Summary: When God is involved revival will come even if circumstances seem not to warrant it.

How to Have Revival When Your Wood’s Wet

I want to read you something that caught my eye this week in a periodical I read.

I am very burdened about my country, the United States of America. I love my country. I am concerned about the carelessness of sinners, the coldness of saints, and the compromise of society. I am concerned about the pathetic pulpits of churches that are filled with hirelings that have mastered the art of almost saying nothing. The church, as someone said, is quickly becoming a NON-PROPHET organization.

I never thought I would see the day when we would be more concerned about offending people that we are about offending God. While the homosexuals are coming out of the closet, the church has run into the closet. We have over one million teenage alcoholics in our country. Out of thirty million teenagers in America, twenty-eight million do not attend church. According to MTV News, over fifteen million teenagers have some type of transmitted sexual disease.

Ninety-five percent of all the preachers in the world are in the United States preaching to five percent of the population. Of course that means that there are only five percent of the preachers going out to preach to ninety-five percent of the world’s population. There is a birth every 2.8 seconds: 350 people born every hour; 247,000 every day; and 90 million every year. Sixty percent of all the people who have ever lived are alive today. There are 150,000 people who die daily without Jesus Christ. If you to put all the people in a line that are dying without Jesus, that line would be 750,000 miles lone, reaching around the world thirty times and growing twenty miles every day.

Listen to what William Booth, the founder of the Salvation Army said, “’Not called?’ did you say? Not heart the call, I think you should say. Put your ear down to the Bible, and hear him bid you go and pull sinners out of the fire of sin. Put your ear down to the burdened, agonized heart of humanity, and listen to its pitiful wail for help. God stand by the gates of hell, and hear the damned entreat you to go to their fathers’ houses and bid their brothers and sisters and servants and master not to come there. Then look at Christ in the face -- whose mercy you have professed to obey -- and tell Him whether you will join heart and soul and body and circumstances in the march to publish His mercy to the world.”

Oswald J. Smith said, “No one has the right to hear the Gospel twice, while there remains someone who has never even heard it once.” The true greatness of any church is not how many it seats, but how many it sends!#

I Kings 18:37-38

37 Hear me, O LORD, hear me, that this people may know that thou art the LORD God, and that thou hast turned their heart back again.

38 Then the fire of the LORD fell, and consumed the burnt sacrifice, and the wood, and the stones, and the dust, and licked up the water that was in the trench.

(KJV)

God has chosen fire to be a symbol of His Presence. Fire destroys and fire refines. Fire led the children of Israel in the wilderness. Here fire consumes the sacrifice. When we desire revival then we desire for the fire to fall.

Elijah was driven with a passion to see his nation return to God, and the contest on Mount Carmel is a biblical model for revival! This experience jolted the children of Israel back to God.

In this passage we find steps that we should take that lead to revival.

STEP ONE. Prayer.

The first is prayer, not the kind of prayer we often hear, but prayer that brought the people to their need. He prayed that it would not rain. The drought was to prepare the people to repent and to awaken their sleeping conscience through the door of human need. He prayed “earnestly”.

Sometimes God has to get our attention in the natural world in order for us to listen in the spiritual world.

STEP TWO. Choose whom you will serve.

There is no middle ground. 1 Kings 18:21 says, “And Elijah came unto all the people, and said, how long halt ye between two opinions? If the Lord be God, follow Him: but if Baal, the follow him. Choose your which side you intend to be on. And the people answered him not a word.

Watchman Nee said, “The same fire that melts wax, hardens clay. With such men as Elijah there is no middle ground.”

STEP THREE. Repair the altar.

Elijah repaired the broken altar. We read in 1 Kings 18:30: “And he repaired the altar of the Lord that was broken down.” Altars symbolize prayer, fellowship with God, dying to self, and yielding to the will of God. The fact that the altar was in a state of disrepair was a powerful symbol of just how far the people were from God.

Jesus declared that “My house shall be called a house of prayer”. But, is that true in the church today? People find it easier to give money than to spend time in prayer because money is the God of this world!

Prayer is important to Elijah and it was important for Israel to know that. He repaired the altar. The Scriptures state that he took 12 stones, one for each tribe of Israel. What does that mean? It means that individually each tribe had a call from God to come to the prayer altar.

STEP FOUR. Remember.

Elijah reminded them of who they were prophetically supposed to be. 1 Kings 18:31 says, “And Elijah took twelve stones, according to the number of the tribes of the sons of Jacob, unto who the word of the Lord came, saying, Israel shall be thy name.”

STEP FIVE. Prepare for sacrifice.

Elijah arranged the wood and the sacrifice. 1 Kings 18:33 says, “And he put the wood in order, and cut the bullock in pieces, and laid him on the wood. . .” He made preparation for the fire to come down. Understand that revival comes from God but you and I have our part to do. We have to prepare the altar.

Where there is no altar there will be no fire. Preparation is not an option. It is essential.

STEP SIX. Make it where God is the only one who can do it.

Elijah drenched the altar with water. 1 Kings 18:32, “And he made a trench about the altar, as great as would contain two measure of seed.” The “. . . fill four barrels with water, and pour it on the burnt sacrifice, and on the wood. And he said, do it the second time. And they did it the second time. And he said, do it the third time. And they did it the third time. And the water ran round about the altar; and he filled the trench also with water” (1 Kings 18:33b-35). He made it impossible for a fire to light except it be God who did it. Nothing was going to happen except what God made happen.

Revival that is nothing more than flesh on parade and human emotionalism is not want we want. We want the fire to fall.

STEP SEVEN. Watch God act.

The fire came down. “Then the fire of the Lord fell, and consumed the burnt sacrifice, and the wood, and the stone, and the dust, and licked up the water that was in the trench” (1 Kings 18:38).

What is revival? Revival is not the fire falling. Revival is the result of preparation made by broken and contrite hearts that causes God to respond and send the fire. Revival is changed hearts and minds. It is God acting as only He can.

STEP EIGHT. Follow through.

Sin was removed from the camp. Notice 1 Kings 18:40, “And Elijah said unto them, take the prophets of Baal; let not one of them escape. And they took them: and Elijah brought them down to the Brook Kishon, and slew them there”.

There was a dramatic result. The people forsook their sin. When revival falls upon us we will forsake sin too. All that Satan had built up was pulled down through one man who was committed to God.

With repentance came the rain of God for man and beast alike, and the curse was lifted off the earth. Crops were restored, granaries were filled, and prosperity and economic recovery came to Israel.#

Conclusion

God has a destiny that he wants you to fulfill, but that destiny requires that you:

1. Leave the middle ground. Take a stand for Jesus. Confront the enemy.

2. Repair your broken altar. Make prayer and worship a priority in your life. Prepare your life for sacrifice.

3. Call upon God today

4. Turn from sin. Repent of every known sin in your life.

5. Follow through so that the sin will not return again.

Hebrews 12:29 ( KJV ) For our God is a consuming fire.

“Set my soul afire Lord, set my soul afire.

Let me be a witness to you saving power.

Millions grope in darkness waiting for thy word.

Set my soul afire Lord, sent my soul afire.”