On Christmas Sunday, Pastor Will announced the new theme for 2012. We have been talking about pursuing Godliness in our Sunday morning sermons, and it only follows that if God's people would really humble themselves, confess sin, and seek the Lord's face as their only hope of spiritual victory and influence in the place that God has placed us to represent Him, He may send an outpouring of His Spirit's power upon us to live Christ-like and usher in souls to the kingdom of God!
If you wonder what we mean by Revival, let us make it clear what it is and what it is not. Probably the last man to experience Revival in the last century was the late Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones of England. In his lectures on the Puritans back in the 1970's, Lloyd-Jones said this about what Revival is:
It is an experience in the life of the church when the Holy Spirit does an unusual work. He does that work, primarily, amongst the members of the church; it is a reviving of the believers . You cannot revive something that has never had life, so revival, by definition, is first of all, an enlivening and quickening of lethargic, sleeping, almost dilapidated church members. Suddenly the power of the Spirit comes upon them and they are brought into a new and more profound awareness of the truths that they had previously held intellectually, and perhaps at a deeper level too. They are humbled, they are convicted of sin, they are terrified at themselves. Many of them feel that they have never been Christians. And then they come to see the great salvation of God in all its glory and to feel its power. Then, as the result of their quickening and enlivening, they begin to pray. As a result, new power comes into the preaching of the ministers, and the result of this is that large numbers who were previously outside the church are converted and brought in. So, the two main characteristics of revival are, first, this extraordinary enlivening of the members of the church, and second, the conversion of masses of people who have been outside in indifference and in sin. Here then, in its essence is a definition of what we mean by revival.What we don't mean by revival is a man-made, emotionally heated, manipulated, superficial hype that is worked up by psychological and sociological means of exciting music, altar calls, "camp meetings", itinerant evangelists, mood settings, and theatrical preaching. This is "revivalism" not true revival. Only God can send real revival. What we can do is prepare for Him to send it by being a people of purity and prayer! We cannot schedule revival as if it is something we can make happen this year, but we can certainly turn our hearts toward God and pray for his gracious mercy to make it happen among our church. We live in a very dark area surrounded by false religion and false Christianity. As God has been reforming us to be a church that is strictly Biblical, may he also revive us so that we would also be fruitful - not for our glory, but for His alone!
Psalm 115:1-3 Not unto us, O LORD, not unto us, but unto thy name give glory, for thy mercy, and for thy truth's sake. 2 Wherefore should the heathen say, Where is now their God? 3 But our God is in the heavens: he hath done whatsoever he hath pleased.
Psalm 85:6-7 Wilt thou not revive us again: that thy people may rejoice in thee? 7 Shew us thy mercy, O LORD, and grant us thy salvation.
