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.