JUST THINK ABOUT THAT for a second. Are you ready for revival? Are you ready for God to show up in a way you are completely unfamiliar with, and change things around in a way you probably don’t want? The problem with God showing up in such a manifest way that we call it “revival” is that He will not tolerate your pride.
I pray for revival near daily. But I tremble when I do. I ask God to set me in my place, knowing that it will be an uncomfortable ride. I’m asking for it, but I am afraid for when it comes. I don’t think you or I are ready for revival.
One of IHOP’s banner promises is that when we reach 500 staff-members (presumably full-time), we will go to 5,000 overnight. Off the top of my head, that means a few things that will make me very uncomfortable:
- No available parking spots
- Someone is in the bathroom, again
- Someone else is always in my favorite chair
- I haven’t had a table-spot in 6 months…
- Who’s the new guy and why is his blog now the most talked about site?
Revival has been so romantisized that we are ignorant of the real life human dynamics of it. This is where the love chapter comes in. First Corinthians 13 - It’s all in context to ministry and life in the church. God wants us to love eachother well and to deffer to one another while He endues us with power to heal, preach, teach, prophesy, evangelize and blog. (Or wordcast, or publish to a webjournal, or whatever. It’s really not that horrible of a word.)
The seed of massive global revival is cracked, and the roots are beginning to sprout. You and I have an incredibly short time to get ready. You don’t know when the “suddenly of God” that is planned for your life will happen. All you know is that your time to get intimacy and personal relationship with God is getting shorter by the minute. Seriously.
When your life season changes do you already have the vision to stay focused? I mean right now. Do you have a plan to keep your heart alive in God through ups and downs? If you were to get kicked off your worship team next week what would your prayer life look like? Would you bad mouth your worship leader? Would you get depressed and wonder why God hated you?
You have to plan ahead for meekness. You have to expect that hard times are coming. Promotion and demotion: They’re both hard to respond rightly to. Pride and bitterness both come from the same apple. Your hope to stay steady and be in love with Jesus after the dust settles is to plan ahead now; and you do that by asking God to help you. Asking Him to give you grace.
Julia said:
Excellent post. I especially convicted by :
“Pride and bitterness both come from the same apple.”
Posted on February 20, 2007 at 11:22 pm
Hollie said:
Fantastic post. I especially like the bit about loving well sine love has been highlighted to me off and on for about the last year, and love at the end of the age in the last couple of days.
I’m with you, Shawn, revival is another one of those things that I pray for, long for, and fear.
Posted on February 21, 2007 at 8:20 am
Shawn said:
@ Julia: Yeah. That is a pretty neat sentance.
@ Hollie: Especially after yesterdays meeting with the GodTV people, and the realization that we are closer to breakthrough than we may think, I am feeling the fear of the Lord. We all have such a short time to get intimacy with God.
I am thankful that at least we know we have a short time.
Posted on February 21, 2007 at 8:29 am
Theresa said:
Yes, I have actually thought about this and been in on discussions about it. Revival will be inconvenient for us. It might require us to disciple people, have them over to our homes, invest in their lives. It will mean I might not get my spot at church, or horror of horrors, someone might encroach on my dancing spot. I have talked to people that have experienced “renewal” and they say it can be messy, but the miracles and fruit is so wonderful.
Posted on February 21, 2007 at 10:23 am
Shawn said:
@ Theresa: I’m glad you ended with those last words: “the Miracles and fruit is so wonderful.”
I don’t want to convey the idea that revival is just a big bummer that we’ll have to grit our teeth for. But rather it is the will of the Lord. It is a chance for us to love others well, to step into deeper measures of our giftings and to partner with Jesus.
The messy part is that it reveals our un-perceived selfish ambitions.
Posted on February 21, 2007 at 12:56 pm
JoAnna said:
Interesting thoughts. I have long been aware that when God moves, people in general don’t like it… I was seriously praying for a manifest of His presence and then had the priveledge to sit in the IHOP prayer room one Saturday (I live in NWA) and heard Misty Edwards singing about God moving and revival, but then switched and was prophetically singing from the voice of the Lord that we think He is like man, but He’s not. He is God and we are not ready. She switched again and changed her song to … (in essence) then make us ready. That opened my eyes and my prayer changed too. It is interesting to think purely of the human aspects on this… I loved your “if you were kicked off of the worship team…” wow. I must confess that there really are days that I long to be with Him for hours but can’t seem to accomplish a few minutes and then I have to sing and am like… “oh shoot! I’m not ready” and sit down to cram.. like its an exam or something. Yuck. I hate it when its like that, but your sentence struck me. Hard. Some days all I do is ‘cram’. Would I be doing even that if I didn’t have to? Yikes. Thank you.
This is a rediculously long post already, so why not continue? God has brought me through quite the process in the last year. It has been hard. Really hard, but soooo worth it!! I have always been a ‘worshipper’ and longed for His presence, but I am amazed at the intimacy He both gives and desires. Now, He keeps putting people smack in the way of my life that need to know what He has revealed, but I don’t know how to share. I can do the long-term, friendship dicsipleship stuff where they watch me and I tell them stuff as it comes up, but what about the other kind? How do I make His unending love real to little kids? How do you make it real to teenagers when you aren’t allowed the time it takes? What about men? Women are obviously easier… All of this drives me to pray, and pray, and pray, but then I am overwhelmed by the need, especially now that I see the huge difference between someone that is ’saved’ and another that chooses to be a worshipper and RUN after the heart of Jesus. Anytime you want to post on this stuff.. or show me some resources that would be very great!
What a tangent… anyway, thank you!
Posted on February 21, 2007 at 6:22 pm
Shawn said:
@ JoAnna: Thanks for your comment. Your tension of being a mentor to people that you’re un-sure of how to is a great question to be asking.
I think one area that we can touch is our speech. 1 Corinthians 14:3 says that prophecy is for encouragement, edification and comfort. If we will guard our tongue and speek encouraging things to others, we may be prophesying on accident.
Look for opportunities to speak one or two little phrases of truth and encouragement. Who knows?…it might be an arrow from the Lord to their heart.
Posted on February 21, 2007 at 11:14 pm
steve offutt said:
man I’ve been chewing over this same question about revival and our prophetic history this week in light of what Paul says in 1 Cor 9 about knowing the race we are running. i.e. - laying foundations NOW!
Posted on February 23, 2007 at 3:18 am
JoAnna said:
Thanks, Shawn! Sometimes the simplest answers are the most profound. You are right. God can do more in 30 seconds than I can do in a well planned lifetime.
Posted on February 23, 2007 at 6:36 am