Revival: It's Costly

Revival Requires Purity

"Who shall ascend into the hill of the Lord? or who shall stand in his holy place? He that hath clean hands, and a pure heart; who hath not lifted up his soul unto vanity, nor sworn deceitfully. He shall receive the blessing from the Lord, and righteousness from the God of his salvation."

Psalm 24:3-5

Revival is a place where we have received the blessing.  We meet the qualifications God has set before us, receive the blessing, and then walk it out.  And to do this, we need clean hands and a pure heart.

Revival Requires Work

"Whoever does not carry his own cross and come after Me cannot be My disciple. For which one of you, when he wants to build a tower, does not first sit down and calculate the cost to see if he has enough to complete it? Otherwise, when he has laid a foundation and is not able to finish, all who observe it begin to ridicule him,…"

Luke 14:27-29

We need to realize that revival requires building a tower.  It requires work and effort, but more than that, it requires yielding to the Holy Spirit and His measure of faith.  It's empowerment by the Holy Spirit that gets the work done.  To be empowered by the Spirit and enjoy life in the Spirit, we need to experience death to ourselves.  That's the cost.  Every time we 'die', we are filled with His word, which is Spirit and Life (John 6:63).  Every time we die to ourselves, we receive a fresh anointing and a fresh empowerment.  And that's what gets the tower built.

Instructions for Revival:

"Always be joyful. Never stop praying. Be thankful in all circumstances, for this is God’s will for you who belong to Christ Jesus.

Do not stifle the Holy Spirit. Do not scoff at prophecies...."

1 Thessalonians 5:16-20



Revival Requires Prayer

Here we can receive insight into what gets revival started.  If we are always joyful, if we never stop praying, then we can expect the move of the Spirit to come.  We need to pray it through.  Then, we can expect the beginning of revival. And that's when it's important that we do not stifle Him.  We have to let Him do the work!



Revival Requires Humility

If the Holy Spirit is beginning something, we need to let Him carry it out.  We need to let Him speak and move through any vessel He chooses.  We can't despise the wisdom of another.  We can't despise a prophecy.  Pride and presumption will put an end to revival!  We need to be humble and let the Holy Spirit flow.  We need to speak up when God prompts us, and remain quiet when He doesn't. We need to acknowledge that others are seeing in part (1 Corinthians 13:9), just as we are.  We need to remember that others, too, have paid the price.  We need to remember that all of us are hungry for a move of God, hungry for revival!

There are conditions to revival.  Some may disagree with this, but I believe that there are conditions to meet before God's promises are fulfilled.  God's love is unconditional, but His blessings are not. We need to go up higher and receive the blessing from the Lord.  We need to contend for revival.  It will come if we really, really want it.

Snapshot: A Divine Exchange

Two mornings ago, God distinctly told me something in my quiet time:

"...It's a divine exchange; your flesh for My Love."

And this hit me.  I realized God wasn't saying I had to earn His Love--no, that was a free gift at salvation.  But I knew that in order to realize His Love again, I had to die to my fleshly desires.  I had to die to myself.  God's taken me to a place of warfare where He requires my drawing closer before He reveals Himself.  He's taken me to a place where I realize that He is so pure.  If I come to Him and want to abide in Him, I need to be pure, also.  So He told me that I needed to give up some things to live in an awareness of His Love.

"For if you live according to the flesh, you will die; but if by the Spirit you put to death the misdeeds of the body, you will live."  Romans 8:13

This is the exchange.  We give up our lives in order to find life.  But He allows us--by the Spirit, He helps us!  And again,

"For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will find it."  Matthew 16:25

Confirmed:  Later on that very same day (1/3/2015), I was reading a book by Bill Johnson --"The Supernatural Power of a Transformed Mind"--that I got for Christmas.  Below is the very last sentence in the book:

"Any price you pay in claiming territory for God is well worth the exchange."

He even bolded it!  The word "exchange" struck me, and I realized that this really went along with thw word God had just given me.  Let's claim the territory of God's Love, first, so that we can be taken onto greater heights and greater victories!

Experiencing and walking in God's Love is worth anything.  It is worth counting any cost for.  Is there an exchange that God's waiting on you to make?  If so, give Him that desire today.  Allow the Holy Spirit to put that thing to death.  Allow God to eliminate any distraction.  The rewards will be divine (Matthew 19:29).