Why Christians Don't Experience True Revival

Introduction

1. A Montana cowboy was overseeing his herd in a remote mountainous pasture.

Suddenly a brand-new BMW advanced out of a dust cloud towards him.

The driver, a young man in a designer suit, Gucci shoes, Ray Ban

sunglasses and fancy tie,

leans out the window and asks the cowboy,

"If I tell you exactly how many cows and calves you have in your herd, will you give me a calf?"

The cowboy thought about it a minute and said, "Sure, Why not?"

The yuppie parks his car, whips out his Dell notebook computer,

connects it to his Cingular RAZR V3 cell phone,

and surfs to a NASA page on the Internet,

where he calls up a GPS satellite navigation system to get an

exact fix on his location which he then feeds to another NASA satellite that scans the area in an ultra-high-resolution photo.

The young man then opens the digital photo in Adobe Photoshop and exports it to an image processing facility in Hamburg, Germany.

Within seconds, he receives an email on his palm pilot that the image has been processed and the data stored..

He then accesses a spreadsheet on his blackberry and,

after a few minutes, receives a response.

Finally, he prints out a full-color, 150-page report on his hi-tech, miniaturized HP LaserJet printer and finally turns to the cowboy and says, "You have exactly 1,586 cows and calves."

"That’s right. Well, I guess you can take one of my calves," says the

cowboy.

He watches the young man select one of the animals and looks on

amused as the young man stuffs it into the trunk of his car.

Then the cowboy says to the young man, "Hey, if I can tell you

exactly what your business is, will you give my back my calf?"

The young man thinks about it for a second and then says, "Okay, why not?"

You’re a Congressman for the U.S. Government", says the cowboy.

"Wow! That’s correct," says the yuppie, "But how did you guess that?"

The cowboy said, "You showed up here even though nobody called you;

you want to get paid for an answer I already knew,

to a question I never asked.

You tried to show me how much smarter you are than me...

and you don’t know a thing about cows...

this is a herd of sheep.

Now give me back my dog.

2. In 3 short weeks, Larry and Tamla Leckrone will be here to hold revival services...

In large part, what you do during the next 3 weeks in preparation...

will determine whether or not you experience revival in your own heart...

Often we will lament about the condition of the world...

the prevalence of sin and greed...

war and strife...

I submit that the needs of the world would be greatly addressed by a mighty revival...

Revival doesn’t begin in a political revolution...

Revival doesn’t begin in an embassy where leaders hash out peace agreements...

Revival begins in the church...

Revival is for the Christian...

Dr. Lewis, one of our former General Superintendents in the Church of the Nazarene has said, “whatever will happen will happen within the church”...

Leonard Ravenhill a great British evangelist said,...

“As the church goes, so goes the world”...

And, I might add...

As the Christian goes...so goes the Church...

Revival MEETINGS seem to come and go...

But true revival is seldom found...

3. This morning, instead of telling you what to do to facilitate revival...

I would like us to look at why we have revival meetings...

but we AREN’T having true revival...

Read Text: 1 Samuel 12:23 “As for me, far be it from me that I should sin against the Lord by failing to pray for you. And I will teach you the way that is good and right.”

This morning, I will be speaking to you about the 7 “uns” of Revival...

or, “why Churches have revival MEETINGS...but Christians seldom have true revival”...

1. Churches have revival meetings....but Christians seldom have true revival...because of Unbent knees

A. Our text tells us that prayerlessness is a sin!!...

Ouch!!!

Sometimes we just call it forgetfulness...

or we get too busy to really pray more than just for meals...

but when was the last time you really KNELT in prayer?...

When was the last time that you prevailed in prayer?...

The revival that swept through the Hebrides (HE bri deez) Islands off the coast of Scotland in 1949 began in a prayer meeting...

Rev. Duncan Campbell, the minister involved in that revival,

wrote:

“Baffled and frustrated in Christian work and witness, I prayed on my face in my study at five o’clock in the morning. The past 17 years had been spent in a barren wilderness, but that morning I came to know the recovering power of the blood of Jesus Christ.1