Revival Conference 2007 - Richard Sipley - Part 5

I've been there all these years, and I'm just saying what is there, and when revival comes, God does some remarkable things with all that. In the Canadian Revival, families would go home after meeting God in a deep way, and they would take their deed for their house and their car keys and their bank book and everything and put it in the middle of the kitchen table to sit around with the kids and everybody and give it all to God. Well, that was like the New Testament church, wasn't it? Those that had property sold it and brought the money, made sure everybody was taken care of. The lust of the eyes. And then the desires, you know, of life, the pride of life. I don't know if you ever heard of Bud Robinson. He was a great holiness preacher of the past generation. He was taken by some friends to New York City and shown around the city. And that night in his prayers he said, Lord, I thank you for letting me see all the sights of New York, and I thank you most of all that I didn't see a thing that I wanted. Nothing. Isn't that wonderful? I didn't see anything I wanted. The pride of life, self-fulfillment, self-exaltation, preoccupation with myself. And that has taken over our society. And the thing that hurts me so much is I see so many of God's people, and they're truly born again, they're Christians, and they love the Lord, but I see their lives just being destroyed by all this psychological junk. I'm sorry, but no, I'm not either. This junk. But I tell you what, in revival we have seen people get their marriage totally straightened out in 30 minutes, and it would have taken years to get it straightened out in counseling, and even then it wouldn't be straightened out. In fact, with most of the counselors we have today, they advise them to get a divorce anyway. Self-fulfillment, finding myself. I don't really want to find myself. What I have already found out about myself upsets me. I never did really love sinners until God pulled back the lid and let me see myself. I got so sick to my stomach looking at myself, and I thought, if I'm that wicked, I ought to love other people who are wicked, who need Jesus. No, I don't want anybody to help me know more about myself. Whatever God shows me will be all I can handle. Paris Reid had a preacher a number of years ago. I was a young pastor when I heard him. He said he had a dream one night, and he dreamed that he had died and gone to heaven, and then he realized that Christ had come, and all the Christians were there. This was a great moment. He watched the Christians as they came one by one before Christ, and in front of Christ there was a brazier full of fire. And as each Christian would come before Christ, there would be an angel who would come with a bag, and they would put it in the hands of the Christian. And he suddenly knew this was their lifetime of service for Christ. And then he would point to the brazier, and they would set it on the brazier before Christ in the fire. And the flames would go up, and in some cases a big, huge bag. There would be nothing left but some ashes. And the Christian would stand there weeping uncontrollably in the presence of Christ. And then there would be some who maybe it wasn't even a big bag, and they'd put it in there, and the bag would go up in flames, and there were glitter and jewels and gold and silver. And he said it was finally his turn. And he had been a pastor for years and pastored some large churches and had all kinds of human success. And he was given a big, heavy bag, and he put it in the flames. And when the flames died down, there was almost nothing left. And he said he woke up, and his pillow was wet with his tears. And he realized that a great deal of what he was doing was for self and not for Christ. And you know, we're all going to stay there someday, right? Now, as I come closer to the end of this message, I have to deal with something in it that puzzled me for a long time. It says, Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. Now, watch. If any man loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. Now, I don't know how many times, it must be thousands that I had read or quoted that scripture and never noticed what it said. What I thought it said, or what it seemed to me like it said was, if any man loved the world, he doesn't love the Father. That isn't what it says. It's very interesting. And so, when I thought of it, you know, I went through my Greek and everything and studied it. Nope, it's just like it is. Nope, you can't change it. That's what it says. If any man loved the world, the love of the Father is not in him. What can motivate me? What can motivate me to be willing to give up the world and to be dead to it and to be done with it and to give my heart totally to my bridegroom, the Lord Jesus Christ? What can do it? Only the love of God the Father. Only the love of God the Father. I really puzzled over that. And I prayed about it and studied about it and said, What are you saying? And the Lord said, What I'm saying is that God's people need to ask God to show them the worldliness and sin and selfishness in their hearts to the point where they will appreciate the shed blood of Jesus and his cleansing and his salvation and the love of God the Father and fall in love with him all over again. He loves you. He loves you. God the Father loves you. Jesus said the Father himself loves you. He loves you. What a powerful motivation. You know, there are two prodigal sons, you know. Not one. There were two sons of the Father. And you see, what's fascinating about that story is that in Luke 15, beginning with verse 1, it says, Now the tax collectors and sinners, that's the bad guys, right? Did you go back to sleep again?