I Long For This!

I want to know something of the genuine experience of Christ in my life. I want an awareness of the presence of the Holy Spirit. I want to know Christ,  not just know of him or about his Word, but truly know him. I know my faith is not based on emotions, nor does it rest on feelings, but I want a passion for the mind of Christ. I want conviction of the truth of his Word, I want a deep sense of his abiding with me. I want to know you Lord, I want to see your face. I long for a spiritual revival within myself, within the church.

Revival is nothing more than breathing life into a body that is threatening to become a corpse. Many of our church services are corpse-like. I don't mean my church I mean church services in general. They are marked by routine, they are marked by prayers, readings, talks, videos and various songs but by and large they are deathly. By and large they make very little impact on the faithful and they certainly have little attraction for the faithless. How quickly can that become apparent? Very quickly from my perspective. How may it be erased? By a divine encounter as a result of the people of God taking a delight in the law of God. Believers being like the psalmist in Psalm 1...that their delight was in the law of the Lord and on his law they meditated day and night.

I long for an experience as the one stated in 2 Chronicles 7:1-3.

1 When Solomon finished praying, fire came down from heaven and consumed the burnt offering and the sacrifices, and the glory of the LORD filled the temple. 2 The priests could not enter the temple of the LORD because the glory of the LORD filled it. 3 When all the Israelites saw the fire coming down and the glory of the LORD above the temple, they knelt on the pavement with their faces to the ground, and they worshiped and gave thanks to the LORD, saying, "He is good; his love endures forever."

I don't think I can fully comprehend what all that means, but the best I could describe it to be would be, an uncommon manifestation of God's divine glory. As a result of this, the priests were unable to enter into the temple of the Lord because the glory of the Lord filled it. They couldn't go about their business because the sense of God's presence was so awesome they could not continue. I long for this...know my heart....I long for this! For an encounter with God that breaks through the molds of all of our conventionality.  For an encounter with God that can not be explained simply in terms of doing church ala Americana. For an encounter with God that breaks the hearts of his people, my heart first, all of our hearts together, so that we can not even have church the way we normally have church. That is what this passage is saying...they couldn't do the routine because God shattered it in an instant. When revival comes to a church or to a nation this will take place. We can't manufacture this on our own.  We try to create the effect without the inrush of the Spirit of God.

I heard Allister Begg recently tell a story of a church he helped pastor in the early 70's in Scotland. He stated at the turn of the century this church (that was capable of seating 1,000 or more) was reduced to 7 or 8 people. They then called a man from a tiny church from the border of Scotland, who had never studied the Word of God in a formal way, but he was a man who knew God and walked with God. The man himself, at the turn of the century, went to Whales where the Welsh revival was taking place. Encountering something in all of that he came back with a glow upon him that could not be explained. It is recorded in the history of that place that there were significant periods of time where there was no preaching taken place. Why?  Because it couldn't take place! It was due to the fact that as soon as the people of God gathered , the Spirit of God fell so heavily on them that against all conventionality, against all of the normal routine, somebody would stand up 7 or 8 minutes before the service was due to begin and would begin to pray out loud. Then another would begin to pray, and then another, and another, and then someone would sing, and then the whole congregation would begin to sing. Then the pastors and the worship leaders would just sit down. The whole thing was orchestrated by the Spirit of God. Eventually, as God would have it,  when the Spirit of God moved off of the people of God, they would say that was good....that was it...now we will go home. This is what happened in 2 Chronicles 7.

I don't want to gather for business as usual. I want to gather for God to be God, and do what God wants to do, when he wants to do it, any day he wants, any time he wants, anything he wants.  He is God-we are men and women. I wholeheartedly believe if you get a congregation that begins to gather in that way,  you will begin to see things happen that you have never seen happen before in your life.  And some things you may even be afraid to see happen. Unfortunately so many don't even desire this. They desire the routine, the programming, the control. This saddens me. It quenches the Spirit.

We have the altar but we can't make the fire, we have the Book but we cant make it live, we have the songs but we can't stir our hearts. In my humble opinion, if the church in America is to become a force to be reckoned with, it must cry out to God for this kind of inrush of the Spirit of God.