How to have a personal revival

Published: Sat, 11/27/10










How to have a personal revival

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While revivals are usually talked about at the corporate or societal level, they all begin with individuals. One of the spiritual giants in the history of the church addresses the bottom line of individual responsibility.

  1. Get thoroughly dissatisfied with yourself. Complacency is the enemy of spiritual progress. A contented soul is a stagnant soul.
  2. Set your face like a flint toward a sweeping transformation of your life. Timid experimenters are tagged for failure before they start. We must throw our whole soul into our desire for God.
  3. Put yourself in the way of the blessing. It is a mistake to expect God's help to come as a windfall apart from conditions known and met. There are plainly marked paths which lead straight to the green pastures; let us walk in them. To desire revival, for instance, and at the same time neglect prayer and devotion is to wish one way and walk another.
  4. Do a thorough job of repenting. Do not hurry to get it over with. Hasty repentance means shallow spiritual experience and lack of certainty in the whole life. Let godly sorrow do her healing work. Until we allow the consciousness of sin to wound us we will never develop a fear of evil.
  5. Make restitution wherever possible. If you owe a debt, pay it, or at least have a frank understanding with your creditor about your intention to pay, so your honesty will be above question. If you have quarreled with anyone, go as far as you can in an effort to achieve reconciliation.
  6. Bring your life into accord with such Scripture as are designed to instruct us in the way of righteousness. An honest man with an open Bible and a pad and pencil is sure to find out what is wrong with him very quickly. I recommend that self-examination be made on our knees, rising to obey God's commandments as they are revealed to us from the Word.
  7. Be serious-minded. You can well afford to see fewer comedy shows on TV. Unless you break away from the funny boys, every spiritual impression will continue to be lost to your heart, and that right in your own living room. The people of the world used to go to the movies to escape serious thinking about God. You would not join them there, but you now enjoy spiritual communion with them in your own home. The devil's ideals, moral standards, and mental attitudes are being accepted by you without your knowledge.
  8. Deliberately narrow your interests. Too many projects use up time and energy without bringing us near to God.
  9. Have faith in God. Begin to expect. Look up toward the throne where your Advocate sits at the right hand of God. All heaven is on your side. God will not disappoint you. Excerpted from A. W. Tozer, How to Have a Personal Revival (Camp Hill, Pennsylvania: Christian Publications, 1983). Used by permission.