Revival Conference 2007 - Ralph Sutera - Part 1

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, and I'm ten minutes smarter than he is, so we're together. We are now in our 55th year of ministry together. That's a miracle in itself to put up with a twin brother for that long in ministry, and 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 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 Denny 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, 75 years ago, 30 years ago, but not too much what the Lord is doing now. And 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 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 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 man 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. 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, 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 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 a revival meeting, three pastors discussed their 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.