======================================================================== ANOTHER NATIONAL REVIVAL？ by Michael Catt ======================================================================== Summary: This sermon emphasizes the need for personal revival as the starting point for a broader spiritual awakening. It reflects on past revivals, highlighting the transformative power of God's presence and the impact on both individuals and communities. The speaker calls for a return to New Testament Christianity, stressing the importance of prayer, repentance, and a genuine hunger for God's work. The message underscores that revival begins with each individual's desire for God to work in their hearts, leading to a ripple effect that can ignite a larger movement of spiritual renewal. Topics: "Personal Revival", "Spiritual Awakening" Scripture References: 2 Chronicles 7:14, Acts 2:42, James 4:8, Psalm 85:6, Joel 2:28 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ DESCRIPTION ------------------------------------------------------------------------ This sermon emphasizes the need for personal revival as the starting point for a broader spiritual awakening. It reflects on past revivals, highlighting the transformative power of God's presence and the impact on both individuals and communities. The speaker calls for a return to New Testament Christianity, stressing the importance of prayer, repentance, and a genuine hunger for God's work. The message underscores that revival begins with each individual's desire for God to work in their hearts, leading to a ripple effect that can ignite a larger movement of spiritual renewal. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ CONTENT ------------------------------------------------------------------------ As a person who was saved during the days of the Jesus movement, revival is a part of my spiritual DNA. Knowing the difference that Christ made in those days in the late 1960s and early 70s, the impact it had on my life and the lives of many people that I knew, the prayer meeting that I was a part of with almost 300 young people, praying four and five nights a week for six and seven hours, and seeing people come out the streets drawn by the prevailing presence of God into those meetings is just unexplainable. In many ways, revival is unexplainable. While we have stories of revival, and we have testimonies of revival, and we have the history of revival, you can never fully put into words all that God does in a season of revival. And I don't think there's any doubt with any of us that we need revival in our land today, but not just in our land. What we need is revival in our hearts, because revival begins with me. It doesn't begin with the other people in the church. It begins with me. Am I interested? Am I desiring? Am I longing for God to do a new and fresh work in me? One of the great preachers of the 20th century said revival is simply a return to New Testament Christianity. It's a return to what it looked like in the Book of Acts, where people were being added to the church daily, where there was much prayer and much grace and much power. I find that largely lacking in the church in America today. Not only is it lacking in most of the places I go and the places that I look at and study, they're even clueless that there is such a thing as the prevailing presence of God. There's a bulletin. There's an order of service. There's a plan. Church starts at 11 o'clock. It ends at 12. Everybody goes out to eat. But at the end of the day, when does the church get overwhelmed by the presence of God? That's what revival is. That's what happened in the First Great Awakening, in the Second Great Awakening, in the Prayer Revival, in the Welsh Revival. People were halted in their steps. Lives were changed. People outside of a church would fall under conviction by the power of God. It was unexplainable the number of people that came to Christ to be saved. But they came to Christ to be saved because first the church had been revived. One of the errors that we've made in the last hundred years in Christianity in America is we've attached revival and evangelism, and we have revival meetings to save the lost. But in the old days of two-week and three-week meetings, the first week of the meeting was to get the church right and God's people right so that when God's people were right, they would go tell their lost friends about their need for Christ. Here's what I know. Carnal people do not care about lost people. Carnal church members only care about, what are you doing for me? Is the music going to be what I like? Is the preacher preaching the way I like? Does he have the personality that I like? Revival removes all of that. It changes the atmosphere. It changes the culture. And we say we want revival, but I'm not sure if we knew the cost of revival that we would actually say we want it or that we would be praying about it because a true move of God would disqualify many people who are lay and professional leaders in the church today because we're not walking in the Spirit. We're not living in the Word. We're not people of prayer, and only revival is going to change that. There's no program from any denomination that can fix that. We have to return to New Testament Christianity. We have to pray, as some of my friends have said, extraordinary prayers, which means if we're not seeing revival in the world in which we live right now, then the praying we are doing right now is not enough. It's not enough. It's not intense enough. It's not serious enough. We're not at the cross like we need to be. However you want to phrase that, we're not doing extraordinary praying, which brings extraordinary supernatural results. The Jesus movement began in California, and it swept all across the land. I wonder if today, or maybe tomorrow, that God would find people gathered together who would lay aside their agenda, who would listen to the Spirit of God, who would come humbly before the Lord, who would confess their sins to the Lord and to one another, and clear a path for the Holy Spirit to come where we would see the indwelling presence in a manifold, evident way of God's Spirit ruling in our hearts and in our churches. It is the only hope for America. It's not going to happen any other way, and we are foolish if we think that it's going to happen any other way than the way God says it has to happen. With repentance comes revival, and even if the whole church isn't revived, or your denomination isn't revived, at the end of the day, if you're walking in personal revival, you should embrace it. You should long for it. You should seek it, and then let it spill over. Tozer said, and I'm paraphrasing, that if revival comes, the minority that are ignited by the fire of God will either catch the majority on fire, or the majority will put the minority's fire out. So which one are you? Which one am I? Am I the majority that will put a fire out because it goes outside my paradigm, my way of thinking, my preferences, or am I the minority that is so on fire for God that the majority would catch fire? Let's pray that there would be an extraordinary work of God in our lifetimes in revival. God bless you. ======================================================================== Video: https://sermonindex2.b-cdn.net/65tW4ISTnqk.mp4 Source: https://sermonindex.net/speakers/michael-catt/another-national-revival/ ========================================================================