Warm Hearts Wet Eyes Revival

Years ago, a big Baptist church interviewed individuals to lead a three-day youth camp retreat in a neighboring state. They needed two hand-picked men to teach this retreat, which was geared for the college-aged kids of this church. Myself and another man were eventually chosen to lead the retreat.

When we received the news, we asked the staff minister of this church why he had selected us over the other qualified candidates. He said, When you two guys were praying over this decision, I was near you, and I heard your warm hearts for these kids, and then I looked down and noticed the floor was wet from your tears. What that staff minister saw in us was the fruit of a personal revival that each of us had passed through.

It was the Spirit of God on us that gave us warm hearts and wet eyes. If you get around someone who has emerged from a personal revival, you will feel their heat and sense their zeal and know their purpose. It was said of the young George Whitefield that he was a man intoxicated with Christ.

I like that. Intoxicated with Christ. Let me ask you, friend.

Are you intoxicated with Christ? When I visit churches, I can always tell if they are far away from God and in need of revival. In Psalm 119.53, the psalmist declares, Horror hath taken hold upon me because of the wicked that forsake thy law. It is evidence that a church needs revival when there isn't much horror today among the members over the godlessness around them in society.

A certain apathy and indifference has settled over the cold church and it's easy to feel the icy blast from a worldly congregation that has no burden for the souls of men. Charles Finney once wrote, When there is a worldly spirit in the church, there is need of revival. The church is clearly backslidden when Christians conform to the world in dress and attitudes, seeking worldly entertainment.

It shows they are far from God and need awakening. It's like when the prophet Jonah was on the run from the Lord and he boarded a ship to Tarshish down near Spain, which was as far away as a Jew could get in those days from Israel. And we read the remarkable account of this in Jonah chapter 1 and in verses 4 through 5, which state, But the Lord sent out a great wind into the sea, and there was a mighty tempest in the sea, so that the ship was like to be broken.

But Jonah was gone down into the sides of the ship, and he lay and was fast asleep. Here, in this incredible scene, we find a backslidden man of God, sound asleep, oblivious to the danger around him. The fierceness of the increasing storm is about to sink the ship, but he is indifferent to it.

Sin rages in society all around us, and we feel no horror from it, because we are spiritually numb toward it. We are indifferent to the lost and perishing. So long and apathetic to the spread of the gospel, we choose to spend five dollars on a Starbucks to indulge ourselves, but we refuse to send money to Africa for Bible translation work.

The modern church sleeps the sleep of death on the pillows of conformity and compromise. In 1740, when God moved through New England, it was called the Great Awakening. Revival has often been referred to as an awakening.

At Gethsemane, Jesus faced the crisis point of his earthly ministry, and his disciples slept right through it. Today, the church is in a crisis point, and we are sleeping right through it. What we need today is, instead of professionalism, we need brokenness before him.

Instead of pride backed by academic degrees, we need humility upon our knees. Instead of dry sermons, we need heart cries from warm hearts. Instead of memorized prayers, we need tears that make the floor wet beneath us.

In our church today, we have a theology of God, but no living consciousness of its reality and power, self, has taken the helms of the typical church and run her aground with human methods. But what we lack is the presence of the Almighty in our midst. Only revival can restore things to a higher plane, for when self vacates the throne, then Christ can be preeminent once again in our sanctuaries and prominent in our holy lives.

I like what Vance Hefner said along these lines. He said, Everyone seems to be holding revival. It's about time someone let loose of one.