Revival the Jesus-Way

Every revival seems to develop its own worship style and its specific methods and organisational structures for doing God’s work. And it’s quite legitimate to do so. New wine requires new wine skins.

However, it’s not the wine skin that makes the difference, but the wine. It’s not the worship style or a new style of preaching, teaching or praying that makes a revival. Electrically amplified sounds and flashy light effects by themselves do not add any spiritual value, neither is the presence of a large crowd in itself a sign for the Lord’s presence.

It’s not what’s happening around you, but what the Spirit does within you that leads to a revival. It’s the responsiveness of your heart that makes all the difference.

Nevertheless, we can get highly enthusiastic over fancy new ways of worshipping the Lord and “doing church” and are happy to invite others to join us in this “new experience”. And all this is fine, as long as it enables us to open our hearts and move on into a deeper relationship with the Lord.

However, the Lord is far more concerned with us as a person than He is with our worship style or any of our methods or experiences.

After all, He has his own, unique way of reviving sinners and preparing them for his work. It’s one that works through transformation of your mind and the response of your heart. And that transformation always involves emptying, suffering, and loss.

The human way to revive is to comfort, to please and to make happy. The Spirit of the Lord, however, leads to conviction, repentance and the burial of self.

Man’s way is to hand you excitement, the Lord’s way is to hand you the cross.

So, do you want revival the Jesus-way?