Revival begins when God’s church come into agreement with the promises of the Bible in a unified yes and Amen. Amen is not just the end of a prayer, but it is the beginning of the declaration we are agreeing to.
In Mark 2:1-12 we read of ‘some’ faithful, expectant men (some Bible versions say 4 men) who pushed through the resistance to what they believed. It is the story of the paralyzed man being lowed down to Jesus from the roof, when the crowds would not let them through to Him. In other words, they pushed through and made a plan to reach their goal, Jesus.
Sadly, it is often the crowds in church that are ignoring the real needs of man, and are choosing to rather focus on themselves and their ‘elite’ members, instead of seeing the missed miracles all around them.
If we are ever going to start a revival, we need to stop looking inside and start looking outside, to where the broken and the lost are. Church is not meant to be a museum for the righteous, but a hospital for those who need God's healing. We need to be reaching far, raising up and releasing wide the people of God’s kingdom.
God’s revival power is linked to His heart, and that is for the people who are broken and need His restoration. When we decide to make ourselves available and pick up the heart of Jesus, that is when we will become carriers of revival and see His Church thrive and flourish.
We need to start pushing and breaking through our barriers, stop looking at our limits and start tearing off those ceilings in our lives, to get to where God’s grace is. Our barriers to revival are the crowds, the ceilings and the critics.
We need to be willing to get our hands dirty, to make sacrifices and go fetch the people to bring them to where Jesus is. By that, I don’t necessarily mean to bring them TO church, but to become the Church and bring Jesus to them.
We need to become people who are known for our love, our care, our concern and our kindness towards others, and not for our judgement and criticism of those we decide don’t measure up to who we think qualifies to become members of God’s Church.
We need to stop expecting an eternal response from God, and start becoming the carriers of God’s revival. Yes, we read of many testimonies of revival where it sounds like it began with just prayer, but we skip the part of how their prayers for others, mirrored their actions towards them. We cannot just stay in our safe, sanitized homes and pray for revival - we need to become the hands and feet of God and carry these people to the feet of Jesus. We need to start seeing the miracles that are right in front of us.
In this story of the paralyzed man that was lowed down through the roof to Jesus to receive his healing, notice what Jesus said. It was because of their faith that the paralyzed man was healed. We have the potential to become the cause and carriers of healing to others, through our faith, expressed through our prayers AND actions and start a revival that is so needed.
We need to counsel others with hope and give them access to the heart and love of God. Just like Jesus broke through the ceiling of heaven to get to us, the nobodies of earth, we need to break through our own barriers to get to those on the outside in order to bring them in. We need to ask God to revive us with His fire, so that WE can become the catalysts of revival; not just for our church building, but for His Church, the body of His Kingdom.
(Based on a sermon by Gabe Philips of Life Changers Church - Milnerton, Cape Town, South Africa) https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=YRTsx41d1Bw
Song: Revival, Featuring Kim Walker-Smith, Album: Soulfire Revolution, Year 2013 - https://youtu.be/EiJJd3ISqSE
No comments:
Post a Comment