The Lion of Judah
In a previous article, I explained that Revival is the “re-viving” of a believer’s heart. It is God renewing the power of His life in you. But why do Christians need to be revived? What have we done to cause us to grow cold, and how can we know which areas of our lives need changing?
Sometimes we drift away from God gradually, so that over a period of time we are not aware of how our passion has cooled. Ask yourself this question: can 1 ever remember a time when 1 was more in love with God than 1 am now? If you can, then God wants to rekindle that fire in your heart. If you have grown cold in your affection towards God, then He needs to restore your first love.
We know if our love has grown cold if we are lazy in our obedience. God needs to revive us if we have grieved Him by our sin, however “great” or “small” it may be. Nothing less than a radical commitment to holy living is enough.
Peter writes: —For he who lacks these things is shortsighted, even to blindness, and has forgotten that he was cleansed from his old sins ” (2 Peter 1: 9). Christians who have begun to take their forgiveness for granted are, as Peter says, blind.
Daily Refreshing
When such a believer is revived, God reminds them of the punishment they would have suffered if they had not been saved. All of us need, on a daily basis, to refresh our praise and thanksgiving to God for what He has saved us from. Jesus said of the sinful woman who anointed him that she loved much, because she had been forgiven much. When you grasp what God has done for you, your passion for Christ will be restored.
Christians also need to be revived in their hunger for holiness. You are to hunger for purity for no other reason than we know it pleases God. Not for any sense of selfrighteousness, not for what it will bring you, but only because you want to see God more clearly.
We also need to be revived if we have allowed worldly lusts and fleshly desires to overtake us. And sometimes, it is things which are not wrong in themselves that have been allowed to take centre place in our lives. Money, relationships, success, jobs – all these things can become idols and distract us away from our true purpose for living. Don’t let the blessings take you away from the Blesser.