PERSONAL REVIVAL - THE RENEWED CHRISTIAN LIFE.

Attending a 1990’s Church     fellowship can mean listening to     sermons which deal with “renewal” or “revival” more than any other subject matter. “Revivals” come and go today like Melbourne’s changeable weather conditions. The “move of God” turns into a pitiful fizzle, and the “revival” is gone over night, the “fire” becomes a wet blanket. Oh Lord, if only we had another “move of God” to take its place, people cry, rushing after another experience  -circus.
A question all of us must find the answer to is “is there a real revival that lasts?”
A second question is just as     important, “what is revival, anyway?”
A third is relevant, “do we have to rush over to the USA, or  interstate in Australia, to enter into true Christian revival?”I can answer that one right now - NO!

“Is there a real revival that lasts?”

We might call what we are seeking “revival” or maybe “renewal”, but notice something about both these English words. “Revival” implies something or someone has life, but needs reviving, such as in the case of a near drowning accident. The victim is alive, still, but needs to be brought to full life again. “Renewal” implies something of the same idea. Something or someone has gotten a bit worse for wear, has seen better days, but is renewed again. Existence is there, but not like it was when it was “new”, it needs to be re-newed. The revival or renewal cannot be correctly applied to a lost sinner’s state. He is not “alive” spiritually at all, so he cannot be revived or renewed. The lost have Gospel messages for salvation, not revival or renewal “moves”.

Is there a true revival for Christians who are born-again, who have real spiritual life in Christ, but who are drowning in Self and the deadening influences of the world? Is there a personal revival, a higher Christian life? The Bible shows that there certainly is! The One who loves us so has said:
“...I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly.” (John 10:10). Is there a true “renewal” for Christians who are worse for wear, tired of the grind, like parched gardens in need of a good down-pour of rain? The Bible says there is - “...to be spiritually minded is life and peace.” (Romans 8:6).

“What is revival, anyway?”

Shall we start off by considering what revival is NOT? It is not tingles in the hands and feet, falling down laughing madly, it is not getting filled with the Spirit so dramatically that you can heal vast crowds of sick people and raise the dead, or have a huge ministry where you shine as an evangelist. Revival is Jesus Christ having more of you! Jesus Christ Himself is ALL of true revival. What He uses us for, or doesn’t use us for in service is His business. This may sound rather stale and even dull, when compared to the excitement of the modern “revivals” which are throwing so many people into confusion. This is not so, the enemy of our souls wants us to be kept on a spiritual merry-go-round, when all the time the “blue bird of happiness, is back home in your own back yards.”

Jesus Christ is ALIVE, He longs for us all to be living with Him in  constant, dependent fellowship. He will fill your life with Himself, through the Holy Spirit, and He will show you the wonder of deeper   Union with Himself. However, this real personal revival can never be faked. Until you are really ready to be humbled, made nothing that Christ may be All, ready to be     obedient in the Lord’s enabling, you will not be given spiritual revelation on this matter. What kind of Life is it that can make the apostle Paul cry from a heart which knows the     delights of Christ Himself:
 

“Rejoice IN THE LORD always: and again I say, Rejoice ... And the peace of God, which passeth all understanding, shall keep your hearts and minds THROUGH CHRIST  JESUS.”

Philip Melanchthon, Martin Luther’s friend, once said,
    “Old Adam is too strong for young Philip.”
By this he meant that the Old Adamic nature which is still in operation in the converted believer, can never be controlled or overcome by human effort. The Christian life is always, until we enter God’s rest, a   struggle to defeat the tendency to sin, which plagues all humanity because of the Fall in the Garden of Eden. We are born-again in Christ Jesus, but even after we are saved, we still have the old Adamic nature. Yes, when we are saved, we become part of a new family of God, we are part of a New Creation of which the resurrected Christ is the Federal Head. We are eternally secure in Christ Jesus, but we do not have, on earth, the elimination of the fleshly nature or the entire death of the carnal mind. Some teachers will send the poor believer racing around looking for the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, convincing them that they can have sinless perfection in this life. This is a pipe dream! But God wants us to enter into rest, from our own strivings, to accept that if we tried forever to be a holy, righteous Christian, we would only fail miserably every time. Only Christ Jesus, living His Life through us, can bring righteousness, peace from struggle, and REST in God, with the outcome being joy and harmony of life. This is the gift of God,

Deeper Union in the Son.
The trials and sorrows you experience in your Christian life are  allowed by God so that you will realise you cannot “go it alone”! Many of us can take years to realise, after we are converted, that we will always fail to live holy, victorious lives, that the old Adam life pulls us down every time. I can remember as a woman of thirty coming to grips with the shocking mess I was making of my own life. I had been born-again at the age of eighteen, I had considered myself since then a good Christian, a spiritual person - and here I was at thirty just as messed up, if I wanted to face it, as I had ever been! I had adored a certain minister, who had become a little “god” in my life.
I had virtually left my first love, Jesus Christ, to devote my silly self to this man. I had put the minister on a pedestal, he was so kind and appreciative of me, I was flattered and spent hours in an ardent sort of “prayer” for him. Because of my leaning so much on the minister spiritually and emotionally, I no longer seemed to need God so much.

Then it was revealed in the fellowship I attended that this minister was a womanizer, he had broken up three churches in New South Wales over this very matter! The “Godly” minister was nothing but a needy, desperate sinner, although he was a man saved  by Grace. I had built a house of sand upon an idol with a heart of stone, and feet of clay. And when the storm came, the wreck of that house was great. It was almost as though someone had proved the Bible was a lie, and God did not exist - I was so devastated.

I was deeply depressed, filled with resentment, was militantly aggressive toward the denomination who had let this fellow stay in ministry as a pastor - and my whole Christian life was in a turmoil. What a fool I felt myself to be, how shocked and disappointed I was in my vanished hero. I remember driving home one day in a snow-storm, yes there was snow that year in Victoria, and crying out, from an agonized heart, “I am of a fallen race, dear Lord!” God met me in my dilemma and pain, and showed me more deeply than ever before that we, all of us, will always fail, even a preacher, unless Christ Jesus is allowed to be the ALL of our lives. I wanted to die of sorrow, and God showed me I had already died in Christ on the Cross.

“That no flesh should glory in his presence. But of him are ye in Christ Jesus, who of God is made unto us wisdom, and righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption: That, according as it is written, He that glorieth, let him glory in the Lord.”        (1 Cor.1:29-31).

                Two Masters - in contrast;
                Two Husbands - in contrast;
                Two Natures - in contrast.

As Blood-redeemed people of God we need not be in bondage to the old master which is SIN in the flesh. You probably know the doctrine about this, as shown so clearly in chapters six and seven of the book of Romans, but you need more than a cold, empty doctrine. You need to have supernaturally revealed, through God’s Word being opened by the Holy Spirit of Grace, that deliverance from the old master, SIN in the flesh, cannot be found by struggling, determining and fighting with this bondage.

What can deliver from the old master?
Who?  The New Master.

People who are unsaved imagine they are free to do what they jolly well please, no God is going to tell them what to do. In reality they are slaves to the master - indwelling SIN. Sin through the legacy of Adam’s fallen race.

The Bible tells us a wonderful thing in Romans chapter six. It shows that we can be delivered from the old master, by Union with our New Master in His death and resurrection (verses 1-10). We can be set free from bondage to the old master, by “reckoning” ourselves dead unto SIN in the flesh (verses 11-13). The old master, it is promised, will not have dominion over us because of Christ’s death and resurrection (verses 14-23). Get alone with God, ask the Holy Spirit to spiritually reveal what these magnificent promises are all about to you personally, in a real practically sense, not just head knowledge doctrine.

What is true revival?
Is it dramatic manifestations, extra-biblical revelations, a “move of God” through some church guru, exotic visions? No, it is ourselves allowing the Lord to live through us. It is to be made victorious over SIN, the old master, and to be brought under the dominion of Another - the New Master, Jesus Christ. God has in history brought large revivals to districts, involving big groups of Christians all at once, such as the Welsh revival, using them then to be instruments in the salvation of many of  the unsaved, however that is up to God, He is Sovereign. We, however, need to be revived right in our own back yards, now. It is trying to live for God by the old nature that makes us worn out inside, dry as a crisp, and robs us of true fellowship in the Spirit with God. Here is what the great Bible teacher of former days, H.A. Ironside, wrote about these Truths:
 

“I am to realise practically my identification with Christ. I have been planted together with Him in the similitude of His death - that is, in baptism - I shall be (one with Him) also in the similitude of His resurrection. I do not live under sin’s dominion. I live unto God as He is my new head. Logically he continues, ‘Knowing this that our old man is crucified with Him, that the body of sin might be destroyed (or, rendered powerless) that henceforth we should not serve sin, for he that is dead is freed (or, justified) from sin.’ (Romans 6: 6,7)

(p.77. “Lectures on Romans”).

Let’s get it all together at this stage. God is telling us that if we put simple faith in the Cross of Calvary, “reckoning” the old man dead, it will be so in practical life. What is it to “reckon”? It is to “count as true”. There is no other way of deliverance from the old master - SIN in the flesh. Your feelings have nothing to do with this. You might say, “but I don’t feel dead, and I can’t get this doctrine correct enough to feel dead.” Feelings have nothing whatsoever to do with this, it is a judicial fact that Jesus Christ’s death is my death, and your death. It is domination by the old man which is causing all your problems! You and I can “reckon” ourselves to have died to Sin’s terrible dominion, and be free to relate to the New Master. ALL your old life is gone in Christ’s death. ALL my talents, gifts, physical members and my resource are now to be at the entire disposal of the New Master alone.

The “Husband” and “married” symbols in Scripture are amongst the most precious of God’s revelations. The seventh chapter of Romans brings us into sacred territory, as far as the spiritual life of the believer is concerned. The opening verse is extraordinary, and a very difficult concept surely for a converted Jew to grasp.
It says:
“Know ye not, brethren (for I speak to them that know the law), how that the law hath dominion over a man as long as he liveth?”

Here, for a stronger authority than my own on this vital point, we will refer again to Ironside:
 

“...his (Paul’s) argument here is that the law has dominion over men until death ends their       relationship to it. But he has just been showing us in the clearest possible way that we have died with Christ; therefore we died not only unto sin, but we have died to the Law as a rule of life. Is this then to leave us lawless? Not at all: for we are now, as he shows elsewhere (1 Cor.9:21), ‘under law to Christ’, or ‘enlawed’, that is  ‘legitimately subject’ to Christ our now Head. He is Husband as well as Head, even as Ephesians Chapter 5 so clearly shows.”

Looking at Romans 7:2,3, we see illustrated that Christ is the New Husband, then the application of this is in verse 4. A woman is legally married to her husband, she is bound to that relationship in God, until death breaks the union. When that first husband is dead it is quite different. She is free to marry another without being an adulteress, she will not be blamed if she does so.

Here comes the thrilling spiritual counterpart to this illustration. Even so, death has ended the relationship of the saved person to the Law of the Old Testament. What death? Is it the death of the Law? No, it is our death with Christ, which has finished the “old order.” The old “marriage” is now null and void, as a widow’s is, and we are free to marry Another. Who? The resurrected Christ, who can do what the Law could never do, make us pleasing to God, and enable us to bring forth the Living Fruit of the Holy Spirit (Galatians 5:22-24). This marriage will bring forth abundant Fruit, not by the self-effort of the believer, but by that which is quietly, graciously produced by the Holy Spirit of Christ (John 15: 1-5; Gal.2:20).
 

“The somewhat weird and amazing conception has been drawn from the apostle’s illustration that the first husband is not the law at all but ‘our old man.’ This is utterly illogical and untenable, for, as we have seen, the old man is myself as a man in the flesh. I was not married to myself! Such a suggestion is the very height of absurdity. The Jewish believer was once linked with the legal covenant. It was proposed as a means of producing fruit for God, it only stirred up all that was evil in the heart. Death has dissolved the former relationship, and the one who once looked to the law for fruit now looks to Christ risen and, as the heart is occupied with Him, that is produced in the life in which God can delight.”

The point made above is that Romans 7 shows that that which died was the old man of flesh, in shared death with Christ on the Cross. The law did not die, it is still alive, but we died to our bondage to it.

We are now getting into deep water, which is so      important to our own walk on this earth with the New Husband, Jesus our Lord. The former condition where the Law, with our attempts to bring forth that which would please God by keeping it, and our self-effort with such sincerity, has been ended in death - we are     married to Another. All your disappointment, after suffering like a woman trying to birth a child in order to bring forth righteousness, has only ended in a still-born child after all! Look at verse 6 in Romans 7:

“But now we are delivered from the law, that being dead (the old relationship) wherein we were held; that we should serve in newness of spirit, not in the oldness of the letter.”

This is because to the natural man it is only “natural” to assume that if he is born-again in God it will be only a matter of making up his mind to be holy before God, and he can achieve this end with diligence and determination. It is our Heavenly Father who allows suffering, temptation, trials with other Christians, untold difficulties to come our way, so that we can learn experimentally that the old man of flesh in the believer is absolutely not one bit better than the old man of flesh in the unbeliever. Then we cry out, “O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death?” (Romans 7:24) and “For the good that I would I do not: but the evil which I would not, that I do.” (Romans 6:19).

The Triumph of Righteousness through Grace alone.
Are you relating to what is written? Do you want to live in fellowship with the Spirit of holiness and be pleasing to the Lord, above all else? Or have you fallen under the seduction of the thrills, excitement, and the false “delights” and manifestations of the shallow, self-centred “revival” crusades?

Are you ready to enter into true revival?

The Bible speaks of the two natures as in contrast. After living by the old nature’s dictates, oppressed by our own failure, troubled in soul, profoundly puzzled because we cannot live up to the heart’s resolves for a better Christian life, to step into the REST of God is unspeakable relief. Even to know that all along God knew that we would fail, and that our experience is common to every person who has a sin nature, that is blessed relief. Today, preachers often try to blame the natural sin of the old man operating in the Christian onto demon activity. They say you have a “demon of bad temper” or a “demon of lust”, and so on. When all along the old nature has never been dealt with as manifest in the believer, and the real answer is not to cast out the demon, but to “reckon” the old nature dead in Christ. Like Philip Melanchthon we can say, “Old Adam is too strong for young believer.” There is a rest from such trials, as Hebrews 4:1-13 teaches. This rest is to cease from our own labours, our struggles to obey, and let Christ be our Life. This is actually the spiritual Sabbath Rest of the New Testament!
To rest from our labours to be righteousness, and rest in the Lord to produce the Fruit.

Reading on into the first verse of Romans 8, from chapter 7, and these verses should be studied together, a gracious truth meets our eyes - “There is therefore now no condemnation to those who in Christ Jesus.” God is not condemning you for the failure of your Christian life so far, He wants rather that you accept that you will never do any better. He knows you are different at home than when you are at church, that you are playing a part when you are with other church-goers, wanting to be like them. If they are still caught in legality, they are doing the same. God sees you in Christ, forever beyond His wrath and condemnation. It is a great blessing to be aware that there is no condemnation to those who have put their trust in Christ Jesus’s death on the Cross. If we are saved, then we have the Holy Spirit within, and Romans 8:1 applies to ourselves. Freedom from condemnation depends on us being “in Christ Jesus”, not on whether we walk in the Spirit in perfection. If we have not the Spirit we are none of His (1 John 4:13).

What a life this “sanctified” Life is! It is a new order all together, it is life not in ourselves, but Life in Christ Jesus. This is what God is calling us to participate in. The old order, the Law, demanded the impossible from persons whose fallen natures were totally corrupted in Sin, whilst the new nature is produced IN the believer by Christ Jesus. Remember, do not try to reform the flesh, it is of no avail:

“Because the carnal mind (the mind of the flesh) is enmity against God: for it is not subject to the law of God, neither can be.”      (Romans 8:7).

“Mortify therefore your members which are upon the earth: fornication, uncleanness, inordinate affection, evil concupiscence, and covetousness, which is idolatry:”

Notice that we “put on” righteousness in Christ Jesus, not striving in the power of the old nature, as seen in Col.3:12-15.

Well, can we get a down-to-earth sort of understanding here, how does this work in our daily lives, which are filled with very “unspiritual” happenings and distractions?

True revival in action.

Firstly, Jesus Christ is risen, He is a reality, and has never ever left you (Hebrews 13:5,6). He is revealed by His Holy Spirit. The true revival is a deeper relationship with Jesus Christ, who is just as much with you, as a saved person, as He is with anyone else on the earth. No need to rush off to Brownsville or Toronto to find Him. Talk to Him now, tell Him you want to live and walk after the fellowship of the Holy Spirit.

Secondly, your life may be all clogged up with unconfessed sins, bow before God and ask Him to show you what these are, and be cleansed as according to 1 John 1:9. Don’t think that this cannot be true of yourself, either. While you are in 1 John 1, look at the promises in verses 3& 4, telling us that fellowship is with the Father and with the Son, and that our “joy may be full” in this fellowship; then the conditions for that fellowship are outlined in verses 5-10. In verses 5-7 we see that we must “walk in the light”, that is, not cover up sin in our lives; and in verses 8-10 we see the fact of indwelling sin in the believer, and the promise of sins cleansed when confessed. This is for born-again people, not for salvation but for a walk in fellowship with the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. Compare too 1Cor. 11:31,32.

Thirdly, do not “try harder” to be a Godly person! As soon as you say, “Well, I can only try” you are showing from what base you are coming from, the old man. Admit to God that you can try no more, admit it will all end the same as the past, and then go only to God. Ask Him to fill you afresh with the Holy Spirit, His Spirit, and go on into the day. Commune with the Lord often, when temptation comes, turn your eyes upon Jesus Christ. Perhaps someone is angry and abusive towards you, you want to give them some of the same. Don’t try to be sweet and loving, seek Jesus Christ, “You handle this through me, Lord, I am not able to control my temper. Make me loving.”  If you react badly, before you turn to Christ, make it right with Him as soon as possible in confession, and be cleansed by the precious Blood.

Fourthly, “reckon” your old man dead. How does this work in actual life situations? We can try to suppress the old man, the old nature, by effort. We can blame it on demons. We can insist we didn’t do anything wrong, it was the other person’s fault. Or we can put simple trust in the Cross of Calvary, which is the only way of deliverance from the old nature, the fallen nature. “Count on” the judicial fact that God truly did dispose of the old man at the Cross, this is positional reality. Thank God in prayer for this, and trust that the Cross is the answer for the old man, just as you did once for sins forgiven for salvation. Read the verses that show this fact, and believe them. Simple trust in the Cross is the only answer to deliverance from the Sin nature’s dominion. This of course means acknowledging from the heart that YOU have an old nature, YOURSELF, and that YOU are sinful in nature.

If anyone is born-again, that person understood the message of salvation in the beginning. None of us would have been saved initially is we had not seen these steps:

                I can do nothing for myself;
                I must repent of my sin;
                The Cross made it possible for me to receive all that God has  for me;
                Jesus Christ Alone will give me  Life as a free gift.

This same “pattern” is God’s answer throughout our entire  journey on earth. I can do nothing for myself: I cannot live a righteous holy life. I repent of my sin daily: not for salvation but for cleansing in the Blood, for a holy walk. The Cross makes it possible: I died with Christ, my old nature is defeated. Jesus Christ will give me Life more      abundant as a free gift. We couldn’t have had salvation on the basis of “I will do my best to keep the ten commandments, and Jesus can do the rest.”  Neither can you have full salvation (we could call this sanctification by Grace alone) for your Christian walk on that basis either. God must be All in All.

Remember always that it is God Himself who is dealing with us, not us dealing with Him (Romans 8:28-34). God has His own purposes for us, and these are unfailing!

Let us hear from the Godly teacher, Andrew Murray:

“The cause of the weakness of your Christian life is that you want to work it out partly, and to let God help. And that cannot be. You must come to be utterly helpless, to let God work, and God will work gloriously. It is this that we need if we are indeed to be workers for God. I could go through Scripture, and prove to you how Moses, when he led Israel out of Egypt; how Joshua, when he brought them into the land of Canaan; how all God’s servants in the Old Testament counted upon the omnipotence of God doing impossibilities. And this God lives today, and this God is the God of every child of His. And yet we are some of us wanting God to give us a little help while we do our best, instead of coming to understand what God wants, and to say: I can do nothing, God must and will do all.” (p.p.125-126. “Absolute Surrender”)

1. You and I can never fully surrender to God to work in and through us, it is impossible to the natural man to just give up!

2. With God nothing is impossible! He will cause you to surrender fully, if you let Him. Even rest from your works in this regard, don’t “try” to surrender to God, yield to Him, and ask Him to make you able.

“Every tree must grow on the root from which it springs. An oak-tree of three hundred years old grows all the time on the one root from which it had its beginning. Christianity had its beginning in the omnipotence of God, and in every soul it must have its continuance in that omnipotence. All the    possibilities of the higher Christian life have their origin in a new apprehension of Christ’s power to work all God’s will in us.” (p.124. ibid).
“...that I may win Christ,
And be found in Him, not having mine own righteousness, which is of the law, but that which is through faith of Christ, the righteousness which is of God by faith:
That I may know Him, and the power of His resurrection, and the fellowship of his sufferings, being made conformable unto His death;” (Philippians 3:8-10).

LEGALISM.        To work by the strength of the natural man to gain salvation, or holiness of life after salvation.
OMNIPOTENCE. The All-powerfulness of God.
 

Footnotes:

Books for reference were -
                                               “Lectures on Romans” by H.A. Ironside. Pub. New York Loizeaux Brothers.

                                                 “Absolute Surrender” by Andrew Murray. Pub. A Barbour Book
 

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