Hearts on Fire: Walking in Personal Revival

224 Pages·2016·1.02 MB·English

by  Colin Dye

Acknowledgements
I would like to express my gratitude to all the members and friends of
Kensington Temple, London City Church who are hungry for the coming move
of the Holy Spirit and the presence of God. They are an important source of
strength, inspiration and encouragement. A special word of thanks to my wife,
Amanda, for almost 25 years of companionship and support in the ministry.
Thank you, also, to Bruce, Michelle, Marko, Antonia, Lisbeth and other KT staff
who helped with this project.
Introduction
What is Revival?
Most people think of revival as God moving on a grand scale. They point to
the great revivals of the past when thousands flocked to Christ. For example,
during the Welsh Revival, 100,000 people became believers in a matter of
months. Pubs were emptied and the churches were filled. Hundreds of foul-
mouthed miners were saved and gave up their cursing. The donkeys in the
coalmines could not understand the new curse-free commands of their masters.
Work stopped until the animals got used to the change of language.
Many are familiar with these and other stories of divine visitations. But
what is the real essence of revival? What is the heart of it? If we don’t know we
may miss what God is doing in these crucial times. And, in particular, we may
miss what God is saying to us personally.
Revival begins in the heart—your heart. It’s when you come back to your
first love of Jesus. It means that you turn from the things that displease Him and
sins that are grieving the Holy Spirit. Revival is the deepening of God’s work as
the Holy Spirit intensifies His influences within you.
Ephesians 5:14 says, “Awake, you who sleep, arise from the dead and
Christ will give you light”. The double picture of sleep and death shows the state
of the hearts of many believers today. Instead of being alive to Christ they sleep
the sleep of death. Revival awakens sleeping souls and rouses the spiritually
dead.
God is calling you to come to Him in the power of a renewed life. He is
drawing you into a fresh relationship with Him. Revival begins with a new
experience of the Father’s love. Only then can He reach out through you to those
around you who do not know Him at all.
God is restoring His light to the Church. He wants you to shine with all the
beauty, clarity and brightness of God’s holiness and power. The light of Christ
shining from you has the capacity to expose the evil deeds of darkness. That’s
what God wants us to do, but how can we do so in any credible way while we
are participating in the very things we should be reproving? We must learn to
walk in a spirit of repentance. We must see sin for what it is—unfruitful,
shameful and offensive to God. It is time to develop zero tolerance to sin in your
life.
But how?
In the parable of Jesus, the returning son learned the meaning of repentance
in his father’s arms. In that embrace he found unconditional love and he felt the
heartbeat of his father. Knowing such grace and forgiveness the son now wanted
more than anything else to enjoy the father’s fellowship and to walk in harmony
with his will. Holiness flows from our relationship with God and revival is all
about finding that relationship of intimacy. It is time to return to God and
experience the joy of the love of the Father.
Trust the Holy Spirit to bring that change in you today. As you read this
book open your heart to what God wants to do in you. Let Him revive your heart
and ignite within you a fresh flame of love for Jesus and for the Father’s
presence. Let this flame become a beacon to guide you as you walk in the paths
of righteousness.
Lord Jesus Christ, revive me today. Make my heart new again. Cleanse me
from my sin and purify me from my defilement. By Your grace I turn from my sin.
Give me Your strength and Your power to live the life You died and rose again
for me to have. Revive the fire You placed in my soul, restore the love You gave
me at first and refresh my spirit with the joy of Your presence.
Part 1
Personal Revival
1. The True Nature of Revival
I have been in Christian ministry for more than thirty years. From time to
time, I have known moments and even seasons of what I can only describe as ‘an
open heaven’. When this happens, it seems as if there is nothing between me and
heaven itself—nothing blocking my communion, nothing hindering the flow of
God’s love and glory, and nothing to stop God pouring out His blessing in
fullness. At times like these people are drawn to Christ by the hundreds and we
witness many outstanding miracles of healing and deliverance. I can only
describe it as revival.
Revival essentially is an open heaven. It’s when God ‘comes down’ and
manifests His glory. It’s when He reveals Himself in all His splendour and
fullness. Our hearts begin to burn with His passion, set on fire by His
incandescent nature. We catch alight like combustible material in the midst of
roaring fire. And yet, by His mercies we are not consumed! Instead, ignited with
His glory we become charged with His power and offer our lives totally to Him
as our only Lord and God. Laying everything before Him, we overcome our
resistance until our will becomes completely His.
It’s time for Europe
I must confess most of these ‘open heaven’ experiences happened to me
while I was abroad – on some mission, up country in some remote village in
Africa, or in some evangelistic campaign in Brazil. And yet, the impression I
have in Britain and Europe is that we are seeing a change in our spiritual
environment also. The growing emphasis on prayer we find almost everywhere,
the rise of great churches in Europe and the increasing responsiveness of
ordinary people to the gospel are all evidences that God is moving.
At the close of the twentieth century there was a deepening awareness of
God visiting His people once again. There was much talk of revival. Many
churches in Britain held nightly revival services and thousands from all over
Europe gathered to seek God and get right with Him. Personal revival came to
many eager-hearted seekers. And these ‘revival fires’ have not gone out. We are
moving into a time of harvest. God is calling for a re-alignment in our lives and
churches. We are catching the true heart of the Lord for holiness and for souls.
And with that has come the new emphasis on mobilisation of the body of
Christ through the principles of cell church. The cells are where hungry believers
pray, call out for souls to be saved and are discipled, becoming actively involved
in God’s work. All this leads me to believe that Europe’s time has come. God is
about to move in revival proportions across our nations. Personal revival will
become corporate revival.
But, if we are to see that, we must go back to basics and understand once
again the true nature of revival. Revival is an open heaven. It’s a manifestation
of the glory of God. It’s a holy visitation of the divine presence. But we must
look for even more than this. God’s will is not just for holy visitation, but holy
habitation. He doesn’t want to come to visit. He wants to come to stay! That’s
the birthright of the church of Jesus Christ, as Paul says,
“…in whom you also are being built together for a dwelling place of God in
the Spirit.” Ephesians 2:22
Revival in the early church
The environment of your birth can have a great affect on you. I was born in
Africa and it has never got out of my blood. Although I haven’t lived there for
over 40 years, I still have a heart for that continent. In the same way, the early
church was born in revival and will never be truly satisfied with anything less.
We were made for the presence of God.
This means we should aspire to live under an open heaven, to know God’s
presence and to see the fruits of revival in our lives. We should seek to live
under the same power and blessing that they experienced in New Testament
times, especially as recorded in the book of Acts.
Acts is the only book of the New Testament which gives us a narrative of
the early church. What was that church like? What were the secrets of its success
and growth? How did they live? What was their experience of God? The book of
Acts answers all these questions and demonstrates the true nature of revival.
What is revival?
When you look at the early church you see evidences of the presence of
God everywhere. The disciples went out and preached the word everywhere and
the Lord worked with them confirming His word with the signs that
accompanied it (Mark 16:20). God was with them. They were living in the
manifest presence of God. He was working with them and vast numbers of
people came to Christ. On the day of Pentecost we read of 3,000 being added to
the church, and in Acts chapter 4 we discover 5,000 men as well as many more
women and children coming to faith. The church grew daily.
“And the Lord added to the church daily those who were being saved.”
Acts 2:47
Now these were not just those who thought it might be a good idea to attend
church, or who wanted to be loosely associated with some new fast-growing and
popular religion. Rather, they came through deep conviction of the Holy Spirit.
On the day of Pentecost they were cut to the heart when they heard Peter’s
message and cried out, “What must we do?” This was real conviction of sin and
it was the touchstone of apostolic Christianity. Anything less than this is sub-
Christian because if you are not convicted of sin then it’s not clear what you are
being saved from, and your claims to be a follower of Christ are doubtful. Jesus
came to save us from our sins. That’s foundational.
In these days of revival we are not content to see people lift up their hands
in public response to the gospel. We want to verify their decision to follow
Christ. We want to know that people understand what it is to repent of sin and to
follow Christ as His disciple. That’s why we have our programme of verification
and consolidation. That’s why we take new believers away for weekend
encounters—to make sure they experience a deep work of the Holy Spirit in
their lives.
A lame man is healed
The book of Acts is full of stories of God’s grace in salvation, healing and
deliverance. It tells of an open heaven and traces the work of the Spirit
outpoured. In the early chapters, the scene is carefully set. The apostles receive
the Spirit, Peter preaches and thousands come to Christ. Then the new believers
are consolidated and meet both in the Temple courts and daily in the homes. The
favour of God is upon them and there is rapid growth. All these are features of
revival. The atmosphere becomes charged with the presence of God. The
fullness of God is everywhere. Miracles make room for the gospel to be
preached.
One such miracle was the lame man who had been crippled from birth. He
sat at the entrance to the Temple courts at the gate called ‘Beautiful’. Peter and
John were going into the Temple to take part in the regular Temple prayers. The
lame man asked for money as he usually did, but Peter’s response was totally
unexpected. He said, “I don’t have any money for you, but I’ve got something
better. In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, rise up and walk!” And the man
did just that! In fact, he followed Peter and John right into the Temple—a place
where, as a disabled person, he had never been permitted to go before. And he
went, ‘walking and leaping and praising God!’
Outstanding miracle
This was power of Christ demonstrated. It was an outstanding miracle—a
40-year-old man, lame from birth could now walk! Everybody in Jerusalem
knew him and he was clearly visible in the Temple completely healed and full of
joy! What a picture of the fullness of the gospel. Every miracle is a parable of
the grace and goodness of God. This was a demonstration of the gospel and its
power to change a man from a helpless beggar who had no access to the Temple
of God into a man set free, full of joy and standing in the place of fellowship
with Almighty God. No wonder Peter used this as an opportunity to preach
Christ.
The preaching that followed brought 5,000 men into the kingdom of God. It
caused a real stir in Jerusalem. No one could deny what had happened and
inevitably the whole matter came to the attention of the authorities. One of the
surest signs of revival is that the world begins to notice that God is doing
something. It may produce ridicule or opposition or some other negative
response, but the world cannot ignore the fact that Christ is moving. The devil
always opposes the move of God. Resistance can come from all directions but,
more often than not, it comes from the religious establishment.
The same people who had condemned Christ to death and handed Him over
to be crucified, summoned Peter and John. The Jewish Council, known as the
Sanhedrin, was the highest court of authority for the Jews. The Sadducees who
boasted many well-connected aristocratic leaders and men of influence in society
dominated it. They didn’t believe in the resurrection of the dead and were,
therefore, resistant to the Christian faith. Their opposition to Peter and John and
the preaching of the resurrection of Christ was total. But they couldn’t deny the
miracle that had happened and so they simply prohibited the public preaching of
the gospel.
It was a cunning ruling because it meant that they didn’t have to disprove
the miracle of the lame man or argue against what was being preached. But if
Peter and John continued to preach they would be in contempt of court. The
authorities thought they had silenced the gospel on the streets of Jerusalem. But
they didn’t reckon with the Spirit that was with these men. In times of revival,
God gives great boldness to His servants, and Peter and John replied,
“Whether it is right in the sight of God to listen to you more than to God,
you judge. For we cannot but speak the things which we have seen and heard.”
Acts 4:19-20
Revival praying
The miracle of the lame man happened at the place of prayer and this is one
of the most outstanding features of revival. Every revival of history has been
birthed in prayer and sustained by prayer. David Yonngi Cho, the pastor of the
world’s largest church in Seoul, Korea says that prayer is the key to revival. All
other revivals have lasted only a short time. But the Korean Revival has been
sustained down through the years by the prayers of the Korean believers. It is
common practice for churches in Korea to hold early morning prayer meetings.
Thousands gather daily around 5am and build an atmosphere of revival through
their praying.
And so it was for the church of Acts. Prayer was paramount. From the
beginning we can see that prayer is the key. The 120 met together in the upper
room to pray and to wait for the coming of the Spirit. They taught their converts
to continue steadfastly in prayer and they supported the great public prayer
events in the Temple. It was not just that they went to the prayer meetings to say
their prayers. They developed a life-style of prayer. Prayer was continuous. It
was part of them—as natural as breathing. This kind of prayer is both a cause
and an effect of revival. Prayer brings revival because prayer brings God. But
also, revival brings prayer. When God draws close He awakens in us a desire to
pray.
Revival is a call to stir yourself up to pray, to seek the face of God and to
pour out your soul to Him. Samuel Chadwick said, “There is no power like that
of earnest, believing and prevailing prayer”. Prayer will give you strength for the
battle, it will keep you close to God in the time of trial and will protect you from
the onslaughts of the enemy. That was the experience of Peter and John as they
went back to their people to report what had happened during their arrest and
trial at the hands of the Sanhedrin.
As soon as they heard an account of the events, the believers rose up in
prayer. It was their first and most natural response. They were passionate about
their contact with God through prayer and so they prayed with one accord lifting
up their voice to God (Acts 4:24). They prayed fervently as if the very destiny of
their city depended on it. They prayed in unity, their many voices becoming ‘one