Father, thank you for your great love to us. Thank you for the Lord Jesus, our Savior. And we do thank you, Father, for our testimony, such as the one that Doug has just given. And we think of the children down in the Sunday School right now.
We think of those who have been with us on Tuesday nights on Rejoice. And Lord, maybe in this group, there are those who will go out full time into teaching and preaching the gospel and sharing the good news of Jesus Christ around the world. We look to you for these things. We look to you for just guidance in this message.
This morning may you encourage our hearts that we may walk with you. Jesus name, amen. Did you guys get my PowerPoint thing? OK, you did.
OK. I'm assuming it's coming. There we go. So this morning, I was going to continue on in our study of the Lamb of God.
And I kind of got sidelined and just felt that this is something that's been really on my heart, mainly because I was reading this week. I'm reading through some of the heavier parts of the scriptures right now. I'm in the Second Kings. And you really, you know, like I have supplements in this.
That's why it's red. But sometimes when you're reading through things like these Wicked Kings, you need some supplements, man. Like you're reading stuff and you're thinking, oh, how is this going to help me today? Well, it does help you, believe it or not.
It does help. But what I do is I take my supplements and that is I'm reading the Psalms along with my journey through first and second Kings. So this week, as I was reading through a verse, Psalm 85 verse 6 came to me and I could not get it out of the loop to the point that I sat down for a couple of hours in my office thinking, praying, reading, trying to go to the next step in my series on the lamb and nothing, like it was nothing. I was like standing on Lordstown Beach looking out at the fog, which I did one day.
But anyway, this Psalm kept going through my mind. And I have spoken on this before, but it's so long ago that none of you, a lot of you weren't here. So that's OK. We live in a land where we have changing seasons.
You may come from a land where he didn't have changing seasons. He had rainy season and dry season. That's it. Everything was the same.
He lived at the equator. It gets dark at 7 o'clock at night. It gets bright at 7 o'clock in the morning. That's pretty much it, isn't it?
Yeah. And you just know that the time is coming. It's going to rain and then it's going to stop raining. But here, I mean, this past week, we had a day that I had actually, believe it or not, put the air conditioning on at the house.
It was 33 degrees. And the humidex was up around 37. 24 hours later, I had reversed the heat, pumped to bring the heat into the house because it was 13 degrees. 33 to 13 in 24 hours.
How does that happen? Well, it does because we're in Nova Scotia. So I think summer's finally here. It is here.
And one of the things that happens in summer, which is great, is the weather gets warm. We wait for that for months. The bad thing about summer is sometimes we get a winter chill in our hearts. We check out.
We check out on the Lord. We check out on attendance. We check out on different things. COVID hasn't helped us in that this year at all.
But it seems that while we live in the land of extremes when it comes to weather, sometimes we can have a winter storm in our hearts. And that's not a good place to be. As an illustration, this is on my bucket list. There's a place I want to go.
Almost got there. But Mount Washington is in New Hampshire. It's the place of extremes. Just read some of this.
It's recorded the highest world record for a land-based weather station, the wind. 372 kilometers an hour was recorded on Mount Washington. I mean, that's 372. I mean, this week we had 72.
And I was like terrified. I'm going to lose half my house or something. 372. The lowest temperature recorded there was 46 below Celsius, with a wind chill of minus 75.
That was in 2004. The highest temperature, plus 38 at the base and plus 22 at the summit. Average snowfall, 650 centimeters. The winds exceed hurricane force, 121 kilometers an hour.
On an average of 104 days a year. That's roughly a third of the year. The summit is in clouds about 60% of the time, sort of like my own brain. So it's a place of extremes.
But the thing is, it can change quickly from what I understand. I remember talking to my boss. He goes, yeah, yeah, we went up Mount Washington a couple of times. He said, one time we got there.
Beautiful hot, scorching summer day. Dead had us all in the car. We were fighting in the backseat like usual. And we were driving up.
And it was a hot scorching day down in the valley in New Hampshire. And we got to the top. We got stuck in a snowstorm in the summer. But see, that's the thing.
That can happen in our own hearts. We can be going through a spiritual summer enjoying warmth, growth, fruitfulness, and fullness in our life. And everything is great. We're down on a beach.
We're dancing. We're our arms are in the air. Everything is happy. And then the next thing, you know, a spiritual winter will come on our heart.
And it'll grow cold. And the thing is, it can happen just like it does at Mount Washington. Why did I pick that? Because sometimes it happens very, very quickly that you go from the warmth of summer to the coolness of winter.
And we can have that happen in our lives and in our hearts. So what do we need? And where are you this morning in all of this? I look at it and think the spiritual summer that we've had.
It's great. Sometimes our heart is warm and things are great. And I found it really, really hard this year when all of a sudden they said, walk down. But we've just gone through that horrible spiritual winter.
In fact, I wrote to people in the government saying, do you realize what you're doing here? Because you're setting people back. You're going to drive them. I didn't say this.
But drive them to a spiritual winter the way this is being done here. It was quite concerning. And weering this that the pandemic has brought around the world. It's frightening to see how Christians have gone from summer to winter so quickly.
So quickly, it's happened. In fact, if I sent out the prayer list a couple of times this week, sorry about that, sort of a fill in your email inbox. But when I look through that, and I won't call any names, but I can sit there with a highlighter and mark people I have not seen since a year ago, March at all. That's concerning.
In a short period of time, they were here singing, perhaps even hands up, perhaps hands down by their sides, perhaps whatever. But they have gone from that to totally absent. And I don't mean just absent from North, but absent from a walk with the Lord. And that is frightening.
You could go from summer to winter that quickly. So I want to look myself. Where is my heart today? Am I hot and on fire for the Lord?
Have I cooled off a little bit? Or am I in a deep freeze in my soul? Even though it's summer in the weather outside, maybe I have the winter blaws in my soul. And what I need is a revival in my heart.
Now, sometimes it's a word that's misused. It's a bit of an exaggeration. It's kind of put out there as a fanatical excitement or hear about revival. That means a whole lot of people get saved from gospel meetings that somebody comes into town, a famous preacher.
And all that stuff. Not quite. It is a biblical term. And I looked it up.
And there's 19 Old Testament verses with 20 references in the New American Standard with the word revival or revival in it. It means when God has given new life to his people, when prodigals have been restored to sonship. And when life is restored to those or a group of people after a period of spiritual deadness. I want to consider a prayer this morning for revival.
Psalm 85. And I'll just read the first seven verses. It says, oh Lord, thou didst show favor to thy land. That is restore the captivity of Jacob.
That is forgive the iniquity of thy people. That is cover all their sin. C'la. Now when you come to C'la in the scriptures, that's ancient speak for, hey, think about what you just read.
That's what, when you come across that, just think of from now on, when you see the word C'la, what he's really saying, it translates very easily into noviscocial language. Hey bud, think about what you just read. So let's think about what we just read. Oh Lord, that is show favor to thy land.
That is restore the captivity of Jacob. That is forgive the iniquity of thy people. That is cover all their sin. Aren't those great things to think about?
Aren't they great things to stop and think about? And then verse three, it carries on, that is withdraw, thy fury, that is turn away from thy burning anger. Restore us, O God, of our salvation. And cause thine indignation toward us to cease.
Will thou be angry with us forever? Will thou prolong thy anger to all generations? Will thou not thyself revive us again if thy people may rejoice in thee? Show us thy loving kindness, O Lord, and grant us thy salvation.
Just realize that I'm reading from me. 1970s version of the New American Standard, and I put up a 1995 version of it, just uses the old language, so it's exactly the same. But the verse I wanna focus on is the one, will you not yourself revive us again that your people may rejoice in you? So this is a prayer for revival.
When should we pray this prayer? Well, first of all, it's suitable for us to pray this when we can remember the gracious works of God in our life. The first couple of verses, as I said, stop and think about this. The Lord has saved us.
The Lord has been favorable to us. He says here you have been favorable in your land. You have brought back the captivity of Jacob. The Psalmist is remembering former and better times.
When you think back on these things, when you think back upon our lives, what we were and when we came to Christ, and the excitement and the joy that filled our hearts, it's good to go back and remember those things. There's lots of times in the scriptures that were told to remember things. To Moses, he said in Exodus chapter 13, remember this day, which you went out of Egypt, out of the house of bondage, for by strength, of hand, the Lord brought you out of this place. You see, because after a while, they're gonna be wandering around in the desert and things are gonna get rough harder and leaner times are coming.
But think back of where you were. Think back of what that slavery was like. Think back of what it was like to be in bondage. And you'll be thankful for where you are today.
It's good to remember these, when we look back on these things, pray this prayer, Lord, revive us again, remind us of these things. We came together this morning. Do this in remembrance of me, 1 Corinthians 11, 24, 25, and Luke, the Lord himself said it. Ask us to remember him.
Remember what he has done. You know, there's days that I've driven in here on, at nine, I talk in the morning, and a minute of a funk. Oh, everybody hates me, nobody loves me. I gotta eat some worms.
And then I come here and people are talking about the Lord Jesus. And they're talking about what has happened, how he has saved me. And talk about what he has done for me. And talk about all of these.
And we remember, we were reminded, we think back and we think of these great things. And it revives your soul, it revives your spirit. This verse came across this week, Psalm 156, greater your mercies, O Lord, revive me according to your ordinances. Think back on what the Lord has done, and it will revive you.
It's also suitable to be prayed at times when you've experienced a turning away from God. Now in verse five here, he says, will you be angry with us forever? Will you prolong your anger to all generations? I wanna just point out, it appeared to the psalmist that God was angry with his people.
Now God can be displeased, there's no doubt about it. But God loves his people. God does not pour his wrath out on his people. God has dealt with our sins and through Christ and through his death.
You see, sometimes what happens is I get into a trial of my own making. Most of my trials are of my own doing, of my own making. Some aren't, some are circumstances that happen. But a lot of circumstances and trials are ones that I've brought on myself.
And I get into this thing, and I'm sure nobody else does, it's only me. And you get into this thing and stuff is just going wrong. And then one more thing goes wrong. And that causes another thing to go wrong.
And then my thinking is all distorted. And now I'm like, why did I get up today? My milk is sour, my cereal tastes rotten. There's no eggs in the fridge.
Like, ah, and it's like everything's wrong. Everything's just bad. And you think about that. And you think, you know what, God must be greedy, greedy, mad at me today.
Wrong, wrong question, wrong answer to that question. It's not that God has mad at me. I've made my circumstances miserable by my miserable rotten attitude. You may keep reminding me that Chuck Swindall has said that attitude is 10% of what happens to you?
Life is 10% of what happens to you. And 90% of the attitude in which I face those things, something like that. It's not going to paraphrase. I don't have it from the new standard version.
But let's close. So life is 10% of my circumstances, but 90% of my attitude towards those circumstances. And see, then you can be mistaken and say, ah, it's not just going to be angry with me forever. It's going to take this away from me and do this to me.
See, that's not that we have our circumstances that we are troubles and trials, a lot of them are our own making. Maybe it's our stubborn hearts. Maybe it's just our attitude that brings it on. Maybe it's our own neglect of our spiritual health.
Perhaps that might be part of it, too. God may bring us into trial. But often we bring ourselves into trial. We just open the door and walk in.
God may bring us to that for a reason, to refine us, to change us, to develop us, to make us more like Christ. But sometimes when we're into circumstances, we brought them on ourselves, sorry to say. And you see, sometimes we just neglected our spiritual health that we get sick. That's a troubling thing.
We've heard a lot about health the last 15, 16 months, haven't we? An awful lot. And people are very, very, very preoccupied with their physical health. Very preoccupied.
To the point that they've neglected their spiritual health, that's a scary place to be. You see, my physical health, I find if I get a cold, I get better. I mean, there are scary things around. And I'm not going to, you know, the COVID thing is not necessarily good for everybody.
And I'm not trying to be smart in saying that. But what I'm saying is that the chances of me neglecting my spiritual health and getting spiritually sick are almost 100%. The rate is much higher than of physical disease. And if I find myself in that state, I am in trouble and I need revival.
I need to be revived. I need life back in my soul. Maybe it's time for us to pray that prayer for in that state. Will you not revive us again?
Will we repent of our sins? God forgives us. And we receive the blessing of God. We may fail the Lord a thousand times over, but he is loving and he's gracious and he will revive us.
He will give us life. And he will take us back when we come back to him. 100% of the time, Psalm 119 verse 37 says, turn my eyes away from looking at vanity and revive me in your ways. We look at so many things around us that we take our eyes off the Lord and it could make us spiritually dead.
The third thing is suitable that we pray this when we're feeling apathetic and lukewarm. Do you always feel spiritually energetic? Sometimes you're kind of like this, right? On the on the on the curve.
Perhaps you've lost your joy of fellowship with God's people. Perhaps you've lost your joy of sitting under the teaching of the Word of God. Perhaps you've lost interest in reading your own Bible. Perhaps you're out of the habit of prayer.
Perhaps all of those things have happened. You know, COVID hasn't helped us in this area. Because what I see and understand that a lot of people have gotten out of the habit of fellowship. It's been easy.
I'll sit at home. If I feel like I'll go on Zoom. If I don't feel like I'll check it out later. Maybe I'll listen to the car.
Oh, I forgot. And it's all good intention. It is not malicious or anything like that. It is just that you've gotten cold in your heart and you don't know how you got there.
Hebrews warns us to remember these things so that we don't drift away. You see, the problem with a drift is, you ever sit in a boat and just sit there in the waves or movies? It's really lovely. I could sleep in the boat.
That's the problem though. I sleep in the boat. It unties itself. I'm in the middle of the lake without a paddle.
Uh-oh. Now I'm in trouble. I've drifted. I didn't even know what I was sleeping.
And I just got myself there. It's a dangerous thing where we can be. The other time we need it, it's suitable for when we're gripped with fear and trouble. Now, there's been no shortage of that stuff thrown at us.
It says in Psalm 71 verse 20, you have shown me many troubles and distresses. Will, uh-oh, it must be. Will you revive me again? And we'll, uh-oh.
You who have, that's get my pronouns in there, you have shown me many troubles and distresses. You who have shown me many troubles and distresses will revive me again and will bring me up again from the depths of the earth. I'm thankful for a verse like this. We're living in a world of trouble.
There's troubles and fears and all of these things that are around us all the time. We live in a world where they're knocking on my door every day. Do I open the door and let them in? If I do, I'm going to find myself in trouble.
I'll be overwhelmed with fear. I'll lose my joy in the Lord. So where do I find comfort? We need this prayer.
Revive me again. Will you not yourself revive us again? Psalm 71 verse 21. In the NLT, it says, you will restore me even to greater honor and comfort me once again.
Isn't that a great promise of the Lord? You will restore me to greater honor and comfort me once again. There's no comfort in the news today. We need revival and restoration to return to the Lord.
Psalm 138 verse 7 says, though I walk in the midst of trouble, you will revive me. You will stretch forth your hand against the wrath of my enemies and your right hand will save me. Isn't that a wonderful promise? All the troubles in this world.
In fact, I shouldn't even tell you this, because this is a weird thing. This morning, I couldn't sleep. I woke up around four, and I'm tossing, turning, tossing, turning, causing us to warm us, to warm us, to warm us, to my minds on this, my minds on that and everything else. Then I finally drifted off to sleep.
Drifted off to sleep three minutes before my alarm was off. I am awakened in terror in my dream that I'm living on this flat earth. Thanks, Nick. I was talking about this last night.
Anyway, I'm looking out on the horizon and all around the horizon, black smoke. And it's just starting to billow towards me. And I woke up from that thinking, oh, the earth's not flat. That terrified me.
But the bill is a black smoke of trouble, just coming. But what it says here in this verse, it says, though I walk through the midst of trouble. Have we walked through troubles this year? We've walked through so many troubles.
In our families, in our homes, in our lives, it says you will revive me. You stretch forth your hand against the wrath of my enemies. Your right hand will save me. We have great Savior.
We have great hope in this world. I need to move along. Two things that this prayer implies. First of all, it implies that life has been present.
Where's Fola? There she is. Foli or a lifeguard? Ish, right?
Yeah. So do lifeguards hang out at cemeteries? No. You don't revive corpses.
You go to the beach where people are, people who are alive. And then the lifeguard comes in to talk to the people who were formerly alive. So there was life there, right? So first of all, it implies life.
That there has been life present. You revive somebody who has had life. The whole word with re-revive, re-live, re-give life is giving life back to someone. If you're a believer, any believer, you have had life.
You have life, eternal life. If you're not a believer, the scripture say you're dead and your trust passes and sin. You don't need revival. You need salvation.
You need to have life. You need to get life. This morning, you can have life. Jesus says, I am the way, the truth, and the life.
No one comes to the Father but through me. For God so loved the world that he gave his only son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. You need that life. But sometimes that life can decline to the part that you need to have that life revived.
You need to have eternal life. I put up here, these are notes to me, ark and illustration. So when Noah built the ark, and people came by and they saw this big thing built out of gopher wood and they said, oh wow, pretty impressive. I mean, I don't believe any of the stuff about the flood, but that's pretty impressive.
And look at that door and that ramp. I'm using the assumption that it looked like some of the stuff you see in kids' books. But they admired it. And they thought, wow, if we ever did get a flood, that thing's not a flood.
They never entered it. They didn't believe. And to their horror, they were dead. They died because they only admired it.
They looked at it and thought, that's cool. You see, we meet people on the streets and talk to them and they know about Jesus. They admire Jesus. They think he was a great man, a great teacher.
They admire him. Just like the people walked by and admired that ark. But you see, knowing about Jesus, admiring Jesus, and thinking he's a great man or a great teacher will not save a single soul. You have to fully trust him.
You have to fully believe in him. I just read a book this week. And if you ever get a chance to read it, it's really, really good. Maybe Jane, if she's online, she'll bring it in for the library.
It's called Cold Case Christianity. Jane, that's Cold Case Christianity by Jay Warner. Whatever his name is. Wallace, Jay Warner Wallace.
Cold Case Christianity. But he says, the two levels of belief that you need to have. You need to believe about. Many people believe about.
You'd be a fool to say, I don't believe about Jesus. You can't even think of this thing. Well, history shows that he exists. It's true.
But you can't stop there. You have to go from believing about to believing in. Trusting him, putting your life in him. You see, I can walk out to the airport and look around and say, yeah, I believe there's airplanes.
I believe that that airplane can take me to Portugal, over the ocean. But does that do me any good? What does me good is when I say, OK, I'm now going to believe in. I bought a ticket.
I sit in the airplane and I go. A lot of people do not move from belief that. Belief that Jesus existed. Belief that Jesus did miracle.
Belief that Jesus died on a cross. Belief that, all of these things. To going to the stage of, I believe in him. I believe that he did this for me.
And when you do that, you have life. The second thing that this prayer implies is that life has declined, that our fruit has withered, that the fruit is still there, but it's withered up. And we need a checkup. I go to the doctor, usually in September, to have a checkup.
They're getting hurt, pass, for some reason. But you go in and he's got a little checklist. Usually my mechanic does a checklist on my car before winter. And he passes to me 100 point checklist.
This is good. Check, check, check, check. The doctor, you know, he'll say check your blood pressure check. And he's got this little thing that he writes in his whatever it is, this file that he checks these things off.
Well, you know, the Bible gives us checklists to see if we need revival, to see how we're doing. And I just want to couple them here. Romans 12, verses 10 to 13. And I won't go through and expound on each of these because I do have to be kind to you.
Here's the list. I just took the verses and I just wrote them down from the NIV. One, be devoted to one another and brotherly love. Be kindly affectionate, it says, in the New King James.
God has put us together as a family. Do we act and treat each other like a family of God? I don't want to treat you like a family. I want to treat you like a family of God.
I treat you like sometimes families treat each other. Maybe sometimes we treat each other too much like family. But we need to treat each other like a family of God. Honor one another.
Above yourselves. Yeah, that exists in the world today. Put somebody, prefer somebody else over yourself. You see, that's a sign of life in the Christian.
Never be lacking in zeal. Keep your spiritual fervor, serving the Lord. Be joyful in hope. Be patient in affliction.
Hmm. That's a hard one to put a checkbox by, isn't it? Be faithful in prayer. Share with God's people who are in need.
Practice hospitality. You see, all of these things are a checklist for us to do a checkup on ourselves. How am I doing in these areas? How am I responding?
Am I showing life? Or am I showing that life is declined? The fruit of the spirit, Galatians, Chapter 5, 22 and 23. Am I displaying these things in my life?
Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, generalist, and self-control? Or do I not show these things? Or am I missing five of these things? It's a little checklist.
I go through these in my life. Hmm. Maybe I need an attitude check. Maybe I need my life revived to walk with God.
So the humus is very, apply. Will you not yourself revive us again, that your people may rejoice in you? First of all, it's for elders, deacons, missionaries, leaders, pastors, whatever it may be. Leaders are not exempt from having a coldness in their soul.
I can assure you that elders, I can assure you that this elder is not exempt from having coldness in my soul. What do I need? I need revival. But I need your constant prayer.
I also need those who will come alongside and say, bro, can we talk for a minute? This is the way you respond to this person on that. We need those things. We need those checkups.
We need not criticism, not just out and out. We do need criticism, constructive. But you know what I mean? We just don't need that kind of thing.
We need people who will come up so along and be honest with us as to what is lacking, what have we done wrong, where are we showing coldness in our soul, but we need more than anything else. We need prayer. Whether you're an elder, a deacon, a missionary, whatever you might be. I'm so thankful, the missionaries that we support, now one of them comes and asks for money.
Do you ever notice that? Every month they send us a prayer letter. They don't ask us to send money. Never.
They ask us to pray. They send us pray for this person, pray for that person. Pray for this soul. Pray for this work.
Pray for this health. Whatever it might be. That's the greatest need. The greatest need for elders, deacons, missionaries, pastors, whatever you might be, is the prayer of God's people.
It's a prayer for the whole church. Will you yourself not revive us again that your people may rejoice in you? Every person, men, women, teenagers, seniors, children, we all need to have a vibrant life. We need to be revived as a church so we can bring a message of life and hope to the world.
We need to be excited about these things. We need God to work in our lives. So what is, as we go through this, the essence of this prayer? First of all, a prayer points us to dependence upon God.
We need to recognize and feel our need before God, recognizing that there's not one thing I can do other than to seek the face of God. If the story of Hezekiah took all his petitions, went before God, fell on his face, and laid them out. I've tried this my own way. I listen to Frank Sinatra too long.
I tried to do it my way. God, only you can do this. We need to go before God. We need to pour ourselves out before Him.
Only God can revive us. A church cannot be revived unless God revives us. Just as a soul cannot be saved unless God saves that soul. Notice it says, will you not revive us again?
Will you not revive us again? Revival has to come from God. It has to come from the Lord Himself. We can look for revival in all the wrong places.
We can look in worship and praise. And worship and praise is great. Don't get me wrong, I love it. It may help, but that's not where we get revived.
It doesn't bring about a lasting revival of my heart. We can look to a preacher or a pastor to revive us. The Lord may use those people to speak to our hearts and perhaps direct us to the Lord, but it's God that revives the heart, not man. In a recent, horrible fall of a Christian leader, and I know you know who I'm talking about, somebody did a little video, and she told a story, her testimony, of how she was driving in the car, lost, just drifting as a Christian.
And his voice came on, and it was soothing, and led her to look into the scriptures, and led her, and she said, I thought of him as the lifeboat. But he's unfortunately, sadly, failed us all. He has failed every one of us. And then she came to the final conclusion when she looked at that and said, you know what?
Jesus is my lifeboat, not a man. There is no man on this planet that can be your lifeboat, only Christ can be your lifeboat. We can look at theology for revival. You know what?
The thing is, I can try to get more knowledge if I want, but if I'm not applying the knowledge I have, what's the use of more? I need to apply the things that I have, the things that I already know. Theology's good, it's great, study it, know it, know your Bible, know how to defend the faith, know all of those things, they're awesome things to do. Oh, by the way, tonight at Grace Baptist, over in town here, David will be doing a presentation at five o'clock on Creationism.
Just thought I'd plug that he called me late last night, and it just came to my mind. So there you can build in your defense. However, that is not what's gonna bring revival to you. Only the Lord himself can bring revival to your hearts.
The other thing is it points us to confidence in God. Will you not, implies that the Psalmist already knows the answer to this. He's praying expectantly, he's praying believingly, knowing that God is willing and God is able to revive us again. It points to a sense of urgency.
It's a cry for revival for the whole congregation. Prayer is the key to this. Prayer is what gives the advantage. Pray fervently, pray expectantly, pray together.
Notice, will you not revive us again? The prayer is for the whole church, for the whole congregation. We need to be revived together. We need the church to be revived.
We need individuals, but we need to be revived together so that we're effective, so that we're working in the community around us. Finally, what are the results of this prayer? The first result is our restoration of joy in the Lord. It's in the next verse, during the last part of the verse.
Will thou not, thyself, revive us again, that thy people may rejoice in thee. When you come back to walking with the Lord, your joy is full. And when your joy is full, it's contagious. There's nothing more contagious.
It's more contagious than COVID. Joy in the Lord brought to the church is contagious. We need that, we need that kind of contagion. I want you to also notice here that revival begins and ends with God.
Will you yourself, it starts with, and says that we may rejoice in you? This verse begins with God. Will you bring revival? Why, so that we may rejoice in you?
It always points to him. I don't know the state of your heart this morning. I know the state of mine. And do you, like me sometimes, remember back to a day when you walked with the Lord.
You really enjoyed that walk with the Lord. You really enjoyed reading your Bible. You really enjoyed those quiet times of prayer with him. And you know in your heart that there's no joy like the joy of the Lord.
And perhaps that has cooled down. Perhaps you're sitting here this morning and you feel like, I don't feel that cold winter chill, but you know what, the leaves are falling off my tree. It feels more like November, it's fall. I have a bit of it, but I'm longing for it.
Well, you can have a spring revival in your soul. Maybe you know somebody else who's going through this. As I said, our list, you look at it and think, there are people on that list I haven't seen for months. Maybe they're going through this.
Can I encourage them? Can I do something to encourage them? Can I send them a card? Can I make a call?
Can I send them an email? Can I chat with them? Can I go visit them? I know what I can do.
I can pray for them. I can pray for them that they may be revived. What about our assembly? Do you ever think about how we're doing?
Ever think about can I do more? Can I be part of this? Do I ever pray for our church? As a whole, as a body, we need revival.
Will you not revive us again, that your people may rejoice in you? Father, thank you this morning, that you give life. Thank you, Father, that when we get out of sorts, when we get out of place, and it seems like our life has just grown cold, our love for you, we can pray this prayer. Will you not revive us again, that your people, or that I may rejoice in you?
Lord, if we're cold and hurt as individuals, or as a group, I pray, Lord, that you will bring a spring of revival to our lives, that we may show life to the world around us. Thank you for bringing us together in Jesus' name, amen. Thank you for your patience, I know.