Fear Will Not Produce Revival

 October 4, 2024

Friday

I went to college before personal computers. Almost none of the college students in my dorm had a TV. We found our entertainment elsewhere. One of the students on my dorm hall had a huge snake. (Truthfully, any snake is huge to me.) That snake needed to be fed live mice. (I know some of you are already disgusted with this.) He would go to a store or get some mice that had been experimented on- actually I don't know where he got them. We would gather around a large terrarium which housed the snake to watch.

Initially, the mouse was extremely afraid. It ran around frantically looking for a way out. It realized that it was next to a snake and intuitively knew what would probably happen next. Meanwhile, the snake remained perfectly still. The mouse stopped his frantic behavior and went about sniffing in the terrarium. The snake moved slowly to get in position to strike. Suddenly, the mouse is in the snake's mouth. It was over even though the mouse struggled for the next several minutes.

The point is that the mouse adjusted to the fear. It adjusted to being in a cage with a snake. The fear motivated the mouse for a short time. That is what happens when people are motivated by fear. Initially, they want safety more than anything else but when the predicted fearful outcome delays, they go back to their lives.

Yes, I know that God moved in amazing ways when people heard, "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God" and "Payday Someday" but while these sermons may have brought an initial reaction from fear, they did not produce revival by themselves. Only the Holy Spirit can bring revival. Without His drawing people to God we are merely scaring people into our baptistries. They will believe they need nothing more than that because it will alleviate their fears. They will go back to their lives with their spiritual insurance policy in hand.

We need a genuine Holy Spirit revival that will last for years, not a momentary flash of evangelism. 

When God's people followed after the Baals, God took His protective grace away. They suffered for eighteen years until they finally cried out to God. God sent judges who led his people back to worshiping Him alone. This happens again and again in the Book of Judges. Years pass while people served other Gods. God gives them over into the hands of others. They cry out and God comes to the rescue.

Isn't it time for us to cry out now? We are under rulers who believe abortion is a right. They seek to reward the ungodly. They look after their own interests alone. They lead us down paths that forget God. Shouldn't we cry out to God for deliverance? Shouldn't we seek revival?

I seriously doubt if revival will come from our politicians. Revival will come when God's people cry out to Him again. It will start with a few in prayer meetings. It will grow because God's people will put away their own idols and worship Him alone. Isn't it time?

2 Chronicles 7:13-14 (ESV) ¹³  When I shut up the heavens so that there is no rain, or command the locust to devour the land, or send pestilence among my people, ¹⁴  if my people who are called by my name humble themselves, and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and heal their land.