How To See Personal Revival

How we doing? Good. About three of y'all doing good, rest of y'all? Y'all need the message today, don't you?

It's going to be good for you.

It's going to be valuable, be official. Hey guys, I'm glad that you're here. As Maggie eloquently mentioned, we are finishing up the month of March, which we called March Madness. We were really only going through John chapter 5 and 6, so there wasn't anything explicit in the text other than the fact that Jesus makes a couple hard statements that then people who were following him chose to leave.

That's pretty mad, that's pretty stressful.

But really we wanted you to consider what it looks like to take every week and attend church in person or online. And I—I've been hearing over the month from people who have done that for the first time, and I'm just so excited that you've been taking a step. That's a start. Somebody come on, let's celebrate that start.

I am well aware that many people come to church here for the first time in a long time, so one week was hard, five weeks, that's a miracle, and you kept showing up and I'm so proud of you.

I believe God's smiling right now because you took five steps more than you've taken the past several years, and that's huge. There's a long way to go, but you got started, so you should be happy, excited, exhilarated, proud of yourself. And last week, I know that I mentioned to you guys in the second service—didn't mention it to the first service—but I mentioned to you guys that I was going to preach on kind of the ingredients of revival. If you don't know what revival is, revival, like, just at its root is death to life revived, right?

When the doctor revives somebody through CPR or whatever they do—I'm not a doctor, but they revived them, death to life, right?

We've been made alive in Christ Jesus. That is revival. But I want to give you kind of a definition that I have for revival. I know I'm skipping points here, but if you could toss up my definition of revival: it's when the church starts leveling up and the world starts showing up.

What does that mean?

It means that we as individuals—you don't even worry about the person next to you—but we as individuals are so excited about our walk with God through various means that God works in us and through us, and eventually people who don't have a relationship with Jesus start turning up, because when something's happening that is spiritual in nature, the people who are spiritually dry in this world, struggling every which way, they'll see it and be like, "I need something. " And when you've got something, that's when revival happens. And so that's my brief definition. And as I was prepping this message, I was trying to articulate the main ingredients that you tend to see in revival, and I didn't quite finish it before this week started, and I had a round table that I needed to go to in—I keep wanting to say MSY 'cause that's the airport—I had a revival I wanted to go to in New Orleans.

Anyone been in New Orleans? You say it "New Orleans, " not "New Orleans. " Come on, don't play around.

I lived there seven years, I know how to say it. I don't know how to talk like I'm from Chalmette or one of these weird Cajun places, but I lived there for seven years. You say it "New Orleans. "

And I was excited 'cause I was going down there in late March, which, if you don't know this, what season is it? If you know—come on—crawfish season. And you might not like taking shellfish that was boiled in shrimp crab boil, ripping it apart and doing that with the head, and then you're pulling out the meat and then eating.

You might think it's gross, but for me it was a good time. I was excited to be there. And when I got there, I was staying in a little hotel, had a rental car, and then I looked at my return ticket, and my return ticket was Thursday morning at 5:00 a. m.

Now, that was a ticket, which means you have to get there how much earlier? Two hours.

Two hours? You need to travel more. That's okay. If international trips, two hours—I'm going to help everyone in this room, international.

Y'all seen that TikTok trend where they're like testing the theory?

It's one hour if it's a national trip, two hours if it's an international trip, 'cause you won't get locked in at customs. So what ends up happening is I'm like, I got to get there an hour before, but then the rental car place was apparently 20 minutes away and you got to wait on a shuttle bus. And so, to be safe, you got to get there at 3:00 a. m.

And I'm looking at the cost of hotels these days and it's—it's not good. So I said, "You know what, we just going to risk it. I'm not going to stay in a hotel. "

And at the end of the event, which was about 10:30, I dropped some friends—pastor friends—off at Garden District at their hotel where they were staying, and Garden District, if you don't know, is pretty close to the Quarter.

And I said, "I'm going to get my kids some souvenirs and I'm going to get me some beignets and work on my sermon at Café du Monde. " So I went to Café du Monde, and it was about 11:30, it was closed. And I was looking for a souvenir shop—souvenir shop wasn't open, except for on one street. And if anyone knows New Orleans, they know what street I'm talking about.

Any of y'all heard of Bourbon Street? So I took a walk from Café du Monde, where I'd parked, locked my doors, walked over to Bourbon Street.

And if you've never been there, the way that you experience Bourbon Street—we always think everyone has to experience it just a little bit—how you do is you start on the——you start on the west side, and then you go all the way to St. Charles, and by that time everyone that's visiting is done with Bourbon Street. It's good enough. It's—it's like the Strip in——in Las Vegas, okay?

It's messed up.

There's a lot of things happening there that you don't want to be a part of. And so I go there, and I want to be clear—I practiced this so many times before I'm sharing it with you—I want to be clear, I went there to get souvenirs for my kids. And so I went to Bourbon Street, went into a couple souvenir shops, was frustrated about the expense of it, got my kids hats, and then I was looking for my wife—but I love my wife, that was really expensive, and we lived there for seven years so you're good, you got stuff. And so then I kept walking.

And, as I'm walking, I realized, as if I'd forgotten I guess, that public restrooms are hard to come by.

I had to use a bathroom, and it was a long way till the closest public restroom, and it was late, and it was probably going to be closed. So I was like, I got to pee somewhere. And, so I'm on Bourbon Street—the only places where places are open, I'm—I'm looking, there's a lot of places that I didn't want to stop at for the restroom because I felt like I'm going to go to hell if I go in there. So, it's a joke, but, I finally came to a place that was about as good as I could find.

It was—again, I want to be so abundantly clear, I practiced this story—I walked into a daiquiri shop because, because they had pizza.

I saw the pizza there, and I assumed they had a restroom because they got food, they probably got—pizza, I don't want to pay for the seafood, it's too expensive, the pizza looked reasonable. Still cost me 10 bucks, but they let me use their private restroom. And I went and used the restroom, came out, and I was like, four hours till this flight leaves, I guess I'll sit and finish my sermon. And so I sit there at this daiquiri shop at a table, and I'm working on my sermon, and across the street—no lie—is a place.

It's a club, but it's not just a normal club, it's a different club.

And I'm working on this sermon about the ingredients to revival, and needless to say, God was speaking to me. That's why I tell you that story—is because sometimes when you're in a certain position and you're seeing the world right before your eyes, the culture, the way people operate, the needs that they have that they're trying to fulfill in every which way—there's just—there's a very clear moment for me in this daiquiri shop that I probably shouldn't have been in, but I was eating pizza, not daiquiris, and God spoke to me. And I finished this up, and beyond the shadow of a doubt, we are in need of God, Father, Son, Holy Spirit. Again, I'm not going to lie to you and tell you that I wept before Bourbon Street the other day, but there was something in me happening that made me feel emotionally conflicted, and I want to impart to you some measure of need.

I want to communicate to you that you have a need for revival.

My sermon title today is very simple: it's "How to See Personal Revival. " And to articulate that and give the ingredients, I'm going to talk about public revivals of the past, but I need you to know that, yes, this could apply publicly, but could also apply personally. And I'll jump right in, no belaboring this point anymore. I'll give you the ingredients of revival.

This is not every ingredient, because revivals always look different, but there are some things that are common to every revival scene in history. The first one, first ingredient, is desperation.

Desperation—look at your neighbor and tell—look, no one's—look at their neighbor, look at one of them and say, "You desperate. " Desperate. Look at your other neighbor, say, "I mean, you should be. " Yeah, that didn't work out.

Y'all are so nervous, nervous, ah, we have to change that boldness of Christ coming in here. Look at him again and say, "You're desperate. You're desperate.

You're all desperate. " How many of you willing to raise your hand say, "I'm desperate"? As the Gen Z would say it, "You're thirsty. " There might be—there might be another—there a bunch of terms to refer to people who are sitting there trying to satiate needs in all the wrong places.

You've seen it in junior high, you saw it in high school, and then you see it as an adult, and you might be around a bunch of people who have figured out socially acceptable ways to be desperate, but you're all desperate, and you have a need that can only be fulfilled in Christ Jesus. I know you know that concept, but you're still searching in all the wrong places. When I was a kid, it was pretty easy—I was looking for attention.

I was in junior high, I was looking for attention. I was in high school, I was looking for attention. Now I'm—now I'm an adult—I'm not in high school, I don't—anyone not want to go back to high school? Sometimes I'm still looking for attention.

It's interesting how I try to find the fulfillment of my normal, natural needs—I think they're God-given—I just try to find them.

When I was in high school, I tried to find them in girls. You might have tried to find them in boys or girls, tried to find them in being the teacher's pet, feeling validated by your grades, trying to find it in your family, trying to find it somewhere. As an adult, you want to find it from your boss or employer, it comes in the form of a promotion, you want to find it somewhere. You're desperate, but many of us fail to recognize or find ourselves desperate when it comes to our relationship with God, because we've been trying to satiate it in other places.

I have found pretty clearly, in my study of history, that desperation is crucial for revival.

Like, if you want a personal revival but you've got no desperation, you're probably not going to see a revival, 'cause—if you don't need God, if you don't feel like you need God, if you're not operating from the capacity of regularly leaning on God—what kind of revival you going to see? Like, desperation is one of the greatest pathways to a connection with God. It is in moments, and many of you can agree with this, that you're desperate that you arrive in a closer connection with God. Most of us, just to be real, most of us, many of us, came to church for the first time as an adult because we were getting desperate.

Many of us showed up trying to hear from God because something bad happened—we lost our job, something crazy happened, or I did something that was then exposed and now it's public and now I'm struggling, and I don't know where to go because no one is receiving me the way that they used to 'cause I did this bad thing.

But I'm going to go try God, because the word says, and everybody else says, that God is love and he's going to accept me where I am. You're desperate. Without desperation, it is hard to seek God. And I say that just as a natural thing, like if all things in your life are working out well, it's really easy just to move complacently through life without leaning on God because everything's kosher.

And sometimes the greatest thing that God can do for you is to put you in a— Position to make you desperate, but I don't believe that you have to be in a bad position to be desperate.

I believe you can actually conjure up this posture of desperation by simply reflecting on some of the things of God. I mean, it's easier — I mean, you want to pull everything out of my life? Yeah, I'm gonna seek God. If it gets hard, it makes it way easier for me to seek God.

But what God wants us to do is choose him on a regular basis.

You can choose to be desperate. I mean, you are anyways — I just proved it to you — but you can choose to be desperate in the right direction, seeking the Lord, satiating your needs with him. I don't know, you might be thinking, like, what's it look like? What's the action step for me to be desperate?

Here's what I'll give you: whether things are going horribly in your life or things seem all fine and good — even if they're all fine and good — there's a spiritual state that you're in that, without Christ, you have no access to, or that you have no access to change.

This is what Paul says, right? Like, even if all other things — all other things considered — it's his grace in my life that is necessary for me to move forward. And so maybe you need to posture yourself a little bit differently. Rather than thinking about God as the genie that when you rub the lamp you can get what you want, you shift it to say, "You know what, I don't have salvation without a relationship with Jesus, and since I don't have salvation without a relationship with Jesus, I'm going to cling to him daily.

He's going to be my daily bread.

I'm not going to look for my bread elsewhere. I'm going to find it in Christ Jesus."

The Scripture point that was really the main text that brought me into thinking about revival comes from John chapter 6, which we've been in — from verse 51. He says this: Jesus says, "I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats this bread will live forever. This bread is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world.

" What Jesus is saying here is that he is who you need.

So seek what you need from the person who can give it — Jesus. You've got to be desperate. The Scriptures say this in Matthew, chapter 5, verse 6. He says, "Blessed are those who hunger and thirst" — this is desperation — "hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.

" Psalm chapter 1 says, "As the deer pants for the water, so does my soul long after you. " Isaiah 44:3 says, "For I will pour out water on thirsty land, and streams on the dry ground. " Hosea 10:12: "Break up your unplowed ground, for it's time to seek the Lord. " There's a level of desperation needed, and I don't know the exact concoction or formula — I don't even know that there is one — but what I do know is what A.

W. Tozer says.

He says, "God in some ways waits to be wanted. " Jim Cymbala says, "God is attracted to weakness. " He says, "He can't resist those who humbly and honestly admit how desperately they need him. " Heidi Baker says, "If you don't go into the wilderness, you won't be desperate, and if you're not desperate, you won't find him.

" I've got to give you one more from Corrie ten Boom, these are people who have followed Jesus faithfully: "You may never know that Jesus is all you need until Jesus is all that you have. "

Whether God has allowed you to be put in this position — which is a grace from him — of desperation, or whether you have shifted your posture to understand that you are nothing, there's no salvation without the person and work of Jesus. Whatever level of desperation you have, as you lean into that, you're going to, I think, embark on a journey that maybe you've failed to do so up to this point. That's the first ingredient. I always spend too much time on my first point.

I didn't plan on finishing all six points — I'm going to give you four today — but still, I'm going to jump into the second point.

The second ingredient for revival is repentance. We don't talk about that enough, do we? I mean, the church these days, we don't talk about repentance very often, not as much as at least they used to way back in the day. I don't know if y'all were — y'all in high school, did y'all learn about, like, the First Great Awakening and the Second Great Awakening?

They taught us that in high school.

Now, I grew up in Arkansas, so maybe they taught us like an explicitly Christian piece of material, 'cause Arkansas, you know, is like super, super Bible over there. But they taught us about the First and Second Great Awakening, and those guys, yo, they preached on repentance. And when I say repentance, I'm talking about the Greek word "metanoia, " which literally means a shifting of the mind. One person said it this way: that repentance is when you're facing one direction, you make an about-face and shift the other direction.

Repentance is turning from your sin.

So, in order to talk about turning from your sin, guess what — you have to talk about sin. You have to confront head-on your sin. And I'm scared, as a pastor these days — I think it's the culture I grew up in — where we always want to preach a message of grace, yet we forget the message from Jesus of truth. He was full of grace and truth.

And it's way easier to preach a message of grace, but sometimes the message of extreme grace without the truth causes an enabling of a culture that is not helpful for revival.

And I want to see revival. I want to see Jesus make the dead alive in this place. I want to see the West Valley of Phoenix, Arizona have a radical shift such that people aren't revolving their lives around themselves, that they're revolving their lives around Jesus. I want to see that kind of stuff happen.

And in order for revival to happen, I have seen historically, I've seen biblically, that there has to be a confrontation of sin in order for repentance to ensue.

But I — I don't, I don't like to talk about your — I mean, you don't like when anyone else talks about your sin. "Only God can judge, " true, so true. I'm not trying to make fun of the fact that only God can judge. Now, God makes it very clear it's not our job to judge — Paul expounds on that, he says, "Nope, it is — it is not our job to judge.

" Yet we need to assess properly what is happening inside the congregation. And he does that in First Corinthians.

He's pretty much saying that sin needs to be addressed. If you go all the way back to Joshua chapter 7, I believe it is, you have what we call the sin of Achan, where there is sin in the camp, and there is a process whereby sin is found out and there is a consequence to that. I say all of that to say that if you're trying to follow Jesus without a confrontation of your sin, then you are radically missing out on the forgiveness that Jesus offers. There is a big barrier between us and God.

Now, Jesus paved the way to break down that barrier by his death on the cross.

The blood that was shed, it was validated by the resurrection from the grave. But that barrier was your and my sin, and without dealing with it, we're simply — I'm not a mime, so I'm not good at doing that — but, like, we're beating our head against the wall because we haven't confronted our sin. And I see a church these days — and I'm not trying to talk mess about the church, I want to be as unified as humanly possible — but what I do want to say is, because of the culture we live in, we're trying to over-prioritize acceptance over alignment with the character of God. We have failed to address sin in our congregations.

And I call myself — y'all know what a method actor is?

Nobody? I'm gonna tell you what a method actor is. A couple of y'all know a method actor. There's a normal actor — that's someone who memorizes lines and does a really good job acting, okay?

And then a method actor is someone that — they'll do the memorizing and stuff, but they live in that character the whole time they're filming, that character.

I always like watching method actors 'cause those are the ones that, like, it's really weird on set, you know what I'm talking about? I always call myself a method preacher, because it would be really nice if I could just understand this material and then preach it really effectively to you guys. I know some just good preachers. I'm a method preacher, and God has to, like, put me through the ringer in order for me to effectively preach a sermon to you guys.

And this week God was putting me through the ringer and helping me, like, reorient my thought process to say, "Yes, radical grace, radical understanding, radical acceptance of people of different lifestyles — radical, radical, radical. " Yes, everyone under the sun is loved by God.

Everyone under the sun is called according to his purposes. Not everyone will receive that, but everyone has the capacity to follow Jesus. At the same time, in order for them to follow Jesus the way he's called them to, sometimes I'm put in a position where I have to confront sin. And every revival in history, at least that I looked at, there's a huge component of public confession and addressing of sin.

I think if we're ever going to see revival in the Valley, we've got to come to grips with our sin, rather than walking around complacent, thinking that because we know that God is love, that he doesn't care about how we live.

Oh, he cares. And you might — you might have an eternity with God based on the prescription from the Bible for salvation, that you simply confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord, call upon the name of the Lord, and be saved. Yes, that's what the Bible says. It is that simple.

At the same time, God has called us to a higher calling, and we are called to make a shift, and in order to receive his grace fully, we need to come to grips and confront our sin and repent from it.

A lot of people are accepting Jesus but not turning from anything, and I'm just like — I'm not trying to be harsh, I'm trying to be clear — like, if you accept Jesus yet don't turn from anything, then what was his blood for? We sing about the blood, and it's exciting, but he didn't die for you to do nothing with it. He wants you to progress into sanctification, being made holy and righteous, purified, spotless — I'm quoting that second song, good song, gorgeous, it's good stuff. Second Chronicles 7:14 says, "If my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear them from heaven.

" James, equally intense in the New Testament — James 4, verse 8 through 10: "Come near to God and he will come near to you. Wash your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded. " I didn't say it, he did.

"Grieve, mourn, and wail. Change your laughter to mourning and your joy to gloom. Humble yourselves before the Lord, and in due time he will lift you up. "

Jonathan Edwards — the guy that people, they don't credit him, they credit God, but he was the one who was preaching a monotonous manuscript sermon in Puritan-ville up in the Northeast in the 1700s — he says this, he says, "Revival is a glorious and wonderful working of God when the people of God" — again, hear me — "when the people of God humble themselves and mourn over their sin. " When the last time you wailed, wept, mourned, and stressed out over the sin that you've yet to confront in your life? Many of us, it hadn't happened. And I'm not saying you have no connection with God, I'm saying your connection with God is radically hindered if you're unwilling to address sin in your life.

John Wesley, who wrote tons of great hymns that you sing and don't even know it, he says this: "Give me one hundred preachers who fear nothing but sin and desire nothing but God, and I care not a straw whether they be clergy or laymen — such alone will shake the gates of hell. " Revival will come when we are repentant of our sin. You know where Pyongyang is? Pyongyang — you know where that is?

Okay, Pyongyang is the capital city — at Seoul, Seoul, South Korea. If you have never done study into, like, the history of the church in South Korea, you should totally go Google that, or ChatGPT that stuff — it'll be so cool for you to read.

Because what happened way back in 1907 is some missionaries had come several years before, and they had done some ministry with people. They ended up having a meeting together, and what was happening is this missionary urged people publicly to confess their sin, and one person in the room started, like, erupting into a deep confession of his sin and weeping. And I — I — I don't know what that looked like, it must have been crazy. Picture that happening here.

I'm not saying you should do it unless the Lord calls you to do it, but, like, that's — that was a — that's a crazy moment.

And what happened is that night sparked a national revival across Be expatriate missionaries, but they're sending them here because of what God has done there. From one person confessing their sin, you—you could see revival after revival. There was a crazy revival in the early 2000s, where like a wave of repentance swept through the islands around Fiji. Y'all didn't even know about that, the islands of Fiji.

What they were doing was they were renouncing witchcraft, burning their idols, asking forgiveness from other rival clans.

And these are just anecdotal evidence that I've seen here—there it's spoken that rivers that were dead started running again and that coral reefs were coming back that weren't there. I don't know what to say about it, I wasn't there back in the early 2000s, but this is what testimony shares. Repentance has so much value, and you being unwilling to confront it is hindering your walk with God. Number three, in terms of ingredients for revival: prayer.

Prayer, God's been really working in me.

I've—I've always had some level of prayer life, but when you get into the position I'm in, where he—God gives you a vision to do something that could be large in nature—, man, you start to really realize your desperation for the Lord. Not only am I confronting sin that I've yet to confront, but I'm also developing a prayer life that is so much different. But you got to have a prayer life in order to have personal revival, and you might be thinking, "I've been trying for years to talk to God, never heard anything. " And I want—I want to tell you, that was me for so many years.

Yet there's something important to understand about prayer: prayer isn't—it's not rubbing the genie lamp. Prayer is a discipline whereby you put yourself in the position or posture to receive from God when he wants to deposit something in your life.

And he's not going to do it every single time—that's what you got to hear. You got to understand, when you understand that, it might take ten prayer times or prayer sessions for you to hear something from God, but you get it that one time and it, like, takes you into the next four weeks—you'll keep doing it. You'll do it 20, 30, 40, 50 times. But a discipline of prayer in your life paves the way for you to have personal revival.

Leonard Ravenhill says this about prayer, he said, "The church is dying on its feet because it's not living on its knees in prayer. " Charles Spurgeon, old school preacher back in Europe in the, the ancient world, early 1900s: "Whenever God determines to do a great work, he first sets his people to pray. " E. M.

Bounds writes a whole book on prayer: "Only God can move mountains, but faith and prayer move God. " Jonathan Edwards: "When God has something very great to accomplish for his church, it is his will that there should precede it the extraordinary prayers of his people. " "Revival is born in prayers, sustained by prayer, and brought to fruition through prayer. " And one person mentioned this, they said, "If you want to have revival in your own life, go home, draw a circle around yourself, and pray, 'Lord, revive everything inside this circle.

'" I love that image, because if there's ever going to be revival in this nation or in this community, it's got to start with you recognizing your need for Jesus. There's a revival that actually happened in 1857 by a guy named Jeremiah Lanphier. It's called the Prayer Revival of 1857. It's in New York.

There's this businessman who decides he's going to start doing a—, he's going to do a prayer meeting at noon every single day, and on—on the first day that he did it, six people showed up.

They spent the entire day, or the entire hour, in prayer. But within months, ten thousand people were gathering daily in New York City for prayer. And in one year, testimonies tell that one million people came to faith in 1857. That's crazy, and it all started with a desperation of reliance on God through prayer.

Number four: Scripture.

I've run into a lot of people out here, I mean just everywhere, who would prefer to have an emotional walk with God that is built on how they feel at the time, rather than a constant guidance and compass from the Word of God. And what I want to be clear on is God can speak to you—he can speak to you any way he wants to. He can speak to you in your prayer time, he can speak to you in the car, he can speak to you in a dream, he could speak to you any way he wants to. But he chose sovereignly 2,000 years ago to allow his people to compile, a subset of documents called the Old Testament and the New Testament, where we can look anytime we want to and see the character of God on display.

You can look in the Bible, the Scriptures, and see God.

You don't have to just randomly think and hope you're going to find God—you can look at his word. And so I would encourage everyone, this is what happens in, every revival I've seen, is that all these prayer times were always substantiated by a close connection and a refocus, or reorientation, to the Word of God, the Holy Bible, the Scriptures. And many of you are like, "I'm lost, I don't know what to do, I try to talk to God, the other day. " And I'm telling you, this—God already talked to you.

He can keep talking to you, I'm not saying he won't. I would love for your prayer life to be so saturated, with the Revelation of God that you're coming to me and telling me how to preach, telling me how to do this stuff, telling me how to lead this church—I'd be down, if it's from God.

But you can start where he's already said it. I think sometimes we're walking around like, "God, speak to me. God, tell me what you want for my life. God, help me in this area.

God, give me this.

God, give me this. " And I'm not saying God does this, but there's probably a posture where he's like, "You know what, so I didn't have to say it five million times, I gave you a one-pager, I gave you a standard operating procedure. " I'm talking to the people in the room who've been beating their head against the wall trying to figure life out, and then their boss comes up to them and they're like, "Hey, look at the handbook. " I mean, come on.

I'm not saying—I mean, he will speak to you in a private prayer time, even if you're not opening this. Right there, God can do it. He did it to Joseph in the Old Testament. He did it to John on the Isle of Patmos.

Now, that being said, John must have been reading something, because that is the most saturated book in the Bible of Old Testament Scriptures. You want to find a book in the Bible that is more saturated with Old Testament Scriptures? Keep in mind, the New Testament was written—so they didn't have the New Testament at the time, you know what I'm saying? All right, so John did not have the New Testament, but he had the Old Testament, and his vision on the Isle of Patmos, that gives us the Revelation of John, or the Apocalypse, that we call it.

Bro had a—bro had a Bible open.

He had to have—he had the scrolls sitting there. Otherwise, unless he's just that good that he can quote Ezekiel, Daniel, all at once, trying to talk about this vision he got from God. And if you want Revelation that inspires revival in your entire life, open God's word. There's a scene in the Old Testament, 2 Kings chapter 22—my boy John corrected me, it was great, I appreciate—he didn't correct me, he helped me, because I couldn't remember what this John, or sorry, 2—gosh, 2 Kings 22—, there's a scene where it just says, very simply, Josiah becomes king, he tells them to go do some stuff in the temple, and they find Hilkiah.

They find the lost book of the law.

I don't know if you've ever passed that part of Scripture, but I remember the first time I passed it, I was like, "What? Hold up, they lost it? They lost the law? " Well, it was the temple, so they found it in the temple.

What does that mean? It means that temple had been gathering dust, they hadn't been doing nothing in there.

And all of a sudden, Hilkiah finds this word and reads it over Josiah, and it says that Josiah tore his robes upon the hearing of the Word of God. And if you want Revelation, conviction, inspiration—all of the above—open God's word, because it is powerful, sharper than any two-edged sword, able to pierce through into your soul and help guide you in all paths of righteousness. Psalm 119 says, "Revive me according to your word. " Acts 2:37 says, "When the people heard this, they were cut to the heart"—that's the words that Peter used, and it was Scripture.

Jeremiah 23:29 says, "Is not my word like fire, and like a hammer that breaks a rock into pieces? " This right here is going to be your best location for conviction—best location. You—open it.

I don't—I don't even understand my sin, open this. Paul will tell you, at some point, "I don't understand why I'm supposed to go open it. " You'll see a bunch of people who are trying to figure the same thing out, and you'll feel connected to them, but also God's going to give you some clarity—it's right here. George Müller says, "The vigor of our spiritual life will be in exact proportion to the place held by the Bible in our life and our thoughts.

" You know, when I look at one of the greatest revivals of all time, most people don't call it a revival, they just call it the Reformation. But it was a helpful moment, and you know what caused it, in a lot of ways? Not only a disenchantment with the church at the time, but what was happening at the time is people were going back to the Greek, and they were opening up the Bible for the first time in a long time after the medieval—like ages, or the Middle Ages—and they were coming to grips with the word.

This is Martin Luther—Martin Luther is like reading the Bible, and he's realizing that what he had been following actually misses the point. He is convicted of his sin, he is convicted of what he had been doing. And then, because of the power of God's word, other people at the same time started pushing in that direction: Martin Luther, John Calvin, Zwingli, Wycliffe, Huss—people all over Europe at the time. And it's all rooted in wanting a deeper understanding of God's word.

And I could keep going on all of this stuff, I got so much more content here, but I want to give you this big idea: if you want revival in each one of these areas—prayer, desperation, Scripture, repentance—if you want revival, begin revolving your life around Jesus.

I—I know that that is our mission statement, at the same time, that is the heart of this. When you pray, this is you choosing to put Jesus at the center. When you open God's word, this is you choosing to put Jesus at the center. When you're desperate, this is you recognizing that you can't do it, but he can.

And so, for the people in this room, I don't know which one of these ingredients you might be missing in your life—could be all of them, could be a couple of them.

My encouragement to you is to recognize that desperation, repentance, prayer, and Scripture are crucial to your personal walk with God. And there's some of you, as you sit and you listen to this, you're like me. I remember—I never forget when I was in eighth grade, I was at a church camp that I didn't really want to go to, but I went anyways, and I—I was at this worship service, having done some things I shouldn't have done, and, one girl is telling the youth minister about it, and I'm angry because she was calling me out. And during that worship service, I—I felt something in me of just disgust with how I was living, and for the first time, I had kind of a—a vision or a pathway for what I could be.

And since then, I've come to learn that that was the Holy Spirit convicting me of my sin, putting me in the place where I had to come to grips with how I was living, and repent.

And I did, and what I saw from that moment—it wasn't like Fiji, where rivers started running again—but for me, there was a new sustaining thing in my life that was giving me fulfillment that I had never experienced before. And for everyone in this room, you might be in that same spot, feeling the conviction to repent of your sin and follow Jesus. I want to give you an opportunity to follow him. So if you would bow your head, close your eyes, I want to give you an opportunity to receive Jesus today.

The way we do that here is we say it all together out loud, for the benefit of those who are praying it for the first time.

So repeat after me, say: "God, I believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God. I believe he died on the cross and rose from the grave. Father, forgive me of my sin, I repent and turn toward you. You help me walk with you for the rest of my life.

Today is the day that I start my life with you. "

Heads bowed, eyes closed, I want to give you an opportunity to let us know about it.

So at the count of three, if you Amen. Amen. I see you. Let's celebrate those who have just trusted in Jesus.

And for—