Why We Need Revival (Part 1) — Michael L. Brown

Praise God. Let's pray together. Thank You, Lord. Fathers, You've received our worship, received our offering, received our lives. I pray that You would open our hearts and minds to hear from Heaven. Lord, some of us have been together in meetings hundreds and hundreds of times.

We've heard so many messages, but we pray again that You would speak to us through Your Word, that Your Word would come with power and conviction, that it would burn like fire in our hearts, that it would be a tree of life as we take hold of it.

Give us ears to hear what Your Spirit is saying, Father, in Jesus' name, Amen. Let's turn to Psalm 85. A few weeks ago, God really grabbed hold of my heart in a very intense way and began to speak to me about my own life and about our community here.

And I knew this was the day to bring the message. I've been asking Him through this day that He would cause it to grip me again afresh and grip all of us. Psalm 85, I want to speak to you today about why we need revival here in our midst at fire.

Psalm 85, this is one of the great psalms of revival from Israel's history. You showed favor to Your land, O Lord. You restored the fortunes of Jacob. You forgave the iniquity of Your people and covered all their sins.

Selah. You say, what does selah mean? No one is exactly sure. Perhaps it is a pause. Let's continue. You set aside all Your wrath and turned from Your fierce anger. Restore us again, O God, our Savior, and put away Your displeasure toward us.

Will You be angry with us forever? Will You prolong Your anger through all generations? Will You not revive us again that Your people may rejoice in You? Show us Your unfailing love, O Lord, and grant us Your salvation.

I will listen to what God the Lord will say. He promises peace to His people, His saints, but let them not return to folly. Surely His salvation is near those who fear Him. That His glory may dwell in our land.

Love and faithfulness meet together. Righteousness and peace kiss each other. Faithfulness springs forth from the earth and righteousness looks down from heaven. The Lord will indeed give what is good and our land will yield its harvest.

Righteousness goes before Him and prepares the way for His steps. I just want to give you some background as to how I came to be preaching this message here today. We've been really experiencing some wonderful things from the Lord here in recent months and we have every reason to be encouraged.

A lot of wonderful things happened in May. We had our Not Ashamed Charlotte rally that displaced the gay pride event in Marshall Park. Less than a week after that, I was sitting with over 200 city leaders from the greater Charlotte region, pastors and leaders that had come together for a Charlotte Awake banquet, sitting at a table with the mayor of Charlotte who's telling me, listen, you guys have to give us our marching orders.

And telling the pastors there, it's up to the church. You guys have to do it and change the city. Then hearing from Henry Blackaby, one of the most respected authorities on revival in the nation, in the world, this old man of God who in his semi-retirement is still getting 1 ,500 invitations to speak every year.

And he asked the question, why then with all these invitations? He's speaking at this banquet. Why then is he here in Charlotte? And he said for years when people have asked him, is there any one city in particular in America that you believe is targeted for revival or has signs of revival?

He's answered for years, yes, the number one city is Charlotte and that's why I'm here. Those things are encouraging when God has called so many of us into this area to share in what He's been doing through the years.

Every week we hear encouraging reports, those of our folks who help and stand with those working in the area in pro-life work. Almost every week we hear testimonies of lives of babies saved as our workers join with other ministries and stand in the city.

Almost every week we hear testimonies from our students of people being saved on the streets and coming to the Lord. I mean, there are good things happening. There are more and more neat testimonies of supernatural manifestation, of the gifts of the Spirit and words of knowledge and people being touched and God's power really moving.

I mean, good things happening. I had some of my dear friends recently with us at FIRE and they were just encouraged by what's happening in our midst. There are a lot of good things going on. Our finances in the body here are strong and stable, stronger and more stable than they've ever been.

There's a lot of good that's going on and we could just be rejoicing at His goodness. Then suddenly, I mean suddenly, kind of out of the blue without anything to precipitate it, any outward crisis, any terrible need, anything going sour or bad, suddenly God started dealing with me about our lack.

Suddenly I was arrested by heaven in my own life and for us as a community about the depth of our needs. There were several things that began to stir me. God spoke to Israel in Deuteronomy 1 when they were in the wilderness and told them, you've been at this mountain too long.

And then they got moving and they went forward and they were active and then, and that's in the first chapter of Deuteronomy, the second chapter He says, you've been going around this mountain, this country too long.

And I was suddenly struck with this picture of us just going around in small circles and maybe having some blessing and maybe having some growth and maybe having some increase, but in terms of the calling and purpose and destiny of God, just going around in small circles.

I was struck by the fact that our dear friend Yesupatam had come, our friend from India, one of my closest friends and co-workers. He had been with us a year earlier and really felt impressed of the Lord to bring a message to us of faith and challenge us to buy the field in terms of land or property or where we're supposed to be situated.

And it just struck me that one year later, we still didn't even have a word as to where we were supposed to be. Just, boom, it just hit me. Someone recently donated funds to us to republish my book, From Holy Laughter to Holy Fire.

It had been in print about 10 years and had gone out of print. We received some funds to put it back in print. So I just began to flip through some of the pages of the book. And I went to one of the chapters, God Wants All of Me.

It was written in, I believe, May of 1996. And at the beginning of the chapter, there's a hymn from William Cowper. Where is the blessedness I knew when first I saw the Lord? Where is the soul-refreshing view of Jesus and His Word?

What peaceful hours I once enjoyed, how sweet their memory still, but they have left an aching void the world can never fill. Return, O holy dove, return, sweet messenger of rest. I hate the sins that made thee mourn and drove thee from my breast.

The dearest idol I have known, whatever that idol be, help me to tear it from its throne and worship only thee. I mean, these are words in old English and you could just kind of breeze through them. But suddenly, I was just personally drilled by them.

Prayer from Leonard Ravenhill, written when he was 86 years old. 2 .30 in the morning, February 12, 1994. Look at the hunger that's in his heart as an old man. Lord, engage my heart today with zeal that will not pass away.

Now torch it with Thy holy fire that never more shall time's desire invade or quench the heaven-born power. I would be trapped within Thy holy will, Thine every holy purpose to fulfill, that every effort of my life shall bring rapturous praise to my eternal King.

I pledge from this day to the grave to be Thine own unquestioning slave. I read these things and suddenly, I was getting drilled in my own heart with a call to go deeper. Just a couple weeks before that, I was on a plane flying back from New York City, just feeling the grace of the Lord on my life, feeling the favor of heaven.

I had my headphones on, was listening to some worship music and I was just so overcome with God's goodness in His love and the sense of being in His will. I was just sitting there on the plane with tears of joy streaming down my cheeks, just enjoying the Lord and the sense of all is well with my soul.

And now, just a couple weeks later, I'm undone with a sense of need, with a sense of urgency, with a sense of something missing. And I'll apply this to fire to all of us in a moment. I had written this in that chapter, God wants all of me.

Revival is all about the claims of love. Husbands, how strong is your love for your wives? Wives, how deep is your love for your husbands? Parents, how intense is your love for your children? God's love for you is infinitely stronger, deeper and more intense.

He aches for you. He longs for you. How do you feel towards Him? Is the cry of your heart the same as David's, where he said in Psalm 63, O God, you are my God, earnestly I seek you. My soul thirsts for you, my body longs for you in a dry and weary land where there is no water.

Is that earnest seeking of God, that desperate thirst and driving hunger, that is what is so characteristic of revival. It leads to an encounter that is so dramatic, we can only say, your love is better than life.

What more can we want than Him? What more does He want than you and me? And then these words of Duncan Campbell, convicted me afresh. He said, Is my sense of need and your sense of need the very ground on which God can work?

Let me read that again. Is my sense of need and your sense of need the very ground on which God can work? Oh, how true it is that hunger, real hunger, creates a capacity for God. And the reason why we are not filled is simply because we are not hungering after God.

Campbell said, The crisis of conversion is ever to be regarded as a conviction of guilt, but the crisis of sanctification is a conviction of want. In other words, when we get to that place of radical deep breakthrough in our own lives and to a new point of sanctification and devotion and fellowship to God, it comes out of a conviction of want.

He said, You have it expressed in the words of the hymn, O, when shall my soul find her rest, my strugglings and wrestlings be over, my heart by my Savior be possessed, be fear and sinning no more. There you have the cry of want.

There you have hunger expressing itself. There you have a true longing after God. There you have a vessel into which God wills to pour Himself. Suddenly I was struck. This had been growing in me. But just looking around, watching the atmosphere sometimes of our services, be it in our corporate church gatherings, be it in our school setting, of just a casual atmosphere, of just a lack of real hunger.

People couldn't come in and say, Boy, you guys seem desperate for breakthrough. I'm not talking about putting on some show. I'm not talking about the louder we cry out, the greater sign of hunger it is.

I'm talking about something that's reflected in strolling into services 15, 20 minutes, a half hour late. Something reflected in the worship team getting grieved because as they look up worshiping, they see conversations going on through the building.

Some of us by the very leaders, Oh, because we just have to stop and talk to somebody about something. Suddenly I was just struck by the fact that five more years could go by and we could still be small in size and small in impact, which if it was our destiny and calling in God we'd embrace.

But it's not. You have to understand there's something in many of us that have been together for some years now that remember what it was like to literally be training 10 times as many people every week as we are now and seeing 10 times as many laborers going out in the harvest field to make a difference.

We thank God for everybody that is here with us. We thank God for the family community we have. We know that the kingdom of God is not about numbers, but when you're praying and yearning and longing for God to raise up laborers for the harvest, these things matter to you.

I want to say something as plainly as I can say it. I'm speaking for myself, but all of us in leadership, really we could be anywhere else. All of you that are part of this congregation, you could be anywhere else.

No one's forcing anybody to be here. We're all here by choice and a sense of the plan and purpose of God. And if I had my choice, if God just said to me, okay, you could go anywhere in the world, you could work with any group of people, you could make any place your home, you choose it, you choose the congregation, you choose the leadership team that's out there, you choose the school, choose the church, you, wherever you want to go, I'll bless it, I would choose to be here.

There's no group of people I'd rather be with, there's no group of leaders I'd rather work with, there's no group of students, grads, there's no congregation I'd rather be pouring into. I mean that with all my heart.

But I'm saying that something has to reawaken in us because we are hardly fire anymore. Listen, just to remind you, we're talking about calling, we're talking about destiny, we're talking about what God has fashioned us to be in His will, His plan.

This is not about our ambition, this is not about our desire, this is not about us thinking a certain way of ourselves, this is simply a matter of wanting to run the race God's given us to race, to run and be the people He's called us to be.

That's all that matters. Doesn't matter what other people think, doesn't matter if someone likes us or dislikes us, doesn't matter what our reputation is, the only thing that matters is what does our Father think?

What's He saying? What's His plan? What's His desire? So just to remind you, our name is not CCC as in Casual Christian Community. If that's what we were called to be, then we'd go for it with all of our hearts and we'd strive to be casual.

We are not CFF, Congregation of Fellowship and Fun. Oh, there should be fun in our lives and we should have fellowship. Coming together is one and the Lord is important, but God has given us a calling and destiny and it's not lukewarm and it's not ice, it's fire and passion for God and purity and things like revival and revolution are part of our DNA.

I'm telling you, one day I'm enjoying the favor of God and sensing His blessing and sensing that sense of purpose in being in His will and the next day I was struck by a tremendous sense of ordinariness, of just being personally and corporately tame and stale and very little of a threat to hell.

I was looking for some things on my computer and happened to stumble upon one document which got me reading something else and something else and something else which took me back to a lot of the events that took place five, six years back in Pensacola when at great price to many of the people here there was a separation from where we had been and a moving on from the Lord.

And then about 300 people were part of a large relocation here a few years back, the first fruits of them coming right about three years ago now. And I was reminded by the Lord in that sense we paid a great price for our freedom.

In other words, we could be whatever God wants us to be. There's nobody stopping us. Listen to me. There's nobody stopping us from going forth. There's nobody over us except for the Lord. We have our own leadership team accountability this way and in other ways as well.

We have our own sending organization. We're a movement in ourselves in that sense part of many, many, many, many, many things God's doing throughout the body. But it's not like we have to go and get somebody's permission to go after God.

We have to go and get somebody's permission to be radical for Jesus. We have to go and get in the proof somewhere to change the order of what we're doing to break through. And I just suddenly hit as if the Lord was saying, well, what are you waiting for?

If you recognize there's more, if you recognize you're supposed to break through, what are you waiting for? What holds you back? What hinders you? And I took it again. Everyone that's close to me knows that what strikes some as bad news can often strike me as something to be encouraged by.

That within moments of hearing something that's truly disastrous, I somehow very encouraged. But I was encouraged because I felt God was taking the initiative to draw near. God was knocking at the door.

God was giving a fresh invitation. God was saying, I'm ready to do something. I'm ready to break out. I'm ready to move. I'm ready to pour out my spirit. I'm ready to do something different. And it wasn't about awakening in the region.

It wasn't about fulfilling of larger prophetic promises. It was just about us. It was not to have what happened in Brownsville again or what happened in this place again or that place. It was about God drawing near and torching our own hearts again.

It was in that Ravenhill prayer. And I've been praying those words again and again. God, torch my own heart. The key to our destiny is a fresh visitation from heaven that becomes an ongoing habitation.

Listen, it is just the way God has made us and it is just part of our heritage and it is just part of our calling. Everything that we want to see happen from evangelism to missions to community impact to healthy family life to revolutionary living to manifestation of the kingdom and power, everything that we want to see happen will only happen to the degree that we are freshly plugged into God, that the fire of God is burning in our midst, that we are not living compromised worldly lives.

In short, there can be no fire as in fire church, fire school of ministry, fire international, and whatever else we do. There can be no fire without the fire. It's often been asked, this question has been asked many years, why is it we don't have revival?

And the standard answer is, this is just throughout the body, worldwide, why is it we don't have revival? Why don't we see revival? The standard answer is, because we're willing to live without it. So the next question is, why are we willing to live without it?

And the answer is, because we don't realize we need it. So let me give you 10 reasons why we must have revival. 10 reasons why we must have revival. If you're visiting, let God speak to you as He speaks, let Him speak and move on you as He does.

But I'm speaking this in particular to our community here. And I believe we all have these 10. There we go. 10 reasons why we must have revival. Number 1, there are many things promised in the Word that we have not yet seen or experienced.

And if we continue on our present path, we have no assurance we will ever see the promises realized. Come on, we read the Scriptures. This is not a book of myth and fiction. This is not given to us just as the tease of some kind.

These are words of truth, spoken by a God who's drawing us deeper for His glory. You say, aren't you encouraged by the exciting things happening? I see exciting things happen, and I've seen the same exciting things happening for years, and they keep hitting the ceiling in my own life and in the body worldwide.

There are many things promised in the Word that we have not yet seen or experienced. And if we continue on our present path, we have no assurance we'll ever see the promises realized. You say, brother, these things take time.

Correct, I understand it. But I've been going after some of them for 35 years now, and the clock is ticking. We were praying as leaders the other morning, just in the room where we were praying when we were quiet, you can just hear the clock ticking.

And on the one hand, we're resting in the Lord and enjoying the Lord and trusting His goodness and trusting His timing. On the other hand, there's that consciousness, the clock is ticking, the clock is ticking.

Just sitting around doesn't make things change. Time in itself does not make promises come to pass. We need a fresh breakthrough because there are things promised in the Word we've not yet seen or experienced.

And we have no guarantee we ever will. Number two, there are many things in the Word that God describes as normal. Not even talking about promises. Not even talking about things He says to seek or pursue.

But just when you read the Scriptures, when you read the New Testament, these things are simply described as normal. There are many things in the Word that God describes as normal, yet we have rarely seen or touched them.

How can we live the rest of our lives without taking hold of God's reality? Come on, at a certain point, most of us get this holy desperation, we've got to break through, we've got to do things differently.

Fast, prayer, whatever we have to do, we're going to get hold, we're going to see the change come. And then when you don't see it happen after a certain point, you just kind of settle in where you are and get used to it.

And think this is the norm. And you have relative hunger and relative thirst and relative desire. As long as it doesn't rock the boat of your overall life, because we get settled in. We just get into a pattern, a habit.

At a certain point we ask the question, how can I live the rest of my life without finding out what it would really be like to break through? How can I live the rest of my life without finding out what would happen if I really went after God in this way and fasting or prayer or seeking His face?

How can I afford to do that? And then we just get used to life. I don't know if you've ever watched a game on television, maybe you're a baseball fan or something and you're watching a game and there's a guy pitching and the pitches don't look that fast or that hard to hit and nobody's hitting him.

And you think, man, you know, if I had any skill, I could be up there and hit it. There's a reason nobody's hitting the guy. It's harder than it looks. There's a reason that a lot of people sit in churches and church meetings and think, man, if I was in leadership, I'd do things differently.

And then they get in leadership and they do it just the same. There's a reason we sit back sometimes and judge others for what they haven't done. And then we live out the rest of our lives repeating the exact same patterns.

There's a reason. Life has a certain momentum. Hard to get out of ruts, hard to recognize we're in certain ruts. There are many things in the Word God describes as normal yet we've rarely seen or touched them.

How can we live the rest of our lives without taking hold of God's reality? Number three, why we must have revival. Many of us have dreams and visions that we believe God has promised to us personally.

I'm not talking about things that are written in Scripture that are general for the body or maybe a promise for a particular nation. I'm talking about things in your own life. Things that, man, you wrote down in your journal or tapes of a prophetic word you know are true.

You play and replay. Or things just as long as you've been saved, you've known you were destined for this or made for this or you're going to see certain things happen. Many of us have dreams and visions that we believe God has promised to us personally yet the clock is ticking and we're no closer to seeing these dreams and visions come to pass than we were 10 or 20 years ago.

In fact, we're beginning to talk about what God wants to do through our children and grandchildren. What about the purposes of God for this present generation? What about His plans for our lives now? Could you just fast forward it, those of you with kids, fast forward it to 30, 40 years down the line when your kids are talking about how God's going to fulfill those promises through their kids and you're thinking, no, no, no, it was supposed to be through you.

And then your spiritual parents are thinking, no, no, it was supposed to be through you. And their spiritual parents are saying, no, it was supposed to be through them. It's so easy to put it off for tomorrow.

It's so easy to believe it's going to happen in the next generation. What about right here and now? I still remember hanging out with Leonard Ravenhill and him saying to me, just so broken up one day, he said, Mike, I don't care what's going to happen in the year 2010.

We were very close the last five years of his life from 89 to 94. So he was 82 when we met. I remember him saying that one day, he said, Mike, I hear all these reports of what God's going to do in 2020, 2010.

He said, I don't care, I'm not going to be there. You know, what about here and now? What about the burden of the Lord here and now? What about the jealousy of God here and now? What about what he wants to do here and now?

I've shared this many times, but it's a useful illustration. When we lived in Pensacola, Nancy and I were talking one day, and she said, you know, I think you put on a little weight. And I said, I have, but I have a plan.

She said, oh, good. I mean, she's just concerned basically for my overall health, than witnessing God, just my overall health more than anything. So I don't know how long went by, six months, maybe a little longer.

And she said, you know, I don't think you've lost any weight. I said, no, I haven't, but I have a plan. I really did. Six months or a year go by. And she said, you know, I actually think you've gained a little weight.

And I said, yeah, but I have a plan. She said, your plan is not working. Some of us need the Lord to look at us and say, your plan is not working. You've been going around the same mountain too long. You've been waiting for the breakthrough tomorrow too long.

Your plan is not working. What about what God wants to do in your life in the here and now? What about this present generation that has spiritual responsibility? What makes us think that things are going to be fulfilled in the future?

You know, many times commitments that we make to God for tomorrow are excuses for our disobedience today. Come on, how many fasts have you started tomorrow? How many vows have you made for tomorrow? How many major commitments have you made for tomorrow?

In fact, sometimes we're making our fasting commitment over a big meal while we're full to the max. What about what God wants to do today? If we keep going the way we're going, the one thing we're sure of, we'll never see it fulfilled.

That much we can be fairly confident of. Number four, why we must have revival. To the extent we know the Lord, to that extent we want to know Him more. To the extent He's touched us, to that extent we want to be touched again.

I mean, as we draw close to Him, doesn't that create a greater desire to be with Him more? As He begins to reveal Himself, doesn't that create a passion? God, I want to really know you. We can relate to Moses being on Mount Sinai in Exodus 33 and having this extraordinary encounter with God.

And in the midst of it, what does He say? Now show me your glory. It's like, Moses, you've seen enough. Moses, you've experienced enough. Moses, you've gone deep enough. He said, no, this just whet my appetite.

There should be something in us in our walks with God, a holy, insatiable hunger. And God satisfies us with an unsatisfying satisfaction. Remember a preacher saying that 30-something years ago, but it's true.

That's why there's so much blessing that's pronounced on those who hunger and thirst for righteousness and seek His face. Number five, we are jealous for the reputation of Jesus. The Father desires to highly exalt Him and to demonstrate by the Spirit that He is risen from the dead and that He's Lord.

Yet so much of our witness and lifestyle brings Him reproach, not honor. While the world continues to mock Him, having never encountered Him in power. This should provoke us to hunger and thirst and prayer and contrition.

God, the name of Jesus is mocked. People still don't take Him seriously. Really, ask yourself a question. Most people here are Americans or at least living here in America. How much worse do things have to get before we get desperate?

I mean, isn't it true that the worse they get, the more dull we become? Isn't it true the more society mocks Jesus, the more we become accustomed to it? It's just like if you work around people that use profanity, you hear it all the time, you get used to it.

You work around people that are smoking cigarettes all the time, you get used to it. And then you're away from it for a little while, you get back to it and you realize, oh, the smells, or this sounds terrible.

We've just gotten so used to the way things are that there's very little of us that burns with shame that the name of Jesus is so mocked. Come on, just think of the reputation of Jesus through His church in American society.

Think of the conclusions that Americans draw about Jesus based on the behavior of so many leaders, based on the message that's so widely distributed in TV and book form, based on so much superficiality and compromise that's out there, and here living in the Bible Belt.

I was talking to a local homosexual leader a few weeks ago, a few months back now, and he said to me that he himself is agnostic, atheistic. He said when he lived in other parts of America, most of the homosexual men and women that he met themselves were atheistic or agnostic.

He said, but it's different here in Charlotte. He said to me, every African-American gay and lesbian person I know in this city is a Christian. Of course, professing Christian, we wouldn't define it the same way, but that's just how he's saying it.

He said in many of the white gays and lesbians, these are his words, they're Christians. You know, doesn't something in us burn for the reputation of Jesus and for the truth of the gospel? What's going to bring about change?

Are we just supposed to accept the way everything is in our own lives and in our society, and that's just the way it is? Or is there something in us that's supposed to take hold of heaven and say, God, glorify Jesus.

Glorify Jesus in the eyes of your bride, in the eyes of the church, in the eyes of this world. Number six, the bride has still not made herself ready, and there is a passion in the Lord's heart for a fully devoted, totally loyal, holy, holy people.

What is hindering in holding us back from full surrender? What is stopping us from taking the plunge? And how does the Lord feel when spiritually speaking, we're so busy building our own houses while his house remains in ruins?

In other words, how much does he have the priority? How much are we concerned to have our lives, the consuming passion in us, if you cut us, the blood that comes out is blood of holy desire to please the Lord and to be a people that are right in his sight.

Haggai, the first chapter, God rebuked the Jewish people for being busy, getting resettled and building their own homes while his lay in ruins. We need to ask the Lord, spiritually, does that apply to us on any level?

Number seven, the needs around us continue to be staggering. Multitudes of lost, sick, hurting, dying people who need the gospel. So many who've never even heard the gospel. Even if we're seeing success, the harvest is still so plentiful, the labor is still so few.

Can we let people perish when we have in our hands the key to their salvation and deliverance and freedom? When I went to India the first time, I was so staggered by the needs. We were at a train station and homeless people around us and crippled people.

The needs were so staggering, I didn't really know how to respond to it. And over a period of time, just getting to go there each year and minister, you kind of compartmentalize things. Okay, I can do something about this.

I can't do something about this. So I'm just not going to let my heart be torn as much because I can't fix this and do something about this. So I'll minister here where I can. And you kind of unconsciously get used to everything else.

So we often feel the same way. Okay, the needs are staggering. Look, if we just stopped and focused on the needs, we'd lose our minds. If we just stopped and focused on the suffering, we'd explode from the emotional pain.

And we're going to be focused on the Lord and rejoicing in Him and enjoying His peace and His grace. But have we on any level insulated ourselves? Have we on any level just put up certain walls so that the needs of this world don't burden us anymore, don't pull at us, don't break our hearts, maybe it's too painful?

You say, oh, but who can live like that all the time? Nobody's supposed to live like that all the time. But there's a time to mourn and there's a time to rejoice. And perhaps because we've forgotten the one, we've lost part of the other.

Perhaps because there's not greater brokenness in carrying a burden and not more tears out of broken hearts for a dying world, there is not as much joy and celebration. Number eight, for those of you trying to write down all of this, it may be slightly challenging.

You can always get the tape and listen back to it. Satan is on the move with all his unholy aggression, working tirelessly and with fiendish creativity to defile, devastate and destroy. Can we sit idly by and pursue our own interests when the enemy of our souls rapes and pillages and ravages and pollutes?

Our present pace is not fast enough. Our present result is not effective enough. And despite all our boasts and big talk, when I say our, I mean the Church of America, more of the same will only produce more of the same.

So what am I saying? Work harder? Fight even more? Get less sleep? Push even harder? No, I'm saying we need a fresh wave from heaven. We need revival. We need outpouring. Now, there's someone who takes a message to heart.

You talk on the need for tears and they start to cry. Praise the Lord for some forerunners in our midst. I'm not saying that we beat ourselves. I'm not saying that we whip ourselves into a frenzy. I'm saying we need a greater outpouring of God's Spirit and power so that the things that we are doing will have more effect, so that the prayers we are praying will bring about more breakthroughs, so that the lives will be multiplied at a more effective pace.