February 26, 2005
Revival Warfare
Various Scriptures
Prayer and Scripture
reading: Paul
1.
Illustration
– Ajith Fernando, in The NIV Application Commentary, shares an incredible
story. In 1935, Blasio Kugosi, a
schoolteacher in Rwanda, Central Africa, was deeply discouraged by the
lack of life in the church and the powerlessness of his own experience. He
followed the example of the first Christians and closed himself in for a week
of prayer and fasting in his little cottage. He emerged a changed man. He
confessed his sins to those he had wronged, including his wife and children. He
proclaimed the gospel in the school where he taught, and revival broke out
there, resulting in students and teachers being saved. They were called abaka,
meaning “people on fire.” Shortly after
that, Blasio was invited to Uganda to share with the Anglican Church there. As
he called the leaders to repentance, the fire of the Spirit descended
again on the place, with similar results as in Rwanda. Several days later,
Blasio died of fever. His ministry lasted only a few weeks, but the revival
fires sparked through his ministry swept throughout East Africa and continue to
the present. Hundreds of thousands of lives have been transformed over the
decades through this mighty East African revival. It all began with a
discouraged Christian setting himself apart to seek the fullness of God's
Spirit (as cited on PreachingToday.com).
When we get serious about God and about sin in our hearts and lives, God
will move. True brokenness and mourning
bring us to the point of being willing to deal with sin. Let’s read more about this in 2 Samuel
21:1-14.
2.
2
Samuel 21:1-14 from the NASB – Now there was a famine in the days of
David for three years, year after year; and David sought the presence of the
Lord. And the Lord said, “It is for
Saul and his bloody house, because he put the Gibeonites to death.” 2 So the king called the Gibeonites and
spoke to them (now the Gibeonites were not of the sons of Israel but of the
remnant of the Amorites, and the sons of Israel made a covenant with them, but
Saul had sought to kill them in his zeal for the sons of Israel and
Judah). 3 Thus David said to the
Gibeonites, “What should I do for you?
And how can I make atonement that you may bless the inheritance of the
Lord?” 4 Then the Gibeonites said to
him, “We have no concern for silver or gold with Saul or his house, nor is it
for us to put any man to death in Israel.”
And he said, “I will do for you whatever you say.” 5 So they said to the king, “The man who
consumed us and who planned to exterminate us from remaining within any border
of Israel, 6 let seven men from his sins be given to us, and we will hang them
before the Lord in Gibeah of Saul, the chosen of the Lord.” And the king said, “I will give them.” 7 But the king spared Mephibosheth, the son
of Jonathan the son of Saul, because of the oath of the Lord which was between
them, between David and Saul’s son Jonathan….
9 Then he gave them into the hands of the Gibeonites, and they hanged
them in the mountain before the Lord, so that the seven of them fell together;
and they were put to death in the first days of the harvest at the beginning of
barley harvest…. 13 He brought up the
bones of Saul and the bones of Jonathan from there, and they gathered the bones
of those who had been hanged. 14 They
buried the bones of Saul and Jonathan his son in the country of Benjamin in
Zela, in the grave of Kish his father; thus they did all that the king
commanded, and after that God was moved by prayer for the land. The Message puts that last phrase – from
then on God responded to Israel’s prayers for the land.
3.
King
David’s reign was the heyday of the united Israel. Life didn’t get any better than it was during his time. Yes, there were some hiccups in his life
with the Bathsheba and Absolom incidents, but life was good for the
Israelis. They were safe and secure,
taxes were low, and they were fairly well off.
But they hit a major wall – famine.
In ancient times, famine was almost always caused by a lack of
rain. No rain in an arid climate was
catastrophic. Notice how it was three
years before David sought God for the reason?
He probably thought that the first year or two were supplemental
punishments for his sin, but when it became three years and food shortages
started hitting, he knew he had to ask God.
Or maybe he’d been asking and God chose not to answer until He had
David’s complete attention. Whatever
the reason, David asked and God answered.
4.
What
was God’s answer? What was causing the
drought? Sin. Sin that had been buried and not dealt with for years. And not just any sin, but in many respects
the worst kind of sin. This was sin
done in the name of God. Saul had
decided what God wanted Him to do and tried to carry it out, even though it
wasn’t God’s idea at all! My suspicion
is that, since Saul had failed God in wiping out everything the Amalekites
owned, he decided he’d make it up to God by wiping out the Gibeonites. The problem: Joshua and the Israelites had
made a treaty, a covenant, with the Gibeonites that Israel wouldn’t wipe out
Gibeon and Gibeon would serve as slaves to Israel. Not much of an arrangement in our eyes, but better than being
annihilated! The point is that Saul had
tried to cover his own sin by slaughtering innocent people in God’s name.
5.
How
does this apply to us? It is so
incredibly easy for us to bury sin in our own hearts and lives. It is so incredibly easy for us to have sin
that we’ve committed and even harbored and never confessed and repented
of. We can bury it for years and wonder
why we never get closer to God or why we never become the person God has for
us. We may even allow ourselves to
suppress it to the point that we never think about it. Or we may be continuing to indulge in a sin
that we’ve been involved in for years.
Unconfessed and unrepented sin will always cause a famine of the Spirit
in our hearts and lives. We’ll be able
to sense a little of His Spirit moving, but we’ll never be able to become the
man or woman of God that He’s calling us to be. Buried sin causes a famine, a boxing-in, of God’s Spirit in our
hearts and lives. He can and will still
use us, but we’ll always live in defeat.
The only thing that can defeat this sin, that can clear the slate, is to
get the sin into the open and put it to death by confessing and repenting of
this sin.
6.
How
does this fit in with revival? When God
begins to break our hearts so that He can heal them, He will always come across
this kind of sin and will move on our hearts to deal with it in His way. So if we do confess and repent of it, He’ll
keep working in our hearts. If we
don’t, we’ve created a roadblock that He can’t get past. Sometimes those sins are personal ones;
sometimes they are corporate, involving an attitude or action in the whole
body. But Satan will always try to use
sin to keep us from being revived, from being broken then healed and filled to
overflowing with God’s Spirit and love.
If we want to keep allowing the Spirit to move among us like He did last
week and even more powerfully, we’ve got to deal with any and all sin and to
fight against Satan’s attempts to seduce us into sin. We’ve got to first be broken and mourn, obey God’s leading, and
then fight revival warfare if we’re going to experience the fullness of God’s
Spirit in our midst.
7.
How
do we do that? We’ve got to recognize
how Satan fights against us in trying to get us to sin or in keeping us from
confessing and repenting of our sin. So
what kinds of sin does Satan seek to use against us?
8.
Strongholds
– habitual or addictive sins. These are
sins we’ve indulged in so much that we don’t think we can break them. Alcohol and drug abuse can fall into this
category as well as pornography and gossip.
Whether they are attitudes or actions or thought patterns, these sins
have a powerful hold over us that Satan will use like a lever to try to pry us
away from God and His healing power. It
is extremely important that we find someone that we will confess to and repent
of with who can also keep us accountable for staying away from this sin. Having someone to encourage us and help us
stay on God’s path is essential in breaking strongholds. In addition, much prayer is needed, so
recruiting a prayer group is important, and I would recommend reading “Victory
over Darkness” by Neil Anderson to help break these strongholds.
9.
Impulsive
sins – sins of opportunity. These sins
may have been indulged in only once or twice, but never publicly confessed and
repented of. They haven’t become a
stronghold but a stumbling block – something that Satan uses to derail God’s
work anytime we start moving closer to God.
It can be something we never thought in a million years we’d do, but in
a moment of weakness an opportunity to sin arose and we bit the big one. Then we become so ashamed that we were
stupid enough to fall for Satan’s scheme, so we try to bury the sin and never
confess or repent of it with anyone.
Knowing that someone besides God accepts us and loves us in spite of
knowing our sin is an incredibly freeing thing! God uses that person to free us from the pit of despair and to
draw us closer to Him and bring us to the point where He can break our heart
and then heal us. If we let him, Satan
will use sins of opportunity to hammer us and keep us from becoming the person
God created us to be.
10.
Deliberate
sins – sins we indulge in purposefully and defiantly. Satan really uses these to tell us how worthless we are and how
disgusting we are in God’s sight. 1
John 1:9 tells us that there is no sin God cannot forgive by the blood of Jesus
Christ. These are sins we feel
particularly ashamed of and bad about ourselves for, so Satan has a
particularly strong grip on our hearts in these areas if we listen to him for
even an instant. When we confess and
repent of these sins, again with someone we can trust who will accept us in
spite of our sins, the stranglehold on our spiritual lives is broken.
11.
Why
am I emphasizing confessing to someone and repenting in their presence? What does Satan love to whisper to us? “You’re so worthless! I can’t believe you did that! If anyone ever knew what you’ve done, you’ll
be rejected for the rest of your life!
You’d better not tell anyone or they’ll hate you!” Sound familiar? As long as we buy into this lie by not confessing to someone we
can trust and asking them to help us get past this, we’ll keep believing these
lies, and revival will never come to our hearts. We’ll never experience the revival that God has for us. We’ll never allow our hearts to be
completely broken because we can’t let this sin get into the open, so we’ll
never be completely healed.
12.
We
are involved in spiritual warfare. The
heavenly beings, both angels and demons, are fighting for the souls of all
people on earth. But Satan is defeated
and knows it. He is trying to take as
many people with him as possible when he is cast into eternal fire. So he works to deceive us. I read this week a reminder about the first
days of the invasion of Iraq. The Iraqi
information minister kept saying that Saddam’s forces were wiping out the
American troops, even as you could hear the sounds of war in the
background. The Iraqis believed him
because that was all they knew. We know
the truth, and yet at times we choose to be deceived. We’ve got to make better choices.
13.
If
we’re going to be broken and mourning so we can experience God’s healing, we’ve
got to enter the battle for our souls and our future. We’ve got to confess and repent of our sins so that we can be
free from them – free to be revived, free to be healed. And maybe right now you are asking, “What
went on this week? I made this
commitment to God and asked Him to break me so I can be healed, but it doesn’t
seem like much has happened.” Ask God
right now if you’re harboring sin in your heart and life, sin that may have been
buried for years. Or maybe God has
started moving powerfully in you, but you feel like something is holding you
back. Ask God right now to search your
heart and reveal any sin you haven’t dealt with or wanted to deal with. As Psalm 139:23-34 says, Search me, O
God, and know my heart; test me and know my thoughts. 24 Point out anything in me that offends you, and lead me along
the path of everlasting life. God
will answer that prayer.
14.
If
there is sin that you need to deal with, deal with it right now. Find someone whom you can confess it to and
then ask them to join you at the altar as you confess to God and they can pray
for you. Maybe it’s someone you’ve
offended, or maybe it’s just someone you know well enough to trust. But folks, if we want the Holy Spirit to
move among us even more powerfully than we’ve seen already, we’ve got to deal
with sin. So right now, either find
someone you can confess to, or I’m available, and I never break a confidence. If you need to leave the sanctuary for a
moment to talk to that person, then feel free to do so. Then return to the altars and confess before
God. If you need to talk to someone who
isn’t here, come forward and commit to doing so as soon as you possibly
can. God is working here, and He wants
to break us and heal us and make us whole and pure and filled to overflowing
with His love. Find that person or come
forward now.