"You have wearied the LORD with your words,
Yet you say, "in what way have we wearied Him?"
In that you say, "Everyone who does evil is good in the sight of the LORD, and He delights in them," Or, "Where is the God of justice?" Malachi 2:17
God is speaking, it's time to listen.
Everywhere we hear the cry, "we want, we need, we must have revival." The focus, rightly so, has been put on The Church, the Body of Christ in America. "..if My people which are called by my name..." The Church, the people of God, are the heart of this nation, not just the "moral compass," but the heart. Racial equality, unity, compassion, forgiveness are all national cultural values that come straight from the heart of God revealed through Jesus Christ. Without The Church this nation would never have become the "land of the free." For America to experience revival it must start in God's people and that is the focus of this message.
The issue is not God's reluctance to send revival, it is our inability to receive His way of sending it.
Much of the preaching and prophecy of the past 20 years has focused on changing ("shifting") culture, primarily from a political and governmental perspective but also media, entertainment, education, etc. No doubt change is desperately needed in those arenas. But that is not God's focus in revival. We want to "take the mountains of influence" without taking the biggest mountain, ourselves.
The issue for the American Church is the heart, specifically a divided heart. It is clear from multiple scriptures that God's highest value is to have a people who worship and serve Him with their whole hearts; a people who wholeheartedly seek Him, who wholeheartedly cry out to Him, and who wholeheartedly walk with Him in fellowship every day.
God's way of sending revival has not changed, shifted or veered. Revival is an outpouring of the Holy Spirit that brings people into encounter with the reality of Jesus Christ and the transformation that comes from being "born from above" and "baptized in the Holy Spirit." The Apostle Peter called it "times of refreshing from the presence of the Lord."
He empowers His people. He restores us to our first love, Jesus. He imparts gifts that enable us to fulfill our mandate to function as the Body of Christ and to preach the gospel of the kingdom to every creature. Revival is The Church being The Church!
To experience what we have been crying out for, we must receive the Holy Spirit.
We must humble ourselves to receive Him wholeheartedly.
We must love Him and one another with our whole hearts.
There are two contrasting kings of Israel that illustrate the condition of The Church in America. The story of King Amaziah is found in 2 Chronicles 25. The most insightful part of his saga is found in verse two of that chapter, "And he did what was right in the sight of the LORD, but not with a loyal heart." While he was in need of God's help in defeating his enemies he did what God said. But as soon as he defeated his enemies and was securely in the place of control and safety he brought in the idols of his enemies and set them up as his gods.
OUCH! I am afraid the American Church has fallen into the same pattern. In our comfort and relative security we have replaced the values of the King and His kingdom with the value system of the world. The result for King Amaziah was his fall from power and ultimate destruction as he replaced the one true and living God with the gods of the surrounding culture. Instead of overcoming, he was overcome with the spirit of this world.
King David, on the other hand, often did not do "what was right in the sight of God," but had a heart that was wholly His. When David sinned, He ran to God not away from Him. Scripture describes him as "a man after God's own heart." From the passionate worship of Psalms we understand more of the heart of David; he was completely sold out to the God he loved with his whole heart in spite of his own weakness, failing and imperfections.
To be wholeheartedly His means moving from serving God for your own agenda with a focus on "doing what is right" to appear right to actually being right through the transformational work of the Holy Spirit in our inner being. The repentance that is needed today is the changing of our minds to humbly receive the Spirit of the Living God to change our hearts.
It is time for revival. It's time to stop talking about it and receive humbly and wholeheartedly a fresh outpouring of the Holy Spirit. No agenda, no preconceived list of requirements He must fulfill...just Jesus.
Comentários