iCanuck

10 Steps to Guarantee a Personal Spiritual Revival

photo by Doug Robertson

I read this article by A. W. Tozer in an Alliance Life magazine many years ago and used it on several occasions in my own spiritual journey.  It was usually a beneficial experience for me.  That was a long time ago, and my faith and my relationship with God has changed a lot since then.   This is a good thing.  Changes in how I see God and interact with him are signs of growth.  I think it would be unhealthy if nothing had changed.

So, as I look at this article now I have mixed feelings.  Where I once wholeheartedly agreed with Tozer and this method/”how to” approach to personal revival, I now have second thoughts about the approach.  Now, as I read this, I hear, “Do this. Don’t do that. You must. You should. You have to if you want to be more spiritual and have a better relationship with God.” But,  . . .  then . . . I hesitate to be so critical . . .  because I do remember having wonderful experiences with God as a result of following these steps.  I never want to give the impression to anyone that they need to be doing more, or that God would love them more if they do certain things.

So, I hesitate . . . I hesitate to be critical of this approach and I hesitate to encourage others to follow these steps.  Yet, here I am posting it here.  After reading the following article, I would love your input.  Does this smell of religion to you?  Religious works? Or, is this positive?  Something we should encourage?

I have previously said that any Christian who desires to, may experience a radical spiritual renascence, and this altogether independent of the attitude of his fellow Christians. The important question now is How? Well, here are some suggestions which anyone can follow and which, I am convinced, will result in a wonderfully improved Christian life.

1. Get Thoroughly Dissatisfied with Yourself.
Complacency is the deadly enemy of spiritual progress. The contented soul is the stagnant soul. When speaking of earthly goods, Paul could say, “ I have learned … to be content”; but when referring to his spiritual life, he testified, “I press toward the mark.” Stir up the gift of God that is in thee.

2. Set Your Face Like a Flint Toward a Sweeping Transformation of Your Life.
Timid experimenters are tagged for failure before they start. We must throw our whole soul into our desire for God. “The Kingdom of God suffereth violence, and the violent take it by force.”

3. Put Yourself in the Way of the Blessing.
It is a mistake to look for grace to visit us as a kind of benign magic, or to expect God’s help to come as a windfall apart from conditions known and met. There are plainly marked paths which lead straight to the green pastures; let us walk in them. To desire revival, for instance, and at the same time to neglect prayer and devotion is to wish one way and walk another.

4. Do a Thorough Job of Repenting.
Do not hurry to get it over with. Hasty repentance means shallow spiritual experience and lack of certainty in the whole life. Let godly sorrow do her healing work. Until we allow the consciousness of sin to wound us, we will never develop a fear of evil. It is our wretched habit of tolerating sin that keeps us in our half-dead condition.

5. Make Restitution Wherever Possible.
If you owe a debt, pay it, or at least have a frank understanding with your creditor about your intentions to pay, so that your honesty will be above question. If you have quarreled with anyone, go as far as you can in an effort to achieve reconciliation. As fully as possible make the crooked things straight.

6. Bring Your Life Into Accord With the Sermon on the Mount and Such Other New Testament Scriptures as are Designed to Instruct Us in the Way of Righteousness.
An honest man with an open Bible and a pad and pencil is sure to find out what is wrong with him very quickly. I recommend that the self-examination be made on our knees, rising to obey God’s commandments as they are revealed to us from the Word. There is nothing romantic or colorful about this plain downright way of dealing with ourselves, but it gets the work done. Issac’s workmen did not look like heroic figures as they digged in the valley, but they got the wells open, and that was what they had set out to do.

7. Be Serious–minded.
You can well afford to see fewer comedy shows on TV. Unless you break away from the funny boys, every spiritual impression will continue to be lost to your heart, and that right in your own living room. The people of the world used to go to the movies to escape serious thinking about God and religion. You would not join them there, but you now enjoy spiritual communion with them in your own home._The devils ideals, moral standards, and mental attitudes are being accepted by you without you knowing it. You wonder why you can make no progress in your Christian life. Your interior climate is not favorable to the growth of spiritual graces. There must be a radical change in your habits or there will not be any permanent improvement in your interior life.

8. Deliberately Narrow Your Interests.
The Jack-of-all-trades is the master of none. The Christian life requires that we be specialists. Too many projects use up time and energy without bringing us nearer to God. If you will narrow your interests, God will enlarge your heart.

“Jesus only” seems to the unconverted man to be the motto of death. But a great company of happy men and women can testify that it became to them a way into a world infinitely wider and richer than anything they had ever known before.

Christ is the essence of all wisdom, beauty and virtue. To know Him in growing intimacy is to increase in appreciation of all things good and beautiful. The mansions of the heart will become larger when their doors are thrown open to Christ and closed against the world and sin. Try it.

9. Begin to Witness.
Find something to do for God and your fellow men. Refuse to rust out. Make yourself available to your pastor and do anything you are asked to do. Do not insist upon a place of leadership. Learn to obey. Take the low place until such time as God sees fit to set you in a higher one. Back your new intentions with your money and your gifts, such as they are.

10. Have Faith in God.
Begin to expect. Look up toward the throne where your Advocate sits at the right hand of God. All heaven is on your side. God will not disappoint you.

If you will follow these suggestions, you will most surely experience revival in your own heart. And who can tell how far it may spread? God knows how desperately the church needs a spiritual resurrection. And it can only come through the revived individual.

So, there it is!  Again I would really love to hear what you think.  Seriously Leave a comment if you have any thoughts.

Rethinking the Sermon

The sermon has become the central part of most worship services today. When you ask someone, “How was church today?” or “What is THAT church like?”, you will get responses either about how good the sermon/preacher is or how good the music is. Even so, the music is usually seen as preparation or a lead-up to the sermon. The sermon is the most important part of most churches today so you would naturally thing that it would be the most effective part of the worship service. But, is it? How effective is the sermon? Or, is it effective at all? Some may argue that the effectiveness of the sermon depends on the giftedness of the preacher. That may be true . . . to an extent. I still think, though, the effectiveness of any preacher who is preaching in a large group setting is still quite limited.

I have been to Christian conference grounds where there are chapel services every morning and evening Sunday to Friday every week of the summer. Many faithfully attend these services daily with their Bible and notebook in hand. They hear sermons wice a day, every day for weeks! And what is the result of all this pew-sitting? Are they “closer to God” at the end of the summer then they were at the beginning? Are they following Jesus more wholeheartedly (Yes, I recognize the redundancy of that phrase, but I ain’t no professional author ) as a result of all the sermons they heard over the summer? Do husbands treat their wives better the more sermons they hear? Are wives more faithful to their husbands after attending a sermon filled weekend conference? Do you stop criticizing others the more years you spend in the church? Granted changes do occur seemingly as a result of sermons. I say “seemingly” because I am hesitant to give the lone sermon too much credit. Before I explain what I mean, take a look at something that A.W. Tozer, a well-known preacher, once wrote:

“Though God… has provided answers to our questions concering Him, the answers by no means lie on the surface. They must be sought by prayer, by long meditation on the written Word, and by earnest and well-disciplined labor. However brightly the light may shine, it can be seen only by those who are spiritually prepared to receive it.” (The Knowledge of the Holy)

So, if this is true, what does it mean for the Sunday morning sermon? Could we also say, “However eloquently the preacher may wax, it can be heard only by those who are spiritually prepared to receive it?” If someone is ready, if there are spiritually open, if they have heard God silently speaking to them already BEFORE attending the Sunday morning meeting, they are more likely to respond to something the preacher has said. But, what about those that haven’t been seeking by prayer, or meditating on the written Word, how effective will the sermon be for those people?

When there is genuine change in someone after attending a Christian conference of listening to a sermon, I wonder if it is because God has already been speaking to that area of the person’s life even before the sermon was delivered. Let”s say I have been feeling bad about how I treat my wife for some time and I have really wanted to change but I just haven’t gotten around to working on being a better husband. When I read the Bible and pray I feel that God is reminding me of this area of my life and how it needs to change. Every time I show disrespect I regret and feel bad. Sometime I say sorry to her. Then one day I hear a sermon on how to be a good husband and finally I make some changes in my life. Was it the sermon or the preacher that changed me? Or, was it that I had already placed myself in the position and was spiritually open at the time I heard the sermon that helped me make these lifestyle changes? Was it the sermon that effected the life change or was it my times of personal study and prayer?

If the sermon is not solely responsible for effecting change in one’s life, why is so much energy and time put into its preparation? Could that time and energy be used in other ways more effectively?

I have more to say but let me leave it here for now and give you a chance to respond. Of course, if nobody responds, I will just shut up and say no more but I would love to hear what others think and what their experiences have been.