On Eagles' Wings Pt 114 — Don Courville

Well, it's good to be back with you again today on eagles wings my. What a blessing it is to be with you. I would like to be with you face to face. You know, I really don't care to call up and do business on the phone.

I thought I've always rather to do it face to face. Are you like that? Well, you say no, I'd rather do it by phone. Well, whatever your makeup is. I like to walk with Jesus. Face to face. Do that in the spirit we walk with him being conscious of him right with us.

Revival as Returning to Jesus

Leading guiding talking to us giving us nudges. What a wonderful thing it is to walk by faith. Been talking with you a little bit about revival. Remember revival is is Jesus again and today I want to get into.

Historical Lessons About Revival and Surrender

Some things on the symptoms of revival some of the symptoms of revival. I think this will encourage you. I'm gonna take you back and share history with you. I don't know a lot about history. I like history probably don't know a lot about history because I forget more than I remember but History is interesting because it shows us how God has worked in the lives of men.

Someone has said his history is his story his story in the lives of men and basically that is true you know. Ended up with you a little bit last week telling you that and sharing with you how Jonah didn't like Ninevites and whatever area you have not surrendered God will bring you to a crisis in that life and Revival is actually God bringing us back to the cross back to Jesus back to living by faith back into his rest.

He wants us practically where we are positionally positionally. We're in Christ. We're seated at the right hand of the Father. We're with Jesus, but practically we have to stay there by faith. And live in this life and so if there's somebody you don't love like no like Jonah didn't like Ninevites.

God's gonna bring you face to face with that fact. We really don't know how Jonah ended up. He had a pretty rough time here. You have a great huge OCD the experience revival and you got a prodigal prophet out there pouting under a gourd.

God is just loving him out there under that gourd. God loves you. You know that you know, that's all God is is love and all he does in relation to us is love. What a terrible thing it would be for you my friend to live your life on this earth and to die and to go to Hell for all eternity because you would not receive the love of God.

God loved you enough to come down and die on the cross for your sins and the scripture says that God shed his blood. The scripture says in first Timothy 316 that God was manifest in the flesh when people people Say what's God like.

Well look at Jesus look at the Lord Jesus Christ. And that's what God's like because he was God. Even Thomas said show us the father and Thomas said have I been so long a time with you Thomas? He that has seen me has seen the father.

Walking in the Spirit Rather Than the Flesh

Where yet are you there at the point of blessing? Are you under the the blessing sprout? Are you are you walking in the spirit? Are you walking by flesh? The flesh doesn't profit anything matter of fact the flesh wars against the spirit and the spirit against the flesh and these are contrary The one to the other so that you cannot do the things that you will.

Everything is spiritual. Everything has a spiritual Ramification to it. We're just not here. We're just not blobs. We're created in the image of God. He intends for us to know him and to love him and to understand how much he loves us and how much he wants to Bless us and for all eternity heaven is going to be such a blessing a wonder.

God the eye had not seen ear had not heard the things that God's Prepared for us. We can't even fathom it. Paul's even seen things and and he couldn't even tell us about it. You just can't comprehend it comprehended.

It's so wonderful. You know the fruit of the flesh is evidence in the life of a believer in in Whatever area that it's not surrendered to him in other words if if I get angry then that area is not surrendered to God and That area in my life will be flesh to be.

I'll be actually out of control. Being in the flesh is being out of control. You're at the whims of your emotions. You're at the whims of of your intellect. You're at the whims of circumstances. You're at the at the whims of of people that come along.

The Holy Spirit's Control and the Fruit of Joy

But if you're under the control of the Holy Spirit and God commanded us to be controlled by the Holy Spirit He says wherefore be you not? Unwise but understanding what the will of the Lord is what is the will of God?

He says be not drunk with wine, but be filled with the Spirit, you know if you're filled with the Spirit The fruit of joy and melody it's gonna come out of your soul out of your very being people are gonna say What's wrong with him?

Why he's so happy in his whole life is correct caving in and There the only answer is it's Jesus. Oh Man, if Jesus can do that for his life, then what can he do for mine? My life's a wreck. You know if you're if you're desperate you turn to Jesus.

He can help you a lot of people turn to church and they get turned off because they don't get their needs needs met. And if your church isn't pointing to people to Jesus and people aren't getting saved Under your church and your ministry, then you need revival.

A Jesus-Centered Church and the Need for Revival

And if people aren't drawn and the to your church the amazing thing about our churches people are continually just coming in and we're praying God bring in the destitute bring in the lonely bring in the downhearted bring in the the losers bring in those that that Are hungry for God bring in those that want God and we have visitors coming all the time and not only that.

But as we go throughout the day Every day, we're telling people about Jesus and then we even go out on visitation night and tell people about Jesus talk about Jesus. He's the only one worthy talking about your church ain't worth a flip if you're not talking about Jesus.

And if they come there and they can't find Jesus Christ as their Savior. They can't walk under there and be under conviction. By the way, if you have sin in your life in your church, and there's and it's rampant.

There won't be any conviction of the Spirit of God. The Spirit of God would be gone and A lot of our churches. We we don't know how bad we need revival. Revival is Jesus again, and we're going through What we call revival season.

Well, we're gonna have revival meetings April 14th through the 19th. And actually they're just evangelistic meetings revival is when the Holy Spirit does it and you really can't advertise revival. You can say we're going to have some revival meetings but revival comes when God is ready to send it and when we're ready to receive it and What he wants us to do is to get ready for it.

Making Jesus the Center of Daily Life

Can you right now say Jesus is my life. Right this moment. Jesus is my life. He's all to me. He's everything he's breath. He's my joy, he's recreation. He's my work. I go to work. It's Jesus. Ah, Lord I have a chance to be a light to those around me today.

You're going vacation. It's Jesus. Oh Lord, we're gonna go down to Florida or off to Texas or New York. And what are you gonna show me through this time? Who do you want to to? Lead me to to talk to about you every day.

It's Jesus Jesus. You say you're crazy. No, man, this is life. Jesus is life. Paul said I am crucified nevertheless I live yet not I but Christ lives in me in the life that I now live in the flesh. I live by the faith of the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me the next thing He says I do not frustrate the grace of God.

Many of you are frustrated because you're you're frustrating the grace of God. You won't let God be God in your life. You're trying to be God on certain days or in certain areas and he wants to be God every day in every area.

Mary, Martha, and Hearing God's Direction

What area is it that hasn't gone to the cross whatever area it is He's going to continually be bringing you back to that area. You know Martha was a performance oriented woman and there was Mary and Martha Jesus came into their home and because she was she had been Grooved to perform.

She couldn't discern when to sit or when to serve and if you're filled with the Holy Spirit You'll know when to serve and then you'll know when to sit. Otherwise you're going to be confused going around in circles in the kitchen rattling pots and pans trying to get things Together and then you're going to come out and and be bitter at your sister and explode at Jesus and say why don't you make?

Her come help me a Lot of us are just going in circles and sad to say a lot of our churches are going in circles. Because we're not doing what God wants us to do and a lot of us don't even know the first thing he wants us to Do well revival will bring you back to the point where you can hear what he wants you to do again.

The First Symptom: A Deep Hunger for God

Now let me give you some symptoms of revival. I've got a wonderful book by James Stewart called God's new thing and I would love to say to all of you. I'd like to send you a free copy. But if you like a copy, I'll get you one and there's another book open windows that that's a tremendous book.

These are books on revival tremendous books on revival. Open windows and God's new thing and then the there's a tremendous book on the Holy Spirit and God has just not let me get into the Holy Spirit on sharing on that.

I've wanted to what a wonderful thing it is to be able to fellowship with God through the person of the Holy Spirit, but if you like one of these books if you'll if you'll write to me and Give me a little time because sometimes I'm here or there I'll get you one and if you can help out on the expenses, I'd appreciate it.

Otherwise you might have to wait till we get enough to cover it God might bless and we might have enough to where we could just do it. But If you would like to have something on revival that will encourage your heart, I want to be an encouragement to you.

I Want to be an encouragement to you. I might make you mad. I might make you glad. But I just want to be an encouragement to you. I make you mad because there might be something I say that's that stirs you up if I say something wrong I expect to hear from you.

I know my woodwork. My woodcutter friend will be on the phone after me. If I say something wrong or if I don't say it in the spirit, I expect them to be after me. I Appreciate God giving me people that love me enough to confront me and you and I need each other.

We need to be helping one another but this book is tremendous book and I want to just share some things some Symptoms of revival some of the features of revival from this. Some of the distinguishing features of a great awakening and No, revival is really completely identical with any other in every particular.

But here's some of the common evidences of revival and I just want to share these things with you maybe share some scriptures and Go through these things and and share a little bit of history with you in the remaining time that we have today.

Now if I get back over here in my Bible to some verses that I have I want to share these with you as we get into the first symptom of revival now listen to this it's going to be a deep hunger for God a deep hunger for God.

The psalmist said my soul thirsted for God For the Living God. When shall I come and appear before God? Psalm 63 1 Oh God Thou art my God. Early will I seek thee my soul thirsted for thee my flesh Longeth for thee in a dry and thirsty land where no water is.

Psalms 143 6 I stretch forth my hands unto thee my soul thirsteth after thee as a Thirsty land and Oh Amos gotta throw him in there. Amos 8 11 behold the days come said the Lord God that I will send a famine in the land not a famine of bread nor of thirst for water, but of hearing the words of the Lord.

A Moravian historian writing of the days prior to the culminating day of 13th August in 1797 said a great hunger after the Word of God took possession of us so that we had to have Three services every day five o 'clock in the morning 730 in the morning at night at night.

Everyone desired above everything else that the Holy Spirit might have full control self love and self will as well as all disobedience disappeared and an overwhelming flood of grace swept us all out into the great ocean of divine love.

Have you been there in? 1885 Reverend GH Moore pleaded with his congregation to seek after the Lord in a deeper fuller way and Four men were stirred up to pray and then and so what they did is they met regularly on Saturday nights in the old school house of Kells Seeking the Lord for a fuller manifestation of his power.

To meet the hunger of their hearts and that my friend was the beginning of a mighty revival that swept all over Ulster and even John Wesley described a blessed meeting in his journal. He said Monday January 1st 1739 Messrs. Hall and Kenson Ingram Whitfield Hutchins and my brother Charles were present at our love feast in Getters Lane with about 60 of our brethren now get this about three in the morning.

When's the last time you stayed up to three in the morning with other brothers? Praying for a revival praying for the blessing of God about three in the morning as we were. Continuing instant in prayer the power of God came mightily upon us insomuch that many cried out for exceeding joy.

Many fell to the ground as Soon as we recovered a little from the awe and amazement at the presence of his majesty. We broke out with one voice. We praise the O God. We acknowledge thee to be the Lord.

My friend one of the symptoms and evidences of a mighty awakening is a deep hunger for God. I don't know about you, but my heart is pained. There's so few really that have a deep hunger for God and If you want to evidence of that you just look at our prayer meetings.

Prayer meetings to be the prime time of the church, but it's the slime time for many. I Don't want to spend my time there. I've got more important things to do like watching TV. We don't care for God.

We want to give our nod to God on Sunday and then go on The rest of the week and ask God bless me and all my luxury. Bless me and all my adventures to make money for myself so I can get more things for myself.

So I can build me a bigger barn. God will not be mocked. There's a payday coming Sunday. I'll tell you another symptom of revival. That's an agony for souls when you have this agony. You'll be like Jesus where you'll stand and you'll look over your Jerusalem and you'll cry out.

The Second Symptom: Agony for Lost Souls

You'll cry out for that town for your city for your loved ones. You'll have that burden and you'll cry out and like Jesus when he said old Jerusalem. Now that stone is the prophets. Often he wanted he said I'd take you under my wings, but you would not.

You would not let me read you that that's Matthew 23 37 excuse the pardoning pardon me the rustling of the leaves here in the mic. But he said old Jerusalem Jerusalem thou that killest the prophets and stone is them which are sent unto thee.

How often would I have gathered thy children together even as a hen gathered her chickens under her wings and you would? Not. Oh God wants to bless us. But we don't want it an agony for souls and agony for souls that's just an outstanding feature of revival.

A young Welsh clergyman in Reading the litany one Sunday morning came to the words by thine agony and bloody sweat. He just read those words and History records that he was ceased with great heaviness and agony and in some manner he shared in the awful sorrow of Gethsemane and Calvary and That was the beginning of a mighty work of grace that shook the little Principality of Wales.

And when Daniel Rolands read these words to his congregation They were overpowered and felt that they also were in Gethsemane where their Lord. And when Murray McCain Came back from the Holy Land after six months absence from his people in Dundee he discovered that a greater work of God was going on than ever before through the ministry of William C Burns a young man of only 22 years of age and so great was the agony get this on behalf of lost souls in his Congregation and so amazing were the scenes even till four o 'clock in the morning at st Peter's that he was asked by the Presbytery of Aberdeen to give a special report of these amazing scenes.

It's just people agonizing for lost souls burdened under the Spirit of God. And you know what some of the Presbytery wanted to condemn the work that was going on at st Peter's in Dundee for its emotional aspect.

Here's here's a part of his answer by the way if you get plugged into Jesus and the Holy Spirit is plugged into you and filling you you're gonna get excited. You're gonna be burdened for lost souls if you're not burdened.

You're not gonna pray for him if you're not burdened. You're gonna. You know you're not gonna talk to him. And I'm sharing these things with you as symptoms of revival to show you that maybe you don't even have the symptoms.

You know if your vital signs aren't working. You don't have any heartbeat brain. Wavelength lungs not working. You're in trouble. You're really sick either. You're dead. I Don't know where you're at. You're either sick dead or alive one of those.

Or yet, but anyway, here's here's a part of his answer he said. We changed that every since my return I have frequently seen the preaching of the word attended with so much power and Eternal things brought so near that the feelings of the people could not be restrained.

I have observed at such times an awful and breathless stillness prevailing pervading the assembly and Each here bent forward in the posture of rapt attention. Serious men covered their faces to pray that the arrows of the king of Zion might be sent home with power to the hearts of sinners.

He said sometimes in James Stewart said this in his book sometimes in my meetings in Europe the choirs have not been able to sing the closing Invitation song because they were so broken down in agony for souls.

Choir leader, when's the last time your choir was like that? I was at everybody rushing back to hang up your robe so you can get out and be the first one to the parking lot. To be the first one to the chicken joint.

More interested in dinner than souls. Not caring that somebody came to our church today and left unsaved. Are we in tune with God at all? It's my question. Are you in tune with the Spirit of God what the Spirit of God is saying?

Let me share another symptom with you a third one and that is to be filled with the love of Christ. To be filled with the love of Christ the fruit of the Spirit is love. You know, what makes love worth work?

It's faith. Galatians 5 6 says faith which works by love they go together. If you can if you don't have love for people, then you don't have faith. If you don't have faith then your love for Jesus is is going away.

Faith which works by love. Jude 21 says keep yourselves in the love of God. Now a visitor from England visited Christmas Evans in Wales, and he'd heard a lot about him and with him. He was he was very displeased because of his disorderly meetings.

Christmas Adam and said these means even he didn't think they should be going on the way they were and so the Englishman got up and He preached and he preached very coldly history tells us and he was fully determined.

Not to countenance any of the wild notions of the Welsh and when he had finished all Christmas Evans He got up and out of respect to the to the brother from England. He tried to speak a little broken English as well as he could but while he was describing the glory of Christ.

Talking about the glory of Christ and how wonderful Jesus was the greatness of his sufferings and the infinite merits of his sacrifice. In a most powerful manner, you know what the old Englishman did.

He he forgot himself and he jumped up and he cried out with all his might. Oh my god. Is this my Savior. And he fell down on the floor? Can doing the very thing that he had condemned others are doing.

Well, he was so cold and dead because he hadn't been plugged in with Jesus. But once he got plugged in with Jesus, he got a little excited, too and maybe that's what we need to get plugged in with Jesus and that's what revival is and one of the evidences is love.

A Welsh Evangelist's Prayer for Personal Revival

Now this was just a natural sequence of of Experiences known by the Welsh preachers at that time and while riding on horseback to a preaching engagement over the hills One evangelist he was very weary and he was very cold of heart in the pulpit and so in secret prayer He'd also Came to realize that he was just cold there.

He was cold in every area in his study and he was cold. So as he was riding along he dismounted from his horse. He went out into the woods and he spent three hours in the woods crying to God to break his cold heart and to fill him with a burning love for lost souls and He said having begun in The name of Jesus I soon felt as it were the fetters loosening and the old hardness of heart softening and I thought mountains of frost and snow dissolving and melting within me and there stalled over me a sweet sense of his forgiving love as The Sun was westerning.

I went back to my appointment and on the following day I preached with such power to a vast concourse of people gathered on the hillside. That a revival broke out that day and it spread through the whole principality my friend.

Revival will come when you and I get on our on our faces before God and say God I am cold I am dead. I'm backslidden. The problem in my church is me. The problem is me. Well, it will not. I'll revive me again in a remote village in a little town at a meeting a Young girl who was naturally shy she stood up and with trembling lips.

She cried fervently in the old Welsh language. I loved Jesus Christ with all my heart and many deeply spiritual historians believe that this was the beginning of the Welsh revival of 1904 a mighty revival and The evangelist James Stewart had said I remember when expounding the glories of Christ From Ephesians to a group of young converts in Hungary that the Holy Spirit so bathed us all in Calvary love.

That I could not finish the message, but simply wept with the congregation in sheer joy. When's the last time that happened in your church? It's no wonder that one of the favorite hymns in the Welsh revival of 1904 was wondrous love.

Unbounded mercy vast as oceans in their flood. Jesus Prince of life is dying. Life for us is in his blood. Oh What heart can ever forget him who can cease his praise to sing wondrous love forever cherished?

While the heavens with music ring. The love being filled with the love of Christ is one of the symptoms of Revival. Have you been there? Have you been there? Have you experienced that type of love? What's God want to do in your life?

What is God Telling you. Is he convicting you of something then do something about it. Oh How we need revival. These are three of the symptoms of revival being filled with the love of Christ. Having an agony for souls and a deep hunger for God.

Are you on the verge of revival? Are you so far away? You don't even know what the goal is. Start praying for God to do a work and start revival and ask him to start in your heart well until next time I Trust that God will bless you and remember the Lord.

Jesus Christ is all you need but Is he all you want? God bless you.