Why Revival Tarries - Part 6 — Henry Blackaby

God's Pattern for Focusing on His Own

Into God's own, this closing word. Too many of the circles in which I move, the pastors are led into a guilt trip if you don't have the entire church focused on the lost. You have forsaken the pattern of Jesus.

You have forsaken Christ's headship. His concern is for his own, for when his own come into a vital relationship with him, the presence of God in revival breaks out, and a lost world feels the impact of a revived people of God.

You are not neglecting the lost by focusing on God's people. You're simply doing it God's way. Let me pray with you. You take a moment in your own heart. Who are the strategic people of God that you are now ministering to with a passion that somehow you believe the greatest investment that you can make is the same that Jesus made in those God had given him, and because he did, Pentecost could come through ordinary people immersed in a vital relationship with the living Christ.

Pastoral Investment in Deacons and Elders

Pastor, what are you doing with your deacons? Trying to get them out winning lost people or helping them with their marriage, with their devotional time, with their prayer time, with their difficulty to trust God in the business world?

Are you bringing your deacons and your elders to a huge relationship with the living Christ? If you're not, you don't need to rededicate your life. You need to repent. Forgive me for not doing what I know to do because to know to do good and not do it is sin, and the only remedy for sin is repentance.

Repentance Rather Than Rededication

Don't hide repentance under rededication. Don't do that. What about the youth and young adults in your church? Are many of them so excited about their relationship to God that many of them are responding to God's call into ministry?

Teaching God's People as Jesus Taught His Disciples

If not, why not? Why does nobody in your church feel called to go at Christ's command to the ends of the earth? Probably because they've never been taught. Never been taught. Would you make a sovereign commitment to God that taking the word of God as your guide, not some book written by men, but the word of God as your guide, you will teach God's people the way Jesus taught the disciples?

Because those disciples were then used of God to turn a world upside down. The reaching of America waits on the repentance of God's people. Would you teach them that, and would you yourself be transparently honest before God about the quality of your relationship to God?

The River of Living Water and the Call to Repent

Is the life of Christ flowing in you and then through you? Is there a river of living water issuing out of your life? And everywhere it touches, it brings life. If not, repent. But even some of you here may be saying, where in do I need to repent?

Ask Him. Stay before God until God shows you. Father, we have the rest of this day, but this day is not an ordinary day. This is a day that you sanctified for yourself. There carries with it an unusual degree of your presence and power on this day, Sunday.

Sanctification Through the Truth

So may there be throughout the rest of the day and on into the evening a sanctifying of our lives by the truth. Your word is the truth. May we turn aside from all else and with trembling hands open your word.

And there let you speak to us and not only hear, but immediately obey. And when this day is over, may every one of us be transformed into the likeness of your son to one more degree as you make yourself known.

Christ's Pattern for Mission and Obedience

Thank you, Father, for your word and thank you for your son who gives us the pattern that you established for him and therefore for us. He sent us into our world in the same way that you sent him. Help us to linger on that and meditate on that until we have our lives thoroughly adjusted.