Revival Begins with You

 

By: Greg Laurie, crosswalk.com

Then we will not turn back from You; revive us, and we will call upon Your name. (Psalm 80:18 NKJV)

Charles Finney, who was known to be a part of a great revival, said, “The experience of revival is nothing more than a new beginning of obedience to God.”

Any genuine revival that has ever happened in human history has brought about repentance in the lives of the people, a change in the community, and evangelism en masse.

We need a real revival today—not just an emotional experience and not just a tingle down the backbone. We need to see God work, because our nation needs it as never before. We don’t need some new thing. We don’t even need a “fresh word from the Lord.” Rather, we need to get back to the old things, to the very standards that God gave us, and we need to practice those.

I like what Jeremiah said: “Thus says the Lord: ‘Stand in the ways and see, and ask for the old paths, where the good way is, and walk in it; then you will find rest for your souls’” (Jeremiah 6:16 NKJV).

The early church, the one that Jesus started, turned their world upside down. They set the world on fire. But the church of today is much larger than the early church and has considerable resources, with incredible technology to utilize. Yet it seems as though the world is turning us upside down. Why aren’t we setting our world on fire? Because we need a revival. We need an awakening.

We talk about the need for revival in our country and about the need for change in the church. But we must each ask ourselves these questions: Am I personally revived? Am I living as a committed, on-fire follower of Jesus Christ?

If you are not, then you are part of the problem, not part of the solution.