You Are Revival

Absolute dependency on an all-powerful God!

Sometimes, as I go through life, humanity sneaks up on me just long enough to wake me up to the fact that without God I don't have much to offer.  My own self-preservation, self-interested, humanistic, selfish approach to life becomes absolutely obvious.  In these times it is even more obvious that anything supernatural, good and godly must come from absolute dependency on God.  This letter, blog, whatever you want to call it is the opposite of a motivational speech and won't impress your flesh one bit.  It won't help you "self-improve," but will help you "self-destruct."  Keep reading to find out more...

I don't like the saying, "without God I can do nothing."  That saying couldn't be further from the truth.  Well meaning preachers and Christians may quote this and I give them the benefit of intention.  However, without God I CAN do a lot!  The problem in this statement is the "I."  The problem is never with God.  God knew that when men put their minds to it they can accomplish almost anything, look at the tower of babel:

Genesis 11- ³ They said to each other, “Come, let’s make bricks and bake them thoroughly.” They used brick instead of stone, and tar for mortar. ⁴ Then they said, “Come, let us build ourselves a city, with a tower that reaches to the heavens, so that we may make a name for ourselves; otherwise we will be scattered over the face of the whole earth.”
 ⁵ But the LORD came down to see the city and the tower the people were building. ⁶ The LORD said, “If as one people speaking the same language they have begun to do this, then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them.

Is life all about man's accomplishments?  In some cultures, we seem to think so.  So why would God break up such valiant attempts at teamwork and success as that of the constructing of the tower of babel?  They were mindful of the things of man, not God, that's why!  Jesus told Peter he was Satan when he was mindful of the things of man and not God  (Matt. 16:23)!  How in error I have been for all these years when my mind strays towards the successes and interests on man, of myself, of humanity.  Must Jesus have to call me Satan a thousand times before I wake up and realize how incapable I am of serving Him with the mind of Christ?!

We are about as capable of accurately serving God as a child is of swimming across the Atlantic ocean from one continent to the other.  Impossible!  To think otherwise is a grave error.  Self has a hard time embracing such truths!  Self fights to stay alive, to stay significant in some way or another to earn the approval of someone far inferior to our Creator King.  Sometimes that someone is someone we love, and sometimes it is just a stranger.  In many ways we do things in life simply to impress ourselves and to feel like we did some sort of good.  How in error we are, friends!  Do you not know that even your well-intended good works are evil!  The best intended act of service or self-denial is like a dirty tampon, the Word of God says (Isaiah 64:6)!  Look up this Scripture.  In the Hebrew, the original language of "filthy rags" means a woman's dirty rags during "that time" of the month.  This is natural for the woman but stinky, gross, and filthy just like our human nature! 

If our good works are evil, if our best intended, most energetic efforts of serving our King are evil and in error what possible chance under heaven and earth do we have to properly serve God?  NONE!  That's the point!  You cannot do it!  Religion is predicated on propagating the false assumption that you can!  Satan also perpetuates this theme through his encouragement of your flesh efforts in trying to serve God.  Satan knows that when you try to serve God in the flesh you become disillusioned, burned out, broken and useless!  Oh God, please open our eyes to help us see this truth!  YOU CANNOT SERVE GOD!  Only God in you can serve God through you!  Please hear me before another radical Revivalist becomes a dying star Disciple!  

We cannot serve God and we shouldn't try.  All we must do is surrender... daily.  Our works will get us nowhere, fast!  We'll spin our wheels and spin our wheels, until fifty years later we look back on our life and realize all that we did was a waste of time.  Have you read Ecclesiastes lately?  That is the letter of a broken man lamenting sarcastically about the life of the richest man to ever live... a life of wisdom, money, power, sex.  A life that was absolutely worthless apart from God!    

What then is the summary of all of this?  The same summary that a writer finished Ecclesiastes with.  The conclusion of that letter is an eternal conclusion that remains to this day... "Fear the Lord and obey His commands. (Eccl. 12:13)"  Obey not in your strength, but in His!  His strength is made perfect in your weakness, thus the reason why we need Christ Jesus in the first place!  The whole point of the law is to prove that you cannot obey it!  It proves our deficiency in hopes of pointing us to the Fulfiller of the law, the ONLY Sufficient One, Christ Jesus!   You must let Him, the Great I AM take away your great "I CAN."

Let this plea be a stark reminder of an eternal truth... You must be absolutely dependent on God and STAY dependent at all times.  I cannot live sinless without God, far from it!  I cannot even think sinless without Him!  I cannot do one thing, not the smallest, with a pure heart and in the will of God without His Spirit inside me leading me and empowering me to do so!  Even the best prepared sermon preached in the flesh would be nothing more than an emotional speech, pathetic at best.  I MUST and we MUST stay wholly surrendered to Him or our lives will be of little use to the advancement of His Kingdom.  Let your sin and humanity remind you of this truth every time you realize you fall short.  Realize it you must.  If not, you won't recognize that your hands need to stop gripping your life so hard, knowing it's slippery and elusive, and let your life fall into the hands of our Almighty God, and Him alone.  

Your fear of insignificance must be crucified on Christ's cross for you to live a resurrected, victorious life in Him.  Even my cooperation with Him is insufficient.  We are to not live a life occasionally calling upon Him as many do.  We are not even to live a life walking with Him when we can.  We must stay IN Him at ALL times.  Flesh isn't allowed in Him.  You'll still exist, but once you put on Christ and hide yourself in Him, you will look a lot more like Him to the world when they look at you.  Before you can be found in Him, you must let go of the world, and your own efforts so He can take you to the place where He rules and resides... seated at the right hand of God, the place of true eternal significance.

MS

www.youarerevival.com 

Sex so easy, sex so hard!

What does sex have to do with Godly living?  What does sex have to do with a "Revival blog?"  Keep reading to find out.

Why is it that it's not so easy for couples, young and old alike, to uphold moral Godly standards in their relationship related to sex before marriage?  Why, in contrast, is it a joke sometimes that "sex stops with marriage?"  Some older couples even joke about the idea that their love life certainly isn't like it was on the honeymoon.  I understand that people aren't getting any younger, but no matter what your age, you can certainly still enjoy your spouse in this way.  Why is it so hard to stay pure before you get married and oftentimes hard to cultivate a lively, exciting sexual relationship after you get married?  The answer is simpler than you think, and it has to do with covenant. 

The enemy (Satan) wants nothing more than God's people to break covenant.  Break covenant first with God, then break covenant with their bodies and with their interpersonal relationships.  They do so before marriage by having premarital sex and break covenant after marriage through abstinence and, at worse, adultery.  Marriage is a sacred act and God intended sex the night of your marriage to be the shedding of blood (woman's hymen) that signified the seal of this covenant.  Malachi, Chapter 2 talks in detail about the marriage covenant and the consequences of breaking this.

When people engage in sins of sexual immorality, they are not just affecting themselves.  They are hurting God's heart and damaging the spirit and soul of their partner, not to mention the possibilities of the consequences of sexual sin related to physical sexually transmitted diseases (STDs)!

Your body is one of the greatest possessions on earth we have to steward (manage) before we go home to be with the Lord in heaven.  

1 Corinthians 6-

¹⁸ Flee from sexual immorality. All other sins a person commits are outside the body, but whoever sins sexually, sins against their own body. ¹⁹ Do you not know that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own; ²⁰ you were bought at a price. Therefore honor God with your bodies.

At one point in my past when I made a bad sexual mistake with a woman which led to stimulation, not intercourse, thank God, the Lord repremanded me in a very strong way.  Stimulation is just as bad of a sin as intercourse, since God judges the heart in the matter, which in this cases was consumed by the lust of the flesh.  Intercourse can have more negative soul-level and body-level consequences, but the spirit-level immorality is just the same.  For around three straight days and nights I could feel His discipline as He led me to study every detail of the following passage in Romans 12:

 ¹ Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God—this is your true and proper worship. 

This passage is very important to God.  Certainly the Bible states that God desires "obedience over sacrifice, (Hosea 6:6)" but God also clearly states that denying your carnal fleshly desires, abstaining from premarital sex, etc. is a way that we can not only honor God but is our only REASONABLE, only OBVIOUS, and CLEAR way to offer to Him a spiritual sacrifice.  It's amazing that something "physical" can be our "spiritual" act of worship.  Wow, why is the physical nature of our bodies so important to our spiritual man, anyway?!  True worship is found in our daily choices, not just in songs we sing.  Our choices in the natural can affect our spiritual walk and our eternal destination!  

Clearly, the Holy Spirit gives spiritual life to our spirit man which is housed in these flesh containers (our bodies), which still, at many times are subject to the carnal nature of sin.  Just read how Paul describes this battle in Romans, Chapter 7: 

 ²¹ So I find this law at work: Although I want to do good, evil is right there with me. ²² For in my inner being I delight in God’s law;²³ but I see another law at work in me, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within me. ²⁴ What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body that is subject to death? ²⁵ Thanks be to God, who delivers me through Jesus Christ our Lord!  So then, I myself in my mind am a slave to God’s law, but in my sinful nature^[d] a slave to the law of sin.

The good news is that the battle is won when we walk in the freedom of the Spirit!  The point is that the desires of sin, leads to bondage.  These bondages can lead to spiritual death (James 1:14-15).  That's why the flesh is so important to bring under submission to the law of the Spirit; the life of Christ!  The flesh affects the spirit man, because our choices to submit the flesh to the laws of Satan or the laws of God are what represent whom we serve.  The Bible asks, choose you this day whom you will serve (Joshua 24:15).  It also says, man can only serve one Master (Matt. 6:24)!

We MUST let our flesh be mastered only by the power of the Spirit, the life of Christ in us!  True freedom is being a bondservant to Jesus Christ.  Worldly definitions of freedom, like "Free love," is not free at all!  It's the best way to keep yourself in bondage and the best way for Satan to condemn your soul to hell.  

The flesh affects your soul  

The pleasure you "feel" in the flesh actually creates emotional responses and can sear lifelong memories into your memory and your physique.  This is why it is not out of the question for mature Christians of many years to fall back into sins of the flesh upon a simple temptation.  When you taste the fruit of the knowledge of the tree of good and evil when it comes to fleshly sinful pleasures, these "feelings" and "memories" can last with you for a lifetime.  Even more reason to never "go there" in the first place!  Personally, I am not tempted by drugs, because I have never been subject to the bondage of drugs, physically, or mentally.  BUT I am subject to the knowledge of sexual immorality in the form of pornography.  That was a struggle of mine from an early age and STILL, after many years of Christian Kingdom living, a battle that I have to stay accountable to in my own life so that I can ensure a victorious life in Christ, not a depressed life in Christ.  

Too many Christians live depressed lives because of bondages to carnal sin!  If this is you, SUBMIT FULLY TO THE LORD YOUR GOD TODAY AND LET HIM BREAK OFF ANY FLESH BONDAGE, SOUL TIE, OR STRONGHOLD IN THE NAME OF JESUS!  The Anointing of Jesus breaks EVERY yoke (Isaiah 10:27), including ANY struggle you may be going through!

God longs for a people who will dedicate themselves to living Holy lives, full of POWER and PROMISE.  Don't let the enemy derail your train before it has a chance to get to its final destination.  We must run this race of Christianity, this marathon, as those dedicated to finishing and finishing strong (Acts 17:11, Heb. 12:1-2).  Please, don't be another "sexual statistic" in The Church (someone who falls to immoral temptation, thus bringing down the name of Christ and Christianity).  I pray to God daily that I am not either.  We are all subject to the devil's temptations to break covenant before AND after marriage.  I pray you stay strong in your relationship with your boyfriend/girlfriend before marriage and stay strong in your physical relationship with your spouse after marriage!  

When you get married does the Bible not say that your body does no longer belong to yourself but to your spouse (1 Cor. 7:4)?  Solomon said to enjoy the breasts of the wife of your youth (Prov. 5:18-19), but he didn't intend for you to stop when you got older!

Allow God to revive you and renew your mind AND BODY, so that you can enjoy great physical relations with your spouse.  Don't even think that this is not possible!  Many places in the Bible commend Abraham for his great faith.  The Bible even states that Abraham's body was revived by faith to perform sexually (Rom. 4:19-20)... so can yours be!

Sex is one of the least talked about subjects in all of Christianity and, in my opinion, one of the most important subjects to talk about because it is such a great weakness for many.  Satan doesn't want you to understand the power of covenant in your life before or after marriage, even more reason why we need to!

Stay strong, be blessed, keep living a life of The Kingdom, a life of Revival!

MS

www.youarerevival.com

Revival Minute w/Matt

The best revival meetings ever documented have had no apparent leader other than God. 

The Holy Spirit can move upon His people in such a way that they are all led by the Spirit to usher in His words, grace, power, and love in these revival atmospheres.  You must be open to God's Spirit speaking to you, listen, then act in faith and obedience to what He suggests.

However, even in such meetings it is typical that God appoints spiritual facilitators that can be there to monitor the flow of the Anointing and make sure that the Holy Spirit is not grieved, that things continue to flow in the direction the Holy Spirit desires, and that nobody gets out of order or oversteps their liberties. This is true spiritual authority at work.

Out of relationship with the Holy Spirit such elders in the body of Christ, regardless of man appointed position or title, can be those God uses to bring order in such a setting.  God's order, not man's order; free of rules, free of methods, free of religion, free of timelines.  

This is in great contrast to typical Sunday morning church services where there is a set time of service; an expected time to preach with a certain amount of time given to an altar call.  In true revival meetings everyone there may not know one thing that is going to happen or for how long. 

This is also in contrast to typical tent or stadium evangelism or healing meetings.  Finney, Edwards, Wesley, Moody, A.A. Allen, William Branham, and even modern examples such as Benny Hinn, may very well have led "anointed," meetings but the gifting and attention still focuses on them and the Word of the Lord through them.  A true revival atmosphere has very little attention on any one man.  A great example of a Revivalist that I aspire to flow in the Spirit like is Evan Roberts of the Welsch revival.  He simply showed up and prayed.  God did the rest and God got the glory! 

Continue living a lifestyle of revival!

Matt Skamser

www.youarerevival.com

 

Are you a little too spiritually comfortable?

Hi Friends,

Allow me to encourage you for a couple minutes with some quick tips related to seeing and "being" Revival on a daily basis as a disciple of Jesus.

Consider your relationship with the Lord. Are you comfortable where you're at? I want you to think about that and meditate on that for a couple minutes... 

If your answer is "Yes" I would like to challenge you to a deeper level of revival living. There's a big difference between knowing that you're saved (eternal assurance) vs. being comfortable with your walk. A Revivalist is never comfortable with their walk with the Lord. Although they have peace and joy within, through relationship with the Holy Spirit they inevitably will continue to feel challenged to go deeper in revelation and understanding of the things of Christ thus creating in ourselves a discomfort in knowing we have yet to "make it" so-to-speak. Furthermore, the more time we spend with The Holy One the more our less holy characteristics are so thoroughly exposed. The process of holiness and sanctification is not a comfortable one at all. I pray you would defy comfortable Christianity and pursue holiness and purity like never before. 

If you question how to do this practically, here are two tips. 1. Worship Jesus more. As He is Glorified His Holiness is magnified. As His holiness is magnified we realize how privileged to be in His presence with even the opportunity to worship His Greatness. His grace is made all the more aware as well as our dirty rags of self righteousness. 2. Stop comparing yourself to others and compare yourself to Jesus. When we compare ourselves to others we can easily fall into a false sense of comfort in our relationship with the Lord. It's easy to say in our hearts that I am better than so-and-so at this or that or even to subconsciously judge others and thus think more highly of ourselves than we ought. Simply focus on Jesus, the sinless, holy, spotless Lamb, worthy to be praised, and keep your eyes off of the world and others. 

The above is a healthy reminder that we have a long way to go. It may also keep us from subtle judgmental holier-than-thou attitudes toward our brothers and sisters and the world. True holiness and relationship with the Lord will lead you to work on the log in your own eye far more than pointing out the spec of dust in your brother's. 

Be blessed!

MS

www.youarerevival.com