Many of our churches show more signs of death than of life, more signs of decline than of growth! If we were to be absolutely honest, would Ichabod (1 Sam. 4:21) be written over your church or mine? Is it not true that at least to some extent God’s glory in the church is less than before?
It need not be so. No life can excuse its spiritual decline. No church can justify its loss of the overwhelming sense of the presence of God, the power of God, and the glory of His working in its midst. This sense of the presence of God can be as overwhelming today as it ever was. The anointing of the Spirit can be as powerful upon your life as it was upon others.
Holy Ghost conviction can seize sinners as powerfully today as in any day gone by. Revival can be as real in our churches today as in any glorious era of the past. Perhaps we are living farther from revival than before. Perhaps we will have a greater price of self-humbling, self-emptying, and seeking of God’s face. Perhaps it will cost us more to put first things first. Perhaps the price is more than we are prepared to pay. But this is still the dispensation of the Holy Ghost.
Why should you complain of how the church needs revival when your own life is so ordinary? Why should you point to the spiritual drought about you when rivers of living water are not gushing from your own innermost being? Why should you bemoan the lack of the manifestations of the supernatural when you are not paying the price for new mighty enduements of God’s power on your own life? We are guilty before God.
We Know the Price that Needs to Be Paid, But We Are Not Paying It
We know what is wrong with the church, but we are not turning the world upside down ourselves (Acts 17:6). You and I condemn ourselves by the light we are failing to walk in. We have no adequate excuse for the barrenness of our own lives.
What are we going to do about it? It is not enough to have pious wishes; we must seek God’s face until our hunger becomes overwhelming, until our souls become desperate to have more of God. It is not enough to sing about prayer, we must learn to spend hours and hours in prayer.
There Are No Shortcuts to Blessing
Of course, there are certain essentials. If there is any sin in our lives it must be repented of and cast away. If we have never made an absolute surrender and received the fullness of the Spirit by faith, we must open our heart and enter into His fullness.
But then do not look for some new glamorous moment to change you from immaturity into maturity, from a careless prayer life into a mighty prayer warrior.
It will cost you time. It will cost you hours reading the Word over and over. It will cost you days of reaching out to God, and nights of hungering and thirsting for more of Him. It will cost you self-discipline to see that you keep your prayer times, that you set apart times for fasting.
But if you pay this price, the power of Christ will rest upon you, the glory of God will crown your ministry and witness, and your life will be made radiant by the presence of the resurrected Christ. You cannot earn it; it is given by God’s grace. But God does not waste His grace on those who do not prepare their lives to be His sanctified vessels, meet for His sacred use.
Miracles can fill your life, for God is waiting today to be gracious. He is waiting today to move this world for God through you.
