"Revive Us Oh Lord"

Preached by Rev. Ed Brouwer at The Gathering Place,
Pulpit Series Volume 17 Issue 43 11/25/2007

We are in the final days before revival right now, and we are asking God for something more than an emotional high. I do not believe that revival will come until we are broken over our sin. This morning, I want to prepare you for Revival.

There are several principles regarding revival:
God Is Looking to Do a Great Work
II Chronicles 16:9 “For the eyes of the LORD range throughout the earth to show Himself strong for those whose hearts are completely His.”

God Is Attracted to Brokenness
Psalm 51:16-17 “You do not want a sacrifice, or I would give it; You are not pleased with a burnt offering. The sacrifice pleasing to God is a broken spirit. God, You will not despise a broken and humbled heart.

Psalm 34:18 “The LORD is near the brokenhearted; He saves those crushed in spirit.”

God Is Found When Sought
Jeremiah 29:11-13 “For I know the plans I have for you, plans for your welfare, not for disaster, to give you a future and a hope. You will call to Me and come and pray to Me and I will listen to you. You will seek Me and find Me when you search for Me with all your heart.”

The Effects of Revival:
Revival Turns Away God’s Anger
II Chronicles 7:14 “If My people who are called by My name humble themselves, pray and seek My face, and turn from their evil ways, then I will hear from heaven, forgive their sin, and heal their land.”

A Personal Hope and Future
Revival is the people of God living in the power of an ungrieved, unquenched Spirit.
Vance Havner: I had a friend who once asked me why God wasn’t blessing him, but all he meant was financially. My response to him was, “What if God’s idea of blessing you means that you are head-over-heels in love with your wife?” This is what God can do for you.

A Religious Hope and Future
Revival is the church falling in love with Jesus all over again.
Revival leads churches to fight hell rather than each other
Revival leads churches to fulfill the Great Commission
Revival leads churches to worship God
Revival leads churches to train leaders
Revival leads nations to repentance
Revival leads to a renewed commitment to God

Jonah 3:1-10 “Then the word of the LORD came to Jonah a second time: Get up! Go to the great city of Nineveh and preach the message that I tell you. So Jonah got up and went to Nineveh according to the Lord’s command. Now Nineveh was an extremely large city, a three-day walk. Jonah set out on the first day of his walk in the city and proclaimed, In 40 days Nineveh will be overthrown! The men of Nineveh believed in God. They proclaimed a fast and dressed in sackcloth—from the greatest of them to the least. When word reached the king of Nineveh, he got up from his throne, took off his royal robe, put on sackcloth, and sat in ashes. Then he issued a decree in Nineveh: By order of the king and his nobles: No man or beast, herd or flock, is to taste anything at all. They must not eat or drink water. Furthermore, both man and beast must be covered with sackcloth, and everyone must call out earnestly to God. Each must turn from his evil ways and from the violence he is doing. Who knows? God may turn and relent; He may turn from His burning anger so that we will not perish. Then God saw their actions—that they had turned from their evil ways—so God relented from the disaster He had threatened to do to them. And He did not do it.”

Revival Releases God’s Power on Earth
Psalm 34:3-7 “Proclaim with me the Lord’s greatness; let us exalt His name together. I sought the LORD, and He answered me and delivered me from all my fears. Those who look to Him are radiant with joy; their faces will never be ashamed. This poor man cried, and the LORD heard [him] and saved him from all his troubles. The angel of the LORD encamps around those who fear Him, and rescues them.”

Focus on the need for Revival
Immorality is high. It is estimated that more than 30 million babies are aborted each year world-wide, and as a nation we ponder whether it is ethical. Our country has legalized same-sex marriages. The porn industry booms because of freedom of speech while Christian boys and girls have been reprimanded for bringing Bibles to schools. The religion of atheism is forced on students, while the Ten Commandments are removed to prevent offending someone.

We call ourselves a Christian nation,
but we have not had a significant
movement of God in this country in more than 100 years and it shows.

We need to see the lost turn to God and be saved. We need to see the church stand up and do it! The greatest need in the church is: REVIVAL!

The church has lost its focus and is so busy squabbling over the color of the carpet or “he-said” - “she-said”, that the Great Commission is going unheeded. The church is in an apathetic, powerless state so that the gospel is rarely shared, let alone lived. As a result, conversions and baptisms are down. The reputation of the church to the outside world is that of a people judging, money begging, disinterested, irrelevant and compassionless.

We need to get our focus off the junk and back on reaching the lost for Jesus Christ!

The greatest need in your life I believe, is a brokenness that leads to weeping over your sin. I am talking about a turn from sin to Godliness, resulting in you walking with God in a meaningful and powerful way.

Isaiah 1:16-20 “Wash yourselves. Cleanse yourselves. Remove your evil deeds from My sight. Stop doing evil. Learn to do what is good. Seek justice. Correct the oppressor. Defend the rights of the fatherless. Plead the widow’s cause. Come, let us discuss this, says the LORD. Though your sins are like scarlet, they will be as white as snow; though they are as red as crimson, they will be like wool. If you are willing and obedient, you will eat the good things of the land. But if you refuse and rebel, you will be devoured by the sword. For the mouth of the LORD has spoken.”

God has taken your sins which were like scarlet and made you white as wool! This comes through repentance and brokenness.

Some folk don’t like to hear much about repentance; but it is so necessary that if I should die in the pulpit, I’d want to die preaching repentance, and if die out of the pulpit I’d desire to die practicing it.

In his book I Surrender, Patrick Morley writes that the church’s integrity problem is in the misconception that we can add Christ to our lives, but not subtract sin. It is a change in belief without a change in behavior.

Allow God to deal with your Hard Heart:
You don’t have to be an atheist to have a hard heart towards God.

When was the last time you couldn’t wait to open your Bible to see what God has to say?
When was the last time you prayed to God, and focused only on Him?
When was the last time you sang a song and didn’t think about whether you liked the sound?

A.W. Tozer,said, “Have you noticed how much praying for revival has been going on of late - and how little revival has resulted? I believe the problem is that we have been trying to substitute praying for obeying, and it simply will not work. To pray for revival while ignoring the plain precept laid down in Scripture is to waste a lot of words and get nothing for our trouble. Prayer will become effective when we stop using it as a substitute for obedience.”

The Revival Prayer: Start with Me!

Once a man asked an evangelist, “How can we have revival?”

The evangelist answered by asking, “Do you have a place where you can pray?”

“Yes”, the man replied.

“Here’s what you need to do. Go to that place and take a piece of chalk along. Kneel down there, and with the chalk draw a complete circle around you and pray for God to send revival on everything inside that circle. Stay there until He answers, and you will have your revival.”