Acts 1:14 (KJV)
These all continued with one accord in prayer and supplication,
with the women, and Mary the mother of Jesus, and with his brethren.
How do we prepare for Revival? – Acts 1:14
I.
Introduction
I read a story about a Japanese emperor that, many centuries ago,
commissioned an artist to paint a bird. Many months passed, no painting. A year
passed. No painting. Several years passed, still no painting! The Emperor had
paid a great deal of money for this painting, and had been very patient in
waiting for it. He became so angry that he did not have his painting that he
called the artist to his court to demand an explanation. As the man came to the
court, he brought with him a great canvas, many papers, and art supplies. To
the Emperor’s surprise, over the next hour the artist painted a masterpiece of
birds on the wing. When the Emperor asked the delay, since it had only taken
one hour to complete this great work, the artist then pulled the papers out. He
showed the Emperor sketches of wings, feathers, beaks, heads, and bodies. Then
he explained that all of this research and study had been necessary before he
could complete the painting.
Now, that’s an entertaining story about something that may or may
not have happened, but the moral of the story, which goes to the heart of our
lesson today, is this: what are we doing as a church to prepare ourselves for
the coming revival? Are we studying the small things so that we are prepared to
make the great masterpiece? Let’s look at what the early church did to prepare
themselves for the coming revival.
II.
Spiritual
Preparation
So what was happening right after Jesus had ascended into Heaven?
That’s what starts out the book of Acts, and the church was trying to figure
out what to do. Now, this particular verse that we have just read is usually
used in conjunction with how we choose people to work within the church, and
how to prepare for that particularly. However, I want to draw our attention to
the fact that this was not just a time for the disciples to be thinking about
who to replace Judas, but also to prepare themselves for the promise of the
Holy Spirit that was coming down to them. As one author stated, this is a passage
where Luke gives a generalized review of what was happening within the church,
and that “the primary characteristic that marked their lives together in this
period was prayer, as they anticipated together the promised gift of the
spirit. Prayer was the hallmark of the church in its early days. There was no
effective witness without the Spirit, and the way to spiritual empowerment is
to wait in prayer.”
Something else we have to do before revival can happen as a
church is that we must get right with God personally. This goes beyond the type
of confession that we make to God in our personal lives. It acknowledges that
we have made mistakes, that we are under the punishment of sin without Him and
the saving grace of His son, and that we must confess those mistakes to the
Lord. I am certain that there have been many churches in the past that have
missed out on true revival because they were unable to confess their sins
personally to the Lord Most High. Ecclesiastes 7:9 says “be not quick in your
spirit to become angry, for anger lodges in the bosom of fools.” When we are
angry with one another, when we disagree, when we get to a point where we break
fellowship, or we cannot tolerate someone else because of our own pride or
because of our sinful nature, then we are missing out! And it takes confessing
to the Lord those sins.
III.
Prayer
– Habakkuk 1:5
The next step we take is prayer. We talked a little about this
last week in our personal preparations for revival. I won’t repreach all of
that, but remember that revival starts with the prayer of one person! But how
does that translate into the entirety of the church? Look at the book of
Habakkuk. This is one of those books of the Bible that’s of the minor prophets,
and sometimes is overlooked because it has a lot of history behind it, and it
can be hard to fully understand sometimes. Mostly what happens within the book
is that we see a prayer by Habakkuk praying to God for revival and God
responding to him. Furthermore, these prayers are done privately and publicly.
It is a joint effort to pray in private like we are instructed to do in so many
places in the Bible, but also in a public way, in a way that beseeches God. It
is never done in a way that is like in Matthew 6:5, where the hypocrites pray
in public so that they can receive their reward right then.
As we pray as a church, especially for revival, God wants us to
take certain steps to pray with one another. Look at James 5:16, which
instructs us to “therefore confess your sins to each other and pray for each
other so that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous person is powerful
and effective.” When we confess our sins to one another, we are able to
move into a place where we can ask as a group of believers for the will of God
to happen. Look then to Acts 2:42, which reads “they devoted themselves to
the apostles;’ teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to
prayer.” In other words, as a group of believers, the early church
confessed their sins to one another, ensuring harmony within the church. They
devoted themselves to the teaching of God’s word, ensuring that they knew what
they would be talking about. They devoted themselves to the teaching of God’s
word, ensuring that their knowledge would increase. They devoted themselves to
fellowship with other believers, so that they would ensure that there were
others that would stand with them as they faced the difficulties that Satan
would throw against them. They devoted themselves to the breaking of bread
together, which ensured that they were meeting the needs of those within the
congregation. And finally, in the most important spot, they dedicated
themselves to prayer, ensuring that they were listening to God’s will in their
lives through the Holy Spirit.
Before we move on from Habakkuk, I want us to look at the first
response that God gives back to the prophet in chapter 1, verse 5. When we have
done the things that we must devote ourselves to as a church, God makes a
promise to us. In verse 5, God says “Look at the nations and watch - and be
utterly amazed. For I am going to do something in your days that you would not
believe, even if you were told.” God will do things that will utterly amaze
us as a church! But we must devote ourselves, especially to prayer. And one
more time, how many people does it take to start a revival? Just one. But now
that we know how to spiritually and prayerfully prepare ourselves, how do we
make that jump as a church to the actual work? It’s simple: we make ourselves
available to God.
IV.
Make
Yourself Available to God
The first way that we make ourselves available to God is to
literally do JUST THAT. But it’s done by humbling ourselves. We mentioned this
a couple of weeks ago when we approach the throne of God for personal revival.
We cannot have revival in our lives personally, or as a church congregation
together, without first humbling ourselves before the throne of God. 1 Peter
5:6-7 says “humble yourself, therefore, under the mighty hand of God so that
at the proper time he may exalt you, casting all your anxieties on him, because
he cares for you.” When we humble ourselves, we are allowing ourselves to
be used in a way that will completely allow ourselves to bend to God’s
will.
But we are also to humble ourselves as a church. One of the things
that I did when I was preparing for this sermon was to write the word
“remember” on my notes. What I meant by this was to ask myself what was
different before in my life when I was experiencing personal revival? What were
the churches doing that I was at when we were having great revival happening
within the church? Was it some program? Or was it that we had submitted
ourselves completely and wholly to the will of God? And then I asked myself
this: what changed? How did it change? Did I, like the church in Laodicea, become
lukewarm? As I said last week, we must remember that God is the one who brought
us through hard times, and built us up. But we cannot dwell nor can we live in
that past. But we can remember that commitment that we made to God, not only as
a personal believer, but as a church!
What other ways do we make ourselves available to God? We repent. Just as we
saw in James 5:16, we repent. But this is done as a church as a whole. Have we
been prideful? Have we looked down our noses at other churches rather than to
try to lend a helping hand? Have we turned anyone away? I know of churches that
have done this to their own detriment. One particular one, which was Lithia
Heights Baptist in Lithia Springs, had been prideful and had been exclusive to
the point that it shut down. Instead of welcoming all people into the church to
worship, and to welcome especially those who had committed their lives to the
Lord fully into membership fellowship, they decided to start a mission where
‘those people’ could go. Because of that pride and that exclusivity that they
held, it would be less than 10 years after that mission was established that
the mission would buy out the old church building after Lithia Heights had
closed for good.
When we don’t give ourselves fully to God, we cannot expect
revival in our lives or in the church. If we haven’t given ourselves full to
God, then we are holding ourselves back. We are literally preventing the
revival that God promises us to keep from happening.
V.
Conclusion
Now, I know that this has not been a sermon to this point that
might feel very encouraging. Often the ones that seem that way are the ones
that are promising that we have lots of work to do. But I can promise you this:
God is working on our behalf always, and he wants to see revival happen in our
church in a way that will not only surprise us, but also make us believe the
unbelievable. One of the great quotes about a church is by William Temple, who
at the end of his life was the Archbishop of Canterbury in England. He said
that “the church is the only cooperative society in the world that exists for
the benefit of its non-members.” We are a place where those that are seeking
the way to the Cross will find it!
As I was reading this week, I came across a book titled “How to Have a Soul
Winning Church” by Gene Edwards. Edwards is one of the theologians who coined
the phrase ‘church building evangelism’. By this, he meant that most churches
think that just because people drive by the building, they will come to church.
Obviously, this is not a truism of any church, even the huge ones! If it were,
those churches and any that are on a road would have to constantly be building
new sanctuaries to accommodate the masses coming to church every Sunday! As
Edwards asks in his book, “are we asking too much of lost people to come to
church?” He then turns it around and asks us, the Christians reading the book
and sharing it, “is it too much to ask Christians to go out to the lost man?”
Edwards points out that churches that are committed to have true revival in
their church have two things in common: they do a few things exceptionally well
for programming, ensuring that they do not interfere with reaching people for
Christ, and they also ensure that the entire church congregation is visiting
and reaching out to those within the community for Christ. These soul-winning,
revival happening churches do not depend on just one or two people to carry
that full load, but they all participate in it!
He tells this story to confirm what he meant by these two points.
In 1900, a particular church was the largest in its city. But by 1959, it was
deserted and boarded up. For two years, there had not been a service in it. For
all intents and purposes, the church had died. This was a church that had
averaged 800 people coming to worship. But as these things tend to happen, what
had once been the premier area to live in began to degrade, becoming one of the
poorest places to live in that city. Many Hispanics moved into the area. The
denomination that this church belonged to was concerned that one of their most
famous churches was falling to pieces, and programs and various schemes were
used to try to bring it back to life. But nothing worked. But in 1959, a young
pastor came to the city with a call from God placed on his life. He found that
there were only seven members left in the church. He got those seven together,
and told them “I want to be your pastor; vote me in!” And sure enough, they
did!
The young pastor went to the Hispanic orphanage that was located
just down the street from the church and arranged for the children to come to
the church there on Sundays. When the pastor counted, there were 40 Hispanic
orphan children, seven members, and his family, making up 50 people. The church
would asked for and received training to win souls and to have true revival in
their church and in their community. It was a unique scene: a church built for
over a thousand worshippers, but only 10 people on the front pew getting
training on how to win souls, and praying with all their heart for God to bring
revival to their community and to their church.
Four Sundays later, that church had gone from being their usual 50
people to over 220. In a month! How did it happen? The houses were the same,
the people who lived there for years were the same. Revival had struck that
church in those four weeks, but there had been no evangelistic campaign. This
congregation had committed themselves to prayer, to reaching out to the lost of
their community, and to putting themselves right into the thick of the lives of
those who were lost. They depended on God to provide the harvest, and believed
that he would do it! Before the year was out, this church had won more
Hispanics to Jesus Christ than the rest of the churches combined in their city.
Now, that church could have looked back to see the greatness of
their past. But they had allowed pride, and they had allowed sinfulness towards
their neighbors to cloud the way forward for them as a church. It had nearly
killed them. But God had done something in their days that they would not have
believed even if they had been told. They were completely and utterly
amazed.
I’ve got to tell you, today’s sermon I hope will be a reminder to
you that we have a revival coming. I truly believe that! But we have to do the
work as a group to do that. I hope that you will take time this week to pray
for our church, pray for all the events that are upcoming, and that you will be
praying that God will make us emulate His son. Let’s pray.
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