Revival Conference Wales 2009

Aspirations and a hunger for revival can be little more than a sentimental dream. Of course, we'd love to see the gospel spreading powerfully across the world, with people coming to Christ, with churches growing, and a great move of Christian people in soul-winning activity. But we'd like to have it cheap, preferably at no cost at all. I myself am a product of revival, in that my great-grandfather and then my grandfather were converted in the Welsh Revival of 1904. My great-grandfather had no time for God, apparently, and was known as a drinker and a blasphemer. And one night, at the height of the Welsh Revival, he'd gone to his local public house, where he would mock the fact that people were crying out to God across the Principality of Wales and were making fools of themselves, as far as he was concerned. No one has any detailed record of what happened in the pub that night, other than God visited. And my great-grandfather, amongst others, was converted to Jesus Christ. He came home late. He woke up my great-grandmother. She thought he was drunk. He told her what had happened to him, which only confirmed to her that he must be drunk. But he woke the whole family up, including my grandfather, who was then in his early 20s. And within a few days, the whole family was converted to Jesus Christ. That is where the Gospel came into my own family, and I'm therefore a legacy of that great move of God, where 100,000 souls came to Christ in a 10-week period. But as in all revivals, there is a cost to God breaking out like that. There is the cost of true repentance, where sin is faced, it is confessed, it is put right where possible, and it's renounced. Often, we confess our sins for therapeutic purposes, so we may have the benefit of a clean conscience, only so often to go and soil it again. But true repentance is repentance towards God, and it's for God. Then there is the cost of full surrender, where Christ is indisputably Lord in the lives of those who mean business with him. Every part of life must be unconditionally surrendered to his Lordship. Then there is the cost of living in the fullness of God, where he becomes the sole source of our dependency, not on personalities, or on gifts, or on callings, but on God himself alone, so that his strength might be demonstrated in human weakness. Then there is the cost of prayer, intercession that gets hold of God and will not let him go until he has poured out his blessing. I so wish I could testify to all of this in my own life with a clear conscience. But may God grant that he bring each of us to this point ourselves. There is a sovereignty of God in revival, for he alone can draw people to himself. But there is also the cost of true consecration that must be faced by the believer who really does mean business. May God give to this current move of revival conferences, which I believe are from him, and may he give to them the spark that ignites and releases a new wave of true spiritual revival that exalts the Lord Jesus Christ and humbles the sinner and brings a move of God which will transform our world. Regular church life isn't doing it. We need true spiritual revival. May God, in his mercy, grant it to us, and may God bless you as you meet to consider these vital issues together.