Richard Owen Roberts, President and Founding Director, International Awakening Ministries, may be the greatest historian, theological and practical leader of revival in our contemporary day. Though now in the sunset years of his life, he has given himself to the study and witness of revival, reformation, and/or spiritual awakening.
I am doing a four-part series that begin Tuesday using his material. Click here to see Tuesday's post, here to see Wednesday's post and here to see yesterday's. Here is today's entry.
God’s Cultivated Presence
It is a remarkably blessed truth that even when every other church in a given city is under the judgment of God, your church can still cultivate God’s presence in a glorious way. This is also true of individuals. Every other individual of your acquaintance can be living in unresolved sin and under God’s righteous judgment, and yet you can live repentantly and be constantly and consciously cultivating the presence of Christ in your life and enjoying an awesome sense of His nearness. When the Spirit of God came upon Azariah the son of Obed, he said, “Listen to me, Asa, and all Judah and Benjamin: the Lord is with you when you are with Him. And if you seek Him, He will let you find Him; but if you forsake him, He will forsake you” (2 Chronicles 15:1-2). This is the Word of God and must be heeded today by each of us.
Thus, we can answer precisely the question, “What is a true revival?” A true revival is a blessed season when God is in the midst of His people in a manifest way. By this definition we can readily ascertain what is true revival and what is not. In recent years we have heard of many boastful claims of great revivals occurring. What is the outstanding characteristic of these movements? Noise? Excitement? Physical Phenomena? Crowds? Holiness? A friend of mine was determined to visit one of these “revival” scenes and asked if I had any advice. Yes, I said. Talk to the chief of police and ask if a revival exists in that city. The chief said, “Absolutely not! There is no revival in this city. If there were, the crime rate would show it.” Try as some may to avoid it, the only convincing evidence of revival is holiness.
The reason why the movement of God in Wales in 1904- 1905 is so wisely remembered is not the great preaching with which it was blessed or even the extraordinary wisdom of its leadership, but the incredibly wonderful impact upon holiness. Countless dens of iniquity were closed. Thousands of drunkards were made sober for the rest of their days. Time after time the judges of the principality laid white gloves on the bench signifying there were no criminals to be tried. Policemen were largely unemployed in anything other than trying to keep the churches from collapsing because of the weight of the multitudes crowding in. Indeed many of them organized themselves into gospel quartets and sang in the services. Hundreds of homes celebrated Christmas for the first time because the father was sober and had not wasted his income on drinks, bets on sporting events, and sinful pleasures. And, perhaps more remarkable than any of the other evidences of God’s presence in the land, the mules and ponies in the deep earth mines went on strike. Having for so long been driven with kicks and curses, they simply did not know how to respond when the newly converted miners came down the shaft and put their arms around the necks of the animals, saying, “Mulie dear, we are here to serve the Lord Christ. Let’s have a hymn and prayer and then get to work.” Any movement that calls itself revival that does not result in a wonderful increase of holiness is a sham.
For some, however, this seems too commonplace a definition of revival to be consequential. Many are prepared to argue, “God is always with us in this fashion.” Nonsense! You have only to ask, “What is the most noted aspect of God’s revelations of Himself to the men of Scripture?” to know how far from this we usually are. Is not the holiness of God always the overwhelming issue? Such cries as, “woe is me for I am undone”; “I am a man of unclean lips and an impure heart”; “depart from me, I am not worthy” are to be expected when The Holy One manifests Himself. Most of us recognize that Satan can duplicate many of the phenomena of Scripture, but the one thing that he cannot produce (nor would
he if he could) is true biblical holiness. It is the one truly reliable evidence of the presence of God in an individual or a church. Are you marked by such holiness? Is your church? Our personal, tragic lack of holiness is constantly proclaiming our own desperate need of revival. The absence of holiness in the church has made the church an incredible source of mockery to the world, and this proves the immense need of revival right now!
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