31 Days: Fear of Revival? {Day 3}

Sometimes there can be fear of revival.  Images of people falling over, helpless; a congregation wildly dancing around the sanctuary.

I am not here to divide doctrine or debate theology; all I know is, that was so not the kind of revival I experienced.

But with fear can be walls, walls put up to protect ourselves from what may be perceived as “crazy Christianity”.

We have all heard stories, and maybe even ourselves have experience great tragedies after churches have fallen after some move of His Spirit.

However, from what I have experienced; revival is not about an outward “emotional experiences”.  It’s about an inward conviction, a radical change that has fruit as a result of the power of His presence.

True revival is not “hot and cold”, “back and forth”, depending on who is worshiping, or what leader speaks to the church.  True revival has no “jack-in-the box” feelings that come and go like the waves of the ocean.

God is strong, capable, able to sustain what He sets in motion.

And guess what…our God is not fickle.  He is power and He is life!

And when we have experienced true revival, we too will become alive, free.  One thing is also most definite, at least form…once we have experience revival we will never be the same again.

One encounter with the God of the Universe…and our lives will be radically, upside-down, always and forever changed.

As a little girl, I was always warned about getting, “off”, or of getting“too much of God”.  I was taught to live “safe”, to remain careful within the walls of the religion others dictated to me.

I was shy…painfully shy. While feeling desperately insignificant.  I was afraid of anything I couldn’t control….and even more afraid of disobeying. 

I didn’t understand what revival could do in a life.  As a result, I was going through the motions.  Living empty doctrine. Faking Christianity.  Worse yet, deep where no one saw me…I was dying inside, slowly.

And it wasn’t until I stepped into this new church, my Spirit surged as if I was alive for the first time in my life.  I was finally experiencing what they talked about in scripture, “tasting and seeing”, the goodness of the Lord.

Somehow, someway it was as if I was finally in the presence of a Lord I had always known.

No more was God far and lifted off.  But God was real, near. 

I was home. 

And God was not just a God of judgement, “do’s and don’ts”….but He gently revealed to me, He was so much more so, a God of love.

Needless to say, I never went back.  Not only did I not go back to my old church, but this presence that I felt…this presence that made tears shed from a heart that had not cried in twenty years, told me…

This wall-less Christianity is what real faith is all about.  This peace I had found, was the sustaining power of a living God…the one true God….I had always been looking for.  

And after getting one taste of an authentic God….you can never go back to routine rituals, empty religion…..artificial substitutes.

Even more…

Instantly, I got set free from all my fears.  And that was just the beginning of how God saved me.

He began to show me, I really did have a testimony.  One He was about to show me.  One I was about to share with many….

Why had I never seen it before?