In the book of Habakkuk, in chapter 3
and verse 2, we read, O LORD, revive
your work in the midst of the years,
and the midst of the years make known
in wrath, remember mercy.
Well, there are several vital truths mentioned here
in this power-packed verse of scripture, friends.
First, there is a recognition of the Lord.
To say, you know, Jesus is one thing,
but to be utterly surrendered to him as
Lord of your life is altogether something else.
The first words out of the prophet's mouth
is a fear of God in acknowledging him
to be who he says he is.
Lord, O Lord.
Secondly, an interesting word is used.
It is a word seldom found in scripture,
but here it fits perfectly in this setting.
It is the word revive.
The prophet knows the deplorable condition of the
people of God.
The southern kingdom of Judah was in distress
concerning its destruction by the Chaldeans, who the
prophet mentions as the instruments of God's judgment.
The three brief chapters of the book of
Habakkuk deal primarily with the invasion of the
land of Judah by the Chaldeans, who brought
spoil upon the people of God, and consequently
great hardship and suffering to them.
It appears to them that God is a
million miles away.
They are in desperate need of him.
They need a touch from heaven.
They need reviving.
Also, notice how the prophet points this work
as being God's work.
He says, revive your work, which is pregnant
with several layers of meaning.
That the work of revival is not something
man drums up or produces on his own.
It's a sovereign work of God that only
he can do.
Also, revive your work is a plea to
God for him to look down from heaven
concerning the work of his hands in regard
to his people.
Whatever the direct appeal of the prophet is,
one thing is certain.
They need reviving.
They need revival.
Well, when is revival needed?
Charles Finney wrote that a revival of true
Christianity presupposes a fallen away.
Finney goes on to say, Look back at
the history of the Jews.
God maintained devotion among them by special times
of great awakening when people turned to the
Lord.
But soon after, they had been revived.
The Jews faced opposition and their spirituality declined
until God had time, so to speak, to
shape events to produce another awakening and again
pour out his spirit to convert sinners.
When the opposition began afresh, religion degenerated, and
again the nation was sucked down by a
whirlpool of luxury, idolatry, and pride.
So says Mr. Finney.
It kind of reminds me of the sad,
deplorable condition the church is in today.
I'm often asked to define the term revival.
I would say revival is needed in the
church when spirituality has declined and the people
have become desensitized to sin, particularly their own.
And although they operate works for God through
religious activity, their hearts are far away from
God as they are in a backslidden condition.
They must get right with God.
There is a deep need for revival.
That's where we are today, friends.
And the title of my message today is
Getting Right with God, for the life of
faith must be lived in a red-hot
love relationship to Jesus.
When we grow cold towards him, we go
cold on everything else regarding things of eternal
worth.
Our daily testimony suffers.
Our daily witness suffers.
We lose our burden for the souls of
men and fail to promote and advance the
gospel in our day.
We become self-sufficient, self-reliant, and have
little need for God to work a miracle
in our life or else we perish.
Therefore, our faith suffers.
Our faith stagnates.
We need reviving.
We need revival.
For to be involved with the activity of
heaven concerning men, we need to maintain a
close walk with God so he can reveal
more of himself to us as we exercise
our faith toward him.
Well, what does it mean to get right
with God?
That's what we're going to look at today,
friends.
It means to look in the mirror and
see ourselves as God sees us, sinful, lustful,
prideful, ambitious for personal gain and self-recognition,
full of the world and full of self.
There must be this revelation of our own
badness before we see a need for help
from above.
The truth about ourselves hurts because we normally
measure our spiritual life in relation to other
men, so we use a perverted yardstick to
measure ourselves by.
We say to ourselves something like, why, I'm
not as bad as other men, so we
flatter ourselves and deceive our own hearts.
But God sees what scoundrels we really are.
He sees our self-satisfaction and self-reliance
and so he will produce situations to try
us to show us our true condition and
our need of him.
If we are still in such a spiritual
stupor that we don't hear God speaking to
us as in Amos chapter 4 where God
brings a series of remedial judgments upon his
people, one right after another, and each one
more severe than the preceding one, yet God
laments, Yet have ye not returned unto me,
saith the Lord.
But then God eventually just steps away and
will say, Ephraim is joined to his idols,
let him alone.
When God withdraws himself from our midst, he
leads us to our own devices.
And this is where we are right now,
right now, in the state of the Church.
The first step to a life of faith
and a deeper walk with God is to
realign ourselves to God for this to occur.
We must be transparent with ourselves and honest
with ourselves before God.
We must ask him to shine his searching
spotlight upon our lives by his Holy Spirit
and reveal to us the sin areas that
lie like snakes beneath the rock bed of
our religious life and need to be driven
out and exposed.
I used to live on a property out
in the woods in the south and my
land was just crawling with poisonous snakes.
I'd have to go out each year onto
my property to find them and destroy them
because I had a young child that liked
to play in the yard.
I had a rock bed at the foot
of my front yard that served as an
irrigation ditch and I would have to strap
on my boots and go down there and
straddle those rocks with a can of gasoline
in one hand and a shovel in the
other.
I would pour gasoline down on those rocks
and every time I did several snakes would
slither over the tops of my boots.
They were cottonmouths and very venomous and as
they came scurrying I would slam the shovel
down on their heads to stun them and
then cut their heads off with the blade
of that shovel.
It was hard work but it was necessary
work.
It had to be done because I loved
my little daughter and I wanted to protect
her from getting bit by a poisonous snake.
God the Father loves us.
He knows that sin is harmful to us
and he wants to help us drive that
sin clean out of our lives.
At times we must strap on our boots
and face our enemies, face our sins, root
them out and get rid of them.
If we ever want to go further with
God he won't go one skinny inch further
with you friend if you have sin in
your life and you are coddling it.
Getting right with God is uncovering and exposing
sin areas that need to be dealt with
and addressed and given to Jesus.
If you want personal revival friend, if you
are a pastor and you want your church
to see revival then you, you must get
right with God and repent.
I'll close this message with the following story.
Years ago I received a telephone call from
a pastor in my community and he said
he had read my book on revival entitled
Realities of Revival and he wanted to meet
for lunch to discuss it further.
Well, I'm always open to a free lunch
so I agreed to meet him at a
local restaurant.
He was an elderly saint and I was
a much younger man.
He told me he had been a pastor
for nearly 50 years but he wanted to
see revival in his church.
He asked me if I could call and
get Henry Blackaby to come to his church
for some meetings on revival.
I looked him in the eye across the
table and said if you are really serious
about seeing revival at your church then the
first thing you must do is to repent
and get right with God.
Revival has to start with you getting right
with God.
Well, I thought I had offended him.
He got up abruptly and paid the check
and I thought I'd never hear from him
again.
He must have thought to himself, what's this
young whippersnapper telling me I need to repent?
Well, a week went by and he called
me again and again he invited me to
lunch and this time he brought two more
pastors with him.
They asked me if I wouldn't mind meeting
with them on a monthly basis to pray
for revival.
Of course I didn't mind.
I was glad to do it.
We met for several months praying to the
Lord to show us revival.
I'll never forget it.
As we sat in a circle with our
chairs facing each other this elderly pastor bolted
up from his chair like a bolt of
lightning and stood straight up stiff.
Then he crumbled down on the ground before
us and while he was on his hands
and knees he cried out in a loud
voice, Lord, forgive me for my dirty rotten
sins.
I need revival.
Let it start with me.
Well, that man was getting serious with God
and if you want to go further with
God in a life of faith friend, you
must get right with God and ask him
to give you personal revival.
There's no other way but to trust and
obey.