Return To Your First Love

Return To Your Fist Love

God wants to send real revival! More than just a banner stretched outside a church

building, more than just a few conversions, more than just a temporary rush of emotions

and more than a gathering like we have here this morning. God wants and God desires to

send real revival. He wants to send the kind of revival that finds individuals radically

allowing their lives to be changed. He desires to send the kind of revival that invades the

homes of our families and heals the hurts that we have thrown on each other. He yearns

to send the kind of revival that finds entire cities falling under the canopy of His glory!

Why do we so often approach the level of revival that God desires and that we dream

about but never quite get there? It is as if we are missing one ingredient. I’ve come to the

conclusion that the missing ingredient is true unity. It is God’s catalyst for revival.

When a recipe is created, there is often a single catalytic ingredient that triggers or initiates

significant change when it comes into contact with the remainder of the ingredients. If

that catalyst is missing from the recipe, then the whole cake flops. I remember when I was

first learning how to cook, I failed to understand the difference between baking powder

and baking soda. Well for those of you who don’t go near the kitchen except to go see

what is in the fridge, let me clue you in on what can happen with the wrong ingredient. It

is the difference between a cake rising as it should and filling the house with its flavorful

aroma, and one that smells good but doesn’t look or taste as it should. One small

ingredient can make the difference between success and failure, between victory and

defeat.

Friends, here this today we have the opportunity to get the recipe right. We have the

opportunity to understand God’s plan for us, for you and for me, I praise Him that He

desires to be here this morning, that He desires to invade us tright now, and that He

desires a personal relationship with each of us so greatly, that He sent His son Jesus Christ

to die on a cross in payment of our sins! Thank you Lord! for being here today!

In God’s Word is the only unanswered prayer of Jesus! Jesus’ unanswered prayer is very

simple and is repeated no less than five times in John chapter 17. It happens in verse 11,

and in 20 - 26. That prayer, that desire, that plea from Jesus to the Heavenly Father is that

“we may be one”. I have found that anytime something is repeated in the Bible, that it is

signifying importance and that it is a value or a lesson that we need to understand and to

store deep within us. Five times this prayer of Jesus is repeated. Now if something is

important enough to be repeated five times, well, I think and hope that you get the picture

that this is a key desire of Jesus.

Unity comes in many forms, some of which come to mind almost immediately and some

that need to be dug up from deep places in us. Lets look at a few examples that I thought

of.

What about snowflakes, you remember those things that fall from the sky in the winter

and as kids we love because they might cancel school. And now that we are parents we

abhor for that very same reason that they might cancel school! Individually or a few at a

time they are pretty to watch as they fall, but they have no real effect on us. But allow

millions to gather and they can stop traffic, shut down entire regions for days at a time or

even kill as they avalanche down the sides of mountains.

Or what about the fingers on your hand. Individually they can show direction, show

numbers and even make profane and vulgar gestures. But now put them together and

you have dynamite. Look at Mike Tyson. What do you think would happen if Tyson

could not put his fingers together to make a fist? I doubt seriously that he would be the

most feared heavy weight fighter of all time. For it is when those fingers come together

that they suddenly have great power and the capability to punish greatly.

But they can only punish when a master controller is in control. When I allow God to use

me, all of me and you allow God to use you, all of you then great things with power and

might can happen.

I want to take a look at five areas that God desires to bring unity to. Five areas that if we