Preparing for Revival
Joel 2:12 – 18
How many of you are fans of David Letterman? I am not one to watch his show, but there is one aspect that I used to tune in for. I loved his top ten lists. Recently, I came across a top ten list that wasn’t written by David Letterman, but I think it is appropriate for our lesson today. It is entitled “Top 10 Ways You Know You’re In A Bad Church.”
10. The church bus has gun racks.
9. The church staff consists of Senior Pastor, Associate Pastor and Socio-pastor.
8. The Bible they use is the "Dr. Seuss Version."
7. There’s an ATM machine in the lobby.
6. The choir wears leather robes.
5. Worship services are BYOB
4. There’s no cover charge, but communion is a two-drink minimum.
3. Karaoke Worship Time
2. Ushers ask, "Sleeping or non-sleeping?"
1. The only song the organist knows is "In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida."
I hope that Leatherwood is nowhere close to this list, but I have a feeling that if we had a church bus, there would be a gun rack in it. Seriously though, we may not have gotten as bad as this list would indicate, but I believe there is room for improvement. God has great plans for the church. He has plans to bring about excitement about the things of God. He has plans to draw near to us to allow us to experience his presence. He has plans to bring about revival.
Last week, we began our series on revival by taking a look at some of the great revivals of the past to see what we could learn from them. We talked about Pentecost, the Great Awakenings, Wales, and Howard Payne. All of these revivals resulted in tremendous times of worship, thousands getting saved, and the power of God being displayed. Now, it is time to take what we talked about last week and apply it to our church in Porter Township.
In the book of Joel, there are a few passages pertaining to revival, but we will look at one in particular. Now, Joel writes this passage during a time of famine. Everyone is in disarray because they do not have food to eat, and so, they have turned away from their God. People are living in sin, and Joel is writing this passage to give them instructions from the Lord. Let’s pick up the story in Joel 2:12 – 18.
“Even now,” declares the Lord, “return to me with all your heart, with fasting and weeping and mourning.” Rend your heart and not your garments. Return to the Lord your God, for He is gracious and compassionate, slow to anger and abounding in love, and he relents from sending calamity. Who knows? He may turn and have pity and leave behind a blessing – grain offerings and drink offerings for the Lord your God. Blow the trumpet in Zion, declare a holy fast, call a sacred assembly. Gather the people, consecrate the assembly; bring together the elders, gather the children, those nursing at the breast. Let the bridegroom leave his room and the bride her chamber. Let the priests, who minister before the Lord, weep between the temple porch and the altar. Let them say, “Spare your people, O Lord. Do not make your inheritance an object of scorn, a byword among the nations. Why should they say among the peoples, ‘Where is there God?’” Then the Lord will be jealous for his land and take pity on his people.
As we look at this passage, you may be wondering what it has to do with revival. Revival can be simply defined like this: Revival is when God shows up and shows off. In this passage, God gives the people of Israel this promise. He says in verse 18, “Then, the Lord will be jealous for his land and take pity on his people.” Mostly, we think of jealousy as a bad thing, but it is not bad when the Lord is jealous for us. It means that God will have an intense desire and earnest enthusiasm to be with us. In other words, God will really want to be right here with us and will want to bless us. Isn’t that what revival is about?
Now that we have discovered God’s promise that he will be jealous for us and heal our land, we have to take a look at one little word in that promise. It is the word “then”. The promise starts with this tiny little word which means that we have to do something before this promise will go into effect. What do we have to do? That’s what we are going to take a look at this morning. We are going to take a look at what we have to do to receive the blessing of revival.
1. Return to God With All Your Heart
How many of you here this morning are married? Think back to your honeymoon time with me for a moment. Do you remember how romantic, loving, and caring your spouse was then? I don’t want you to answer out loud because I don’t want to get you in trouble later, but how many of you are as romantic now as you were when you were first married? If you are like most people, things are a little bit different now, and I recently heard an illustration that brought this point to light. It is entitled, “The Stages of Sickness in Marriage through the Years,” and it describes a husband’s response to his wife getting sick through the different years of marriage.
Sickness in the 1st year--The husband says, "Oh, sweetie pie, I’m really worried about those nasty sniffles you have! There’s no telling what that could turn into with all the strep that’s been going around. I’m going to take you right down to the hospital and have you admitted for a couple days of rest. I know the food is lousy there, so I’m going to bring you some takeout from your favorite restaurant. I’ve already arranged it with the head nurse."
Sickness in the 2nd year--"Listen, honey, I don’t like the sound of that cough. I called the doc and he’s going to stop by here and take a look at you. Why don’t you just go on to bed and get the rest you need?"
Sickness in the 3rd year--"Maybe you better go lie down, darling. When you feel lousy you need the rest. I’ll bring you something--do we have any canned soup around here?"
Sickness in the 4th year--"No sense wearing yourself out when you’re under the weather. When you finish those dishes and the kids’ baths and get them to bed, you ought to go to bed yourself!"
Sickness in the 5th year--"Why don’t you take a couple aspirin?"
Sickness in the 6th year--"You oughta go gargle or something, instead of sitting around barking like a dog!"
Sickness in the 7th year--"For Pete’s sake, stop sneezing. Are you trying to give me pneumonia? You’d better pick up some tissues while you’re at the store."
How many of you can relate to this illustration? Why does this happen in a marriage? It usually isn’t because we love our spouses any less. It is usually because we take them for granted after being around them so long. Maybe it’s because we have gotten a little lazy because it is a lot easier just to give them a few aspirin. Maybe it is because we have grown accustomed to the person and allowed our love to get stale.
Did you know that this kind of complacency happens in our Christian lives too, and it is not new. The apostle John writes about this in the book of Revelations. As he writes to the church in Ephesus, he commends them for their hard work and perseverance. They have done a great job as a church in a number of areas; however, John has one warning for them. He says in Revelations 2:4-5, “You have forsaken your first love. Remember the height from which you have fallen! Repent and do the things you did at first.” Just like in a marriage, we often start our Christian walk off with hearts a-blazing. We are excited about the things of God. We get in His word. We love to pray. We can’t wait to get to church and be with God. But, just like our illustration about sickness in marriage, we start to fizzle emotionally through the years. We still might come to church and do our duties, but our passion is gone. We still might read our Bible, but it has become more of a chore than a passion. Before long, prayer becomes weak and almost non-existent. We become complacent in our relationship with God and never do anything about it.
This must change if we ever want to have revival. We must renew our vows, so to speak, with God, and we must fall in love with Him all over again. How do we do that? We must ask Him to forgive us for falling away and draw near. We must make it a priority to tell God and show God how much we love Him.
2. Declare A Fast
There once was a little boy who was asked to give the blessing at dinner. He bowed his head and said, “Thank you Lord for this food and bless the hands that made it, AMEN.” Out of breath, he looked up at his parents, and said, “Do you think I prayed quick enough for God?” His mother was a little curious about this remark, so she asked, “Why do you think you have to pray quickly?” The little boy replied, “Because the pastor said that in the Bible we are told to pray and fast!”
Now, like this little boy, we often are mistaken about the activity of fasting. In a general sense, fasting talks about giving up food, and that is mostly true; however, God is not concerned about the fact that we are not eating. God is more concerned with the fact that we are giving up something that is important to us in order to get closer to Him. We so often give up food, but sometimes, we must get rid of some things in our life by fasting from them.
So many times, we allow a wedge to get between God and us without even noticing it. One example of this, and I have been very guilty of it many times in my own life, is television. Recent statistics show that the average Christians spends well less than an hour a week reading his or her Bible. The same study shows that the average Christian spends between 15 and 20 hours a week watching television. Now, I am not condemning the watching of television, but I am suggesting that if we want to get close to God and revival as a church, we may have to give some things up. Whatever you spend the most time on is the thing you love the most, and until we spend the most time with the Lord and doing his will, we cannot truly say that God is first in our lives. In order to do this, we must declare a fast on all things that we have put in front of the Lord and spend time with Him instead. We must restore God as the number one love of our life if we ever hope to have revival.
3. Rend You Heart And Not Your Garments
Wives, if your husband does something wrong towards you, what are the two words you want to hear? I’m sorry. Sometimes, they are the two hardest words to say in the English language. Now, sometimes, it is not just enough to hear these words however. You want to know that the person who says them truly means them.
God requires the same when we tell Him we are sorry. In our passage, god tells us to rend our hearts and not our garments. Back in the time that this passage was written, people use to tear their clothes as a sign of repentance for something they had done wrong. After awhile though, this tended to lose it’s meaning. People would skip the part where they would apologize and mean it, and they would simply tear their clothes. This is not what the Lord desires. He desires that we turn from our ways with a truly repentant heart and not just words.
How can we show God that we are sorry? We must repent specifically for every known sin we have committed since the last time we have prayed. As a prideful people, it is not easy to confess, but we must cleanse ourselves before the Lord if we have any hope of revival. 1 John 1:9 tells us that, “If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.” When we confess with a whole heart and a broken spirit, God not only forgives us, but He purifies us as well. That is where the weeping and mourning come in. It should make us sad when we sin. As Christians, whatever breaks the heart of God should break our hearts as well. Sin breaks God’s heart because we are rebelling against His perfect plan and against God himself. That should break our hearts as well. If we knew how much we hurt God every time we sinned, we would never do it. However, when we do slip up, God is waiting to restore us if we rend our hearts.
4. Gather Together And Pray
We have talked about the importance of prayer for the last couple of weeks, so we will just touch on this briefly. In our passage, we are told to gather the assembly together. Everyone was to be in attendance from the young to the old. Even the bride and groom were to be in attendance even though they were legally exempt from having to be in church during their wedding time. Why was it important for everyone to gather? The Lord wanted them to tell Him what they wanted. God wanted to hear their hearts so He could meet their needs. Until he could do this, the people had to put everything else aside to meet with God.
If revival is ever to come to Leatherwood Church, we must first decide if we want it. Do all the believers here truly want it? Once it becomes our heart’s cry, then we can gather everyone here together in an assembly and cry out to God for revival. That is when the promise kicks in and God will be jealous and heal this land.
Folks, I don’t know where you are at in your relationship with God, but I know where we need to be if we want revival. We must return to God with all our heart by returning to that time of first love. Then, we must declare a fast on anything that we have put before the Lord. We must also rend our hearts to God through true confession to remove any barriers between God and us. Finally, once we are made right in the eyes of God, we must gather together and pray for revival to come. R.A. Torrey, a notable Christian scholar, summed up the process of revival in a similar way calling it a prescription for revival. He said, “First, let a few Christians get thoroughly right with God. Second, let them bind themselves together to pray for revival until God opens the heavens. Finally, let them put themselves at the disposal of God for Him to use as he sees fit in winning others to Christ.” This morning, I am asking you to take the first step with me by getting right with God. He is calling this morning to you asking you to return to your first love and getting rid of anything in the way. Won’t you do that this morning? Let’s pray.
