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  THE CANADIAN REVIVAL STORY
  by Ralph Sutera
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Summary: This sermon emphasizes the need for personal revival, focusing
on falling in love with Jesus and allowing God to work in our lives. It
shares powerful testimonies of transformation, highlighting the impact
of revival on individuals, marriages, ministries, and communities. The
speaker stresses the importance of surrendering to God, reordering
priorities, and being willing to be changed by the Holy Spirit.

Duration: 1:10:12

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DESCRIPTION
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This sermon emphasizes the need for personal revival, focusing on
falling in love with Jesus and allowing God to work in our lives. It
shares powerful testimonies of transformation, highlighting the impact
of revival on individuals, marriages, ministries, and communities. The
speaker stresses the importance of surrendering to God, reordering
priorities, and being willing to be changed by the Holy Spirit.

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CONTENT
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How is everybody? How is your faith? Let's try that again. How is your
God? I'm glad that your God is greater than your faith. Now there's hope
for the rest of us.

You see, that's what we've been talking about, God coming back to us in
a truer sense. It's a delight to be here. Just by way of introduction,
for those who may not be familiar with who I am, I have a twin brother
who is ten minutes older than I am.

I'm ten minutes smarter than he is, so we're even. We are now in our
55th year of ministry together. Now that's a miracle in itself, to put
up with a twin brother for that long in ministry.

The ministry has taken us to a number of countries, but what's thrilling
is to be in a place where we can see God at work in so many wonderful
ways. It's a delight to be here and to share with you. I looked at the
schedule and I saw the number of speakers that were scheduled to be
here, so I had the idea that you were going to have your supply of
sermons, and that I needed to do something different from a sermon.

We're going to have another sermon right after I'm finished, but this
morning I have a sense of going back to something that Danny said last
night in his first point. Do you remember the first point last night?
What was the first point? Remembering. Remembering and being stimulated
by what God has done in the past to believe that he can do the same and
more in the present as well as the future.

I'm convinced that many of our peoples and many of our churches and many
of us in our Christian lives live in such a way that we have what I call
a glorious future behind us. We can tell what happened 50 years ago and
75 years ago, 30 years ago, but not too much what the Lord is doing now.
You see, God needs to use the past to remind us of the fact that he is
the same and that he can continue to do his work in his own way.

So, I just want to get started on the subject of the Canadian revival
story and lessons that I've learned as a result of it. I guess I should
qualify by saying that I do not speak as some authority on the subject
of revival. I think it's right when whoever said it, said it right when
he said, revival is one beggar telling another beggar where we both can
find bread and eat it together.

Someone said the person who thinks he has all the answers probably
hasn't heard the question yet. Or you might as well have a conversation
with yourself. You have all the answers anyway.

But I do thank God that through the years he's given my twin brother and
me the opportunity of being in town and a number of places where he has
seen fit to do a deep work among the people of God. And that's been
thrilling. It's been exciting indeed.

And so I do stand here as a witness to the fact not only that we read
about revivals in history as well as in the scripture, but I stand as a
witness that God is powerfully at work in our day and we can believe
that he is the same today, yesterday, and forever. And we need to be
believing believers. I am convinced that in many of our churches we are
filled with unbelieving believers who really don't believe God can do
it.

Now in the light of what we heard last night, it's interesting that
Psalm 107, there are four times one statement is made. It's this, all
that men would praise the Lord for his goodness and for his wonderful
works to the children of men. That's what we heard.

Remember, his wonderful works. Four times that statement is made in the
Psalm. A world traveler at the end of his trip around the world was
asked, what was the greatest thing you saw? Was it the Taj Mahal? Was it
the Swiss Alps? Was it the Grand Canyon or the Canadian Rockies? What
was the greatest thing you ever saw? And with no hesitancy he replied,
the greatest sight in all the world is a heaven-sent revival.

You see, on his trip he ran into a place where there was a revival. And
that was more exciting to him than any other sight that he'd ever seen.
You see, it's interesting that Albert Einstein, the Jewish scientist
that is renowned as being one of the most brilliant men the world has
ever known, made this statement.

If one purges Judaism of the prophets and Christianity as Jesus Christ
taught it, of all subsequent editions, especially those of the priests,
one is left with a teaching which is capable of curing all the social
ills of humanity. Imagine that from a Jewish scientist. Imagine that.

He said, you know what he's saying to us? He's saying if we could get
rid of all the nonsense and all the garbage and all the secondary issues
and get back to what Jesus Christ clearly taught, we would have the
religion that is capable of curing all the social ills of humanity.
That's why we need revival, to get back to the simplicity of what it is
Jesus taught. Now, revival, we're talking about it.

Is it a must or is it merely it would be a nice thing to have and to
happen? And if you're here today with the idea that it would just be a
nice thing to have or happen, you're not a candidate to be revived. You
see, the truth is that the history of the church is the story of
revival. You take revival out of the church, you have no church history.

For all other times, the church was merely treading water, merely just
holding its own, merely just kind of trying to keep itself above water.
That's why we need revival. Well, what is it not? What is it not? Well,
it's not an evangelistic crusade, though an evangelistic crusade could
turn into a revival.

It's not always a spiritual happening inside a church building. Some of
the great revivals of the past have not occurred in the church. It is
not necessarily a time of religious excitement.

See, we get excited about many things in life, but religious excitement
is not revival if God is not about whom we are excited. Any other
excitement is not revival. And is this revival? Ah, this is interesting.

After revival meetings, three pastors discussed the results. You know,
pastors got together. Well, the Methodist minister said, the revival
worked out great for us.

We gained four families. And the Baptist minister said, well, we did
better than that. We gained six new families.

The Presbyterian minister said, well, we did even better. We got rid of
our ten biggest troublemakers. By the way, six and four makes ten.

And that's a tragedy when those four and those six take their
bitternesses and their resentments and all their problems to another
church. What they do is just deaden the spirit of the next church they
attend. So be careful who you take into your church.

Well, that's interesting. No, no, no, no, that's not revival. Revival is
not a big numbers game or picking up a few disgruntled families from
another church.

That's not revival. Well, revival is a spiritual experience that only
Christians can have. You cannot revive something that has never been
vived.

You see, an unconverted man has never been vived. We are now talking
about to be revived is to return to where nothing stands in the way to
hinder a relationship with God and with man. Nothing stands in the way
to hinder that relationship.

Well, when I think in terms of reviving, I think there are all kinds of
definitions that can be given. Here's one that I like. It is when hidden
springs spring forth.

There are hidden springs underneath and all at once they spring forth.
Springs of prayer and fasting and genuine seeking God for a moving of a
spirit. And I wonder even in this very area, where are those springs
that are underneath that have been praying and seeking God sometimes for
years? And many times we go into a community and they'll begin to say,
well, here's a group of people that have been praying for so many years,
all by themselves, for revival.

Hidden springs. Well, I could talk about D.O. Moody's hidden springs in
his ministry. I could talk about Billy Graham and the people that were
prayer warriors behind him.

I could talk about Charles G. Finney. But let me just share personally
just the sum of the hidden springs that have been behind our ministry
through the years. Well, we were in a Western Canadian city.

Mrs. Follis was a member of the church. We were there for one week of
evangelistic meetings. And I need to say to you by way of background
that Lou and I had 18 years of evangelism as straight evangelists after
leaving university and starting ministry.

And then God Almighty began to work in changing all that, and I'll get
to that in a minute. But here's one of those hidden springs. Mrs.
Follis.

After we were in her church, she and her husband prayed for us every
single day for four years. When revival broke out in Western Canada, we
had a weekend conference in the city of Regina, Saskatchewan, and she
and her husband drove over the Canadian Rockies. And they were there in
the middle of the winter, all bundled up, this elderly couple.

And my brother thought he would honor them, and he asked them to come
forward and say a few words to about 700 people there. And they stood
up, and my brother, who was kind of excited to see all these people had
come from all over Western Canada for this conference, he said to her,
he said, what do you think of all this? And she kind of stood rather
still and nonchalant as it were. She said, this is nothing.

But here's my brother with 700 people. What do you think of all this?
This is nothing. That's a real starter for you.

But he could tell that she was saying something more than that. And he
questioned her a little further, say, are you trying to say something
else? She said, and she turned and said, this is only. Well, now that's
getting a little substance, isn't it? From nothing to only? This is only
God answering prayer.

That's all. And then she told that crowd, and we heard it for the first
time, that when we were in her church, God laid this ministry on her
heart, and for four solid years, she and her husband had prayed for us
every single day that God would transform our ministry from evangelism
into a ministry of the, into the inner life of the church and revival.
So this is nothing.

God answering prayer. That's all. One of those hidden springs.

A year after the revival broke out in Western Canada, one of the men,
Bernard Palmer, who wrote the Danny Orless series books for boys and
girls a number of years ago, was in South India. He was at a Gideon
convention, and he said, and he began to share with the Gideons what he
saw in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, in the revival. He was there when it
happened.

And when he got finished, two Gideon brothers came running up to him,
and they said to him, where did you say that happened? In Saskatoon,
Saskatchewan, in Western Canada. Oh, they said, praise the Lord, praise
the Lord, praise the Lord. He said, why? Because we asked God to lay on
our hearts a sister city on the North American continent to pray for a
revival, and God gave us a city of Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, to pray for
a revival.

And here they are, one year later, they hadn't even heard the revival
broke out. Gideon's right. Well, there was a missionary on an airplane,
and an evangelist friend of ours said, when I get on the plane with
people like that, I just kind of want to find out exactly what they know
about answers to prayer.

So I asked the missionaries, can you tell me of a prayer that you
prayed, and you know God exactly answered your prayer? And the
missionary said to this evangelist, yes, I began to pray for a revival
for Canada, and especially for Western Canada. God laid that on my
heart. And it's interesting that a short time later, I heard that there
were two little twins that were up there, and a revival broke out.

And God answered my prayer. He didn't spring, spring forth. Bill McLeod,
the pastor of the church, got so tired of playing the religious games
with divine truth with his people, that he literally laid aside many of
his pastoral duties, so that he would just give himself to ministry of
prayer, intercessory prayer.

And he prayed. Well, I can tell you he prayed five years for a revival.
He prayed with other pastors, including Henry Blackaby, who was a pastor
in the same city at the time.

And in the midst of it, then God just encouraged him to lay aside even
more, to just call his whole church to pray. But his people didn't know
that on his face, in his office, day after day, here he is calling on
God for a genuine revival. Well, there it is.

Didn't we hear last night the importance of prayer for a revival? Here's
the pastor. Here are all these hidden springs, spring forth. Well, when
Lou and I found ourselves in a western Canadian city, at Prince George,
British Columbia, the pastor said to us, said, fellows, my part in this
ministry is to pray.

If you need anything, you talk to the associate. I have to pray. And he
would sit on the platform night after night, very somber, very sober.

And we hardly knew exactly what was taking place. A week and a half into
the crusade, where God began to work at such a powerful level, he came
to the platform one night. It was as if a bird let out of the cage.

And he stood up. He said, folks, I want you to know that God answered my
prayer. He set me free.

He said, and he told the congregation that for one solid year, he had
not prayed a night, he had not slept a night through without God waking
him up in the middle of the night, calling on God for a revival for a
city, for the province, for the country. And one solid year interceding
like that. And he said, last night, God said to me, all right, my child,
I've answered your prayer.

Now rejoice. Hidden spring, spring forth. That man, Cliff Dietrich,
godly man, just passed away about a month ago.

Hidden springs. Well, what happened? Duncan Campbell found himself in
the city of Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, a year before the revival took
place. The church was so cold and so backslidden that they couldn't even
get 50 people to come to hear him speak.

Here he's talking about the great revival in the Hebrides and off of
Scotland and so on. And he couldn't get more than 50 people. But God
revealed to him, and I'm not exactly sure how, whether it was a dream, a
vision, but knowing that godly man, how God used him so powerfully,
revealed to him that a revival was going to break out in western Canada
and it was going to start in this very church.

And he locked that secret in his heart in the city of Saskatoon, only to
go to the city of Winnipeg, where he spoke to this pastor's brother, and
he told him what God revealed to him. And he said, you lock that in your
heart, and when it happens, then make it known. And I can tell you that
if you were to read the autobiography of Duncan Campbell, before he
passed away, it happened.

And the mention of what I've just told you is there as a record that God
made it clear to Duncan Campbell that a revival was going to start in
that city. Well, in the midst of that, Lou and I got so tired of just
going to churches as evangelists and finding that many people would be
prayed with for salvation, then go back a year or two later and wonder,
where are all those people? What happened to them? Where are they? We
thought a church knew how to carry on leading people on in the things of
God. What happened? Is there something wrong with the message? Well,
could be.

Is there something wrong with the church? Could be. Is there something
wrong with the pastoral staff? Could be. All those things could be
involved.

And in our spirit, God began to sharpen the focus in our hearts as to
what the message was all about. You see, in evangelism, for too long,
many of us made the mistake of presenting a kind of gospel message, and
as what Don Kern was talking about, of understanding what the gospel is
all about in that earlier hour this morning. We made the mistake of
presenting a message of, come get all you can from God, and can all you
get, and sit on the lid.

Come get all you can from him. Get your sins forgiven. Get free from
going to hell.

Get a clear conscience. Some of your habits that have harassed you for
so long, God wants to set you free from those. Come on, get all that.

Just think how much better it's going to be for you. Well, who wants to
burn in hell? I want to be saved. Now, are you suggesting those things
are not real? Of course they're real.

But if that is the essence of Christian experience, we have missed it
completely. You see, it's not what we get from God, but it's giving
ourselves back to a God who's already given himself to us. And the
Lordship of Christ, the truth of the Lordship of Christ, came into
sharper focus in our hearts, in our minds, as to calling people not just
come to find Christ the Savior, but are you ready to surrender all that
you are, and all that you have, and all that you ever hoped to be, to
his Lordship, to his control, to be able to walk in the fullness of his
Spirit? Well, when we got to this city, the pastor, Prince George's
pastor, Dietrich said, tell us, that's wonderful how the Lord is leading
you.

But he said, I believe there's something else, and that is Christ cannot
be Lord until we understand that death principle, that it's going to be
no more I, but Christ. I am crucified with Christ. Romans 6, reckon
yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God, through
Christ.

And God sharpened the focus further, and all at once the truth came in
such a way that God used it to break the hearts of many people in
Western Canada for his honor and glory. And so, from that background, we
find ourselves in this city of Saskatoon with 190 people on the first
night. The second night, God Almighty got ahold of a lady in that
congregation.

By the way, I need to get back to the prayer preparation. That pastor
not only was hidden himself for prayer, but as one reporter wrote, let
me just share it with you, the pastor persuaded his church to clear the
calendar of all activities on Wednesday night. Sunday, he told his
people, if you have to miss a service, miss the Sunday morning or
evening service, but don't miss Wednesday night.

He stressed this until he saw the adult prayer meeting attendance rise
from 40 to 120. There were also two children's prayer meetings, total of
40 in attendance. Thus, a total of 160 out of 300 people were coming to
a midweek prayer meeting.

He then invited his people to stay after church on Sunday nights for a
half-hour prayer. Next, he started cottage prayer meetings around the
city. The attendance was not large, but prayer was growing.

He set up a prayer wheel and asked people to sign up 15 minutes around
the clock, people were praying. The deacons met on Saturday night for an
open-ended prayer meeting that began at nine o'clock and lasted until
they felt it was finished. Prayer, preparation.

So, we walk into that situation, 190 people, first night. Second night,
God gets ahold of a lady who was praying for a revival in Canada, so
concerned about the economic situation, the political situation, the
religious situation. And God said to her, Emma, why are you praying for
the country when you can't even stand your own pastor's wife? How phony
can you be? By the way, that's about as phony as it can be for some of
us praying for revival here when we're not willing to be honest and deal
with our sin.

We can say it as loud as we want to say it in prayer. How phony can we
be? And God broke her heart and she had to make things right with the
pastor's wife and other women in the church. Well, you know what that
did? That helped her husband to recognize he had a problem.

Of course he did. Thirteen years, he and his blood brother had been at
odds with each other. And for the last two years, they had not even
spoken to each other.

They used to sing together and now they're in separate churches because
they couldn't stand being in the same church. And guess what happened?
We saw God Almighty work in that man's life and in a reconciliation with
his brother. And before the seven and a half weeks of a crusade was
over, they were on the platform singing together for the glory of God.

Well, things began to happen. All at once, we found ourselves with
people meeting God in every direction. Ten-day crusade, we knew that we
could not stop after ten days.

We knew that God was just beginning to work. But what do you do with
your schedule? After all, you're busy. You've got a full schedule.

And God Almighty began to talk to us about that. Who owns your schedule?
Whose schedule is it? When are you going to begin to live by faith and
trust God instead of saying, oh, look, I'm so busy. I'm booked for five
years.

I'm so important. And we sat down and wrote a letter to all the pastors
that we were engaged to be with for the next two years and canceled all
the meetings. And I can tell you, it was interesting because one pastor
in Ohio, we had been scheduled to be with him for almost two years for a
100-year celebration of their church.

And they were doing a whole month, and we were going to have one week of
evangelist meetings in the middle of it. And we write him and tell him
that, I'm sorry, we've got to cancel. God's about to do something here.

We can't walk away from it. And we get an airmail special delivery
letter back. And I say to my brother, I said, Lou, you open this letter.

I thought surely we were going to get it now. And instead, we open it,
and he said, thank you, thank you, so glad. We'll be glad to release you
as long as you give us some other dates.

But it's about time you begin to walk by faith as you tell the rest of
us to live. Oh, no. He didn't say it quite that bad.

But that's what it said to us, and God was on the scene. We had to move
to a larger building. From a building that seats 300, we moved to one
that would seat 700, and the first night it was filled.

The second night, it was packed again. While we were there on the second
night, we get a phone call from a pastor from a church that would seat
1,000. He said, our church board has just voted to open the church.

If you want to come over tomorrow night and start in, we open our doors.
And so we moved to that church, and we were there that week, and that
was full. And we rented a building which seats 1,700 people, and we
started in there, and we just continued night after night.

Sundays, we'd have two services with 1,700 people at each service, and
we'll continue for seven and a half weeks. Well, what was happening? All
kinds of things were happening. Reconciliation between people,
restitution of stolen goods around the community.

The newspaper office was getting reports, something's happening in the
city. What's going on? The pastor said, you know, maybe we should send a
report into the newspaper and let them know a little bit what's
happening. But he thought, you know, this newspaper is not conducive to
helping us in anything spiritual here.

I said, let's try. So I went with the pastor, and we took the report in,
and the editor of the newspaper said, oh, you're too late. He said, look
here.

And he shows us an article that he had written. And he said, look what
it says, and it's going to be on the front page of the newspaper.
Morality in the wake of a revival.

Why was he writing it? He was getting phone calls from the department
stores. What's going on? We have all kinds of people telling us that
they've stolen goods here in the department store and want to make them
right. Well, what's going on? The grocer calls and says, a lady comes
and she says, they didn't ring up a 99 cent bag of potatoes that should
have been rung up.

And I knew it was not rung up, but I stole it, and God has spoken to my
heart, and I've got to make it right. And the manager of the grocery
store says, he said, when she came to me like that, I just put my hands
on my head. I said, oh no, not another one.

He said, you're the sixth person that has come to me today to make
something right. All at once, the reconciliation and restitution turned
the eyes of a community on God. The newspaper reporter, the editor said,
I get a phone call from the police department.

The police department said, what's going on in town? Nighttime crime is
at an all-time low. What's happening? God was at work. We pick up the
Saturday newspaper where all the churches have the advertisements, and
we look, 12 churches cancel their services.

We now join the revival that is happening in our city. Word to God that
God would get a hold of some church people in some cities, where we
begin to understand that we're not building our own little kingdoms, but
we're building the kingdom of God. I can tell you, it's great when you
see that begin to happen, and the community sees God at a different
level.

Well, all at once, things are happening. Well, we ended on a Grey Cup
Sunday in Canada with 4,000 people in the large auditorium. You know
what Grey Cup Sunday is like in Canada? Sure, I'll tell you what it is.

It's Super Bowl Sunday down here. You know what that's like? Why, we
even have churches that dismiss services on that night, or we have
churches that change the time of their service to accommodate Super Bowl
here. In fact, we even have some churches that have Super Bowl for the
Sunday night service, and at the intermission, they have their 10-minute
service.

Isn't that a nice one? But there are 4,000 people, snowstorm all around,
to see what God was doing. Well, what was happening? Well, I can tell
you one lady came to the meeting. She said, Lord, if you don't heal me
tonight, I'm jumping off the bridge.

Another lady, she and her husband took in a woman whose husband had left
her, only to find that that woman then began to run around with her
husband, or began to get interested in her husband, and the bottom line
is then she runs off with this woman's husband. And when her children
would come home from school with the books from school, Alice in
Wonderland, and this woman would say, it's Alice in Blunderland. That's
the name of the woman that ran off with her husband.

And that woman was good for the psychiatrists, all kinds of pills she
was on, and if God had not touched her life, she'd either be insane or
in the grave today. And what a sight to see when God broke her heart,
and she saw her bitterness, and how God put love within her heart for
that husband. That situation has not changed.

But I can tell you, in March of this year, she was there in the
conference that we had in the very city where the revival broke out, and
you see the glory of God on her life, and the way God has anointed her
and gifted her to be able to minister to people. Toronto Seminary
chaplain, he came from the eastern part of the country to find out what
was happening. In fact, many of the Christian periodicals were sending
reporters to find out what was happening.

People said, is it a youth revival? Is it a youth revival? Said, the
generation gap never had a chance. We had 25-year-olds praying with
75-year-olds. We had 18-year-olds praying with 88-year-olds.

I'm just using some figures. They're saying, we just want to be one. We
just want to be together, because God was at work, and there's no
generation gap.

Well, what about that seminary chaplain? He goes back to Toronto, and
one of the students says, I knew I had to be in chapel that next day,
because I saw the chaplain's face, and I knew something had happened to
him. Well, I can tell you what happened. Chapel service started at 10
o'clock in the morning.

Bill McCloud was there ministering 10 minutes. He spoke 10 minutes to
the students, and God broke in on the scene, and what started at 10
o'clock in the morning ended at 1.30 a.m. the next morning. All kinds of
people making things right, getting off their knees, going to the
telephone, calling their parents, making things right.

One pastor in northern Manitoba said, if God doesn't do something for
me, I'll never preach again. He said, I had to travel 700 miles to
attend my own funeral. You know what he's saying, to die to myself.

He said he went back to his church, and people began to get saved week
after week as a result of it. There was a fugitive criminal who was just
passing through the city, and by chance, oh, just by chance, he was led
to the meetings. Just by chance.

Coincidence, isn't it? Guess what? He got saved, and he turns around and
goes to the police department, and he turns himself in and saying, I'm a
fugitive criminal, and I'm turning myself in, and I'm ready to have
whatever is necessary for me to make it right. And the police department
in the city of Saskatoon said, why did you do it in our town? He said,
because it was in your town that Jesus Christ has become Lord of my
life, and I want to make it right. The bottom line is that his wife came
later, she was saved, and three children, a whole family born again as a
result of it.

Workman's compensation. A man lied that he was injured on the job, and
God got a hold of him and said, when are you going to make that right?
He had thousands of dollars already given to him through workman's
compensation, and he turns and goes back to the people in charge and
says, I'm ready to go to jail, I'm ready to pay it all back, whatever is
necessary to be thoroughly right with God. Well, there was a man and his
wife who traveled with us.

It was marvelous what God did in their lives, but I can tell you that he
began to pray for his daughter going to the University of Alberta, and
the Lord said to Henry, quit praying for your daughter's safety and for
her to have a good year until you go back to the university where you
cheated on that last term paper for your final exam and for your
diploma. Who was he? An administrator in the education department in the
city. One of the leading educators of the city.

Now God gets a hold of him saying, when are you going to go back and
make that right? Quit praying for your daughter. And he went and made it
right with the university. What about those who had stolen goods from
Ornita Stainless Steel Company on the job? How to make it right? A man
writes a letter to the Prime Minister of Canada, dear sir, you better
fix up some kind of a conscience fund because there are going to be lots
of Christians in western Canada who are going to be sending you money
that they cheated the government.

I can tell you when God goes to working like that, you better believe
the eyes of God, the eyes of the world will be turned on God. Now it's
no more business as usual, no more playing games. The pastor of that
church, the largest church, Walter Bolt, when we went to it, when God
got a hold of his heart, he said the most devastating thing about
revival was to be honest enough with myself to admit that there was only
one thing that was causing my cup of joy to spring a leak, and that was
sin.

Well, what was sin? Sin of the pride that he did not need any of his
other brethren in the ministry in that city. He had the biggest church,
he had the wealthy people, he had everything he needed, and God broke
his heart about his lovelessness for the brethren in the ministry, and
one day he called as many of the pastors and their wives to a home of
one of his parishioners, and there we started in at 9 o'clock in the
morning, and he asked all those brethren for forgiveness, and I can tell
you what started at 9 o'clock ended at 4.30 in the afternoon, just
enough time for us to get ready and go back to the next evening service,
and during that day all kinds of things happened. One pastor after
another making things right, one with another.

One wife, one pastor's wife, she said here I am in Saskatchewan, I'm
used to being out in British Columbia with the beautiful trees and the
hills and the mountains and the water and the ocean and all the rest of
it, and here I am in Saskatchewan, and here nothing like that, and here
I'm in a basement suite, we live in a basement suite, and a small
congregation, and the winters of Saskatchewan and all the rest of it,
and she went on like that. She said I read a book when I became a
pastor's wife, How to Be a Pastor's Wife and Love It. She said I've been
a pastor's wife for three years, and I can write a book, How to Be a
Pastor's Wife and Hate It, and God broke her heart, and that couple was
melted before God and restored in ministry, one thing after another
taking place like that.

It was amazing to begin to see how God was at work. Well, churches were
cleansed. One pastor said to another, he said I wonder what this church
would look like if at any given Sunday God Almighty would take the lid
off of my congregation, and this was a church close to a thousand
people.

If God would take the lid off of this congregation, I wonder what it
would look like to God, to a holy God, to a pure God, absolutely pure
God. Another pastor said I have the idea that if that happened in my
church, it would probably look like hell itself to a holy God. Well, we
found ourselves there on a Sunday morning.

The service began at quarter to eleven, only to find that the meeting
ended at quarter to four in the afternoon. Did we preach that long? No.
No.

The message was preached. God Almighty came on the scene. God began to
break people's hearts, all kinds of people across the congregation
making things right one with another.

We gave four invitations for people to go to a place of prayer. Some
people left. They left to go to the restaurant at twelve, twelve-thirty.

They had to beat the Pentecostals to the restaurant, and so they were
there. They left. Guess what? They went home, and they get phone calls
from the church.

Please come. Come on back. Come on back.

Come on. The service is still going on, and by the way, come on back.
I've got to talk to you.

Why? They've got to make something right. The pastor sat on the
platform. All kinds of people coming up to him.

He sat there. They were making things right, one with another, with the
pastor, right on the platform. Quarter to four.

The following Sunday, we're in the same church, and guess what? The
service ended at quarter to two in the afternoon. You know what the
pastor said? We're getting cleaner. We're getting cleaner.

God cleansing his church. Does revival affect church boards? Absolutely.
There's a church board in Eastern Canada, when God worked in their
hearts and lives.

You know what they said? We used to spend the first two hours. No, no,
no. No, no.

We spent the first ten minutes with a devotional. Get that out of the
way, and then just get on with the business. And then the rest of the
night, fussing and fuming over what needs to be settled, and go home
close to midnight with our stomachs churning.

Now they're telling other church boards, now it's changed. Now we spend
the first hour and a half or two hours on our knees, praying for each
other, ministering to each other, bearing each other's burdens, praying
about the decisions that we need to make for the church. And then get up
off our knees and spend the last hour doing the business, going home
with all kinds of things confirmed, settled, and peace in our hearts to
know that we've heard from God and we've responded to God in such a way.

A district superintendent of that district, over 170 churches, of 70
churches in that district, a year and a half after the revival meetings
took place, he said to us one day, he said, fellas, you need to know
that in a year and a half after revival meetings, I as a Sunday school,
as a superintendent, have not been called out on one troubleshooting
assignment in any one of my 70 churches. Not one in a year and a half. I
said to him, are you trying to say to me that in a year and a half no
church has had any problems? He said, no, I didn't say that.

He said, I as a superintendent have not been called out on a
troubleshooting assignment in a year and a half. And then he made a
statement I've never forgotten. He said, I said, he said, tell me, what
are you, what are you trying to say? He said, because revival taught
church leaders how to solve their problems with knee pads on instead of
with boxing gloves on.

Pray through your problems instead of fighting. Revival made the
difference. That district in the denomination the next year reported 119
percent increase in conversions.

And it was a district that was considered one of the lowest as far as
conversions was concerned. And it was by far much larger than any other
district in both Canada and the United States in conversions as a result
of revival. I can tell you missions affect, oh, let me get back to the
city of Saskatoon and church growth.

Henry Blackaby was pastor of the church at the time. He had been praying
with Bill McLeod for a number of years for revival. He was pastor of the
Southern Baptist Church, a small work at the time.

And he was there for the meetings. And I can tell you that he personally
was impacted directly to what was taking place. I met him there in his
office one day.

In fact, he was very much behind the scenes during this whole time. But
God was doing a powerful work in his life and in his heart. And it's
wonderful to see that happen.

And then I can tell you that if he were here right now standing on this
platform, which he was in April, in March of this year, in front of the
35th year anniversary celebration in his own city, he would tell you
that revival absolutely revolutionized his ministry. The church, he
started about 10 churches. For 10 solid years after, he'll tell you the
results of what happened.

University students were impacted. Ten other churches were started in
the area. And then he starts talking about how revival changed his
family, changed his ministry, changed his writings.

And he said, you realize that Experiencing God was produced in 1998. He
said, that's all a direct result of what happened here in revival in
1971 that changed my life. In fact, I interviewed him on the platform
that night and it was marvelous and the words right out of his mouth, he
said, I guess I would have to say that my whole DNA for life has been
changed as a result of revival.

So when you think of the ministry God has given that man worldwide, just
remember God Almighty got a hold of a pastor in a simple little church
in Saskatoon and touched his heart and ignited him at a level that he's
never been the same and he's not afraid to say it. So who are we? Where
are we? What does God want to do in any of our hearts, any of our lives?
I can tell you what happened to other people and missions. Winnipeg, the
city of Winnipeg alone, where Bill McLeod and another pastor had the
crusade, Lou and I were not even there.

That was the beauty of what was happening in revival. It didn't matter
who was preaching. God was on the scene.

Things were happening. It is known that out of that one crusade alone,
there are at least 30 people in full-time Christian service. People say,
how does revival affect world evangelism? I'm telling you right now.

There was a mission station where in Africa, four couples were on the
same mission station, did not know each other, only to find that all
four of them were the direct result of meeting God in the Canadian
revival. A pastor wrote me. He said, you'll be interested to know that
today in my church, I had a guest speaker in the morning and then a
guest speaker at night, two different speakers.

They not knowing each other, the morning speaker said, I am here to say
to you that I was saved as a result of the revival that took place in
Saskatoon and now here I am in the ministry. The night comes to a
nighttime meeting and the man gets up and says, I was saved as a result
of a revival and here I am now in the ministry. How does revival affect
the world? A youth pastor, well, I could say a man who was in the youth
group in the city of Regina, he's now a pastor in Egypt, said to me that
out of the 35 young people in his youth group, 75% of that youth group
now in full-time Christian service as a direct result of revival.

I can tell you that the Bible colleges reported a vast increase in
enrollment of students wanting to come to study and the registrars would
tell me that on the applications, they would find this kind of a
statement, I'm coming as a result of the change that has taken place in
my parents' lives and now our family has been changed and now I want to
study for God as well. I can tell you that the tract societies reported
such a tremendous increase in the giving for printing of gospel tracts.
I can tell you that Bible colleges not only increased by way of numbers,
but the dynamics that began to flow out of that have affected the entire
world.

In fact, in the Canadian Revival Fellowship, which was born out of the
revival, we have several people who were Bible college students at that
time who are now involved in full-time revival ministry. It's wonderful
to see what happens when God excites people about the things of God. Oh,
that men would praise the Lord for his wondrous works among the children
of men.

This is a moment, this is an hour of remembering that in our lifetime,
in our day, God can do it. Have any of you ever heard of the name of Dr.
Sherwood Wirth, former editor of Decision Magazine? Just keep that in
mind for a moment and I want to say something about it. Here's the
definition of revival.

When God's people come out of their bondages to be able to fulfill the
Great Commission. That's it. Out of our bondages to be able to fulfill
the Great Commission.

It is said of Jonathan Goforth, comments of the heathen where he worked,
the heathen would say when the revival broke out in Jonathan Goforth's
life, the heathen would say, their God has come, their God has come.
They would say, well we've heard about their God, but now their God has
come, their God has come, their God has come. What to God that America
would start talking like that.

That our God has come. A pastor in Iowa during the Easter season, we
happened to be there for meetings at the time, he wrote something in his
church bulletin that to me is very profound. Listen.

Revival is resurrection power at work in us. Resurrection power at work
in us. Transforming the deadness of our sinful selves into the beauty of
the resurrected Christ.

When people see him living in us, then they will be able to respond to
our testimony, he is risen, he is risen, and with a bold affirmation we
can say he's risen indeed, he's risen indeed in our lives, he's risen.
Well, Leonard Ravenhill, we've heard that name mentioned, have we not?
Well, I can tell you that during these days, Leonard Ravenhill wrote us
a letter, and in the midst of his letter he said, thank God for what he
had heard, what was happening, but listen to what he said. The answer,
oh here's what, amidst the tragedy of this hour, and he talks about
Watergate, the oil crisis, unfinished war in Vietnam, many things,
trickery, political schemes, and so on, so on, but he said amidst this
all, all this satanic deception, there is one supreme tragedy.

What is it, Leonard? And in big, bold print, a sick church in a dying
world. And he goes on, the answer is a revival of holiness amongst the
people of God. I know that some snicker at the deeper life teaching, but
there is a deeper life.

This is Leonard Ravenhill. There is a deeper life. It is as deep as
Gethsemane, and as costly as Calvary.

That's it. That's not playing games with God. And then he ends his
letter to us with a statement that is on his tombstone in Louisiana,
epitaph on his tombstone.

It is, think you that the thing most Christians are living for are worth
Christ dying for? Repeat, think you that the thing most Christians live
for are worth Christ dying for? And then he signed it, yours for
revival, God's way, Leonard Ravenhill. Well, let me just tie this
together. My problem is to try to tie such a happening together in a
short hour.

What have I learned? There's nothing more important than times of
refreshing in hours of God's visitation. Our agendas must be set aside
when God wants to visit us in a special way. And some of us are not
ready to set our agendas aside, and that could be one of the biggest
hindrances to revival.

I've learned that we cannot put God into our mold or into a box. He will
break out in some unexpected way and place. It is his work, not ours.

I've learned that the Spirit of God needs very little help in convicting
people of sin in times of revival. You see, that verse says, in the hour
of God's power, his people are willing. And what we strive to see happen
with conviction, when God goes to work and we pay the price for a holy
ghost revival, then what's the willingness? One pastor said to me, I
never thought I would live long enough to see the day where the people
in the church are saying, Pastor, I can hardly wait for God to show me
something else that needs to be made right.

I'm having such a good time making things right with others. I can
hardly wait for God to show me something else. He said, those are the
same people that before revival would do everything to try to hide and
cover their sin.

You see, in the hour of God's power, the Holy Spirit doesn't need much
help in bringing conviction. I've learned that God cannot do his work
and live his life through us until he strips us of all our reliance on
human resources. As long as we can depend on our human resources, we
have the know-how, the ability.

God has to strip us of that if he's going to do his work. God does not
call the equipped, but he quits those he calls. So don't try to make
ourselves anything other than what God has made us to be.

And you know what that is? 1 Corinthians 1. God loves to use the weak
things. Aren't you glad? That's what gives my brother a chance. And
that's what gives his brother a chance.

And everybody said, you didn't have to say it so loud. Why did I say
that? Because when one newspaper reporter, a Christian periodical,
reported what was happening, four or five pages worth, and somebody
brought us the article, look at this, and one paragraph said, the music,
trying to describe what was happening in the revival, the music was
below par. And it was.

We had Dr. Virgil Brock was our song leader. You know who he was, the
man who wrote the song Beyond the Sunset, and many other gospel songs.
But he was 83 years of age.

He had a natural vibrato in his voice. You were never sure which note he
was on. So the music was below par.

It was. And then it went on to say, and the preaching was below par. Oh,
now they went to meddling.

And went to say, in both content and delivery. Now what's left? And I've
got to get this in. I've got to get this in.

My brother was doing most of the preaching at that time. And there's a
reason why. There's a reason why I had to tell you that.

Here's why. Because when I looked at that article, I thought, I'm going
to have fun with my brother on this one. And I said, Lou, look what they
said about your preaching.

Look what they said. And I'll never forget. His eyes just began to
sparkle, a great big smile, and he bursted out, Amen! Praise the Lord!
Why? Because the rest of the sentence said, but one could not escape the
fact that God was at work with his people.

And when he said that, he said, Amen! Praise the Lord! It's about time
something happens that nobody can get credit for it but God! 1
Corinthians 1. Why did God choose the weak? So that if anything good
happens, no flesh could glory in his presence. So that all the glory
goes to God. I've learned that you can be too big for God to use, but
you can never be too small for him to use.

That's wonderful, isn't it? I've learned that revival must always be
revived. It's not a once and for all, pure all, forever ill in the body
of Christ. Does not your Bible say, Wilt thou not revive us? When? Next
word, what? Again.

The revival needs it again. There was a church where a revival broke out
a number of years ago, and a visiting speaker was there. This is a true
story.

And he said, Where are the people who were here 25 years ago when
revival broke out in this church? And the hands went up. Guess where
they were? The last three rows of the church. Last three rows.

And the pastor said to the visiting speaker after, he said, Do you want
to know where my problems are in this church? He said, The last three
rows. They've had their revival. My brother says it this way, Brother,
if you've had your revival, you've had it.

You've had it. They've had their revival. He said, You want to know
where the life is in this church? First three, four, five rows.

These new believers, these that are hungry for God, those are the ones
that sit and soak and sour and will hope that everybody else will
sweeten up and take care of them. Had their revival. Revivals need to be
revived.

And there are times of refreshing. There are cycles, times of refreshing
from the presence of the Lord. So if I could tie it all together,
personal revival summed up in the commands of Jesus.

To love the Lord your God with your whole heart and with your whole soul
and with your mind and to love your neighbor as yourself, the first and
great commandment and the second like unto it. The essence of revival,
falling in love with Jesus. And Dr. Sherwood Wirt, the editor of
Decision Magazine, when he talked to Leonard Ravenhill, he said,
Leonard, I've heard that a revival is broken out in Canada.

What should I do? And Leonard Ravenhill said to him, Woody, Woody, get
on the next plane. Get up there as fast as you can. By the time he got
up there, the meetings were in the city of Winnipeg where the two
pastors were holding the meetings.

And he saw they were having afterglows where people were meeting God
after the service. And he saw a bearded engineer and his wife whose
marriage was changed. And by the way, got involved in revival ministry.

He now is in heaven. She's still going on beautifully with God. And when
he saw these people meeting God, he said to this couple, would you come
down to Minneapolis and I'll get some of the Billy Graham people and
some other people in Minneapolis together and let's have what we call an
afterglow where we sit in a circle, put a chair in the middle and
anybody has a need, just kind of share your need and we'll pray for you.

And that's what God was using in that revival in Canada. And so he did
that. So this engineer and his wife go to Minneapolis and Sherwood Wirt
says to the group there, said these folks are here and they've come to
pray with people.

Now who has a need? Come and sit in the chair and they'll be glad to
pray with you. And Sherwood Wirt says nobody moved. Here I brought them.

And he says, well, maybe I ought to start. So he says, I'll go. After
all, a little prayer won't hurt.

Sherwood Wirt says. And so he kneels at that chair and he talks about
this bearded engineer from Winnipeg who says, let me just read it to you
out of the book called Afterglow that's out of print. Too bad it's out
of print.

A blow by blow account, how a revival transformed the life, the
ministry, the marriage of the editor of Decision Magazine. He said this,
soon hands were being laid on my shoulders, my head. People were
kneeling alongside me and praying for me.

Then my turn came to pray and I did fervently, eloquently and I thought
adequately. I asked God to help me be this and help me do that. I
finished and tried to get up, but the hands held me down.

Then I heard Harry, that's the engineer, Harry's voice said, ask God to
crucify you. He's talking to the editor of Decision Magazine. And he
says, crucify me? I wasn't even sure the idea was theologically sound.

To do what, I said? Crucify you, nail you to the cross, he replied.
Well, he had me, this bearded civil engineer from Manitoba. What could I
do? I did as directed.

Now, ask God to fill you with his spirit and thank him for it. I
swallowed and obeyed. Someone started a course and they let me go.

I went back to my seat, considerably subdued, feeling awkward and
foolish. Evelyn, this man's wife, smiled in my direction. You probably
don't have much of a sensation of blessing now, she said.

Don't worry, the feeling will come later. And how? She was right, it
came and it has never left. And here's the story of the transformation
of the life of the editor of Decision Magazine.

For Revival. Now, why have I said that to you? So I can read to you, let
you read some of the words of his testimony as I close. Here it is, and
word to God, some of us would begin to see ourselves the same way.

Here it is. Revival met my need and forced me to reorder my priorities.
It was exasperating to spend many years trying to change other people
and then discover that God wanted to change me.

The impact I had hoped to leave on my world was nothing to the impact
the Holy Spirit made on me. He sent me back to square one. Instead of
talking and writing about the cross, I was nailed to it.

Instead of taking up the problems of humanity and trying to unravel
them, I faced up to my own. Instead of urging others to be unselfish, I
was emptied of self. And instead of going through life spiritually
dehydrated, I fell into a vat full of love.

Amen. Amen. Let's pray.

Lord God, I pray thou will make us so sick and tired of business as
usual. Thou will make us candidates for such a moving of the Holy Spirit
that we will pay any and every price to be thoroughly right with the
King of Glory. Whatever it may be, O God, deliver us.

Whether it's our agendas, whether it's some secret sin, whether it's
broken relationships, whether it's professional jealousy, whether it's
denominational pride, whatever it may be, O God, set us free so that the
Spirit of the living God can move in genuine revival to do things that
cannot be described in human terms. That the world will say, we've never
seen it on this fashion before. When the Holy Spirit comes upon us in
such a way that all the charms of the world will be broken, even among
our young people.

Have your way. Spirit of the living God, fall fresh on us. Have your
way.

Have your way. Spirit of the living God, fall fresh on us. Spirit of the
living God, fall fresh on us.

Break me, melt me, mold me, fill me. Spirit of the living God, fall
fresh. Thou art the potter, I am the clay.

Mold me, make me after thy will. While I am waiting, yielded and still,
Lord God, quiet our spirits. Have your way.

May we make that full surrender to your Lordship today. We'll give you
the praise, the glory. You're worthy of it.

We long for you to have it. Do what no man can do. We are not interested
in what man can produce.

We long for a moving of the Spirit of God so that the world can see a
demonstration of divine love such as never before. Have your way. Praise
you.

Give you the glory. In Christ's name we ask it. For his sake and all of
God's people said, Amen.

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Video: https://sermonindex2.b-cdn.net/GzJ9oeOj0ts.mp4
Source: https://sermonindex.net/speakers/ralph-sutera/the-canadian-revival-story/
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