An Interview with Pastor Shane Idleman on Revival

The following program is recorded content created by the Truth Network.

That's 866-34-TRUTH. I'm joined today by my good friend Pastor Shane Eidelman. We've only met face-to-face once where I had the joy of spending time with him and ministering in his congregation, Westside Christian Fellowship in California, last year, early last year before COVID.

But we have been in regular private communication for years, and I've loved his heart. Yeah, man, that's what I preach. That's what I believe. It's hard for holiness. It's hard for repentance.

It's hard for prayer, for fasting. And God's been using him in the midst of COVID in California. The stadium opened up for them to use and preach.

They're seeing people hungering, thirsting, coming to the Lord, Christians coming to press in more deeply to God. He's got a new book on revival that's just out, so I thought it would be an ideal time to spend this hour talking with Pastor Shane. If you have a revival-related question, something you're trying to work out in your own life or your own church, if it's specifically related to the subject of revival, I may take some calls.

866-34-TRUTH, 866-348-7884. But without further ado, Pastor Shane, welcome to the broadcast. Good to have you back.

Welcome, Dr. Brown, and thank you so much for the introduction. We have shared that heart for revival for years. I actually started reading your articles on revival years ago, and that was just confirming more of what God's doing in my own heart. So it's good to get together and finally hash out this topic for those who maybe might be on the fence.

Yeah. Okay, so why would anyone be on the fence when it comes to the subject of revival? Why is that a mixed or a controversial word to some? Well, it's funny you said that, because I'm actually putting the book, Oh, God Ran the Heavens, on audio right now.

I'm in a hotel room, so I took a break here in Riverside, and I just finished the chapter, Embarrassed by the Spirit, to extinguish the flames of revival. And so I think when you use that term in a lot of conservative churches, churches who hold to the inerrancy of Scripture and truth, just this concept of revival, maybe they're not used to it, or what they've seen in the past videos they've seen. But more importantly, I think it's an issue in their own hearts where they've never experienced that fire and passion for God. And so when you begin to talk about that, they are challenged by it, and they're on the fence. They don't want to really embrace that revival fire, in my opinion, at least of what I've seen.

So for some, it's they have negative associations, whether they think it's weird or it's emotional. But for others, the real issue is that we're kind of content to live on the surface. We're kind of content to live with a non-intrusive Christian faith that doesn't really cost us much, require much of us, challenge us, cause us to stand out as followers of Jesus. But real revival will shake and change all of that. There's a great word the Lord spoke to you some years ago, and I want to refer to that in a moment, because it rang so true to me as someone who's been in the midst of historic revival and seen it firsthand in that regard. But first, when you talk about revival, you're a preacher, a teacher, you like to communicate and explain. How do you define it?

People say, well, what do you mean by this? What is revival? Well, it's not camp meetings, and it's not having a revival service or a revival weekend.

It's not working it up. It's God bringing it down. And so in simple terms, I think revival is God reviving his people. And you use the word spiritual awakening simultaneously, where it's crystal clear that God is moving. His manifest presence is here. People say, well, he's omnipresent. He's everywhere.

True. But there's a difference between God being everywhere and his manifest presence just being in a specific church or a conference or a setting. And you can feel the tangible presence of God convicting and encouraging and building a people, tearing others down. It's just this revival atmosphere.

It's ironic. I was going to say this on the first point. It's brought division to our church to some degree, because we have now 100 people at 6 a.m. worship. We have people. The altars have been full and the prayer lines for the prayer meeting and and people who are not open are convicted. And while that just music is too emotional, I can't believe people are at the altar. It's just a bunch of wood.

It's just steps. I mean, they see this. Wow.

You see this contention. And I remember one of our worship leaders was camping out on a song for five, six, seven, eight minutes. And just holy is the Lord. And one person laughed and said, that's just demonic. That's brainwashing. But people are being set free and husbands are returning home, better husbands. And so you see this interesting dynamic that I think people are scared of revival or they've never experienced it or they're being challenged by it.

Yeah. Arthur Wallace once said in his book In the Day of Thy Power, if something claims to be a revival and it's not spoken against, check again to see if it's really a revival. And Duncan Campbell, who was used so mightily in the Hebrides revival in 1949 to 1952 off the coast of Scotland, he verified that to be true. And I've often said that you can have controversy without revival, but you can't have revival without controversy.

It's always been the way it is in history. Even Jesus coming into the world. Simeon prophesied it would be for the falling and rising of many in Israel and so the thoughts of many hearts would be revealed. And then at Pentecost, when the Holy Spirit is poured out, some of the crowd hears the praises of God in their own language and the other part of the crowd thinks they're drunk. So the Holy Spirit's not the author of confusion. He won't inspire me to prophesy it's going to rain tomorrow and inspire you to prophesy that there'll be no rain in the world tomorrow. But when the Holy Spirit moves, it brings up to the surface what's really in people's hearts.

And that's often a shocker because many people like we have all of God that we want. We're just happy with this going to a church service and enjoying the sermon. It may feel a little uneasy, but then we we go out, have our nice Sunday afternoon meal and go on with our lives. Revival does not allow you to just go on with your life. No, it actually it changes everything. It changes your schedule.

It causes you to go deeper in. And I've noticed that these same people, the critics, are also critiques of fasting. You won't see them at all night prayer meetings. You've never seen them at the altar. If worship goes longer than 20 minutes and you start going into 45 minutes of worship, it's too much. So all these deep experiences with the with the Holy Spirit, they discount.

I remember here, even in Southern California, I was at a large conference here, mainly conservative pastors. And the main leader said when he was reading E.M. Bowne's book, when it talks about one of the men who wore grooves in his hardwood floors, you know, this Bible teacher, very popular, said, I can't even comprehend that. Like mocking it. Yeah. Where my heart broke.

It would be to God that we would all do that. What am I missing here? So it's that deeper life. It's that pressing in. It's that experiencing God.

And I think once that gets off the radar and they've never experienced it, they begin to mock it. You're right. There's never a word not spoken against genuine revival. Even Whitfield had his, George Whitfield, of all people, had his critique. Oh, yeah. Whitfield, Wesley. Yeah. Jonathan Edwards.

I've read that during the Great Awakening that the books of critic Charles Chauncey sold better than the revival books of Jonathan Edwards. And today people. Yeah. Go ahead. Sorry. Yeah.

Today, nobody knows the name of Charles Chauncey, but they all know the name of Jonathan Edwards. And I believe that forced him to write his book on a genuine work of the Holy Spirit, where he talked about it will elevate Christ. It will point people to the truth. It will oppose Satan. And so there's there's fruit you can look at it in a genuine revival. You saw this more than more than me.

You know, you should you know, you're more experienced than I am in this area. And you thought, I'm sure with the revival you were at that it was holiness was preaching judgment and righteousness and repentance, as well as the love, mercy and grace of God. So you go back to those old truths and those foundational truths and you can see the fruit of genuine revival. God's handwriting is all over it. And but a lot of people think, well, Shane, if God is genuinely moving, that's what I've heard before at our church, then we would all know it. Well, not necessarily the Pharisees, the critical heart, the stiff neck people. They're going to they're going to attribute the works of God to Satan many times. Yeah.

Yeah. And not not only so the the the people that were there in these historic revivals, as Conrad Cherry historian said that the critics and the Great Awakening, he said they focused on the chaff, whereas those in the revival focused on the wheat. So you're you're always going to have aberrations. Look, what if the Corinthians rejected the Holy Spirit because of all the errors? You know, Paul said, no, the Holy Spirit's working among you.

Let's deal with the errors. And what I've said is that what we often do is we sanitize past revivals and we demonize present revivals. We ignore the flesh and error and humanity, which is going to be everywhere. It's everywhere in church history. It's in any church in the country that there's always going to be always going to be human error or somebody falling short. When it comes to past revivals, we clean all that up and just make it like everyone was like, oh, praise the Lord. God is here. We will all follow him now. And then whatever is happening today, we just pick out the extreme, the negative instead of focusing on the mass of good fruit. You know, it reminds me of Jesus in the gatherings when he sets the demoniac free and there's the whole ruckus and the 2000 pigs running down into the lake and killing themselves.

The people come out and they beg him to leave. I think that speaks a lot to revival, don't you? Well, that's actually the whole point I think that we just made is when they have God in a comfortable spot and they don't want to experience that deeper walk, or they look at a young worship leader and people at the altar and say, I'm more knowledgeable than them. I know more about the Bible than them.

I'm a great feeler or I have a Ph.D. in whatever. How have they experienced that and not me? And jealousy comes in and pride comes in. The last thing you made, it just made me think of D. Martin Lloyd-Jones's quote. You know, he came against a reformed conservative church. It's pretty hard in his book Preachers and Preaching and other places. He said, living children need rules. Dead children don't. So living children filled with the Spirit of God need 1 Corinthians 12, 13, 14. We need boundaries. We need to know how to discern and test the Spirit because we're living.

We're vibrant. We're seeking after the things of God. But dead children don't need rules. And that just really struck a chord with me. It reminds me of the Brother Andrew quote that it's easier to cool down a fanatic than to warm up a corpse.

And, you know, the same way, I would take the noise of the maternity ward to the quiet of the cemetery. So let it be that we're struggling with all the new converts who don't know how to behave in church. Let it be that we're struggling with the emotion of people being set free from decades of chronic sin and bondage. And let it be that we're dealing with the emotion of people weeping and repentance.

Let it be that it gets a little uncomfortable until we fall on our faces too. Okay, we'll talk with Pastor Shane about his new book On Revival, a word that God gave him. I want to open that up. And then the importance of fasting and prayer to usher in what God is going to do. Be right back. Give us strength to always do what's right. It's The Line of Fire with your host, Dr. Michael Brown. Your voice of moral, cultural, and spiritual revolution.

Here again is Dr. Michael Brown. Thanks, friends, for joining us as I speak today with Pastor Shane Eidelman about the subject of revival. Perhaps, Shane, we took one thing for granted first, which is why is it that we believe that the Church of America needs to be revived? We're talking about bringing something back to life. You can't revive a rock because a rock was never alive.

If you've got a two-year-old that jumps out of bed at six in the morning and runs through the house jumping up and down for the next 12 hours, the family may need to be revived, but that little kid's full of life, energy, he doesn't need to be revived. But we speak of the Church needing to be revived. In your view as a pastor, as you look at what's happening around the country, what are some of the reasons that you believe we desperately need revival? Well, I think you can give the Church a spiritual health test.

Obviously, we're talking about the bride of Christ, so we want to be careful and have grace and mercy. But he does call out things as well. If you take spiritual inventory, we're not seeing any types of prayer meetings and pressing in. Some of the worst movies on Netflix are being viewed by Christians. Christians are putting these programs at the top of the list. There's no call to worship nights or worship mornings or walking closely with God or the culture. It's almost like the culture is influencing the Church.

There's no outcry. You saw the article I wrote, A Call to Anguish, based on Wilkerson's famous video clip. And where's that call to anguish? Look at the depravity that we're in.

Look at the different issues that are in front of us. I caught the heat from this, and so did you, when we recognized that a Trump victory would probably bring a lot more pride to the Church, not brokenness and humility. So I think in that, God was breaking the Church. We saw a lot of pomp, a lot of arrogance.

Again, I want to be careful. There's a lot of great churches doing great things. There are people seeking the heart of God and revival and fasting and prayer. But overall, when you look at the Church, we don't see a lot of humility and brokenness over sin and contending for our nation, contending for the churches. And I think it was Ravenhill that said you can tell the popular of the churches by Sunday morning and the pastor by Sunday evening services and who attends. And you can tell how popular God is by who attends the prayer meetings. And we just weren't seeing any of that nationally. I know brokenness and repentance. Look at the Facebook posts from Christians and the tweeting during the last election.

I mean, you couldn't tell a difference. Now, granted, I haven't perfected this area. I'm a work in progress, but I don't see a big desire. We're seeing it now, especially in our church and other churches. There's a desire and a hunger for the things of God, but he had to get us to a spot of brokenness and complete abandonment. I know that's a long answer, but we just didn't see the spiritual signs of health. You can tell if a person is healthy because they're hungry. You can tell a person is hungry spiritually when they're hungry for the things of God. And we just didn't see that. That's why awakening and revival at this stage is our only hope.

Yeah, absolutely. In other words, more of the same will only produce more of the same. It's like if I've been X amount of pounds overweight for X amount of years and I'm going to keep doing what I've been doing, well, I'm going to stay that amount overweight or get more overweight. If I'm looking, you know, boy, I'm out of shape.

Well, whatever I've done to get out of shape, if I keep doing that, I'm going to stay out of shape. Somehow we think that God will just suddenly rain down his Spirit from heaven and suddenly revival just happens. Well, God may come suddenly and he does that so that we can't just plan and here's the calendar and turn on the switch and make it happen. It's about God coming, God filling, God moving. But he may come suddenly, but there's something that's been behind it for years and years and years, just like an earthquake hits suddenly.

But if we could have perfect vision under the earth, we could say, here's how it's developing. And what we forget is if suddenly God begins moving in our services. And instead of a Sunday service lasting an hour and eight minutes, it's lasting six or seven hours. How many people want to stick around for six or seven hours? Or how many people are going to welcome people weeping and wailing? And you go home, you're going to go out for a family meal and half the family sitting there at the table weeping and shaking under conviction. Most people, I didn't ask for this.

I don't want this. So God fills us to the degree of our hunger. If you have parched land that's thirsty, the water comes, it drinks in, there's a storm and all the water just drinks in.

But the concrete, it just forms puddles because there's nowhere to go. So God will only move to the degree of our hunger and thirst. And that's why so much of what we preach and teach has to be designed to cultivate hunger and thirst to make people the rest. There's so much more of God to be had. There's so much that he's promised to experience.

Let's live it out together. And Shane, when you were praying and earnestly seeking God about revival years ago, I've quoted these words. I believe they are such true words that you heard God speak to you. What did he say to you when you were asking him for revival? I think what you're talking about is in the book and articles that I've talked about that time that God poured into my heart.

I don't have it in front of me. I can find it real quick if you want me to read it. My heart was set on revival for our church, for our nation.

You're talking eight, nine years ago? And it was just clear as day, he just poured this into my heart and I couldn't stop writing. I had a little notepad and just writing and writing.

I mean, not a lot, just a couple paragraphs long. And he just poured it into my heart and I couldn't stop writing this and then looking at it, sending it to you and a few others. You know, like, is this genuinely from God? And that's where I think the theme of revival started. I was weeping because it's so true. You want me to read it real quick? Yeah, if you've got it, go ahead.

Yeah, I felt that God was impressing me with this. He said, you don't want revival. It will ruin your schedule, your dignity, your image, and your reputation as a person who is well-balanced.

All that is true. Men will weep throughout the congregation. Women will wail because of the travail of their own souls. Young adults will cry like children at the magnitude of their sin. With the strength of my presence, the worship team will cease playing.

Time will seem to stand still. You won't be able to preach because of the emotions flooding your own soul. You'll struggle to find words but only find tears. Even the most dignified and reserved among you will be broken and humbled as little children. The proud and self-righteous will not be able to stand in my presence. The doubter and unbeliever will either run for fear or fall on their knees and worship me.

There can be no middle ground. The church will never be the same again. Do you truly want revival?

Yeah. And it just broke me that morning. Yeah, and when you shared that with me, having experienced revival myself and having read so much about it and prayed and longed for it, every syllable of that was true and real. I remember, Shane, a few years ago, some years back, Nancy and I were talking, and she said, You feel you're ready for another wave of revival? I said, No, I don't. She said, Why?

I said, Because I've forgotten how hot it is. The burning blaze of holy conviction where suddenly you're undone. You know, you've been just kind of coasting along for years and years. You're a pastor, you know. But you've got these little habits and little sinful pockets here and there.

You're, you know, a godly homeschooling mom. But you've got these areas of the flesh, and you're just kind of coasting along, and we're doing our thing. And next thing you encounter God, like Isaiah 6, woe is me. Suddenly the uncleanness or the vile, the anger, the unforgiveness, the lust, whatever it is, you're undone by it. And ultimately, if you go with it, it's beautiful. It's purging, it's cleansing, it's amazing, it's wonderful. But God's basically saying, Hey, you belong to me.

You belong to me. And I think many of us don't realize how distant we've been. Can you imagine how shocked the believers must have been to Laodicea? They said of themselves, We're rich, increased in wealth, and of need of nothing. That was their self-perception. And Jesus says, You don't realize that you're naked, pitiful, poor, blind. And think of that.

What an eye-opener. But that's what happens in revival. But then, when we come to the Lord, oh, everything's changed. You're seeing some things happening, though. You're seeing stirrings, you're seeing some signs of encouragement.

Share that with our folks. Yeah, and the reason I read that to you, and I've mentioned articles and things before, is being transparent that God hit the nail on the head, as always. You know, I'm conservative by nature. It took me 18 years to finally talk about my experience with the Holy Spirit and speaking in tongues, and not releasing a lot to the public, not emotional. My dad raised us, you know, boy, you don't cry. It was just tough stuff from the farms of Oklahoma. And not having, you know, barely graduating high school and dyslexia and learning and writing disabilities and things, you know, knowledge puffs you up. And you were close to John MacArthur's church.

I have a lot of conservative friends. And you know, God just broke me that morning by saying, it will ruin your schedule. Do you really want this? And so I had to search my heart, and I had to get my heart right before God. And as I did that, you start to see those, the inklings of revival, or the sparks being started. And we started with 10 people, you know, morning worship at 6 a.m. We just put on worship for an hour and a half before our services. And now we're at 100 people. We have now the worship team. Some of the worship leaders want to be there at 5 o'clock to get us doing live worship at 6.

And the parking has been full. And of course, those things aren't necessarily indicators, but now we have men who I would never see at the altar a couple weeks ago. The altar was full of these guys in the prayer room, the lying down there, people crying out to God and coming in saying, I've been filled with the Spirit and people being healed and set free. And one man I prayed with a week and a half ago, we recovered from our homeless ministry. Some of the guys from our team brought him in, and I just said, Are you addicted to crystal myth? And he said, Yes, I am. And it's been 24 hours, and I prayed for him. And I hadn't seen him for a week, and he comes back this Sunday, just beaming, and he said, I've been set free.

I haven't felt like this, and I haven't used in a week. And it's just an ongoing, again, not at a massive level, but you know, God often starts the spark at prayer meetings, or with the Welsh, the New Hebrides, the revival, as you mentioned with Duncan Campbell, was a blind sister and one bent over in their 80s, and it started there. It started in a barn and then grew from there. And so we are very encouraged. Yeah, and just listen, you gotta, each spark, you blow on it, blow on it, and let it burn a little more. And then, either way, we rejoice with every single life.

Every person touched. Praise God. We're gonna come back, talk about fasting.

Ooh. Don't miss it. It's the Line of Fire with your host, Dr. Michael Brown. Get into the Line of Fire now by calling 866-34-TRUTH.

Here again is Dr. Michael Brown. I am speaking today with Pastor Shane Eidelman. He is the founder and lead pastor of Westside Christian Fellowship in Lancaster, California, and now, Leona Valley, California. He's written about eight books.

He has also launched the Westside Christian Radio Network, WCF Radio, so let's see, wcfradio.org, and his newest book is on revival. Shane, tell us the name of your new book and where folks can find out more about it. The title is, Oh God, Would You Rend the Heaven? Oh God, Would You Rend the Heaven?

Either shaneeidelman.com or Amazon or other Barnes and Noble Nook and different places. I'm actually putting the audio together as we speak, and you left off at the break saying, you know, keep that flame going. And I was reminded of that older man who was asked years later when he experienced a powerful revival, you know, what happened? And he looked at the younger man with eyes of fire and he said, when you lay hold of God, never, never, never let go.

And it's that continual fueling those flames and staying humble and usable and broken. And just a great example of that we can see throughout Scripture on being used of God but not promoting yourself, and that's why I want to be careful. I want to let people know about it, know what God's doing.

Like you've told me before, it's okay to let people know, but you don't want to turn into promoting it, marketing it, and you're just really going to quench the spirit. Yeah, so friends, I'm encouraging you for your own edification to go to Shane Eidelman. That's I-D-L-E-M-A-N, shaneeidelman.com. Sign up to get his articles. Again, over the years as I would see his articles in different places, preaching repentance, preaching holiness, hungering for revival, talking about fasting prayer. I read it word for word, said just what I would have said the way I would have said it. So you'll be edified, you'll be encouraged.

Also, good reports of what God's doing. And Shane, you've been active on the political level in terms of standing up for righteousness, in terms of addressing controversial issues, but you know that change can't come from the top down. We can't simply pass laws alone or elect candidates alone and think that America will change.

It has to come from the church coming alive and then conversion of sinners and discipleship. I mean, that's the only way America is going to change. Yeah, and that's where we have to avoid those two errors. I mean, one error, or I guess two extremes, I should say. One extreme is, you know, we've got to get the right people in office, we've got to get these laws passed, we've got to have good Supreme Court justices, which we all agree with, for sure. And the other extreme is, it doesn't matter, the church should not be political, we shouldn't be involved in these things. I mean, there's a healthy medium there where we are not called to be political, but we are called to be a spiritual influence, and that spiritual influence should affect the political arena. However, I think God does give us different callings, and you know, James Dobson and Tony Perkins and those who call to the political arena are going to have a different calling than, say, a Bible teacher, Chuck Swindoll, Charles Stanley, and those. And sometimes we become judgmental. You know, why aren't they more involved like me, or why aren't they less involved like me, and not recognizing and thanking God for diverse gifts and diverse callings. Exactly. I did catch a lot of heat last year for being too political, talking about certain organizations that weren't of God, and abortion, and certain candidates. But, you know, if you look back at American history, I have whole volumes on pulpit sermons that were on the area of politics.

They would not shy away from that whatsoever. Yeah, so again, it's a matter of priorities, putting first things first and second things second. It's a matter of callings, it's a matter of emphases, and we each have to find our lane in that regard, but we know overwhelmingly that everything is going to come down to our own relationship with God, and overwhelmingly, everything is going to come down to the state of the church, as Martin Luther King said, that the church is not the master of the state or the servant of the state, but the conscience of the state. And that's why I've said for so many years that I'm not so much concerned with the presence of darkness as much as I am with the absence of light. You know, you're at a hotel just shut away recording the audiobook and things like that, but if you went in there, checked in at night, and you flipped the light switch on and it's still dark, you don't get mad at the darkness, you think, what's the matter with the light? And that's the real question, you know, what's the matter with the light within the church?

I want to return to a theme really quickly and then talk about fasting and prayer, because this is something that God not only called you to, but called you to challenge others with. But the whole idea about being embarrassed by revival, the chapter in your new book, Oh God, Ren the Heavens. I got saved in a Pentecostal church, so that was normal to me. That was my first introduction to the gospel. But after being in the church for five, six years, and now I'm in college, and now I'm questioning certain things, and I'm reading more, and now I'm going to be starting graduate school, and I kind of, I didn't really like, the Pentecostal stuff was a little embarrassing to me.

And it seems so even anti-intellectual and un-theological. Now I'm starting to shift my views, I've become a Calvinist, and now I'm going, I'm shifted to another church. We were very active socially and caring for the poor and the needy, doing a lot of good. We had, you know, discussions about world politics, we were much more enlightened and barely charismatic, barely at all. Now I'm getting my master's and PhD, and I'm kind of, okay, I'm more sophisticated theologically, and I'm more subdued in my spiritual practice, and this is much more kind of acceptable to this academic world and all that. But I had left my first love. And it's not because of Calvinism, there are plenty of passionate Calvinists and dead Arminians, but for me this was part of me losing my first love, or leaving my first love I should say. And when God began to bring me to repentance, it was very humbling to say, okay, I've become proud in certain ways, and not as passionate and devoted in other ways. And this was as a committed Christian and someone serving as a leader within my congregation. And as God began to bring me to repentance, and then sent a move of the Spirit through me to our church, when the Holy Spirit fell, I was at someone's home, and this one fell on the ground shaking and confessing sin, and this one speaking in tongues, and this one can't even stand, this overall Mother Spirit laying on their face, vibrating, and I thought, oh no, I don't like this guy, I like the sophisticated Dr. Brown, I'm about to get my PhD and all. And God basically said, when my Spirit moves, it wasn't a word, it was a reality.

Things are going to get shaken up, you know, and it's going to be intense. And right then I said, okay, if this is what it means to have the Spirit, and if I have to crucify my own pride, then I just want your Spirit. And to this day, critics will post videos of me from the Brownsboro Revival days, you know, and I'm praying for people and saying, fire, you know, God touched them with the fire and passion of your Spirit, and people that only know me as an apologist or biblical scholar, they're like, Dr. Brown, do you still believe that?

Oh yeah, that's who I am. But, you know, God's really going to move, there's going to be reproach with it, and it's just so important that we're not looking for falling, we're not looking for shaking, we're not looking for weeping. Whether it happens or not, it's not the issue, we're looking for God. But God coming is going to rock our world.

Just share from your heart, preach to our audience for a little bit. When God comes... No, that's a great topic, and it's on my heart like it is yours, because when sinful man encounters, really encounters, experiences a holy God, how are you supposed to act? You just, you know, sit there unaffected?

I mean, you, especially if you're in sin, and you see the weight of that sin, or if you're an unbeliever, you feel the weight of judgment, and that's what would cause people to hold on to trees when Whitfield would preach, or Edwards. And even last week, I was praying for a lady, and after I prayed, she came back in ten minutes later, shaking. Like, I kind of needed to just, you know, hold her and pray with her, and she's weeping, she's just, you know, visibly, seemed upset, but she wasn't, she's excited, she goes, it's the first time I've ever went to the altar, and I was so filled with the Spirit of God, I cannot contain how much joy I have right now.

And she, so... Well, no, ma'am, come on. Now, just, you know, compose yourself, just act like nothing happened. But see, when people experience God, and some people are emotional, some people are conservative, and when God breaks that conservative barrier, they begin to weep for just how much damage they've done in their family, or they, so these are all manifestations of God working in sinful man. He's reviving them, he's restoring them, he's breaking them, he's renewing them, he's giving them hope and a sense of direction, and we get excited, I used to get excited with Mike Tyson's one-round knockouts, or football game after a six-pack of beer, and getting all excited, painting my face a certain color, what's the difference? I mean, now, again, neither one of us is validating odd, weird hysteria, but when God reveals himself to people, you cannot keep that in a box, you cannot try to, you can't contain it, all you can do is steward it, because I also believe we're given the responsibility to test the Spirit, to test the Spirit, and to rebuke what needs to be rebuked, to understand where God is moving, Satan is moving too, to call out people who might be trying to promote themselves, but in that environment, God is also working, so that's my thoughts on this area of emotionalism. I mean, there have been times where I couldn't even go up and preach, because singing Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound, just, it begins to pour into my heart, and I can't, I cannot physically go up and preach, because I'll begin breaking down.

So, how is that a bad thing? And people say, that's just emotionalism. Well, that's not me, if they know me, I'm not emotional. I'm level-headed, I don't, my dad taught us not to cry, you know, strong, I used to bench press, a lot of weight, take steroids, get in a lot of fights, and this unemotional person is now very emotional, because you experience the realities of who God is, and I think it's genuine in many cases.

And you know what's so interesting? I hate emotionalism, just working people up in the flesh, and you can do it, you can use certain words, sing certain songs, create a certain atmosphere, but it goes nowhere. I hate that, because now people are disappointed. They think this is the real thing, and it doesn't last. They walk out of the building just as depressed as when they come in, or a day later when the high fades, it's over, but when they encounter God, nowhere in the Bible does it warn you, don't get too emotional when you encounter God. Rather, we're told to weep, we're told to leap for joy, you know, the lame man healed in Acts 3, he walks into the temple, which is the most reverent place on the planet in terms of your behavior required of you, he walks into the temple walking and leaping and praising God. I mean, what do you expect to happen when demons leave people? With Jesus present, they scream, and the person shakes, and why didn't Jesus just make it totally quiet?

Well, maybe he was letting it be manifest, how ugly this was, how serious this was, but either way, emotionalism is based on getting worked up into a certain frenzy, and look, you could put a movie on with the right music and everything, oh, you're all crying because it's a soulish kind of thing. We're talking about a godly response to truth, a godly response to the presence of God, a godly response to the Holy Spirit. And Paul writes about it in 2 Corinthians 7, that godly sorrow leads to repentance.

That's what happens, transformation comes. Okay, fasting, we've got to talk about fasting when we come back. Thanks, friends, for joining us on the Line of Fires. We focus on the subject of revival. I'm speaking with Pastor Shane Eidelman, I-D-L-E-M-A-N, go to shaneeidelman.com. Check out his newest book, O God, Ren the Heavens. Wherever you get your books online, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Christian book, check it out there, or his website, shaneeidelman.com. Shane, in your own life, hang on here. Hey, guys, if we could just bring Pastor Shane on somehow, my clicker is not working properly. There we go, thanks.

So, all right, so, yeah, just click on it one more time and get rid of that, there we go, thank you, gentlemen. Okay, so, let's not say that was demonic resistance, I think we just had an issue here. Okay, so, in your own life, I know that you are often seeking the Lord in early morning prayer, discipline in your life, but fasting plays an important role. Maybe before you're done you could mention a resource you put together on fasting, but why is that so important in your own life, and why do you think it's important for the subject of revival? Well, it all came together many years ago when, like many people, you're reading the Bible and you hear, you know, Esther fasted and David fasted and Moses fasted and Ezra fasted and, you know, Jesus fasted.

It's like, what is this? You know, like, well, that's not for us today, that doesn't sound very appealing. And coming out of a physical fitness background, that's where I kind of, my expertise was in physical fitness, nutrition, and, you know, you didn't fast, you would lose muscle. You want to eat every few hours and keep the metabolism going, which all that is changing now through intermittent fasting and different concepts out there. So, that started to get in my heart, like this concept of fasting in the Bible, and Jesus saying, you're not going to fast now, but when the bridegroom leaves, you will fast, and not if you fast, but when you fast. So, the conviction started, and then starting to read books on revival, and the decay, and early church fathers, and, I mean, fasting was commonplace. Wesley would fast Wednesdays and Fridays. He actually wouldn't ordain anyone unless they fasted. And I know that might be a little extreme.

I don't know if we can start to get to that degree. So, anyway, you have this biblical examples of fasting, and then I see throughout revival history, throughout early church history, this idea of fasting. And so, I ordered some books, like you said, Arthur Wallace, and other, not too many books were written on fasting. But out of the conviction, I began to study it, learn more about it, and applied it to my own life. And I began to break out first, the first addiction on this fasting area was coffee, and that took me a long time to break.

I know a lot of listeners are not going to like this, but it's addictive, it's a drug, it really made me into a, you know, just a mean, angry person, because it's a stimulant, it's a central nervous stimulant. So, fasted from that, and then started to give up, okay, Lord, I want to go all day without eating, and spending this time with you. Sometimes we're very difficult, you don't feel anything different, but then other times it would just be incredible, as you starve the desires of the flesh, and you begin to be filled with the Spirit. So, it's actually not starving, because most of us have plenty of reserves. What you're doing is you're changing the fuel source to ketosis and different things we don't need to get into, but you are giving up one appetite, a hunger for the things of the world, and now, Lord, I'm exchanging that for a hunger for you. And the example I give is when I lost my, one of my kids at the fair, or if you lose your kid in the crowded mall, are you going to say, well, you know what, I'm hungry, let's go ahead and eat, and then we'll look for that child?

Of course not. I've got to find that child. I've got, and you know, in the Hebrew, bakash, seek the Lord with all your heart. That seeking is, I've got to find God no matter what it costs. So, this appetite for things of the world, you give up first season, what that looks like one day, two days a week, and you begin to seek the heart of God. The reason it's so difficult is we're addicted to caffeine, nicotine, alcohol, sugar, processed foods, aspartame, artificial things, and oh, fasting is so hard. No, really, we're withdrawing from foods that have been damaging the body. So, I saw the huge spiritual benefits from fasting. It actually brought my body under more self-discipline. I think we're supposed to discipline our body and bring those things under control and not allowing the flesh to control us.

I mean, most people let the flesh control them. I want to go to Krispy Kreme donuts. I want a coffee. I want fast food. I want to eat again.

I want chocolate. And we're constantly listening to the desires of the flesh. So, fasting is a season of silencing the voice of the flesh. It's a hunger strike against hell so I can now just devote my attention when I feel hungry and this desire, Lord, I'm going to seek you diligently. But it's not where you twist God's arm.

It's not a good work. It's a hunger for the things of God, so much so that I'm giving up this healthy appetite that he gave me. I'm giving up the good to seek the greater. So, you're basically at this point where you want to see God move more in your own life or community.

Maybe it's a family member that's away from God or a life-critical situation or you're desperate to see an outpouring in your church or you're brokenhearted over the state of the nation. Whatever it is, there's something driving you and you're making the loudest statement to God that you can, right? It's like staying up at night and seeking God because you have to break through.

So, this is just kind of amplifying things once more. It's not earning something from God. It's not that if we starve ourselves enough that he'll respond, that we can twist his arm. But rather, it's kind of turning your whole life into a prayer, isn't it? Because you're conscious of the fact you're fasting. So, with every heartbeat, it's like a prayer, saying, God, I'm serious, God, I'm serious.

Yeah, and it's through that brokenness. There are some mornings where I'd wake up and you just get hungry the first three or four days, and like, God, I want you more. And I began writing the last four or five articles that I sent you over the last three months have been through seasons of fasting where God would just start pouring in my heart, I'd begin weeping, and Scripture will come alive. Joel, consecrate a fast, call a sacred family, get into church and call out to God that he might spare you. When the Scriptures come alive, you're in the state of denying the flesh and being filled with the Spirit.

But again, it can't be a work, or, God, if I do this, you better do this. To me, it's never been that. It's been more of a sign. I'm so broken. I'm so broken over the depravity of our nation. Look at what they're pushing in the schools in California. I don't know if you've heard, but we have teachers in the prayer room in my church, the church I lead, where they have to call the kids their binary name, they, or them.

They can't call it he or she. And where's this going to end, and what are they doing to the children, to the church is so broken, the church is so powerless. So it's mainly a cry of more of God and a brokenness and starving this appetite to focus on an appetite for God. Yeah, and Shane, by God's grace, I transformed my lifestyle as you know, seven years ago, and since then there's been no dairy, no flour, no sugar, hardly any meat. It's a new lifestyle freed from a lifetime of chocolate addiction and other sweets addictions and breads and stuff like that that I was just a slave to. So I'm transformed, and it's a constant discipline, and yet there's that challenge in my own heart. Okay, there's another place to get to, and the only way to get there is with an extended fast. It doesn't happen in any other way. And, you know, many people are fearful, and when I think of it, there's always that little tinge of fear, you know, before starting a fast.

It's like, what, you're going to go out, what's the big deal? But the rewards, the spiritual rewards, I believe many of us will kick ourselves as we look back at our lives and think, why did we take so little advantage of the power of fasting? And it's critical for revival because it's that ultimate prayer of hunger and desperation. And, Shane, you've done practical teaching on this as well because you've got the nutritional background.

You know a ton more about those things than I do. Are there resources on your website that will help people that want to fast, want to dig into this more deeply? Yeah, the best thing is probably the book I wrote, Feasting and Fasting, What Works, What Doesn't, and Why. So it talks about the spiritual and the physical, feasting and fasting. And I've noticed that the spiritual and the physical often run together. When I'm taking care of my body physically, I feel better spiritually. If you don't believe it, try getting four hours of sleep, eating a ton of junk food, and try preaching. That's why I fast now before I preach. But I should mention too, you can download my book at shaneilaman.com.

We've got free download links. So this isn't about money, this isn't about, we're trying to help people. So they can go to shaneilaman.com, download the book for free on this topic of fasting. And we've become so addicted. That's why I think fasting has so many benefits, because you're actually getting off of your addiction.

And the physical benefits, when Jesus calls you something spiritual, the physical benefits from autophagy to cleaning at the cellular level, to arthritis and diabetes and heart disease and blood pressure decreasing, all of these huge physical benefits in addition to the spiritual benefits. Yeah, absolutely. And you know, some of those articles, as you were sending them to me even before they were published, you know, hot off the press, they were vintage, man. They were burning, and you said, man, I wrote this while fasting. You could feel it.

There was, you know, the bowl was pulled back even further before the arrow was shot out. So friends, visit shaneilaman.com, download the book on feasting and fasting, contribute to the ministry, work there, because they're constantly reaching out for more. And then, oh God, we're in the heavens, check out the new book. Shane, I'm utterly convinced, I'm seeing it around the country, where there is hunger and thirst, where there is a willingness to let the Holy Spirit move, and when Jesus is being preached without compromise, God's beginning to pour the Spirit around America, and I'm hopeful that we could see a great shaking, a great outpouring, and a great awakening. Okay, 30 seconds, last word to you. Last word as you're saying that, I just remembered the New Hebrides revival as well, in that small prayer meeting that the gentleman said, God, we are holding you to your word. It says if we seek you, we will find you, and your word is at stake.

That's the same thing that's happening now, you just said it. He will honor His word if we hunger, if we seek, if we desire Him more than anything else, if we break before Him and ask to be used by Him, you will experience, if not corporate revival, personal revival, absolutely. Absolutely, and that great prayer, Lord, don't you know your honor is at stake, all for the honor of God. Check out shaneidleman.com and let's press in until the fire falls. God bless you, man, and grace on your audio recording. You too, thank you as well. All right, God bless. Another program powered by the Truth Network.