror replaced. They are a very busy company, and I needed to make an appointment. The trouble was trying to arrange that with a day that Diana could go down and get me without my having to stay down there all day.
I called and made an appointment, just to see Diana’s work schedule change and I would then have to call and cancel the appointment and try to set up another one. This has been going on for awhile, and I finally nailed it down to this coming Tuesday. We shall finally fix her car!
Have you ever had an experience where you called to talk to someone or make an appointment and you just couldn’t be fit in? They were gone or they were busy and you had to call them later? It’s very frustrating, isn’t it? Especially if you happen to get one of those recordings that keep telling you to press a number, but never leads you to a human.
But we can be thankful that we don’t have that problem when it comes to talking to God. We can go directly to him any time we desire. And each time we pray, we realize our great need for Him. The beautiful thing about needing God, is the more we need Him, the more we will pray. We read in 1 THESSALONIANS 5:17, that we are to pray without stopping.
Daniel prayed 3 times every day. He prayed in the lion’s den. He prayed for wisdom and he prayed for guidance. And he prayed for his nation. You have heard that when God’s people start praying, God starts acting. Listen to what happened when Daniel started praying. When Daniel prayed, warfare broke out. That means that when you pray, you loose the very powers of Heaven!
When we devote ourselves to the Lord, we must do so with a sacrificial heart. That leads us to the third strand of the chord …
3. FASTING
If there was an area that was misunderstood in God’s kingdom, I think it is fasting. What comes to mind when I say that word? For most people, thoughts of going without food and being extremely hungry come to mind. I want to briefly explain ‘fasting’ this morning.
The actual definition of ‘fasting’ is: ‘The sacrificing of nutrition for a specific amount of time.’ I think everybody here today wants to be closer to God than they have ever been, but we do not know exactly how to act upon that hunger. Fasting is one of the disciplines that will help us do just that. Why? Because we are sacrificing something we need very much in order to devote that time to the Lord in prayer.
Sometime after Moses watched as the Lord parted the sea, he told God that he wanted to see His glory. Don’t you think Moses already saw God’s glory in all that He had done for the Israelites? Sure he saw it, but Moses wanted to see more of God’s glory. He yearned to bask in the very presence of our Lord. And when we get to that same point, we need to consider the biblical act of fasting and praying.
James tells us that every good gift comes down from the Father. So, if God is blessing us so much, why should we fast and do without? Because it is a way to tell god that as much as the gifts are important to us, the Giver is even more important. That kind of God-centered fasting softens our hearts and makes us focus even clearer on our need and our desire to have a closer relationship with God, through Jesus.
Fasting will not set God’s heart more towards us, but will have the lasting effect of helping to set our hearts more toward Him. When we embrace Him in a time of sacrifice, it awakens a passion in us that will not be satisfied until we have more of Him. And that helps us to not only see more of His glory, but will also help us give more glory to Him.
The last strand I want to talk about today is …
4. COMMUNION
1 CORINTHIANS 11:23-26 says,
‘For I received from the Lord what I also passed on to you: The Lord Jesus, on the night He was betrayed, took bread, and when He had given thanks, He broke it and said, “This is my body, which is given for you – do this in remembrance of Me.” In the same way, after supper, He took the cup saying, “This cup is the new covenant in My blood; do this whenever you drink it, in remembrance of Me.” For whenever you eat this brad and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until He comes.”
In Communion, Jesus helps us remember three things.
The Last Supper was a celebration of Passover. Passover was, and still is, a yearly event brought each Jew back to remembrance of how God freed the Israelites from the Egyptians.
Jesus used the bread and wine of the Passover dinner to tell us to remember Him; and what he was about to go through for us.
And Jesus commanded us to remember and proclaim Him as Savior until He comes again to gather us up.
When we approach the Table of Communion each Sunday, we are actually coming into the very presence of the Lord, and a further study of His Words regarding this celebration of remembrance will teach us that we must approach Him with a heart that is humbled and pure. A heart that is focused on a yearning for His glory within us; a heart that is softened in love for Jesus.
May I have the Victory Singers come back on stage?
CONCLUSION
As I said, this year will be one of becoming very familiar with the four strands that make up the strong chord of revival. We shall have further and more in-depth teachings on this as time goes by, but I wanted to give you a brief preview today.
Certainly, this coming year will be one of great challenge for this church, but I pray that it will be one of great successes, too. And, as we go into our time of Invitation, I would like to ask each of you to remember your public vow made just last week that you were committing yourself to doing everything you can to make this church prosper in the Lord this year. For any successes this church has will be because you went to the Lord on this church’s behalf.
INVITATION
