Thanks for joining us today on the Line of Fire as we culminate our series this first month on revival, why it's so essential, what it is, how it could still change America, how it could still transform the Church of America, how it can touch you, how it can touch me.
Welcome to the broadcast friends. We are here five days a week to infuse you with faith and truth and courage. We know we're in a battle. We know we're all in the line of fire. We know the pressure is intense.
Sometimes you just want to get away from it, but this is the world in which we live. We are all on the front lines, and it's our goal to stand with you every single day, whether you're a single mom, whether you're in the midst of intensive business dealings, whether you're pastoring a church, whether you're a young person on a university campus. Every one of you, we want to stand by your side and say it's not too late. God has not thrown in the towel. In Jesus, we are overcomers.
Greater is he who's in us than he who is in the world. And in the midst of darkness and apostasy and moral and spiritual compromise, right within the church, how much more in the world, God is saying now is the time if we will cry out to him. Zechariah 10-1, as he told ancient Israel, ask the Lord for rain in the time of spring rain.
It's the Lord who sends the showers. Lord, do it now. Do it in our day. We've read about the awakenings of the past. We've read about the great moves of the past.
We see all the stories in the Bible. What about us? What about here?
What about now? So this last day, we want to focus on revival and you as an individual. If you're not getting my Frontline newsletter, we just sent out our first one last week. So thrilled to hear from those who've received it, have been blessed and stirred by it. We send it out once a month.
It's a brand new publication, just started in January of 2024. So go to thelineoffire.org, thelineoffire.org, and right there on the home page, sign up for our newsletter. We'll put you on our welcome tour, share more about my own testimony and the many resources that we have to be a blessing to you. Free resources on our website to serve you in so many ways because, friends, we want to equip you. We want to empower you.
We want to strengthen you so that you can engage on the front lines and make a real difference for Jesus. And if you'd like to get a copy of the book we've been using, Revival or We Die, right on the home page, your gift of any size, just click on that and go ahead and order. We'd love for every one of you to get a copy. It really will be a life changer as you read it. Or you can call 800-538-5275, 800-538-5275, your gift of any size.
We'd love to send this out to you. I believe as you read it, it's going to be an answer to prayer because your heart will be stirred, your vision will be expanded. You can almost like taste and feel revival. So in the book, Revival or We Die, we start off with the premise that there is more. There is more. When you read the Bible and you read about who God is and then you look around at the church in America, you think, no, no, no.
There's got to be more than that. And then the urgent state of things, the second chapter is Revival or We Die. This is not just another option. We're not talking about a series of special meetings that your church holds once a year, revival services. No, those are series of special meetings and that's all they are. You cannot hold a revival or schedule a revival any more than you can hold a hurricane or schedule an earthquake. Revival is not something people work up. Revival is something God sends down. And America is in such a spiritual and moral crisis today it really is revival or we die.
And then we go through various aspects relating to revival, rediscovering the book of the law, why we must rediscover the word and the truth of the word to have real and lasting revival. And we talk about how we've lost the focus of the real gospel in America. We've gone from talking about how wicked sinners are and how amazing God's grace is to now talking to sinners and telling them they're amazing. It diminishes God's grace. We open up Psalm 51, a beautiful psalm of repentance, to show us what repentance really looks like.
A chapter, Restore My First Love, we did a whole broadcast just on that as I take you through my own journey of times when I'd left my first love and the prayers I'd prayed and how God is jealous to bring us back. Jesus in Luke, the 22nd chapter, tells his disciples. It's one of the most incredible verses to me in the Bible because he knows these men with all their carnality and flaws. They're about to forsake him. They're about to abandon him. And Peter, under pressure, is actually going to deny him. And yet Jesus says to them, I've eagerly desired to eat this meal with you before I suffer.
They're his friends. And Jesus longs to have fellowship with us, his friends. Chapter 7, Set the Trumpet to Your Mouth, how absolutely imperative it is that we speak the truth, that we don't back down, that we proclaim what God's word says regardless of the consequences. Chapter 8, we talked about that earlier this week. Do you not know that your honor is at stake crying out to God for revival because his name is blaspheme because of all the sin and scandal in the church? Chapter 9, Celebrity Christianity, Superstar Saints, and Political Prophets, how far we've gotten from biblical transformation. Chapter 10, asking the question again, is it too late for America?
We really lay it out. We say, maybe it's too late. Maybe we're too far gone.
And then bring tremendous encouragement from past awakenings when people thought the exact same thing. It's too late for America. I'm talking about the 1700s. It's over. The church can never be restored. It's too late. And in the 1800s, in the 1900s, and now in the 2020s, is it too late?
A resounding no, but we must get desperate. In chapter 11, from revival to awakening, when God begins to move, how can we move from there, from revival in the church to reformation in society, from outpouring in the church to awakening in society? And then chapter 12, and this is where I want to focus. This is what I want to leave you with. The world has yet to see.
Well, yet to see what, well, I'll come to that in a moment. I want to talk about revival and you. Let's forget about the craziness of the society.
Let's forget about the agenda of the radical left. Let's forget about the so-called progressive churches that have abandoned the fundamentals of scripture. Let's even forget about your own home congregation, if that needs revival, or your own community.
Let's talk about you as an individual before God. There was an old evangelist named Gypsy Smith many years ago, who was asked the question, how do you pray for revival? And he said, well, I take a piece of chalk, I draw a circle on the ground, I stand inside the circle, and I say, God, revive everything in this circle.
Oh, yes. A house that Nancy and I lived in years back, my study had a wood floor, and there was one little piece of carpet on it, just a square piece, round piece, whatever it was, next to one of the chairs. And some nights I would literally go, it was just big enough to stand on. It was decorative. It was just big enough to stand on. And I would go stand on that, and I would say, God, revive everything standing on this carpet.
Let the work start with you. Have you ever gone to start a fire? You've got the coals in your grill, you're going to start a fire and cook a barbecue, and maybe some of the coals over here really get burning. They get burning, next thing the others get burning, others get burning, and before you know it, you've got this flaming fire. Why not be the coal that starts burning? Why not be the one that has a fresh encounter with God? Why not be the one that gets so radically and dramatically transformed that it makes others jealous and others hungry, and they begin to cry out to God? It could happen in your own family. It could happen with siblings. You've got an 18-year-old girl and her 16-year-old brother, and the parents may be in their early 40s, and the 18-year-old girl, there's a Christian family, church-going family, but very compromised and worldly and Christian, more in name than in reality, and the 18-year-old has this radical encounter, and she gets dramatically changed, and then she's just living differently, and she's shining brightly, and the brother comes under conviction, and I need what you have.
I need what you have. You really know God, and they pray together, and next thing he's weeping and sits down with his mom and dad, I got to confess. You didn't know it, but I was doing drugs. I was partying.
You thought I was out at these sports events. I've been partying. I've been lying to, but I got right with God last week. I just want to follow Jesus, and then the parents, they come under conviction because of the change in their kids and say, hey, we're not getting that in our church.
We're just kind of dead in religion, but we know better because we used to really know God. Before you know it, you have a family ablaze. You have a whole family on fire and burning, and now in the church, now that starts to spread.
Before you know it, you could have a bona fide move of God. You can have an outpouring, and next thing, it's not just what happened in this family, but the Holy Spirit just falling when you gather to worship, and some lost sinner comes in just thinking, I'm just in town for the weekend, but I always go to church on Sunday, just nominal, and they walk in. It's just their religious routine. They come under conviction.
They got saved. Before you know it, you haven't told multiple services every week and prayer meetings every morning because people are crying out to God and start several new converts classes because you've got so many people coming to faith, and every service you're baptizing people. You say, it sounds like a dream. Yeah, but it's a dream that's happened many, many times in reality. These things have happened. The picture I described is a unique picture I just used to illustrate, you know, made up a story just to illustrate, but that kind of thing has happened over and over again in much greater proportion. Maybe it starts with you, and even if it doesn't touch anyone else for a while, it's still your life being transformed.
The world has yet to see. What does that mean? All right, I'm going to come back to that on the other side of a break. Now, we've got a word from our co-sponsor, our friends at TriVita, part of my daily lifestyle. TriVita plays a major role in my life.
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If you're getting our emails and you already got our Frontline newsletter, if not, sign up today. So, this last chapter of my book, Revival or We Die, The World Has Yet to See, what's that mean? Well, it's a famous quote.
D.L. Moody became famous for this quote, The world has yet to see what God can do with a man or a woman fully consecrated to him. Let me read it again.
The world has yet to see what God can do with a man, and I add, or with a woman, fully consecrated to him. Moody became famous for that quote, but it wasn't a Moody quote. It was something that someone said to D.L. Moody. So, in the last chapter of Revival or We Die, I tell the whole story. So, Moody was in England. He was on his way back to America, but he's still in England. And a man named Henry Varley, who himself was an evangelist, was sitting with Moody.
They met in Dublin, Ireland. He was a revivalist evangelist himself, Henry Varley. So, they're sitting there and Varley says to Moody, Moody, the world has yet to see what God can do with a man fully consecrated to him.
So, Moody leaves that meeting, that conversation, and on the boat ride home, remember you got weeks on the boat, this is before you're flying over to England, weeks on the boat, and he's chewing on that. He goes, I want to be that man. I want to be that man. I want to find out what God could do through a man fully yielded to him. Obviously, we don't reach perfection in this world. What if we went after God in the ways that we never did? What if we turned off the TV? What if we put down the cell phone? What if we got offline? And what if we sought God? What if we skipped some meals? What if we got rid of some non-essentials? I'm not saying don't take care of your family. I'm not saying don't go to work. But there's so much expendable time that we waste week in, week out, month in, month out.
Look, I'll be totally candid. I'll be looking for something on YouTube, right, maybe getting ready for a radio show, and I'm looking for some information on YouTube. And as I'm looking, YouTube, it's got this other, you know, recommended things to watch, like, oh, that looks interesting. And then that looks, oh, wow. Before I know it, a half hour's gone by, an hour's gone by with mindless stuff I'm watching. You know, who would win?
A gorilla versus a lion. I mean, completely mindless stuff that has no value in my life whatsoever. It's like, I just wasted an hour. What if you got to that point of hunger and desire for God, that you said, God, I'm going to press in? I felt the Spirit asking me the other night, I felt God asking me the other night, what do you want? What do you really want? And my answer was, Lord, I want you. And I know what God was saying to me was, well, then live in such a way that it's evident that more than anything else in this world, you want me. You want me.
So Moody is transformed, absolutely transformed. And he says to Henry Varley, he comes back years later, and he says to him, he says, do you remember your words? And he said, I remember talking with you.
I remember sitting talking with you, but I don't remember your specific words. In other words, it was just something Henry Varley threw out, just a passing thought. Moody, the world's yet to see what God could do for a man for the yield of damn, but for Moody, boom, that was an invitation from God. And he pressed in, and he cried out, and he became consumed with it. Moody said this, those were the words sent to my soul through you from the living God.
As I crossed the wide Atlantic, the boards of the deck of the vessel were engraved with them. And when I reached Chicago, the very paving stones seemed marked with, Moody, the world is yet to see what God will do with a man fully consecrated to him. He said, under the power of those words, I've come back to England, and I felt that I must not let more time pass until I let you know that God had used your words and my inmost soul. Oh, did you feel that?
Perhaps you feel God giving you that same invitation. I remember reading The Cross and the Switchblade, the famous book telling the story of David Wilkerson and his brother Don and their ministry to drug addicts in New York City, a book that's been a bestseller for many, many, many years in many, many different countries and impacted many, many lives and was turned into a movie as well, The Cross and the Switchblade. And I remember David Wilkerson, he's pastoring in Pennsylvania, he's a backwoods kind of guy, the last guy you'd think is going to be called to the inner city, the last guy you think is going to be called to deal with drug addicts and gangs and that kind of thing. But God uses the foolish things to confound the wise. He uses the weak things to confound the strong. He uses the things that are not to bring to nothing the things that are. That no flesh, this is what Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 1, that no flesh will glory in his presence, but let him boast in the Lord. So it's God working through flawed, fallen human vessels. That's all he has to work through. And the more you give your excuses to God, the more you tell him, well God I can't be used because of this, this, this. The more he says, perfect!
This is just what I'm looking for. This way everyone will know it's you, it's God getting the glory. It's not the earthen vessel, it's God.
You get the glory. So David Wilkerson says that he would watch TV, used to watch TV late at night from like midnight to two in the morning, if I recall. He was a late night person. And God basically spoke to him, give those hours to me. So it didn't matter how much you prayed, read the Word, met with God other times in his life or other times of the day. He knew God was challenging him, give that time to me. So for months he turned those late hours into prayer hours seeking God and it was out of that that the ministry was birthed. Out of that, that this explosion came and raised him up to have one of the most significant ministries of this past generation.
A ministry that touched literally millions of people around the world as he stood as a watchman on the wall. But it came out of him feeling that conviction of God and God saying draw near to me and I will draw near to you. I talk about others that God used in revival or we die, people that God got hold of and it's this pull, this sense there must be. I know God is calling me deeper. I don't want to live my whole life without finding out what God could do through Yielded Vessels.
That's been a great burden of my life. Lake said this, one of these days we'll get sick and tired of the spiritual bankruptcy that we live in and the joke that our lives often are and we will get serious with God. So by God's grace, I'm strong and in vibrant health, thriving in every way and feel like a very young man as I get close to turning 69.
I really feel like a very young man. I'm full of energy, I'm full of faith, I'm full of expectation, I'm full of vision. On every level we are amping up our ministry literally to do ten times more if not a hundred times more in terms of impact and reach this year in the coming years than all the years before us combined.
That's literally our heart, our vision. And yet, as much as I've seen God do amazing things in the past, as much as I could tell you story after story after story about the amazing things I've witnessed God do in my in my own life that I've gotten to be part of, participate in, I know there's more. And I don't want to leave this world without finding out what could happen.
I don't want to leave this world without finding out what could happen if I really went after him in a way beyond anything I've done. It's not works righteousness. It's not going to work harder, pray more, fast more, beat myself to the ground and then God will be obligated when I reach this certain level of self-denial or when I accumulate enough brownie points, simply obligated. No, it's working with God to say, God I am this serious, I am this desperate. And to the degree that we are, to the degree that we are that hungry, that thirsty, as Paul said, I press towards the mark. He gives the image in Philippians 3 of a man straining to the finish line, throwing his body forward.
He said, that's how I live. I want to take hold of everything for which Jesus has taken hold of me. So revival and you.
It starts ultimately with you, with your life. Do what Gypsy Smith said, draw a circle on the ground, get inside that circle and say, God revive everything in this circle. Let the revival start with you.
This is Dr. Michael Brown. Thanks so much for tuning in. Just a reminder that we are listener supported. If we have been a blessing to you, if you're being enriched in the word and prayer and your own walk with God through this broadcast, then stand with us so that we can reach many, many more and bless many, many more. Together friends, we're making a difference. So go to thelineoffire.org, thelineoffire.org, and click donate.
