Just this week a good brother blessed me with a copy of a classic Christian book on revival that I did not have. Yet even better than receiving the book was the content within it. Only two chapters into it I found myself nodding and agreeing (from Scripture and experience) with much of what he was saying.
Realizing he lacked spiritual power, he simply worked harder and increased his efforts, which made him increasingly tense and forceful - "a poor substitute,"he says, "for the Spirit's gentle penetrating power." Yet, during this season of spiritual dryness, he invited some missionaries from the East African Revival Movement to speak at an Easter conference he had organized. And from that week on, everything changed. Their strong emphasis on a personal implementation of the basics of the Christian faith, and in particular, the healing powers of openness, transparency, and repentance made a profound impact on his life. And as Hession wrote in the preface to the 1973 edition, "This little book expresses the truths that lie at the heart of revival, simply because it is the product of revival." Enjoy.
BROKENNESS
"We
want to be very simple in this matter of Revival. Revival is just the life of
the Lord Jesus poured into human hearts... Whatever may be our experience of
failure and barrenness, He is never defeated. His power is boundless. And we,
on our part, have only to get into a right relationship with Him, and we shall
see His power being demonstrated in our hearts and lives and service, and
victorious life will fill us and overflow through us to others. And that is
Revival in its essence.
If,
however, we are to come into this right relationship with Him, the first thing
we must learn is that our wills must be broken to His will. To be broken is the
beginning of Revival. It is painful and humiliating, but it is the only way...
The Lord Jesus cannot live in us fully and reveal Himself through us until the
proud self within us is broken.
This
simply means that the hard unyielding self, which justifies itself, wants its
own way, stands up for its rights, and seeks its own glory, at last bows its
head to God's will, admits it's wrong, gives up its own way to Jesus' way,
surrenders its rights and discards its own glory - that the Lord Jesus might
have all and be all. In other words, it is dying to self and
self-attitudes.
As
we look honestly at our Christian lives, we can see how much of this self there
is in each of us. It is so often self who tries to live the Christian life...
and self, too, who is often doing Christian work. It is always self who gets
irritable and envious and resentful and critical and worried. It is the self
who is hard and unyielding in its attitudes to others. It is the self who is
shy and self-conscious and reserved. No wonder we need breaking! As long
as self is in control, God can do little with us, for all the fruits of the
Spirit (they are enumerated in Galatians 5), with which God longs to fill us,
are the complete antithesis of the hard, unbroken spirit within us and
presupposes that it has been crucified...
Brokenness
in daily experience is simply the response of humility to the conviction of
God. And inasmuch as this conviction is continuous, we shall need to be broken
continually. And this can be very costly when we see all the yielding of rights
and selfish interests that this will involve, and the confessions and
restitutions that may be sometimes necessary. For this reason, we are not
likely to be broken except at the Cross of Jesus. The willingness of Jesus to
be broken for us is the all-compelling motive in our being broken too. We see
Him, who is in the form of God, counting not equality with God a prize to be
grasped or hung on to, but letting it go for us, and taking upon Himself the
form of a Servant - God's Servant, man's Servant. We see Him willing to
have no rights of His own, no home of His own, no possessions of His own,
willing to let men revile Him and not revile in return, willing to let men
tread on Him and not retaliate or defend Himself. Above all, we see Him broken
as He meekly goes to Calvary to become men's scapegoat by bearing their sins in
His own body on the Tree.
In
a pathetic passage in a prophetic Psalm (a Messianic Psalm about
Jesus), He says, "I am a worm and not a man" (Psa 22:6). Those who
have been in tropical lands tell us that there is a big difference between a
snake and a worm. When you attempt to strike at them the snake rears itself up
and hisses and tries to strike back - a true picture of self. But a worm
offers no resistance. It allows you to do what you like with it, kick it or
squash it under your heel - a picture of true brokenness. And Jesus was
willing to become just that for us - a worm and not a man. And He did so
because that is what He saw us to be -- worms having forfeited all rights
by our sin, except to deserve hell. And He now calls us to take our rightful
place as worms for Him and with Him. The whole Sermon on the Mount with its
teaching of non-retaliation, love for enemies, and selfless giving, assumes
that that is our position. But only the vision of the Love that was willing to
be broken for us can constrain us to be willing for that.
But
dying to self is not a thing we do once for all. There may be an initial dying
when God first shows these things, but ever after it will be a constant dying,
for only so can the Lord Jesus be revealed constantly through us (2 Cor 4:10).
All day long the choice will be before us in a thousand ways. It will mean no
plans, no time, no money, no pleasure of our own. It will mean a constant
yielding to those around us, for our yieldedness to God is measured by our
yieldedness to man. Every humiliation, everyone who tries and vexes us, is
God's way of breaking us, so that there is a yet deeper channel in us for the
Life of Christ. You see, the only life that pleases God and that can be
victorious is His life - never our life, no matter how hard we try. But
inasmuch as our self-centered life is the exact opposite of His, we can never
be filled with His life -- unless we are prepared for God to bring our (self)
life constantly to death. And in that, we must co-operate by our moral
choice."
Hard
words for the modern day person -- steeped in psychology and not
Scripture -- to accept. In the Bible, there are not many passages that
speak specifically of revival, but one does confirm what Hession has said
here. It is found in Isaiah 57:15-16. There God speaks through his
prophet and says: "This
is what the high and lofty One says -- He who lives forever and whose name is
holy: "I live in a high and holy place, but also with him who is contrite
and lowly in spirit, to REVIVE the spirit of the lowly and to REVIVE the heart
of the contrite." And the context that follows suggests that
this "contriteness" and "lowliness" stems
from a remorse over their sin, wickedness and selfish greed.
That's
what we need to see. Revival does not come to those who think they are fine
just the way they are. It does not come to those who believe they have what it
takes or have their act together. It does not come to the proud, the
holier-than-thou, the self-satisfied, or self-sufficient. It comes to
those who have been broken and humbled by the convicting work of the Holy
Spirit and thereby made contrite by seeing the ungodliness and sin that exists
in their soul, and their desperate need for God's grace in Jesus.
It
comes to those who KNOW they are entirely lost without
God, spiritually dead without Jesus, and powerless apart from the
indwelling presence of the Holy Spirit. It comes to those whose inner
awareness of personal sin and need causes them to fall on their faces in
humbled lowliness and plead for that which they cannot produce, or receive,
except by the graciousness of God who gives them what they could never
deserve. It is the lowly and contrite whom God revives, not the proud or
haughty or self-contented. Or to use a more contemporary term, it does
not come to those who have a wonderful, glowing and undeflateably good
self-esteem.
God
ever calls us to come before Him in prayer. With what shall we
come? Requests that He notice how good we've been doing in our Christian
walk? Hopes that He sees what fine specimens we are? Or with honest
transparency that openly confesses our sin and lack and our desperate need for
His grace? It has often been said that, "To be full of God's
Spirit you cannot be full of yourself." It's true. For God
does not dwell with the haughty and self-satisfied, but the lowly and contrite
-- "to
revive the spirit of the lowly, and revive the heart of the contrite."
With
prayers for personal and corporate revival, Pastor Jeff
