Seeking Revival
Our church has been seeking revival by attempting to align with 2 Chronicles 7:14. We’re pursuing humility, prayer, and repentance. Along the way it has become clear that seeking revival is actually seeking God.
Our church has been seeking revival by attempting to align with 2 Chronicles 7:14. We’re pursuing humility, prayer, and repentance. Along the way it has become clear that seeking revival is actually seeking God.
Seeking God
The phrase seek my face in 2 Chronicles 7:14 means pretty much what you’d expect: To pursue a deeper relationship with him, experience of him, understanding of him, obedience to him, etc. The Bible uses many verbs to express this basic idea: love, fear, walk, serve, follow, observe, return, obey, and so on. However, a common thread emerges when you study these commands to worship throughout scripture. Here are a few examples:
The phrase seek my face in 2 Chronicles 7:14 means pretty much what you’d expect: To pursue a deeper relationship with him, experience of him, understanding of him, obedience to him, etc. The Bible uses many verbs to express this basic idea: love, fear, walk, serve, follow, observe, return, obey, and so on. However, a common thread emerges when you study these commands to worship throughout scripture. Here are a few examples:
Love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength. Deuteronomy 6:5
… and if they turn back to you with all their heart and soul in the land of their enemies who took them captive… 1 Kings 8:48
Blessed are they who keep his statutes and seek him with all their heart. Psalm 119:2
You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart. Jeremiah 29:13
…return to me with all your heart, with fasting and weeping and mourning. Joel 2:12
Jesus replied, love the lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. Matthew 22:37
All
Here’s the startling fact: 99% devotion to God is 100% rejection of God. 99% obedience to God is 100% disobedience. 99% love for God is 100% disregard for God. He has not left us the option of mild pursuit. It is all or it is nothing.
Designed for Wholehearted Pursuit of God
This makes sense when you think about it. In a chronically dissatisfied culture, Psalm 107:9 says For he satisfies the longing soul, and the hungry soul he fills with good things.
We’ve never been more entertained and informed, yet we’re still not satisfied. We carry the world in our pockets, and it’s not enough. Anti-depressants remain some of the highest prescribed medications in America. Why? Because we’re designed for something bigger than this world.
My five-year-old son had a birthday party recently and within 24 hours he was dissatisfied with his new toys and desperate to go to Wal-Mart to spend his gift card on the next toy. I told him we’d get a new toy, but warned him not to expect this toy to satisfy him because he’s made for something bigger. (He just looked at me…) The same lesson is instructive for adults.
– Drive a car, but don’t expect it to satisfy your soul. You’re made for something bigger.
– Get a job, but don’ expect it to satisfy your soul. You’re made for something bigger.
– Get money, but don’t expect it to satisfy your soul. You’re made for something bigger.
– Make a home, but don’t expect it to satisfy your soul. You’re made for something bigger.
– Get married, but don’t expect your spouse to satisfy your soul. You’re made for something bigger.
– Have kids, but don’t expect them to satisfy your soul. You’re made for something bigger.
– Join a church, but don’t expect it to satisfy your soul. You’re made for something bigger.
We end up hating these things when we make them our ultimate pursuit because they can’t satisfy us. We HDTV ourselves crazy. We jump from spouse to spouse, job to job, church to church – looking for something to satisfy us in an all consuming way.
What can we do?
So how in the world do we change this? We’ve failed to obey God’s most central command, to seek him with all our hearts. Beyond that, we’re incapable of this kind of pure devotion to God.
Here’s where it gets beautiful. All we’ve talked about so far is law (commands). But God reveals in Romans 7:7-13 that the law is diagnosis, not cure. The command reveals our inability to live up to our design and God’s desire. But we cannot cure ourselves through trying really hard to do something of which we’re incapable. We need a savior. This is where Jesus steps in.
Revival is God seeking us.
We’ve said that seeking revival is ultimately seeking God. But it turns out that none of us is capable of seeking God (Romans 9:10-18). Here’s the good news: as you turn your head toward God, trying to figure out how to solve this predicament, you’ll see that he is aggressively seeking you. Like the prodigal son, we see our Father running toward us as we return to him.
We try and fail to seek God in humility. Yet God sought us in humility when Jesus did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. (Philippians 2:6-8)
We try and fail to seek God in prayer. Yet God sought us, speaking first and then coming as the Word made flesh, Jesus Christ (John 1:14).
We try and fail to seek God in repentance. Yet God sought us while we were yet sinners. (Romans 5:8) And in Jesus, we finally find the power to truly change (Romans 6:1-14).
To seek revival is to give in to God’s pursuit of us. It is to go, weary and heavy laden, to Jesus and finally receive rest (Matthew 11:28). It is to trust in and follow Jesus Christ.
