1 Kings 18:36-38 “At the time of sacrifice, the prophet Elijah stepped forward and prayed: ‘O Lord, God of Abraham, Isaac and Israel, let it be known today that you are God in Israel and that I am your servant and have done all these things at your command. Answer me, O Lord, answer me, so these people will know that you, O Lord, are God, and that you are turning their hearts back again.’ Then the fire of the Lord fell and burned up the sacrifice, the wood, the stones and the soil, and also licked up the water in the trench.”
I had been asked by a large church in Brazil to come and speak on revival. One of the things that I find interesting is that the people of God are praying for revival.
I arrived on the 23rd of August. That evening I spoke to the pastors and staff of the church and I mentioned that before revival there must be reformation.
Martin Lloyd Jones, a great 20th century preacher at Westminster Abbey in London , said that the best definition of revival is God passing by. I like that definition. How else can you explain some of the things that take place in revival except for the fact that God passed by. We see this with Moses in Exodus when God with His hand hid him in the cleft of the rock and then passed by. After that experience Moses was not the same. However, we see that before God passes by preparation is made and this is what John the Baptist did. John came preaching “prepare the way for the Lord” and then Immanuel (God with us) passes by. When Jesus does, what happens? People’s lives are touched, demons are driven out, dead are raised, people are given hope. In other words, transformation takes place.
However, we can pray for revival, but the one thing that we can and must do is LIVE IN DAILY REVIVAL. I brought out three things that are necessary in order for us to live in daily revival.
- Learn to live one day at a time. There is nothing that I can do about yesterday. It is already gone with its opportunities and goals. I have no promise for tomorrow, but by living for today with all that it has to offer I find that today – will be yesterday – tomorrow.
- Learn to repent quickly. We hang on to unconfessed sin too long. We have an advocate with the Father – the Lord Jesus Christ – and we can come to Him with our confessions and make it right with Him and anyone else. We need to learn to have faith and a clear conscience.
- Praise God continually, because we have so much to be thankful for. We need to be constantly offering up to the Lord the sacrifice of thanksgiving.
In closing I’ll use the illustration of my experience when I visited the Yosemite National Park here in California recently. They used to have what was called “The Fire is Falling,” and it was such a sight that people from all over the world would come to see it. It attracted so many people that the park’s plants would get trampled down so they stopped having this event back in the 1960s.
Camp Curry is the base of this thousand yard sheer cliff at the top of Glacier Point. The park workers would gather bark from trees and in the evening would burn it at Glacier Point until it was reduced to hot coals. At a set time in the evening a man at the base – at Camp Curry – would cup his hands and shout up: “LET THE FIRE FALL!” At the top, a man would shout down: “THE FIRE IS FALLING!” and then they would push the burning coals over the sheer cliff and it would look like a waterfall of fire. Many in California see this as being prophetic and they are crying out to God: “LET THE FIRE FALL!”
When I was preaching in Brazil the Lord brought this to my attention that in Brazil we too need to be shouting: “LET THE FIRE FALL!” I sense that God is getting ready to shout back: “THE FIRE IS FALLING!” When it does, it will be judgment for some and for others it will be a great anointing for great exploits.
The time is near, Jesus is coming! Are you ready?