Seeds of Revival: Partnering with God's Move

Meet Ms. Mabel

 Ms. Mabel is a friend of ours from Centre 61. She always has a sweet smile and the cosiest fleecy coat on. You don’t get past her without a warm hug and greeting. Last week after I shared a testimony at a prayer meeting of some healings and miracles that the Lord did in a nearby village, she came up to me and said, “I grew up in that town (Dromara), and was saved during a revival in that same hall in 1950!” She asked me to take her back with us sometime. So we brought her last night to Cafe Hope, a church service that is held in the hall twice a month. The whole drive there she shared stories of growing up in this rural farm-town, of the revival that came, and how she gave her heart to Jesus at the tender age of 12.

There’s a treasure to be found in the stories of the older generation. They have seen for themselves what God has done; and what God has done we can be assured he will do again. 

God's Garden

A few months ago I write a blog about planting seeds (bulbs) in the hard frozen ground of winter. There’s nothing to show for that toil for quite some time. This week I was excited to see the first blooms of crocuses and camellias showing in our garden. The crocuses caught me by surprise because they were coming up in places that I hadn’t expected (because I hadn’t planted them). I didn’t know to look for them there. They are evidence of those that came before who cultivated the garden.    
​The kingdom of God is like a garden. God is the Master Gardener, he has the plan for what he wants to grow and cultivate in the land. There are many analogies of this in the Bible. We are simultaneously the garden (Song of Solomon 4:12), the soil (Matthew 13:1-23, Mark 4:1-20, Luke 8:4-15) and the seed (John 12:24). In every example our role is a little different. As the garden we are something that he is building, tending, sometimes pruning (like when we are a branch, John 15:1-8). Every garden is unique. Our job is to yield to his plans and let him form us. When we are the soil, God is the one that removes the stones, waters the ground, scares the birds away, and pulls up the thorns so that we can grow what he is planting within us. When we are the seed we are the DNA carriers of the harvest. He puts inside of us what he wants to grow. The seed doesn’t decide what it’s going to grow, it grows what it was designed to grow. The soil doesn’t tell the seed what to do, its job is to nourish the seed and be a good soil for the plant to grow and multiply in. The garden is the product of good soil and properly chosen seeds. All three must yield in their own way to God’s hands.

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When Earth looks like Heaven

    
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God is cultivating his garden here on earth. We are not the garden planners, we are not the ones that decide what will grow where, when, and how. We receive his plans, and become yielded ground, good soil, and stewards of God’s rhema word to us. 
    We have seen revivals come and go in this land. In every country, actually. Those revivals are parts of the garden that God is cultivating. God started something in Dromara in 1948, and while it failed to continue it doesn’t mean God was finished. Mabel marvelled that the hall was still standing and said it was “an act of God” that the building was actually restored and in such great condition. 
​The people who carried the seeds of God’s rhema word before sowed into the spiritual ground of that village. The land and this building still bear the blessings, hope, and plans of what God started. God never gives up on, leaves, or fails his people. His plans for this village are the same as they were in 1948: To bring God’s kingdom.

Every garden goes through a winter season.  And God has been showing the first blooms of winter to remind us that spring always comes, and he has been tending this garden long before we arrived. When we listen to the testimonies of what God has done before and take them to heart, God breaths his warm breath of life on the seeds and dormant plants of the garden to cause them to grow. God’s moves of the past are never dead, but they are dormant, waiting for the right soil to grow in again. Revival is not just a short period of time that the Spirit of God moves. It is when earth begins to look like heaven. There are books written on the topic of revivals so I am not even going to start scratching the surface of how they start and why they fail. But I do know that God’s heart is always to bring his Kingdom.
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​So what is your part? 

• Connect with God daily: This can be done through worship, prayer, and meditation. It should include thanksgiving, repentance, and listening without speaking.
•  Read God’s Word: Read the Bible with the Holy Spirit. Allow God’s spirit to speak to you and bring fresh revelation from His word. Don’t just read it to check the box and move on. You might read a whole chapter, you might stay on one verse.
•  Worship: True worship is a surrender in your body, soul, and spirit to acknowledge the holiness, supremacy, and authority of God regardless of what you feel like, or your life looks like in the moment. It’s not about you, it’s about Him.
• Fasting and Giving: These two lifestyle practices are essential in rooting out the things that will deplete the condition of your heart. Fasting creates humility and kills the hold the flesh has on your mind, will, and emotions. Giving through tithes and offerings kills the hold money has on your sense of security and trust in it. It is also the means by which God wants to invite you to share the rewards of growing His Kingdom. It is a way of sowing; and we will reap what we sow!
• Yield to his direction: To be used by God you must be in tune and submission to what he might ask you to do. Pray with someone in the grocery store, share your testimony in front of other people, serve in a new and scary way in your church. Remember, the garden and the soil don’t tell the seed what to do, they protect, feed, and grow the seed. 
• Finally, Look to what he has done. Share your testimony! Study the moves of God, his revivals, those that ushered in the Kingdom in their land. Ask God for a picture of what he is creating, ask for strategy, and instructions. You carry an integral part of revival in your land.  Your testimony might just be what someone else needs for their victory, the last piece needed for that breath of warm air to stir the seeds of revival.

“I will remember the works of the Lord; 
surely I will remember Your wonders of Old.
I will also meditate on all your work,
And talk of Your deeds.”
​    Psalm 77:11-12