Jan 21 2014 - Revival Marker of an Empowered, Active Church

You cannot use the word "revival" without having something or someone revived.  Revival has to do with the church before it has anything to do with the community or world.  Our current expression and experience of God's presence and power needs to increase.  We are the ones who need a greater release of the Holy Spirit.  We are the ones who need a greater display of what the revivalists of the 18th and 19th centuries called "experimental religion."

Oswald J. Smith, in his diary that appears in "The Revival We Need" notes: "I have come to the place where I realize that I know almost nothing about experimental religion.  I have the 'form of Godliness.' but not the 'power.'  [2 Tim. 3:5] It is in my head but not in my heart.  My religion is theoretical, rather than experimental."  The early church, the church in revival, was actively walking in the power of the Holy Spirit.  We cannot settle for less.  We cannot be comfortable with a Christian existence that is without the experience of the power to transform our own lives and the lives of others.

This challenge is not presented to bring us into condemnation but repentance.  There is no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus (Romans 8:1).  The rest of the verse, however, says that we are not to walk according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.  Repentance is not about weeping and gnashing of teeth but turning and transformation.  We need to own up to our need for change.  The level of God's glory that is revealed through us is insufficient for our own needs and the needs of the world that needs to encounter that glory.  We are supposed to be being transformed from glory to glory (2 Corinthians 3:17-18).

Our unsanctified and untransformed flesh is the veil that prevents the glory of God that resides in us from being revealed.   The revival we so desperately need is a greater release of the presence of God that we already carry.  We are the temples, and corporately the temple, that contains the ark of the gracious presence of God according to the New Covenant (1 Corinthians 3:16, 6:19; 2 Corinthians 6:16; Ephesians 2:21).  This temple must open its doors wider.  This ark must move amongst the people of the world with the glory of God showing.  The tangible and transformational presence of God is supposed to be with us in power.

Seeking transformation from glory to glory,

Merril