Revival Conference 2007 - Don Courville - Part 2

But he came in, John came in with the Evangelists the first week, the very first day, I think it was, when the deacons got saved. Missionaries came off the Indian Reservation, off the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. God began to work on their hearts, tune them up, drip them inside. It was an anointed time from the Word. As a matter of fact, I've listed some things, about 13, 14 things, at this revival about it. But there was anointed preaching, there was the anointing of the Holy Spirit present, it had been prepared by prayer. I doubt we really see anything happen of any significance without prayer. So what happened, eight days there, God's work, wow, powerful. People getting saved, getting right with God, and then moved down our way about 36 miles away, entire church. Went 18 days in our church, this was April of 1985, 18 days in our church. I sat through 12 messages, and I remember I was over in this part of the church, God was working right from the very beginning, I was back in the back of the church when the invitations were given, directing people downstairs to go to the prayer room. I didn't even have enough of God in my life to go down and pray with Him. I was just, God, You've got to do something in my life. But after the 12th message, the Spirit of God hit me, I was over there, and He'd come along and He said, You bitter old rascal. He ripped me right open, and I saw God, and I broke, and I went down on my knees right there. And God answered my prayer, and He began to work in my heart, and He dealt with me with my bitterness. And of course, when these things happen, you've got to get up and tell the whole world. That was the second thing about it, anointed preaching, but anointed testimonies. And many times it was said that the flame of revival was the fame of what God was doing in lives, and they'd give testimonies. We'd start off at 7 and go to 10 o'clock at night, and just sometimes the testimonies would just carry things on. You'd hear a holler here, or you'd see somebody running across the room to get things right, because God was working. And so that's what went on for 18 days. And then it went on down the road to the third guy, he's really jumping up and down and hollering by this time, because he had it all organized, probably advertising the paper and all this. But the evangelist is in the process now of moving his family out. They've been close to a month, and he went over a month, and he's moved his family out. And this went on then spontaneously, two weeks in the third church, and then it went spontaneous for two years. The evangelist came back to our town, went south to my wife's home church, went down there for three weeks. Just God moved in. But God had those ranchers, this is Sand Hill country out in western Nebraska. God had those boys a-tensing out there, because it come June, haying season, the hay was one inch tall. Not that tall, but one inch with a drought. God had their attention, and he got a hold of those ranchers. That's why it was referred to many times as the Rancher's Revival by the evangelist. So God worked down there for three weeks, and I had to go to Louisiana and came back, and he moved back to town, moved into our house with his family and everything, and came back into another church, went into a Westland church. We were in just a little independent Baptist church, went into a Westland church. And then it just kept going like that. Ended up going over down into Kansas, northeast Kansas. Just the Spirit of God just carrying it like that. And God would work in such ways as I'd never seen anything like it. Now, that I would consider just the tip of the iceberg of what's happened in my life since then, it's just been phenomenal, just phenomenal. I feel sorry, you know, I don't look perfect, ask my wife and kids, whatever, but I know what to do with it, to stay there with God. Just talking with Harold, Don Kern a little bit ago, you know, I finally got it figured out with all these problems coming in things, I'm supposed to rejoice, give it to God and just rejoice, give thanks. God's in control. He's the great circumstance of life, as Hudson Taylor said, after he went through a trial. So it went from city to city, little town here, we've seen whole football teams get saved, bars get closed down. As a matter of fact, I jotted down some things here. Let me just go through it. There was conviction of sin. There was repentance of sin, restitution for sin. These are the basics of revival, testimonies given. Many were saved. Many said, it's like being born again and again, and John and I talked about that. We believe many of them probably just got saved the first time, because they never had such a great thing as this. But there was a lot of opposition. The enemy likes to get in and stick his nose in, see if he can get some attention. We learn, just glance, then keep your gaze on God when those things go on. He wants to get attention, and so there was lots of opposition. Right at the beginning, we'd have like three septic systems go out and these things. We learn the enemy tells on himself by the amount of opposition we get, so we shouldn't get excited. He'd just tell us, God's going to do something, and I'm going to distract you if I can. But we just go back to God and ask him to take care of the distractors. There was a lot of prayer. There was a lot of prayer. After God got a hold of my heart, then I didn't have to go pray. I wanted to go pray, and others, and the prayer continued on even several years after that. The pastors, some of the pastors, we'd keep getting together and praying. There was a lot of humbling, dealing with pride. I shared something with you earlier this morning. Not that I wanted to share it, but just so that you understand that's a good way to keep walking with God is to look for opportunities to humble ourselves, even if you're not sure. Go ahead and humble yourself. It's not going to hurt you. Spontaneous, continuous into the other churches. I just had jotted down some notes. I read a little booklet a couple days ago that I wrote on this revival, and I've got a few copies. If any of you would be desperate to have one, I don't pass these out anymore. It's called Revival of Ruin, so I went back over my own little story to see some things here. The evangelist sent this out all over the world, a whole bunch of countries, but it seemed to be anointed by God. I just sat down and wrote it in a short amount of time, I think maybe an hour or so, but I told the story of what happened there in this little thing, in this little booklet. There will be a few more details in it, but I'm going to tell most of it here, of just how God was able to come in and cleanse our hearts when we would finally get honest with God. As Harold was talking this morning, and Ralph, and Denny was talking last night, we have to do this. We just have to do this. Now, what happened in the church? That was an interesting thing. I mean, we had a little church and maybe seat 120 people packed back to the entry, to the vestibule. By the way, that thing was filled back to the door a couple of times. But after the revival was the most interesting thing. After the smoke all settled and dust got all down and everything settled back down to normal, so to say, it wasn't normal. We had three things we didn't have before. These three things, whatever it costs, you get them. We had purity, we had unity, and we had power. We didn't have but half as many people. How about that? You ever experience that? What happened? It got so real, those that didn't get revived couldn't stand to stay around there. So they left, and the rest of them, God moved them out. It was amazing. You got jobs to go here and there. And so here, God said, there's a humbling promise.