February

February was a long month. It began with hospital visits, it ended with unrelated deaths and related depressions--and that was just what I saw--and it was full of the work of the Spirit of God revealing people's need for him to themselves. We will see if it continues, I pray that it will. Can I now say that revival means people being broken? Maybe not always, but perhaps usually? I do not want to say "this is what it would look like where you are," but I do want to say that, when you pray for revival at any cost, this is what "at any cost" may look like. Near the end of the month, I reached the point where I was just expecting--as if it were certain--something worse than what had just happened. Thus I came to the point where I needed God to make me willing to lose everything and everyone for the sake of his kingdom. I didn't lose everything, but I had to be willing to. I had to be willing to count everything else as loss for the sake of Christ. Even before this, I was made to know my weakness, that I did not know what to do in all that was happening.

And now, examining myself to see how I acted sinfully--selfishly, pridefully, by not speaking, by speaking too much, by speaking wrongly, by relying on humans rather than God, by neglecting to pray as much as I truly needed, by failing to truly immerse myself in scripture. Not that I have not grown through this, since in many of these places I was forced to see my sin, and therefore changed, and since I did pray and read the Bible more than before, for which I praise God, but it is not enough. Therefore I pray that the Spirit of God would work in me to seek God more and more, even when I would otherwise feel that it is unnecessary.

At the college I am at, there is a good deal of praying for revival. In the middle of March there will be another concentrated time of praying for revival. Do they know what they are asking for now? Do they know that was what February was? Would they keep praying for it if they did?

Do we trust God enough to let him break us, knowing that it is in order to renew us all the more in Christ?
Do we trust God enough to let him expose our sin, since it is there anyway, in order that we might see it and fight against it by the power of the Spirit?
Do we trust God enough that any pain will be worth the gain of knowing him?

Maybe not, in which case there is still no condemnation.
Do we trust God enough to ask him to break us, expose our sin, and put us through trials, knowing and even admitting that we will struggle against him, but trusting that he is good enough to remain with us through our struggling?

Maybe not, but there is still no condemnation.
Do we trust God enough that if he does break us, expose our sin, and put us through trials, and even if we do struggle against him, we will still trust him for our salvation? This is the promise of God, as it is written: "For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord." Romans 8:38-39.

Brokenness and Gospel-Revival

http://thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/scottysmith/2013/02/12/a-prayer-about-our-victorious-christ-and-a-fleeing-devil/

I have said before that when I hear people pray for revival, I often think they don't know what they are praying for. Revival looks like broken people seeing their brokenness and turning in repentance to our Savior, Christ Jesus.

Just as the prophets bounce back and forth between condemning God's people and promising God's grace to them, so, in lives, when God tears people's lives down, and apart, so that they have nothing to stand on, he so often follows it by setting them on Christ as the rock and foundation of their lives. Yes, there are times when people's lives fall apart and they reject Christ, but then it is not our Christ they reject, but a false Christ. Or why do they expect an easy life? We are saved by a suffering king, one who took on himself our pain. Do we expect to be greater than our savior? So we rely on him, the powerful and good God of the universe. Because he is powerful and good, we need not fear when evil surrounds us, for he is with us. Therefore, depend on him when evil does surround you, for he is there. Not because you will see him act--praise God if you do--but because he will act. Therefore we act in faith, assuming that God works in that, not that we will necessarily see it, but because we will praise God for it because he has told us that he works in and through us. Indeed, to see God work in us is for God to work through us in those who see God's great power work to miraculously change lives.

When people pray for revival, they expect changed lives. When there appears to be satanic attacks, praise God that we have been counted worthy to suffer for him, and that we are such an affront to the Enemy as to warrant it. And have hope: our Enemy is an idiot, when he most won, in killing the messiah, he killed himself. It is no different any other time. The great force of such attacks will press us to lean upon and rely on and worship and glorify our king. He may make us know our sin and death. That will cause us to realize our need of Christ's righteousness and life. And that will cause us to praise our great High Priest who intercedes for us at the right hand of the Father, and to rely on the Spirit who empowers us to act according to his will, and glory in our redeemer.

Dangers of Revivalism

I am surrounded by people praying for revival. This is a good thing, but I am not always encouraged by it. I want the prayers to be answered literally, but fear that the people praying do not know what they are asking for. I am also sometimes concerned when we start expecting it with an attitude of ought, that is, when we start thinking that God ought to give us a revival. These are hard to avoid, and I have certainly fallen into them on occasion, but they are no better for that.

God owes us nothing. The gospel is that he gave us his only son. Now, if he has given us his son, anything more is as nothing in comparison. Thus we can pray boldly for revival. The problem is when we start viewing it as a right. Our faith is a gift, and with Christ comes all else. A revival in the church means nothing less than the resurrection of many dead who sit in the pews. To call it a revival is to admit that we once were, but are no longer, alive. That we need reviving is to imply that we are not vived, i.e., that we are not alive. To pray for revival, then, is to ask God to save those who sit under his word yet do not hear it. Why are we ever not praying for this? That many more would receive the gift of faith--that is revival. Revival is simply missions targeting the churched, and, through the churched becoming the saved, those who see the church being the church will know that we are Christ's church by our love.

This all sounds nice and pretty, but it is not really. Beautiful, yes, but not so much ordered, at least from what we can expect to see. To love one another is dangerous. We are still sinners. We will still rub each other the wrong way. We are all broken in our ways, and only Christ can fix us, and, though we are made new when we are saved by him, we are not quite as we will be. We are fixed, yet we are not fixed. We have been taken out from this world, yet we are still in it. We still struggle against sin, and some of us will not like to be around others of us, on account of our sins, yet we must see each other as forgiven, since that is how we are in Christ. Sinning, but also justified. Weep for the sin, weep with the sinner. Struggle to see in each person the image of God, how they reflect the nature of God in their life and in their works. May we be unwound to reflect him as we ought, and may we bear with one another as God bears with us, even though it costs us our lives.

Revival

What is this thing called "revival"? Surely, the Spirit of God has been sent, and has not departed. Why do we accept that revivals are rare occurrences? I will certainly grant that they are miraculous, but isn't all preaching to be bathed in prayer, depending upon the Spirit that it might touch the hearts of those listening? When did the first revival end? When the Jewish Christians were dispersed? No! That was no end to that revival, but a spreading of it into many regions.

Where the Church lacks a revival, there she is sick. Why does the world ignore us? We who ought to have a joy which surpasses understanding, and a love so much greater than that which the world is capable of. Should those in the world not either be repulsed by seeing in us such an image of the Most High God, or else drawn to him by that beauty which we, though fallibly, ought to be displaying in that manner?

Church, come out. I pray that you would come out as Lazarus, and be unbound from worldly things and let go to make disciples.

Look away from whether it is, in fact, normal for the Church to have revivals. The question is rather, whether we ought to always be seeking such? Well, do we not desire that the whole world should be full of the glory of Christ? And does the filling of the world with his glory not increase during periods of revival? Where, then, is the question? Of course we ought to desire that we should have more and longer and more intense periods of revival, for that is what shall bring it to pass most quickly that the whole earth be filled with the glory of God.

We ought, indeed, even in times of great revival, desire that God would reveal his righteousness by his Spirit more than he is, and desire that he should sanctify his saints wherever they are found, so that in them he might be seen, and not ignored, but either reviled or clung to. Cling is, indeed, the right word, for we have no hope apart from Christ. Do you think you have enough to last you? Then you are still thinking in the wrong terms, for our Christ is not one to be gotten enough of. Are you satisfied by what you have of Christ? Then you do not yet see his beauty and majesty and glory, for it is impossible to realize how much of Christ there is to be had, and not to desire to know and to have all of him. "He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things?" Romans 8:32. But what more could we want? "For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be glory forever. Amen." Romans 11:36.

The Body of Christ

If my head is damaged, I may not be able to use my body as I once could. I may not be able to use language, or move my arm, as I used to. As it is, if I pick something up, it is the hand that does it, but it is me in that hand--without my willing it to move, it would not move. If I break my arm, it is not something wrong with me, per se, but with my arm. If I become paralyzed, it is not something wrong with my mind, usually, but with the connection between my head and my body. What happens to my head affects all of my body, and what happens to my body affects what my head does with my body.

We are the body of Christ, for we are all united to him, just as all the parts of the body are to the head. All that we do in him is his action, and all he has done is something that we, in a sense, share in--a soccer player kicks a ball into the air, and raises their arms in their happiness. The same power which raised Christ from the dead is the power which works in us. He who willed that the Church resist temptation in previous times is also he who wills every act the Church now does. The pain that the Church endures for Christ, it also endures by the power of the Spirit, and therefore in Christ. The Christ was crucified bodily on the cross in the first century, but, ever since then, his body, the Church, has been being in a sense crucified by the world. "Take up your cross..." The Christ who submitted his body to suffering to the end for our sakes now submits us to a kind of picture of that suffering, and endures it, which is to say that we endure it in him, for the joy set before him who is our joy, for the sake of those who are yet lost, that we might show how great the love of God is, and draw some to Christ. Thus Paul says, "Now I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I am filling up what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions for the sake of his body, that is, the church," Colossians 1:24.

If the martyrs in ages past, and places far away, can endure suffering by the power of the Spirit, then what will stop us? It is that same power in us, to will and to work to his good pleasure--it is, indeed, a great cloud of witnesses. Yet, as when my foot hurts I sometimes hold it in my hands, and feel the sensation of pain in my mind, so the various members of the Church ought to feel the pain of their fellows. Just as Christ intercedes on our behalf, so should we on behalf of our fellows.

By his stripes, we are healed, and, by our stripes, the Church often strangely grows. May the Church, even here, be deemed worthy to suffer for the sake of the Gospel, that we might both see and show the glory of God in it.

Apathy and Revival

Two trends I have noticed. First, a concern about apathy. Second, a desire for revival. Revival will come when the Gospel is heard, and apathy will die when the Christ, who came full of grace and truth, takes over lives.

Truth: we are sinners. Grace: God is mighty to save. Truth without grace leads to apathy. We are totally lost, so why bother? Grace without truth leads to apathy. I'm okay, and even the little things are cleaned up. Why should I care if the world is going down the drain? I'm safe. Grace and truth: we were poor, a widow, an orphan, yet Christ is our riches, Christ is our husband, God is our father. Because that is who we once were, and because Christ saved us from that, so now image him to the world--go and do likewise.

But I desire more than just a cure for apathy. Revival is likely to bring persecution, so we ought prepare, and seek a revival that brings such passion as to bring us through any suffering. We must see the life that we have in Jesus, and the joy we have in him, and see the life we have in this present age, and the pain which we might be threatened with, and see that the first so overshadows the other as to make the pain and suffering of this age itself become a joy to bear because it shows how great our God is, because our suffering in this life for the souls of the lost is a picture of the immense suffering which Christ underwent for our lost souls, and because if the world does not hate us, then it is not seeing what it saw in Christ that it crucified him for.