How to Experience Personal Revival

I am blogging a bit of a summary I put together from the last ten weeks of the women’s Bible Study I hosted in my home.  It is taken from the book “The Calvary Road” by Roy Hession.  Again, I highly recommend every Christian man and woman reading this book, at least if they are interested in a clear understanding of how to experience the peace of God in his/her daily life. It is really good for anyone longing to live in true fellowship with God and other people – those who are tired of the masks, the guilt, and the hurts that weigh down their spirits.

I honestly believe that the application of the truths in its pages will bring revival not only to our hearts but also to our homes, churches, and communities.

 So, let us first answer the question what is revival and how can we experience it?

 Before revival can be corporate, it must first be personal.  It is the experience of any simplest Christian who “walks in the light”.  It means a readiness to “break” and confess our sins at the feet of Him who was broken for us, for Blood does not cleanse excuses, but always cleanses sin, confessed as sin; then revival is just the daily experience of a soul full of Jesus and running over.

The necessary attitude of the one who wants to experience revival is a humble willingness for God to begin His work in himself first, rather than the other man. It means a willingness to admit his need and a willingness to humble himself at the Cross.

It is important to note that the rivers of life to the world do not flow out in their fullness through one man, but through the body, the team.  Also, our brokenness and openness must be two-way, horizontal as well as vertical, with one another as with God.

To be broken is the beginning of revival.  Being broken is both God’s work and ours.  He brings His pressure to bear, but we have to make the choice. Brokenness in daily experience is simply the response of humility to the conviction of God.

 Our wills must be broken to His will.  The Lord Jesus cannot live in us fully and reveal Himself through us until the proud self within us in broken.  This simply means that the hard unyielding self, which justifies itself, wants its own way, stands up for its rights, and seeks its own glory, at last bows its head to God’s will, admits its wrong, gives up its own way to Jesus and surrenders its rights and discards its own glory – that the Lord Jesus might have all and be all.  In other words it is a dying to self and self-attitudes.  It is always self who gets irritable and envious and resentful and critical and worried.  It is self who is hard and unyielding in its attitudes to others.

Dying to self is not a thing we do once for all.  There may be an initial dying when God first shows these things, but ever after it will be a constant dying, for only so can the Lord Jesus be revealed constantly through us. People imagine that dying to self makes one miserable. But it is just the opposite.  It is the refusal to die to self that makes one miserable.  The more we know of death with Him, the more we shall know of His life in us, and so the more of real peace and joy.

Fellowship –

Everything that comes between us and another, such as impatience, resentment, or envy, comes between us and God.  We are perhaps so occupied with the wrong the other man has done us that we do not see that we are sinning against Christ in not being willing to take it with His meekness and lowliness.  Seeing so clearly how the other man wants his own way and rights, we are blind to the fact that we want ours just as much; and yet we know there is something missing in our lives.  Somehow we are not in vital fellowship with God. We do not lost peace with God over another person’s sin, but only over our own. 

The way of the Cross is the way that God’s lowly Bond Servant, Jesus, first trod for us, and should not we, the bond servants of that Bond Servant, tread it still?  Does it seem hard and forbidding, this way down?  Be assured, it is the only way up.  It was the way by which the Lord Jesus reached the Throne, and it is the way by which we too reach the place of spiritual power, authority, and fruitfulness.  Those who tread this path are radiant, happy souls, overflowing with the life of their Lord.  They have found, “he that humbles himself shall be exalted” to be true for that as for their Lord. 

Power of the Blood –

Just as it is the disposition of the Lamb that bestows upon the Blood its power, so it is only as we are willing to be partakers of the same disposition of the Lamb that we shall know its full power in our lives.  All the fruits of the Holy Spirit, mentioned in Galatians 5 – love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, self-control – what are they but the expressions of the lamb-like nature of the Lord Jesus with which the Holy Spirit wants to fill us?

Every sin we ever commit is the result of the hard unbroken self taking up some attitude of pride, and we shall not find peace through the Blood until we are willing to see the source of each sin and reverse the wrong attitude that caused it by a specific repentance, which will always be humbling.  This does not mean that we need to try to make ourselves feel the humility of Jesus; for we have only to walk in the light and be willing for God to reveal any sin that may be in our lives, and we shall find ourselves asked by the Lord to perform all sorts of costly acts of repentance and surrender, often over what we term small and trivial matters. But if we are willing to do this in each issue, the Blood of the Lamb will be able to cleanse us from all sin and we shall walk with God in white, with His peace in our hearts.  As we go to God for His continual cleansing from sin, and “the tide is being continuously healed at its beginning,” Jesus is continuously filling us with His Spirit. Those who come before God with a “humble and contrite spirit,” are those who “dwell with Him in the high and holy place,” knowing His peace, true fellowship and victory through the Blood of Jesus, and who experience continuous revival 

Comments

[Diane]

Good a.m., Kerry,

Thank you for sharing. As I was reading the above, I was struck by similarities you are sharing in the book "The Calvary Road" and a book I have been reading for a time, now, Divine Mercy in My Soul, the Diary of Saint Maria Faustina Kowalska. For Lent, I have been reading from the devotional, Mercy Minutes(daily gems of St. Faustina).

Today's devotional was what seemed to be in line with what you are sharing:

"From today on, I do the will of God everywhere, always, and in everything."(Diary, 374)

"Now I understand well that what unites our soul most closely to God is self-denial; that is, joining our will to the will of God. This is what makes the soul truly free, contributes to profound recollection of the spirit, and makes all life's burdens light, and death sweet." (Diary, 462)

[Mark L.]

Kerry: that's a great book! A classic even.