Ignite a personal revival in your relationship with God, and experience His divine guidance in every facet of your life. In this episode, I unpack the profound concept of personal revival, underscoring that true fulfillment in life transcends being a good person – it requires a deep partnership and covenant with God. I also explain how personal revival can infuse your existence with new vitality, fostering a bond with Him.
Promising a life-altering transformation, I share actionable steps for achieving personal revival. I stress the importance of a conscious decision and unwavering commitment to your spiritual journey. I delve into the power of prayer, the wisdom in the Bible, and the sense of community found in a Bible-preaching church. The episode covers the importance of authenticity in prayer and the need to focus on specific Bible passages for spiritual growth. I also highlight the need to associate with a church that emphasizes Bible preaching over social issues.
Finally, I journey through the three crucial elements of personal revival: decision, dedication, and desperation, demonstrating how each contributes to spiritual growth. I reveal the positive impact of personal revival on self-esteem and relationships, and the importance of holding onto the breakthroughs received from God. Listen in, and let this episode be the catalyst for a personal revival in your life.
Key Takeaways:
- Personal revival involves moving from a mediocre, lukewarm faith to a vibrant, active relationship with God.
- Dedication to prayer, reading the Bible, and involvement in a Bible-preaching church are essential for personal revival.
- Desperation and determination are crucial in seeking personal revival.
- Personal revival not only benefits the individual but also prepares them for the changing world.
Where To Dive In:
0:00:01 Introduction to the topic of personal revival
0:00:32 Definition of revival and its relevance to believers
0:02:07 The need for personal revival in one’s relationship with God
0:03:06 The importance of experiencing God’s presence and guidance
0:04:03 The misconception of Christianity as self-improvement rather than a partnership with God
0:05:26 Revival as bringing life to the half-dead part of one’s faith
0:06:37 The balance between personal effort and God’s action in revival
0:07:46 The power of the Holy Spirit in an empowered life
0:09:00 Making a decision and dedicating oneself to personal revival
0:10:29 Taking dedicated actions such as prayer and reading the Bible
0:11:40 Pray and talk to God, be honest and dedicated
0:12:14 Read the Bible, focus on interesting passages
0:13:02 Find a church that preaches the Bible
0:15:09 Desperation is key to seeking God’s help
0:18:43 Be determined to hold on to your faith
0:19:53 Personal revival can solve many problems
0:20:31 Change with the world and be prepared for challenges
0:22:50 Prepare for an uncertain future with God’s help
0:23:40 People turning to God in a new way
0:24:11 Book promotion: “If you only knew”
0:25:06 Importance of reading the book for churches, politicians, entrepreneurs
About the host:
Steve Gray is the founding and senior pastor of Revive Church KC. He has been in the full time ministry for over 40 years and was launched into national and international recognition in the late 1990’s as the leader of the historic Smithton Outpouring, and again in 2009 when he lead the Kansas City Revival which was televised nationally on the Daystar television network. Steve is also a veteran musician, songwriter, recording artist and published author. His books include When The Kingdom Comes, Follow The Fire, and My Absurd Religion.
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Transcript:
0:00:01
Don’t you dare miss today’s podcast of more faith, more life. I’m going to tell you how to have a personal revival between you and God, how to get it, and why you need it. Hello, everyone, and welcome to another More Faith, More Life podcast. So glad you could be with us today. And we’re going to be talking about personal revival, a personal revival between you and God, what it is, why you need it, and how to get it. So we’re going to talk first of all, Bible, what is a revival? Okay, a revival is for people who know about God, who have had a connection to God.
0:00:32
But it’s sort of mediocre, middle of the road, nothing really happens, and you just live your life believing there’s a God. You pray sometimes when you need to, when you have to, and you believe in Jesus. You’re probably a Jesus believer. And so you would be considered, if anybody asks you, you’d call yourself a Christian, okay? But we get to the point where we’ve done everything right as far as the formulas. This is how you become a Christian. And you did those things, but nothing really happened, nothing really changed.
0:01:03
It’s not that you believe in God, but he’s not an influence in your life. It’s backwards. You just influence your own life and still believe in God. But the biblical pattern is that God influences you. And I find a lot of people would like to be influenced by God. It’s not what you think sometimes that people are so, shall we say, rebellious, but they’re so far away from God and they don’t care about God, but they still believe in God, all those things?
0:01:31
I don’t think so. I think most people have just given up that there’s a God, but he’s an uninvolved God and there’s nothing I can do about it. I sort of just have a cold relationship and I know who Jesus is and the list goes on and on. So it’s this mediocre thing, and you have no spark really about it. You have really very little interest. You may not go to church at all because you believe in God, but there’s no connection of why you would need to go to church and believe in God at the same time, because the churches have failed to bring us personal revival.
0:02:07
So I get it when we say that sometimes church messages are irrelevant to what’s going on in our lives. But what I’m about to tell you today is very relevant. This is life changing, all right? So revival is bringing life to you that you’re kind of half in, half out. It’s getting the half out all the way in. It’s bringing you all the way in with God till he becomes an influence. It changes you. You feel different.
0:02:34
And as far as we can even say this, because some people, rightfully so, say like, faith is not a feeling. Christianity is not a feeling. And that’s true because we can’t trust our feelings all the time, can we? But on the other hand, when you get a personal revival with God, you’re going to feel different. You’re going to feel his presence, and he begins to manifest or make his ways known. He begins to take action in your life in a revived relationship, in a personal revival with God.
0:03:06
And so that’s why I want you to have one, because wouldn’t you like to hear God? Wouldn’t you like to have a god guidance and a god presence to where it’s not blind faith that you believe by faith, but you really never had anything happen that would pull you in to say, well, this happened to me, or this was so real to me, or he spoke to me, or he guided me, or he just filled the room? I’ve had thousands of people around the earth world have told me after ministering to them revival that they said, it just got so real to me. And many of them, I got some kind of a visitation in my room, or my room lit up, or I felt this warmth, or I felt this fire in me. And so you can’t go on your feelings totally, but let’s not also take away that God is a God of feelings, and he produces feelings in us when we connect to Him.
0:04:03
So I want you to think about having a personal revival, all right, and what that would mean to your life if you actually felt noticed and had an active God. Active God in your life where things are happening, god things and God help, right? And God feelings and God emotions and all this now is in you, and you begin to just feel life all a bit differently. You become a better person, obviously. But you know what most people do with Christianity, that’s what it means to them is, okay, I’m a Christian. That means I try to be a better person.
0:04:42
I try to be a better person. I try to be moral, and I try to be good, try to be kind, and I try to be loving. Okay? Now, notice how many times I I try, I do, I’ll do see, but there’s no God in it. Christianity is God comes to me. Jesus comes to me. And now I have this partnership in covenant and agreement with Him that we’re going to walk together, we’re going to enjoy life together. And all of a sudden, it’s not like, I know I need to do better. I know I need to be holy. I know I need to be a nicer person to my family, whatever. No, you’re talking about this other person. Christianity is about another person. It’s not about you.
0:05:26
It’s about you receiving another person into your life and letting his activities into your life. So that’s why I call it revival. Revival means that you have life. You’re a believer. We’re not talking about evangelism here. You’re a believer. You believe in God. You believe in Jesus, hopefully, but there’s no activity. You’re like a drowning man. Somebody drowned in the water, and they pulled him out of the pool, and they laid him down.
0:05:54
Is he breathing? They say, yeah, he’s breathing. He’s alive. But you’re not alive, are you? You’re out. You’re unconscious. And so most people are unconscious when it comes to God, but they’re still breathing. So we want to bring life to you, life back into you, life to the half dead part of you, life to the half cold part. Half of you may believe in God, but the other half not so much, and you just don’t have that interest or there’s not that much activity. Okay, so we want to revive you have a revival of the presence of God, a revival of the power of God in your life, a revival of God activity in your life. Are you getting it? Yeah. And it’s just real. It’s real, real, real. It really does exist.
0:06:37
I know from my own experience, and I was in the ministry for a lot of years and doing the same thing, trying to be a good pastor, good person, good husband, good father, try to be moral, try to not make any mistakes. But it was all I, and all of a sudden, really, that’s not what I was told when I become a Christian, right? You become a Christian. They say what you’ve done in your past doesn’t matter, and you can only do this by grace and by the love of God and all that. And then as soon as you cross over, then it’s, I need to do this. I need to be better. I need to try to love more.
0:07:13
And so we’re missing the power of the Holy Spirit, the empowered life, because when you get the empowered life and we get a revival of the power of God in your life, you’re not just trying. Things are happening on God’s end, too. God’s trying. God’s trying to do things for you. God’s trying to get things happening in you. God’s trying is to make Himself real to you, you see? So there’s a balance. Maybe 50% of you is, I need to try harder, okay? You need to be a better husband, whatever.
0:07:46
But the other 50% is God’s action. And together we become 100% person, living our lives the way we should, and we’ve been revived, brought back. It really means brought back from the half dead. In other words, we’re half alive to God, but the other half is dead to God. And it brings that other half alive to make a vibrant relationship with God. And now all of a sudden, you’re going to have god help in home, god help in relationships, god help in finances, god help in your emotions, god help with dealing in your past, god help with planning your future.
0:08:21
Because the other 50% that’s been dead has now been revived back to life again the way God intended it to be for all believers. Okay, so what do you do? Well, most people have dulled down, so they’re very inexperienced. If you say, Let us pray, they bow their head, close their eyes, and have no idea what to say. So we’re not in very good shape when we talk about this revival stuff. How do we get to a personal revival with God, to where the power and the presence and God activity begins to happen in our lives? Well, the first I put on a little paper here, scratch some things down, is decision.
0:09:00
You have to make a decision, all right? It’s what you want, and it’s what you need. So you look at your life and say, you know what I need? I need a God revival. I need the other half of me to be brought to life, to be in God’s presence, to be alive to God, to be interested in God. I’m not even hardly interested in God, so I need a revival of the power of God. So you need to make that decision. That that’s what I need and that’s what I want.
0:09:28
Because if you don’t want it and you don’t think you need it, then you’re just another religious person. Okay, so that’s not who I’m talking about today. Talking about today who realizes, yes, I would like that, and it happened to me, and I became a totally different person. More than half. All right. It’s unbelievable what happened. If you can put it in worldly terms, you don’t want to say that too much in Christian terms, unbelievable, but it is in worldly terms, just regular life.
0:09:55
It was unbelievable change that came over me. Feeling God knowing God. The presence of God walking. I just never knew that I could have this kind of life, and I want it for you. All right, so the first you make a decision, the next thing you’re going to have to do is have some dedication to your decision. Dedication to your decision. Okay. So that means if you’re going to be dedicated to your decision, you need to make some dedicated ideas in your life, like, okay, so I’m going to start this.
0:10:29
The Bible says you come near to God, you then he’ll come near to you. Okay? So I got to dedicate myself to some actions. I’m going to draw near to God. I’m going to get near to Him. How do I do that? Okay, well, I’m talking like, maybe for you or a person like you. I never pray. I really don’t ever pray. I mean, it has to be a bad situation for me to ever just stop my life and pray. All right? I never read my Bible because I don’t understand it or I don’t know why I’m even reading it. Well, right now you know why you’re reading it. You want to bring a personal revival in. So you want to learn how God thinks, what he does, what’s he like, what is Jesus like, what’s the Gospels like.
0:11:10
So you need dedication. And the first thing you don’t want to do is say, okay, I’m going to be a better person. I’m going to be a better, better person. That’s not it. This is not your power. This is not your strength. This is something coming from heaven above, something coming from the throne of God that fills that gap in your life. That is God activity, a God presence, a God knowledge, a God power in your life. And it goes with you every single day. All right, so you dedicate to it. So what can you do?
0:11:40
What can you dedicate yourself to get this going? You already made the decision. Now dedicate, okay, here’s what I would do. I would pray. I would just, even if just for a few minutes, shut down life and try, try to talk to God and just be honest. Don’t speak in Shakespearean language. These are thou that and Elizabethan English. No, just talk regular like you do to everybody else. Tell him how you feel about life, how you’d like to get to know Him, how you’ve been far away and you don’t know what to do. Maybe that I don’t know how to do this, but I’m going to try.
0:12:14
I would pray, I would read my Bible, find something in the Gospels, a short one. The gospel of Mark is short. You can read Mark and just read something and find something, knowledgeable, something that maybe you didn’t notice before. Take interest in one little passage of just one. Just focused on you don’t have to focus on the whole book. Just focus on some passages that seem interesting to you. And is there anything in there that you can do that you can apply to your life, you can apply to your faith?
0:12:41
Or maybe you’ll do the same thing or maybe you don’t want to do the same thing as the disciples did or whatever. Anything you can find that you can apply, but maybe there’s no application maybe, and you just go on. I would do this too. So after I would try to pray, I’d read the Bible and try to find some interesting passages and like I said, read them several times. So you know that passage. You know it. You don’t have to read the whole Bible all the time.
0:13:02
Then what I would do, I would get into a church that preaches the Bible. Now, that’s a hard one. If you don’t go to church, you could go to the Internet and try to find some churches. Just type in or Google Bible believing or Bible preaching. Now, the problem is they all probably a lot of them say they do, but then when you go and you find a church, go to their website and they probably have some streaming services and find out, are they talking like a Ted Talks? Are they talking like psychology and psychiatry and getting along socially and all that? Nothing wrong with that. In fact, I need to include those in my sermons, too.
0:13:39
But the focus is some of them don’t even read scripture. They refer to biblical ideas, but they don’t read you the scripture and say, here, let me tell you what the Bible what this means. Plenty of times in the Bible, there were people that says, tell me what that means. And so the best you can find a Bible preaching, we preach the Bible. We preach scripture and we stick to it. And we also throw in life examples, just like you do, like life examples and relationships, et cetera, marriage.
0:14:12
But we’re a Bible preaching. We stick with the Bible, okay? And that helps. So that’s what I would do. Start out with some prayer, make yourself do some prayer. Just take a short break and pray a car or whatever in the car. Read some scripture, maybe go to the Gospel of Mark and look through and read, here’s a story, read one story and read it again and just get that story. So you know that story. You know that story better than probably any of your friends know anything about that story.
0:14:41
Then you got to get into church, because church is God’s invention. It’s God’s idea. It’s getting people together to worship and to hear the word of God. That’s what they did in the early churches. They got together, they worshipped, they had God activity going, they had manifestations of God all the time. But you go to church and you need to learn to worship and sing and be free and do your best at that.
0:15:09
And then listen to the sermon and hear a sermon, hear something preached about the Bible. It’s just good for you. All right? So we started with we need to make a decision. We want this, we need this. This is what I need in my life. Okay? Then, secondly, some dedication. So I’m doing dedicated things. I’m going to pray, I’m going to read my Bible, I’m going to get into a church and get into the flow of church life and church living, because that’s God’s idea, it’s not my idea.
0:15:35
Okay? The third one is the biggest one of all, and I want to say this to everybody, not just you’re listening to this and you’ve got a job and you’ve got a family, good for you, but for pastors and leaders. Because I talk to pastors all over the world and they say, I need revival in my church, my church needs revival. In other words, half are like half doing what they should do, but the other half is kind of dead and they need to be brought to life. The other half, and they don’t know what to do.
0:16:06
Don’t know what to do. Pastors, leaders, evangelists, let me tell you, the number one thing you need to do is that is you need to be desperate. You need desperation. You need decision, dedication, but most of all, you need desperation. And desperation is what it is. You don’t need to ask, what is desperation? You don’t need to say, Well, I don’t know, because I’ve been in places around the world, and I just felt moved to just pray for people. But I said, I want the most desperate person or persons to come forward right now. If you’re the most desperate, you are so desperate right now, you have to have prayer right this very minute. You need help, okay?
0:16:45
And I would do that, and a bunch of people would come up, and I’m thinking like, you can’t all be that person. But the deception of it is, they thought they were desperate, and there they stood, just standing there, nothing. But then there were the really desperate people, and some of them are crying, some of them are yelling, some of them are screaming. Some of them are laying on the floor pounding their fists.
0:17:09
They’re desperate. They need help, and they want God help. And I would find those desperate people, because desperation is one of the most powerful tools to get the help of God. And Lukewarm neither hot nor cold. The Bible talks about just you’re stuck in the middle. If God comes. Fine. If he doesn’t, I’m okay too. That doesn’t work with God. But when you say, I’ve got to have something, I’ve got to have something, I got to have life, I need that other half of God. I need the god half.
0:17:42
And get desperate, really get desperate. Absolutely. You will get the breakthrough. It’s lack of desperation. Even if you make a decision and a dedication, but you have no desperation or even another word. You have no passion. Passion and desperation. Absolutely convinced. Persuaded that this is the answer to your life. This is the answer to your problems. If you get a personal revival, almost all of your problems will be dealt with.
0:18:11
Many of them will go away. Many of them will be dealt with in a new way. But life changes, and things that bother you now won’t bother you. Then get desperate before you die. And let’s say you do go to heaven, don’t you? While in this lifetime, in this lifetime, don’t you want to experience the promised Land, the promises of God, the power of God, the presence of God while you’re alive, while you’re right here in this life?
0:18:43
You can. But so few people know how, or so few people know they can. That’s what I’m telling you. Get desperate. God completely came struck me with the power of God. And I’d been in the ministry 20 years and doing the right thing and trying to be good and do the right thing, but nothing like this. Wow. But you know what? I made a decision I got dedicated, I pushed, and I got desperate, passionately desperate for God and just personally me. And I was struck powerfully in front of 150 to 880. People saw this happen to me, and I became a different person. I’m who you see today, I would like that for you.
0:19:24
Then the last one is determination, because once you get anything from God, anything, even if it’s small, even if you pray and you just notice something, I feel better. I notice something, feels like God maybe heard my prayer, then you got to be determined to not lose that and just let it be swept away by the cares of life and fears that we have and cares of life and paying bills and troubles that we deal with. And all of a sudden, that moment gets lost.
0:19:53
So you got to hold on and be determined that you’re going to keep this walk up and it will get more powerful and powerful, especially if you can meet some other people. If you can meet some other that’s why I love our church, Revive Church. It’s full of people that either already have been revived and just want to keep in that flow. They’re determined to stay in the flow, or they’re wanting to be revived and they’re getting help from friends and preaching and singing and worshiping. But friends, people who also either have been there or they’re now seeking the Lord, trying to get this personal revival right. So get determined that you’re going to hang on to anything you can get.
0:20:31
Now, before we end, let’s get this straight. There’s a reason why you should do it, all right? First of all, I already told you, you should do it for yourself, okay? Because you’re not going to go through the battle with self-esteem. You’re not going to be a victim of everybody else. You’re not going to be thinking like, well, they did me wrong and they don’t like me, and I’ll never amount to anything, or everybody else gets the break. But those just go away. They just go away, okay?
0:20:59
It’s just a whole other life. You need to do it for you. You’ll be happier, healthier. You’ll be a better partner to someone else. You’ll be a better dad. You’ll be a better worker, and just everything gets better when you get that other half of you, the God part, filled with him and an active God in your life. So you’re going to feel better. But there is another reason that I am so determined to help people get to this place, and that is the world is changing.
0:21:27
The world is changing, and you need to change with it. You need to change. Not as it, but you need to change because it’s changing. So there’s things that you in the past didn’t matter. I mean, you believed in God, and God’s a good God, okay? But you’re able to go to work and you’re running your family and you’re paying your bills. Okay. Life’s okay, and you get to watch sports sometimes or go do something or go on a vacation. There’s just so many good things going on that it’s not a bad life. Totally.
0:21:57
But the problem is the world is changing, and it’s going to change more. Now, if you don’t change, you’re not going to be prepared for a life that the world is not the same anymore. So I want you to consider what it would be like if war broke out. Well, there’s wars already going on. They’re just not here in our country. But if war broke out in our country or if we were attacked or just the diplomacy didn’t work and some of these rockets going off in the Middle East, in the waters there and the sea, or off the coast of Taiwan where there’s a lot of activity, it doesn’t take much. It doesn’t take much to finally spark it. Where people or one nation has had enough, and they declare war, but they attack with these powerful, powerful weapons.
0:22:50
If that happens, first of all, our economy is going to change drastically. What you’re going to have and not have is going to change how you have to think and work together with other people to make life happen is going to change. And to have God helping you. Not like today, if you don’t have it, like, okay, I know he’s there, but I can’t really say God’s involved in my life and helping me, and I notice God during the day.
0:23:16
You’re going to need that. You’re going to need it to protect your family. You’re going to need it to be who you’re supposed to be. You’re going to need it to be safe in an unsafe world where things are going to change. So why should you do it? You do it because it’s going to make a better you. Yes. But it’s going to help you prepare for what is coming. Now, I’m talking about more faith, more life. You need to have faith in what I said.
0:23:40
Understand? People are doing this. They’re getting nervous about what’s happening in our country and the world, and they’re turning to God in a new way. Not an old way, not this quiet little fold my hands and just read a scripture or two. No, they’re putting energy and passion and determination and desperation in I’ve got to have this. I got to be ready for what’s changing in the world. I mean, rapidly changing in the world.
0:24:11
So you want to be ready for anything. So that’s why I want you to get your personal revival. May the Lord help you. And you do these things to get you into a position where you have God activity and God presence in your life actively, noticeably, every single day. Well, I want to remind you about the book. If you only knew the guide to the Clueless Generation. You can now still get it free as a download.
0:24:38
We do have copies now of the book. It’s a booklet, fast reading. You’ll read it in a short amount of time, only five chapters. But it is eye opening of where we are in our country today and what we must do to keep ourselves safe and to keep America strong. It’s free right [email protected]. Just go there, follow the QR code, and you can download it immediately and start reading it. Okay? This is going into the hands of other people, important people in the country.
0:25:06
And so I want you to get it, too. So you’re right on the mark with what God is saying, not what God is doing. This is what God is saying, what I believe God is saying to our nation right now. Our churches, our politicians, entrepreneurs and influencers need to read this book. If you only knew. Okay? So be sure and do that. We’ll tell you later. We’ll let you get a hard copy. You can order them later as we get them on there. But right now, do that. And until next time, remember, you need to get a personal revival. Right. Till next time. Bye.
