Do we long for the manifest presence of God in our midst?
Bert Warden
Special to CW
Jesus' only plan for the evangelization of the world was to leave behind a Spirit-empowered body of believers, the church. That is the vital message of the Day of Pentecost. "But you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you and you will be witnesses to Me…to the uttermost parts of the earth" (Acts 1:8).
Jesus expects His church to be spiritually on fire. The lost world deserves the witness of a church spiritually on fire. "Be holy for I am holy" (1 Peter 1:16). Any lesser level of spiritual fervor presents to the watching world a blurred image of the God we serve and the Saviour who loves and died for them. We should either be revived or praying for revival.
God sends revival
A church does not "hold" or "put on" a revival. Revival is not something we work up but something God sends down in answer to our cries for spiritual deliverance and renewal. Revival is not just spiritual excitement or renewed Christian activities or even a new vision for evangelism.
Revival is the manifest presence of God in the midst of His people, resulting in their daily living out the Great Commandment: "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind, and your neighbour as yourself" (Luke 7:27).
The presence of God becomes so real that gossip, bitterness, criticism, envy, grudges, etc., sins we live with but refuse to call sins, suddenly become exceeding sinful. Repentance, confession, forgiveness and reconciliation become the order of the day and we begin to live out Jesus' words, "This is My commandment, that you love one another" (John 15:12). Then the watching world sits up and takes notice, exclaiming as they did about the early church, "How these Christians love one another!"
In the time of the spiritual decline of Israel, before their final deportation and captivity God's lament was, "So I sought for a man among them who would make a wall and stand in the gap before Me on behalf of the land that I should not destroy it, but I found none" (Ezekiel 22: 30).
And again, "And the Lord saw it and it displeased Him that there was no justice. He saw that there was no man and wondered there was no intercessor" (Isaiah 59: 16). As a result God brought judgment upon His land and His people.
Warning imminent
Is there a warning here for us?
Hear the words of the apostle Peter: "For the time has come for judgment to begin at the house of God" (1 Peter 4:17-18).
Do not our disobedience, apathy and lack of love make Jesus sick to His stomach, like the church at Laodicea?
"Because you say I am rich and have become wealthy and have need of nothing and do not know that you are wretched, miserable, poor, blind and naked…Therefore be zealous and repent" (Revelation 3:17, 19b).
We loudly complain about the moral decline of our society. "If only they would bring the Bible and prayer back into our schools!" But were not those virtuous practices vanishing from our homes long before they were banished from our schools? There is little hope of reformation in our culture without a renewal of faith in our homes and churches first.
Ask honestly
As Christians we must ask ourselves honestly how much we have bought into the world system, its affluence, its styles, its entertainment and even its morals (e.g. its views on divorce) and what that has to do with the apathy, prayerlessness and powerlessness of our spiritual lives.
When will the trickle of believers who respond to the call to prayer turn into a mighty river—multitudes on our faces before God pleading for personal and church wide revival, the salvation of sinners and the arresting of the downward moral slide of our nation?
"Sow for yourselves righteousness, reap in mercy. Break up your fallow ground, for it is time to seek the Lord until He comes and rains righteousness on you" (Hosea 10:12).
Bert Warden is a Christian and Missionary Alliance churchman and a freelance writer living in Abbotsford, B.C.
