Half-Baked Revivals

I was talking with a friend when a person from a neighbouring country joined us.

The topic was the whole aspect of pineapple theft since we border (are surrounded by) pineapple farms.

Incidentally, that theft is an industry, with whole families being proud of the fact that they are part of it.

You even hear of pupils saying that they would like to join it when they grow up.

This guy said something very emphatically, yet so matter-of-factly.

He said that in his country nobody steals anything. That people farm very far from where they live yet do not even secure the granaries they store their harvest before taking it either for consumption or to the market. And it many times is taken long after the harvest.

Do you know why?

Witchcraft.

Stealing brings about instant retribution. And it is so common that chances of picking on someone who has not ‘treated’ his property are almost non existent.

As a student of revival, I want to say in the clearest way that a similar thing happens when God visits an area.

Revival kills vice.

A similar thing happening in witchcraft ruled territories as happens in places with revival may confuse some to think that we are dealing with the same sources. Yet nothing could be farther from the truth.

One is guided by fear (dread is the actual word) of retribution while the other is guided by a realisation of God and the resulting contentment and peace.

Another analogy may explain it.

An electrician does not play with electricity because he literally feeds off it and has a perfect relationship with it. A person who has had an electric shock or heard sufficiently about it dreads electricity and will never want to come anywhere close to it.

Yet what happens when revival is allowed to cool off is the reason for this message.

When the fear of God wanes, everything else associated with revival wanes as well.

The joy of the Lord that reigned is replaced with discontent and greed.

This in effect brings about the arousal of lusts.

Over time, God and His standards are pushed slowly to the periphery, resulting in a spiritual vacuum of sorts, a vacuum very quickly filled with vice.

On the whole, however, God is very prominent in the mouths of the community, though He is slowly disappearing from its heart.

Evil will thus start growing, eventually thriving, because God has been removed from running the affairs of the community.

And Gideon said unto him, Oh my Lord, if the LORD be with us, why then is all this befallen us? and where be all his miracles which our fathers told us of, saying, Did not the LORD bring us up from Egypt? but now the LORD hath forsaken us, and delivered us into the hands of the Midianites. (Judges 6:13)

He then remains in the history of the community, how He did. What He did etc.

Who He is is completely obliterated from the minds and hearts of His people.

And this happens within a generation as we see in Judges.

But it doesn’t have to happen.

Matthew 28: 19, 20 is the antidote to the waning that is bound to happen.

You see, after Joshua and his crowd left the scene, the spiritual dynamic of Israel changed because none of those remaining had had any experience with God and His power.

But that is not the only reason.

Joshua’s generation forgot what they had been ordered to do to forestall such and eventuality.

And these words, which I command thee this day, shall be in thine heart: And thou shalt teach them diligently unto thy children, and shalt talk of them when thou sittest in thine house, and when thou walkest by the way, and when thou liest down, and when thou risest up. And thou shalt bind them for a sign upon thine hand, and they shall be as frontlets between thine eyes. And thou shalt write them upon the posts of thy house, and on thy gates. (Deuteronomy 6: 6 – 9)

They did not teach their children effectively.

Have you ever wondered why taboos hold more sway over people than God’s commandments?

That simple reason.

Culture so effectively and powerfully ingrains its values to another generation.

But people of faith do not do it as effectively most times.

And that is the vacuum vices will very quickly fill.

We must disciple our generation and the one after us to maintain the tempo of any revival God sends our way.

When I go to the village I was born and raised, it is unimaginable how completely different it is spiritually from the village it was in my childhood. Yet the name of God is still proclaimed as loudly as it was then, now with loud sound systems and modern instruments.

This has happened because discipleship in whichever form was not a part of that revival.

We must see discipleship as foundational to our faith. We must invest in discipleship as the church of Christ.

Otherwise we will have our posterity posing the same question Gideon posed after an angelic visitation.

And I know I am speaking of many villages

God bless you