Pastor's Corner - "The Word of Life"**NEW ARTICLE**
“O Lord, revive your work.”
[Habakkuk 3:2]
The members of Christian churches are not what they once were. It is fashionable to be religious now; persons come in and go when they please, instead of regarding the Church as a special and sacred place, for the gathering of the presence of the Lord. You see, Habakkuk knew how to groan about it. “O Lord,” he said, “revive your work.” Many of us need reviving, but few of us feel that we need it. If you are His, ask that he may give you more grace, that you may abandon these faults and recklessness, and turn to him with a fully committed heart, as the result of a revived godliness in your soul. Now let us observe that the text has something in it which I believe that each of us has. There is not only a need implied in these words, “O Lord, revive your work;” but there is a need obviously felt. It is a blessed sign of life within us when we know how to groan over our departure from a personal relationship with the true and living God. The true believer, however, when he discovers that he needs revival, will not be happy; he will immediately begin that nonstop and continuous cries and groans which will finally prevail with God, and bring the blessing of revival down. That person will, days and nights in succession, cry out, “O Lord, revive your work.”
WHAT DOES REVIVAL LOOK LIKE?
It is probably easier to tell you what revival DOESN'T look like... It doesn't look like "business as usual" in our services and ministries. It doesn't look like the pride that values eloquence over anointing in the pulpit. It doesn't look like the self-righteousness that can critique everyone and everything else, while remaining unaware that the real spiritual problem is in the critic. It doesn't look like the selfishness that demands that every service, sermon, song and ministry be targeted to the whims of the saints instead of the needs of the lost. It doesn't look like the fear of man that keeps our witnessing and our worship so polite that it is powerless. It doesn't look like the lukewarmness that lets people attend church only when it suits their schedule and obey God only when it suits their lifestyle. Do we really want revival, or do we merely want more blessings to waste on ourselves?
Finally, a church must maintain a continual program of true worship of God. God still seeks men who will worship Him in Spirit and in truth (John 4:23-24). Worship feeds revival. The more a church worships, the better prepared their hearts will be to receive total spiritual renewal. True worship is alive and it spreads that spiritual life to all who contact it. A church can worship its way through every trial, problem and battle. Revival will come to those who know how to worship God as true worshipers.
To have an effective spiritual revival two things are of great importance.
First, consecration: that is, preparing oneself to restore their right relationship with God. There is a scriptural saying, "No one pours new wines into old wineskins, or else the wineskins break, the wine is spilled, and the wineskins are ruined. But they put new wine into new wineskins, and both are preserved". Second, restoring and reviving what was lost, corrupted, destroyed or about to die.
We do not need new ministers, or new plans, or new ways, though many might be used, to make the Church better; we only need life and fire in those that we have. With the very man who has emptied your church, the very same man that weakened your prayer-meetings, God can yet make the church to be crowded to the doors, and give thousands of souls to that very man. It is not a new man that is needed; it is the life of God in him. Don’t just cry out for something new; it will no more solve your problem than what you now have. Cry out, “O Lord, revive your work.”
