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Revival: Our Work
Presenter: Larry Kirkpatrick
Location: Bonners Ferry Seventh-day Adventist Church, ID, USA
Delivery: 2011-01-01
Publication: GreatControversy.org 2011-01-01 23:37Z
Type: Sermon
URL: http://www.greatcontroversy.org/gco/ser/kirl-revivalourwork.php
Friends, let me share a brief quotation that will help us understand the message for this hour.
A revival of true godliness among us is the greatest and most urgent of all our needs. To seek this should be our first work. There must be earnest effort to obtain the blessing of the Lord, not because God is not willing to bestow His blessing upon us, but because we are unprepared to receive it. Our heavenly Father is more willing to give His Holy Spirit to those who ask Him, than are earthly parents to give good gifts to their children. But it is our work, by confession, humiliation, repentance, and earnest prayer, to fulfill the conditions upon which God has promised to grant us His blessing (Ellen G. White, True Revival, p. 9; Review and Herald, March 22, 1887).
If something is “the greatest and most urgent of all our needs,” we should take notice. This is emphatic language. Other words should catch our attention, like “work,” “effort,” and “unprepared.” Why need we such a revival? Why need we invest ourselves so that we make “earnest effort”? Not because God is not ready to give, but because we are unready to receive. “Our work” is too clear to miss: confession, humiliation, repentance, and earnest prayer.
Of course, when we say “work,” we do not mean salvation. Nor do we mean our work alone or apart from God. Our topic, more specifically, is revival and how to attain it. And, without God, everything is a waste of time.
The leaders of the Seventh-day Adventist Church are urging us to seek revival. Think how things are in our world today. We are spiraling into a dark and gloomy, danger-frought future. The world economy is a wreck and rapidly worsening. Meanwhile, national leaders are bent on a paroxysm of spending; some are determined to involve young men and women in military adventuring.
At every turn the world around us is has been prepared to reshape us according to a preferred design. The world and its domination-system is becoming ever more totalitarian. It hastens toward darkness. We see this. We see the cracks in the hull; we hear the water pouring in; we know that destruction is pending.
It is the most urgent time for spiritual life. But we are unready.
When the church is revived, the message God has given us to give to the world will sound. Hearts will be changed, won to Jesus. How urgent then is this, our work. The restoration of planet earth is waiting. Our role in these things is not passive; not at all.
Therefore, let us consider, from a biblical standpoint, four elements that have been plainly named and unambiguously set before us. What can we learn and apply to our lives this day, about confession, humiliation, repentance, and earnest prayer?
Confession
Let’s consider confession. The Bible says
Whoever conceals his transgressions will not prosper, but he who confesses and forsakes them will obtain mercy (Proverbs 28:13 ESV) (Unless otherwise noted, all Scripture references are to the English Standard Version).
One kind of confession is the confession of sin. Notice what the ancient Proverb says: if we try to conceal our sins, we will fail. No sin can be concealed from God. When you have sinned, the solution is to confess that sin to God. God knows exactly what it is. Still, you must be specific. Own up. You are not revealing anything to God, of course; but confession has a powerful effect on a person.
When you confess your sins to God, you are accomplishing several things in yourself psychologically.
- You are declaring the rightness of God’s judgment against this sin.
- You are declaring your need of God’s forgiveness.
- You are declaring your acknowledgment of God’s mercy toward you in forgiving you.
You are asking God to do for you what you cannot do for yourself. Even the desire to repent is given us by God. The act of confession is in itself an admission, request, a plea, a demonstration of one’s faith. One does not spend energy asking for that which he is certain will not be granted.
The text includes forsaking of sin with confessing of sin. To forsake sin means to leave it behind. What does it mean to leave sin behind?
If we sin today and ask forgiveness and plan to sin tomorrow, we are not leaving it behind. To forsake, to leave behind utterly, we must be committed in heart to complete discontinuation of the sin. We must open our heart to God and permit Him to take away our slavery to twisted desire. The divine hand will loose us from our deep commitments to sin, but, as the Hebrews were freed from Egyptian bondage, still we are called to accomplish the actual walking out. God frees us; we choose to walk out of the open door of the cage we have constructed.
To confess and forsake is to cease from that sin. God’s power is sufficient!
Humiliation
Humiliation might not be the first, or even the second idea to come to mind. A text, then to illuminate: James 4:7-10:
Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded. Be wretched and mourn and weep. Let your laughter be turned to mourning and your joy to gloom. Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will exalt you.
To humble oneself is to practice humiliation. God is our God; we rebel against sin slavery to Satan. Notice what is involved—cleansing our hands, purifying our hearts. We admit that we have sinned against God. We choose whole-hearted commitment to Him, we leave behind double-mindedness. In the Greek, literally, the having of “two psyches.”
See how in the Scripture we are called to be wretched and mourn and weep. This is not a call to something artificial or fake; but to something that we truly experience in our heart. When we embrace a hatred of sin, when we begin to see ourselves as we truly are, then we will be filled with a sense of our true wretchedness. Then, we will indeed mourn and weep.
God will lift us up after we humble ourselves in heart.
Repentance
The third item in the list from our quotation on revival and reformation, is repentance. A text touching this is Acts 3:19-21:
Repent ye therefore, and be converted, that your sins may be blotted out, when the times of refreshing shall come from the presence of the Lord; And he shall send Jesus Christ, which before was preached unto you: Whom the heaven must receive until the times of restitution of all things, which God hath spoken by the mouth of all his holy prophets since the world began (Acts 3:19-21 KJV).
The call is to repent, that is, to have a 180 degree change of mind, of heart, of commitments. When we return to God we offer up everything. To have our sins blotted out, wiped away, means complete discontinuation, more than mere forgiveness. When sinning is ended on earth, then the record of sinning is not added to in heaven. Then the camp can be cleansed. Times of refreshing come from what? The presence of the Lord. That is, the presence of Jesus in the midst of His people by the Holy Spirit is manifest especially as believers cooperate with God, who, by His grace, both mercy and power, cease from sin.
The time of restoration is the time when every plant that Jesus has not planted has been rooted up and the people of God stand in His strength. They are united in deep friendship with each other and commitment to Christ. The result is seen in Revelation 14:1, a victorious people, standing with Jesus at center.
Repentance is an entire change, an entire turning. Turning changes our entire field of vision. Humans have an almost 180 field of vision, but not quite. So, a 180 degree change of direction presents an entirely different field of view. But although we change direction, it is like when you see a very bright light and then turn to look at something else. For awhile, the bright image of the light remains, obscuring the new point of view. We do not in one moment completely change how we do things, how we feel about things, how we think. Again and again and again we must bring ourselves back and be intentional about changing.
God gives the creative power that makes this change possible. But He does not throw a switch. Changing means a serious investment of life-energy. Repentance like this is bestowed by God. All that we can do is cooperate with Him and plead with Him for it.
Earnest prayer
Do we know what earnest prayer is? Can true revival be anticipated based on anything less than earnest prayer? Luke 22 certainly outlines one of the earnest prayers of Jesus:
And being in an agony he prayed more earnestly; and his sweat became like great drops of blood falling down to the ground (Luke 22:44 ESV).
Jesus, in the garden of Gethsemane, prayed earnestly. Like confession, prayer is not intended to change God’s mind, but to change ours. Prayer is very powerful, because in prayer we engage our whole being. All the mental faculties are engaged. By this, I mean that when we pray, we are actively engaging our intellect, our capacity to make judgments, our ability to feel, and our ability to use our will and to make decisions. The will is engaged. All of this happens in prayer. Well, at least in earnest prayer.
Sometimes when we pray we are very tired; we can scarcely stay awake. In that situation, the kind of full-engagement prayer that I am talking about is not possible. Hour-by-hour we do what we can, but a season of earnest seeking may mean spending early morning hours for a period of days. As always the bare-naked facts are, we spend our best time and energy doing the things we most want to do. If we don’t value something, we do not invest in it. Very simple.
What if I can see that I have a deficit in one of these areas? Just keep it simple. Simply ask God for help. You can pray, “God, please increase my desire to engage in earnest prayer.” Keep at this. Very soon you will experience the result.
Conditions of Blessing
Our opening quotation said,
It is our work, by confession, humiliation, repentance, and earnest prayer, to fulfill the conditions upon which God has promised to grant us His blessing.
It is clear that God wants to bless us. Otherwise, He would not, through His servant, have reminded us that there are conditions. Now if the concept of conditionality seems harsh to us, let’s not forget another crucial concept in the sentence: “God has promised to grant us His blessing.” God has promised. I didn’t ask Him to promise. You didn’t ask Him to promise. He, voluntarily, unilaterally, chose to commit Himself. He made the promise.
See, here is a crucial point. What He promises is not conditional on our work, but the “work” we do in seeking revival makes us capable of receiving that which we otherwise would not be capable of receiving. Maybe it is like learning to count; you have to learn how to count to ten before you can learn to count to twenty. In order for us to be ready to receive the promise, we must first prepare our hearts to receive the promise. And, after all, it is only in whose power that we will place ourselves in the path of blessing? In His. We must never forget this.
Conclusion
All of which brings us home today. We need revival. If we want it, our hearts must be prepared for it. The blessing would be too powerful to receive did we not thus seek it. Shall we not, with this bright, free, open, new year before us, plan to invest our hearts in seeking this work of our Friend the Holy spirit in our lives? May God speed to us and send His strength, that our hearts might be remade in a likeness to Jesus! GCO
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