We began our Cry for Revival on June 26th and it has been an incredible early journey. We are just beginning and God is amazing me every time we gather together. Several characteristics of true revival that we must keep in the forefront of our mind are:
- Worship: True Spirit led worship is critical to maintaining a Spirit of Revival in our midst. Worship is more than reading words from a screen or a sing along. Worship comes from the heart and not just from the head. Our time today of worship without the music was beautiful. Music is certainly a gift from God to us, but often when we are in our times of worship, we get so focused on reading the songs from the screen that we never really enter into worship. We must learn how to sing the song of worship from our hearts, as we did today. What a beautiful sound as so many of us lifted our voice to God without the benefit of being coaxed along by a pre-planned song. But, we don’t want to throw away the beautiful anointed music that has been given to us by God either. This music plays an important part in our life of worship, but we must be careful that the music does not replace the worship.
- Prayer: Every revival recorded in history was preceded by intense and often lenghty times of prayer. Prayer is our way of proclaiming the will of God. Prayer allows us to place ourselves in His Presence and hear from Him. In the Tabernacle, prayer is represented by the altar of incense just before entering into the Holy of Holies and it continually burned in the Presence of God. The fire in this altar came from coals from the Brazen Altar where sacrifice was made for sin and this fire was initially started as God sent fire from heaven. Our prayer life is to be a life of God initated (Holy Spirit) fire filled prayers and not dry legalistic prayers that do not agree with the Word of God. Prayer is critical and I invite you to join us on Wednesday’s at 7 AM and Sunday’s at 8 AM.
- Word of God: The Word of God is what keeps us balanced. Our worship, our prayer time, our gathering times, our fasting and all we do is found in the Word of God. Per George Barna, only about 15% of Christians have a Biblical world view. How sad that many no longer hold God’s Word in high regard in their lives. When people forsake the Biblical view, they will embrace the world’s view on things and be led into serious sin and error. All that we do as a church and as individuals must be filtered through the Word of God. It is through His Word that we judge our doctrine, our actions, our church, and our life. When this does not happen, things can get out of balance and just “weird”. There has been alot of false fire in past revivals and we want to make sure this type of thing does not happen with Impact Church. The Word of God remains a priority for us and I beseech you to take advantage of times when the Word is taught. Revival must be built upon the foundation of God’s Word.
Eddie Hyatt says in his book Revival Fire: Discerning Between the True and False “…what is occurring throughout the contemporary charismatic-revival movement where groups may spend hours “soaking,” singing, prophesying and sharing their spiritual experiences, but seldom—if ever—engaging in serious, sound study of God’s Word. Seeking spiritual experiences apart from Scripture is dangerous. Those taking this careless approach are, unwittingly, caught in the wake of a cultural trend that is carrying people away from the Bible to non-Christian, non-Biblical forms of spirituality.
This we want to avoid and there will be increasingly more opportunities for Bible teaching in the days ahead, so please avail yourself of these times.
It is exciting to watch the fire of God spread in the hearts of Impact Saints.
God is good and wants us to experience Him and His gifts in fullness. Let’s pray that our hearts are open to Him in this exciting time.
