Revival starts with Us

It's been a while since my last blog entry. A few days after I wrote it my father passed away - unexpectedly and suddenly. Life has been challenging and intense since then. But in the midst of it all I sense God working mightily in me.

A few weeks ago God started to move on my heart in an unprecedented and unusual way. The hunger for revival, the hunger for his manifest presence in my life and in our church grew so strong that I couldn't shake it off anymore. In addition to that God sent confirmation through different sources and different people all across the spectrum of the Christian Church. One weekend I wasn't able to prepare my sermon that I had intended to preach. Hunger for God and conviction of my own sin gripped me so hard, I had to spend hours in prayer before God, seeking his face in tears and repenting of all known sin and my idols. Instead of preaching on the intended text of Acts 1, 1-8 I just gave a testimony of what God is doing in my life. Those of you who would like to hear about it can log on to www.nazarene.ie and listen to the sermons of the last couple of weeks. The importance of and the urgent need for repentance gripped my consciousness and penetrated my thinking. God is on the move. And he starts with us. After the service where I couldn't preach my intended sermon one of the members of my congregation forwarded to me the following email that she had received from Simon Guillebaud (A Christian Author whom God had used to speak to me):

I'm feeling very challenged of late, and the below hit me hard:

This man was born in a gypsy tent, of humble origins, and yet ended up being invited to the White House by two presidents. Rodney ‘Gypsy’ Smith came into the world in 1860 in Epping Forest, just outside London. Forty five times he crossed the Atlantic to preach the gospel to millions of people on both sides. His passion was almost unparalleled, and there was great fruit in what he did. What was his secret? Private prayer. His praying was even more powerful than his preaching.

A delegation once came to him to enquire how they might experience personal and mass revival as he had. They wanted to be used the way Gypsy was. Without hesitating, he said:

“Go home. Lock yourself in your room. Kneel down in the middle of the floor, and with a piece of chalk draw a circle round yourself. There, on your knees, pray fervently and brokenly that God would start a revival within that chalk circle.”

How badly do we want it?

SG

It is good to pray for revival in Ireland, or Germany, or Russia or the world. But the start of it is very personal: revival starts with us. I don't have a piece of chalk to draw a circle around myself, but there is a rug in my study that I often kneel on to pray. My intense prayer now, as I kneel on this rug, is  - Lord, send revival to this rug.