Hi Everyone, I have included an excerpt from my first book "God's Heart Cry for Revival." This book has had quite an impact on many Christians around the world, and I pray that as you read it, you too will be impacted positively and seek Christ in a greater way.
INTRODUCTION
Imagine a scene. A Christian Church service has commenced and many of the Lord’s brothers and sisters are taking their place for the most important part of the meeting, the worship. Hands are raised and the spirits of those attending are being regenerated and revitalised by the Holy Spirit. It is an unusual day because as they are worshipping a sincerity and earnestness in prayer reverberates throughout the congregation. A supernatural expectation of a divine manifestation permeates the atmosphere. You see this congregation has been sincerely seeking hard after God for sometime now.
God in Heaven is alerted to this genuineness in prayer and worship. A smile appears on His face as He leans over and says to His Son, “Jesus, why don’t we visit this Church and community today, they seem to want us there.” What follows is extraordinary, Jesus authorises the Holy Spirit to pour out the tangible presence of His person.
Back on Earth a heaviness of the Holy Spirit settles upon the meeting. More and more of the Lord’s wonderful Spirit is poured into the building, so much so that He overflows and begins to flow out into the streets round about the Church, touching homes and lives of the unsaved. You see, when the God and Creator of the entire universe decides to manifest His presence with power in a place, a source of great potency pervades the atmosphere. No sinful or evil presence can occupy the affected area and all people come into the reality and conviction of God in all things. They begin to believe without a human word being spoken.
The atmosphere is divinely infused with His love, power and potential wrath. This revelation of a God of wrath causes unbelievers and believers alike to wail in repentance. Wrath is part of God’s nature; therefore to even begin to understand God, we must begin to understand that He is a God of wrath. We will then come into an understanding of the fear of God. The Bible says, “Who knows the power of your anger? For your wrath is as great as the fear that is due to you.” (Psalm 90:11) Even Jesus told us to fear God in Luke 12:5, “But I will show you whom you should fear: Fear Him who, after the killing of the body, has power to throw you into hell. Yes, I tell you, fear Him.” Psalm 19:9 says, “The fear of the Lord is pure, enduring forever.”
The musicians in the Church building crumble under the sheer weight of the almighty and cease playing. Saved souls cry out to the Lord for forgiveness, repenting of all sorts of secret sins as well as pleading with God for the souls of their families, friends and community. The unsaved scream out with pain and agony as they sense their souls slipping into hell under the conviction of the Holy Spirit. People are lying on the floor, drenching the carpet with tears, and others are receiving open visions and just sit there staring into space.
Without warning, the Holy Spirit anoints a minister to stand and speak His oracles. He climbs up to the pulpit and with a voice and authority more confident than any President, declares, “For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.” (Romans 6:23) With that there is loud audible wailing echoing through the auditorium. Believers and non-believers alike, rush towards the man of God in search of relief from the excessive conviction that is plaguing their souls.
The incredible thing about this revival is, God has broken out of the four walls of the Church building, and is moving powerfully in the community and there are people seeking help from the guilt and condemnation they feel from their realisation of sin. People are coming out of their houses, compelled to gather with neighbours, desperate to get relief from a burden they cannot explain nor understand. It does not stop there; other Churches are reporting similar outpourings and how their community has strangely become God conscious. Enquirers in the multitudes are pouring into the Church, begging for mercy from the living God who sees all. The beginning of a sovereign move of God has begun, in response to the heart cry for revival of His saints.
I don’t know if this sounds familiar to many of you reading this book, but to me, this is my dream and vision for the Church universal. Within this book I will endeavour to reveal to you how to stir the heart of God to bless us with a revival like the one described, and once we are blessed, how to secure it so that it will grow and intensify until it sweeps over the whole earth (Joel 2:28).
A true revival will usually begin in a number of individuals who are burdened excessively for souls. This burden then moves them to their knees and according to their earnestness in travailing prayer, stimulates God to bring a revival to the Church. As the Church is revived and alive in the presence of God, a community revival is then possible if the Church is obedient to the will of God. A true revival should never just be an in-house experience. You see, no building on Earth can contain the Living God of the universe, so if God starts pouring out His Spirit, the whole community will know about it and many will be saved.
Is revival God initiated? Yes, I believe it is, but I also believe He burdens certain people in the Body of Christ to pray and believe for one. Paul Billheimer said, “God does nothing but in answer to prayer.” So if you are burdened for souls and for revival in your city, this is a sign that God is initiating it. But how we respond to this burden is crucial to the outcome. Many Christians have been burdened for souls and for revival in the past but to no avail.
God and Jesus have been patiently waiting for their people to give up conducting Church their way. Their grace to us has been time to get it right. When our leaders and lay people realise that the Church is not about preaching, it’s not about the next big minister coming to town, it’s not about the activities or the Bible studies, but Church is about the presence of God, then and only then will we begin to conduct true Church services.
If all our efforts and energies are directed into Church organizations, then you can be sure that God is not in the house. Our job as a Church is to be a place in the community where people can come to have an encounter with God. Unbelievers are desperate for a real encounter with God and the Church, by and large, has failed to give them that consistently. This will change in the coming days of revelation and awakening.
In the last 100 years or so, God has been increasingly moving in modes of revival on our planet, in various places and at various times. But what the church should be looking towards is the last great move of God to come, as prophesied in Joel 2:28, the pouring out of the Holy Spirit on all flesh. Compared to the revivals of the past, this coming move promises to make all other moves seem like but a mild foretaste. We have to prepare the way for this most powerful move of God in the history of this planet.
Just like a hot water system that cannot flow gas into the burners that generate the hot water until the pilot light is turned on, we, as a Church, are the pilot light and we have to be lit up before our God can turn on the gas of His Holy Spirit and heat up this planet with waves of revival fire.
If you have ever had trouble lighting a pilot light that has gone out you will know that it can be an extremely frustrating process, especially if it is windy. Satan is desperately blowing out pilot lights around the world, but there is a process that insures that this pilot light can be effectively turned on and protected from the winds of satan. This book has been written for the purpose of going into the process of lighting the pilot light and keeping it lit so the Lord can turn on the hot water tap.
This process is laid out plainly in 2Chronicles 7:14. When we begin to walk in holiness and when we find ourselves prostate before the Lord weeping for unbelievers with a sincere repentant heart, crying out to God for His presence, and if our whole Church is burdened the same way, then, I can say without a shadow of a doubt, that we are verging on a revival. But this is but the process of lighting the pilot light of our cold, fallow hearts. The revival that will occur as a result will be in accordance with the depth of our brokenness before Him. Our brokenness attracts God like the ancient sacrificial offerings of Solomon (2Chronicles 7:1-5) the Glory of the Lord will fill our temples, and in the case of Joel 2:28, He will pour out His Spirit on all flesh.
This book has been written to discuss how to push through from the in-house refreshing, with actual proven methods and means of causing a revival that breaks out of the Church and into the community round about us. The purpose of this book is to give us a practical guide that will insure that a revival of Jesus Christ can be effectuated in our communities. My prayer is that you the reader will become profoundly impacted and get a heart that cries for revival.
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