What Chance There seems to be a notion abroad that if we talk enough and pray enough, revival will set in like a stock market boom or a winning streak on a baseball club. We appear to be waiting for some sweet chariot to swing low and carry us into the Big Rock Candy Mountain of religious experience... a kind of benign miracle, a feverish renaissance of religious activity that will come upon us, leaving us morally as we are now, except that we will be a lot happier and there will be a great many more of us.... - A. W. Tozer AW Tozer was a remarkable man of God. Self educated, he was not your run of the mill, fully educated minister of the gospel. In fact he had no theological training whatsoever, obviously Holy Spirit taught and trained to a degree most of us can only dream about. Yet he has left us some wonderful quotations to ponder on. Like this one for instance – profoundly destroying certain myths about revival. How many times have we all seen a church advertising “Revival Meetings – Here Tonight – All are welcome”? It’s almost as if we can call upon “revival” any time we want to – just call it revival and revival will happen. I love the way Tozer puts it – “We appear to be waiting for some sweet chariot to swing low and carry us into the Big Rock Candy Mountain of religious experience.” All sugary sweet, pleasing to our senses, and controllable like a light switch. Yet there is a price to pay way before God releases anything like revival. He has to be sure we will treat revival properly; that we will pay the on-going high price; that our hearts are clean and willing to carry such a burden. Revival is very costly! Yet there are places and people around the world ready, willing, and able to carry it. I sense, along with many others, that the Lord has found and prepared a people ready for revival – and it may not be where you think either! It is already happening in China – the land of impoverished, repressed, and generally uneducated people that is exploding with Christian fervour and zeal. Revival is happening in other places too and seems slowly to be spreading towards the desperately spiritually needy Western Church. How can we encourage God to allow it in our neck of the woods? What chance have we of receiving the astonishing gift and benefits of revival? By taking revival intercession into our hearts – God looks first at our hearts to see if there is any other agenda. Ephesians 6 holds the key. Verses 11-13 say it all – “Put on the whole armour of God, that you may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil. For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this age, against spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places. Therefore take up the whole armour of God, that you may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand.” Why stand? Because only when we stand against all the powers of hell that will be hurled against us when we call to God for revival will we be fit and ready to cope with full, Holy Spirit led, revival.
Posted on: Fri, 03 Oct 2014 21:59:20 +0000
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