Tag: Revival

Saturday Strands

On By BrianIn Saturday Strands

Loose strands for our growth:

The Awakening We Need: Why the Reformed Pray for Revival – Ray Ortlund (DG)
“Will you not revive us again, that your people may rejoice in you?” May Psalm 85:6 grab our hearts and never let us go!

Is the ‘Silent Treatment’ a Godly Approach to Conflict? – Joe Carter (TGC)
Passive-aggressive tactics are ungodly because they promote division over unity, reflect anger rather than understanding, and withhold forgiveness and love in an effort to gain control.

How (and How Not) to Fight Sin – J. Garrett Kell (Crossway)
Fighting sin is spiritual warfare, and warfare requires a battle plan. If left to our own devices, we would have little success against our unseen enemy. Thankfully, God’s word supplies wisdom to assist us in eluding the evil one’s snares.

Rome Is Not Our Home: Live Counterculturally During Election Season – Pete Nicholas (TGC)
Charity is an underemphasized Christian virtue today, and to be charitable requires eschewing suspicion, cynicism, and laziness. It means good conversation and prayerful reflection to inhabit another’s point of view.

Flashback: The Spirit’s Fruit
And the gentle Spirit works in our lives to make us a gentle people in the image of our Triune God. The gentle Spirit works in our lives to make us gentle in situations where we otherwise couldn’t on our own. The Spirit works to replace our tendency towards harshness, loudness, and quarrelsomeness with a Spirit-led gentleness.

Passion Points

On By BrianIn PASSION Points

It has been a busy week with VBS at our church, so I haven’t had a lot of time for blogging.  But it was also a good week, for which we praise God.  Here are some good posts for your weekend reading:

Satan’s Simple Plan – Kevin DeYoung
He really only wants one thing: he wants to keep you from Christ.  He wants to make you selfish. He wants you to live for your ambition. He wants you to live for your addiction. He wants you live for your ego. He wants you to live for anyone or anything that’s not Jesus.

When Sin Looks Delicious – Tim Challies
Do you ever have those days where you just want to sin? Sin looks delicious while righteousness looks distasteful. Sin looks satisfying and holiness looks frustrating. You wake up in the morning with a desire to do what you know you should not desire to do. Your heart echoes with what God said to Cain: “Sin is crouching at the door. Its desire is for you.” And your desire is for it.  What do you do on a day like that?

Sin is Cosmic Treason – R. C. Sproul (Ligonier)
Not until we take God seriously will we ever take sin seriously. But if we acknowledge the righteous character of God, then we, like the saints of old, will cover our mouths with our hands and repent in dust and ashes before Him.

History Could Happen Again – Nathan Finn (DG)
Knowing how God has worked in the past can help us ask some key questions of ourselves in the present. Are we praying for revival in our own spiritual lives? Are we praying for the salvation of the nations? Are our churches setting aside a specific time for focused — even extraordinary — prayer for a global awakening through the advance of the gospel? Do we long for the Lord to move among us as he moved among those who came before us?

Hope you have a great Lord’s Day celebrating our gracious Savior!

Passion Points

On By BrianIn PASSION Points

Here are some good posts for your weekend reading:

Toward a Theology of Church Unity – Kevin DeYoung

Why Did God Use Spurgeon? – Chris Castaldo
There is one thing on which many Christians today agree–we need genuine revival…

Why Pastors and Elders Need Your Prayers – Kevin DeYoung

Six Ways To Encourage Your Pastor – Charles Stone
Being a pastor is a high calling, yet pastors often face loneliness and discouragement...

Hope you have a great Lord’s Day praising the Lord with your local church!

Drifting Heart

On By BrianIn Heart, Revival3 Comments

As I was preparing for my last class on the Great Awakening, I came across 25 evidences of a drifting heart in need of revival.  These are slightly adapted from Richard Owen Roberts’s book, Revival.  For further elaboration of each point, I recommend you pick up his book, but in the mean time these 25 points should be enough for some serious reflection:

25 Evidences of a Drifting Heart

Adapted from Richard Owen Roberts in his book Revival

 1.When prayer ceases to be a vital part of our lives.

2.When the quest for biblical truth ceases and we are content with knowledge we have already acquired.

3.When the biblical knowledge we have is treated as fact and not applied inwardly to the heart.

4.When thoughts about eternal things cease to be regular and gripping.

5.When the worship services of the church lose their delights.

6.When pointed spiritual discussions are an embarrassment to us.

7.When sports, recreation and entertainment become a necessity to us, more important than the things of God.

8.When we can indulge in the sins of the body and mind without an uproar from our consciences.

9.When aspirations for Christian holiness cease to be dominant in our lives.

10.When the acquisition of money and goods becomes dominant in our thinking.

11.When you can sing the songs of the church without your heart.

12.When you can hear the Lord’s name taken in vain and spiritual things mocked without indignation and action.

13.When you can watch degrading movies and TV and read the same.

14.When division and breeches in the peace of the church are of no concern to you.

15. When you able to use the slightest excuses to keep yourself from spiritual duty and opportunity.

16.When you become content with your lack of spiritual power and no longer even seek God’s power.

17.When you easily pardon your sin and sloth saying the Lord understands.

18.When there is no music in your soul and no song in your heart but only silence for God.

19.When you adjust happily to the world’s lifestyle.

20.When injustice and human misery exist around you and you do little or nothing in response.

21.When your church has fallen into a spiritual slide and you are content with it.

22.When the spiritual condition of the world around you is not apparent to you, you just adjust to it.

23.When you are willing to cheat your employer.

24.When you find yourself rich in grace and mercy and marvel at your own godliness.

25.When your tears are dried up and the cold, hard facts of your spiritual condition can not unleash them.

Revival Lessons

On By BrianIn Revival1 Comment

Just attended a seminar  by Jeff VanGoethem on the Welsh Revival and the Layman’s Prayer Revival.  Here are a few takehome thoughts:

  • We ought to be seeking a deepening relationship with God.  Too often we are seeking success as defined by the world.
  • We need the power of the Spirit.  Too often we minister according to the flesh.
  • We need to get serious about prayer and evangelism.
  • We need to challenge our young people to draw near to God – revivals often begin with them.
  • It is easy to listen to a seminar (or read a blog) about revival, but how will we respond?

Fellowship with my Wood Stove

On By BrianIn Revival

Winter is quickly coming and with it comes the cold.  Soon my wood stove will be full of burning wood to keep our home warm.  The wood stove is in the living room.  My office is the farthest room away.  While the living room stays nice and warm, my office is more lukewarm – even chilly.  After an hour or two in my office, I often go out to the living room to fellowship with the wood stove.  I’ll stand next to it and let its warmth warm me.

The Christian life is much like this.  On our own, away from Jesus, we grow chilly.  No longer hot, on fire for Christ, we grow lukewarm, indifferent, apathetic.  Our greatest need is to fellowship with Jesus.  As we spend time with the Lord, he makes us hot again.  He gives us a hunger and desire for him.  He makes us fervent in spirit.  He fills us with passion for God and compassion for people.

Have you grown a bit chilly, kind of lukewarm? Is it time to draw near again that he might make you hot?

“Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you” (James 4:8).

“…you are lukewarm….Behold, I stand at the door and knock.  If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and eat with him, and he with me” (Revelation 3:16-20)

Driftwood

On By BrianIn Revival1 Comment

This summer I picked up a piece of driftwood from the beach.  I wonder how long it was drifting in the water before it washed up on shore.  Was it days, weeks, months, that it drifted, carried along by the waves?  Once it was part of a tree.  It was growing.  It had a purpose.  But then somehow it broke off, fell in the water, and just drifted.

How easily we can be like a piece of driftwood.  Once we were walking in close fellowship with the Lord.  We were growing.  We lived with a purpose to serve the Lord.  But somewhere along the way, the close fellowship was broken and we started drifting.  Maybe all at once, probably a little bit at a time.  We drifted further and further away, carried along by the waves of our world.  For how long?

Thank God, there is a difference between us and a piece of driftwood.  The piece of wood can never become part of the tree again, but God invites us to stop drifting and return to him.

“Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you.”  – James 4:8a

Amen.  May it be so.

Motions

On By BrianIn Heart, Revival

Why do we do what we do for God?  Is it from an all consuming passion for him?  Or are we just going through the motions?  Do we have a heart for God or is it just ritual?  Matthew West has a great song called “The Motions.”  The chorus is:

“I don’t wanna go through the motions
I don’t wanna go one more day
Without Your all consuming passion inside of me
I don’t wanna spend my whole life asking
What if I had given everything?
Instead of going through the motions”

Check out the whole song here: The Motions

Empty Things

On By BrianIn Heart, Idolatry1 Comment

God provides us with many good things.  He showers blessings upon us daily.  Our problem is that we twist his blessings into idols.  We try to make these good things into gods – something God never intended for us to do.  We treasure the gifts before the Giver.  We live for things rather than God.  Yet the gifts God gives us to enjoy make pitiful gods. They are empty.

Samuel warns the people of Israel of this in I Samuel 12:21 – “And do not turn aside after empty things that cannot profit or deliver, for they are empty.”

What are some of these empty things that we serve as gods.  Consider just some of the pantheon.  Which ones call your name?

  • Relationships/Family/Friends
  • Wisdom/Knowledge
  • Food
  • Entertainment/Media
  • Control/Power
  • Reputation/Popularity
  • Health
  • Sports
  • Work
  • Material Things
  • Retirement Fund
  • Government
  • Technology/Gadgets
  • Beauty/Fashion
  • Sex
  • Tradition
  • Change
  • Convenience
  • Comfort
  • Shopping
  • Independence

Good things, but empty gods.

In the movie Cool Runnings, the coach of the Jamaican bobsled team tells the captain of the team that gold medals are wonderful things.  But if you aren’t enough without one, you won’t be enough with one.

Wise words.  Gold medals are good, but they can’t satisfy the soul.  The list above are all good things, but they can’t satisfy your soul.  They are empty.

The Scriptures point again and again to the emptiness of other gods.  In Isaiah 44, we find a man who cuts down a tree.  He cuts most of it up for firewood to keep him warm, but some of it he carves into an idol which he bows down to worship. What a fool, we may think.

But then we go to work to make money which we use to buy fuel to keep us warm, and then we add to our retirement fund or savings account which we are trusting in as gods.  Or we use some money for fuel and another part for material things or entertainment or food which we chase after, live for, bow down to as a god.  We too can be fools.

Psalm 135:15-17 tells about other gods – they have mouths but can’t speak, eyes but can’t see, ears that can’t hear.  Why would we trust in these things, live for these things, treat them as gods?

In I Kings 18, Elijah calls the prophets of Baal to a contest.  Each will build an altar to his god, which ever god answers by fire – he is the true God.  The prophets of Baal dance around all morning calling upon Baal to answer with fire.  Nothing happens.  They trust in a god that can’t answer.  They worship a god that can’t satisfy, provide, or help.  Yet there we go again dancing around our own Baals that cannot answer, satisfy, provide, or help.

That afternoon, Elijah prays a simple prayer to his God, and fire falls from heaven engulfing the entire altar.  The people bow down and worship the true God.  Isn’t it time we left behind our empty things and did the same?