A Different Kind of Resolution

If you're like me, you haven't even begun to recover from Christmas, much less realize that tomorrow is New Year's Eve. And yet, ready or not, 2012 is coming quickly to a close.

With each new year, a guilty twinge creeps into my consciousness, whispering that I'm supposed to make a list of resolutions. It's what you're "supposed" to do to better yourself.

When I was an optimistic young girl, I did make lists--exercise five times a week, read my Bible every day, be kinder to my brother.

But it never failed. Less than one month into a new year, and my clean slate started getting red marks on it. I'd break one resolution, then another. And before I knew it, I just gave up, once again feeling worthless that I couldn't be perfect in one thing for even a measly thirty days.

And yet I think the problem was my resolutions were flawed from the start--I was always the one making up resolutions for myself rather than asking God what He would have me to do and then asking Him to help me obey Him in His strength rather than in my own.

All I really needed to do was look in His Word. Look at His commands.

As 2013 rushes near, my heart isn't really looking for a resolution. Rather, over the past year, God has been drawing me to Christ's charge for Christians to share the gospel with a lost and dying world.

But I don't think it's my heart alone that should be firmly resolved to get the Word out there, but should be the heart of every Christian as well.

During Jesus' ministry, He told His disciples, "'All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age'" (Matt. 28:18-20).

Later, after Christ's resurrection, He told those same disciples, "But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth" (Acts 1:8).

In these two verses alone, Christ empowers you and me to act...but not so that we can fulfill our petty, individual desires. Instead, He empowers us for a greater purpose--to share the truth of Jesus, to teach God's word, to make Christian disciples.

It's an awesome charge not to be taken lightly, although many Christians do (myself included). It's a heavy command, yes, a command--Jesus says "go" not "go if you are brave enough" or "go if you have the gift of convincing speech" and He says "you will" twice, not "you might."

Christ made this a command because He knows the outcome--heaven or hell. And He knows how many souls are at stake. Consider the statistics. 1.5 billion people have never heard the gospel of Jesus Christ (IMB "Who's Missing").

1.5 billion.

Wikipedia claims Yankee Stadium seats 50,000. So fill Yankee Stadium 30,000 times and that's how many people have never heard about Jesus, not counting the billions more who have heard of Jesus but not accepted Him as their Savior.

If each person who reads this would share Jesus with one each week in 2013. And if that one would share Jesus with another one....

As the famous preacher Charles Spurgeon said, "If sinners will be damned, at least let them leap to hell over our bodies. And if they will perish, let them perish with our arms about their knees, imploring them to stay. If hell must be filled, at least let it be filled in the teeth of our exertions, and let not one go there unwarned and unprayed for." 

A Case FOR Revival

Over the past month, Christians around the State of Louisiana have been uniting in prayer for revival, twenty-one days of petitioning heaven for the church to awaken, rise up, and be the salt and light it was called to be.

No, the ground has not quaked. There has been no newsworthy event of extreme religious fervor or any other symptoms equaling that of The Great Awakening. Yet, that does not mean God has not sent revival, nor that He will not send it still.

I may know little, but of three things I am certain: one, that not all revivals will look the same; two, that one soul can experience a revival and that be a miracle; and three, revival could still be waiting just off-stage in the wings.

This morning, though, my husband mentioned that not everyone believes a revival is possible because America is too far gone in its moral depravity.

Throughout the afternoon, his comment has haunted me. How hopeless a world view! That this is it...one I'm sure is shared by numerous others. What's more, how limiting is this view to God, for revival does not start in the heart of man but in the heart of God. Salvation, prayer, revival--they all start in God's heart. And who is to say what God will choose to do or not to do with the soul's of those who reside in America?

But to be fair, perhaps it's the term "revival" that is the problem, what with its connotations of entire communities flocking en mass to church buildings. Revival, though, need be nothing more than a reawakening of one soul towards God. Such an awakening then can spread outward from that one heart to another heart. Also, by the very nature of revival being defined as a "re-awakening," the term implies that revival begins in the hearts of God's people (not the unsaved), the ones who have once been awakened but who now need to be re-awakened. Hence, revival starts at the house of God.

Charles Spurgeon wrote, "While a true revival in its essence belongs only to God's people, it always brings with it a blessing for the other sheep who are not yet of the fold. If you drop a stone into a lake the ring widens continually, till the farthest corner of the lake feels the influence. Let the Lord revive a believer and very soon his family, his friends, his neighbors, receive a share of the benefit...and thus the world gains by revival" ("What Is a Revival". Sword and Trowel. Dec. 1866).

This concept of revival being for the child of God is Biblical, found both in the Old and New Testaments.

Many times, God pricked the heart of His people and they repented, turned from their evil ways and followed Him with renewed fervency. In this space, we have studied a revival after the captive Israelites returned from exile in Babylon.

Another great example is Solomon's prayer at the dedication of the temple. He prayed to God for "when" (not "if") God would stir His people's hearts towards repentance so they would reawaken and "return" to Him, bow the knee: "When they sin against You (for there is no man who does not sin) and You are angry with them and deliver them to an enemy, so that they take them away captive to the land of the enemy, far off or near; if they take thought in the land where they have been taken captive, and repent and make supplication to You in the land of those who have taken them captive, saying, ‘We have sinned and have committed iniquity, we have acted wickedly’; if they return to You with all their heart and with all their soul...then hear their prayer and their supplication in heaven Your dwelling place, and maintain their cause, and forgive Your people who have sinned against You and all their transgressions which they have transgressed against You" (1 Kin. 8:46-50).

In the heart's returning is a revival.

In the New Testament, no passage speaks of revival more than the chapters in John's Revelation where he speaks to the seven churches, most of which had serious need of revival. For instance, to the Church at Ephesus he says, "Yet I hold this against you: You have forsaken the love you had at first. Consider how far you have fallen! Repent and do the things you did at first " (Rev. 2:4-5).

Repent. Turn away from sin because only in true repentance can one re-awaken his first love for God. Reawakening--revival.

When God sends revival, it may not look like a page out of our history books...or it might. But our God is consistent and true to His character in that He constantly seeks to refine those sheep who are His and to bring back into the fold those sheep who have gone astray.

My prayer is the one we still sing in Will­iam Mac­kay's old hymn:

Revive us again;
Fill each heart with Thy love;
May each soul be rekindled
With fire from above.
Hallelujah! Thine the glory.
Hallelujah! Amen.
Hallelujah! Thine the glory.
Revive us again.

No matter how dark it looks, my God is big enough to bring revival--to one. to millions. Revive us, O Lord.



Image from Tim Beddingfield.