Revival

And so the adventure begins...well sort of. I'm at my in-laws at the moment which means I've got a bit of a break with a full time baby sitter (thanks nanna). Matt is up at Weipa until Friday next week so he will be having more of an adventure than I am, although with the temperatures looking to drop this weekend close to freezing I'd say I'm being adventurous (it's amazing how fast after living in New York I've acclimatized to the tropics!)

With all this quiet time God is beginning to move my heart with new thoughts. As mentioned in my previous post, I've been reading the book 'Can God' by J Edwin Orr. His journey is one of stirring people to pray earnestly for revival and describes revival as follows:

"What is revival? It is not an Evangelistic campaign, or a series of special meetings. The way the word has been prostituted so as to mean to many nothing more than the visit of an itinerant Evangelist, displays terrible ignorance, which savours of profanity.

"What is revival in Nature? Yonder is a gaunt, gnarled tree, that has withstood many a blast. What a miserable object it is, with a few withered leaves still clinging to its lifeless limbs! But go back in the spring. What a change! The old dead leaves have all dropped off, and the tree is radiant with a new life, that has come pulsating from within. In the physical realm, revival means, not the coming of some new exotic parasite seeking either to camouflage, or to replace the old tree, but the new life and growth in the already existent.

"The parallel is true also in the spiritual realm. Revival is not a matter of organizing; but it bursts through human plans and organization, sending new stream of life into undreamt of channels.

He discusses the past revivals that swept through Whales in 1860 and 1905 (the book was published in 1934) but says this:

'Will those who tell us that they have been through the Welsh Revival explain whythere is no revival today?'

"Behold, the Lord's hand is not shortened that it cannot save: neither His ear heavy, that it cannot hear: but your iniquities have separated between you and your God, and your sins have hid His face from you, that He will not hear."

'Who'll pay the price?'

"The Lord saw it – and wondered that there was no intercessor."

Romans 12:1 says

I beseech you, therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, your reasonable sacrifice.

If all of us as Christians offered ourselves fully to God (after all, this is our 'reasonable sacrifice') scary as it can be...and we prayed in earnest for revival, what would happen? I would have to say in all honesty that I believe some pretty incredible stuff would happen that I've never seen in my lifetime...so why aren't we??

It's stirring in my heart...but I know that thinking about it is not good enough...

...and (He) wondered that there was no intercessor...