Are We Ready for Revival?

The Holy Spirit, when it gets linked up with your human spirit, is to ignite the soul. Dr. Tony Evans says part of the Spirit's job is to make the intangible God tangible, but how much He can do that is up to us. It is your relationship to the Holy Spirit that determines how much of God you experience today. This is The Alternative with Dr. Tony Evans, author, speaker, senior pastor of Oak Cliff Bible Fellowship in Dallas, Texas, and president of the Urban Alternative. When a rocket shoots up into the sky, you know there's something powerful going on inside of it. Today, Dr. Evans explains that the same is true when a believer is lit up by the fire of revival.

Let's join him as he explains. In the scripture of Matthew 3, we're introduced to John the Baptizer, John the Baptist. We're familiar with John, the relative of Jesus Christ, because he has been given to us as one who is the fulfillment of a prediction.

Between the end of the Old Testament and the beginning of the New Testament, there were 400 years where God was not talking. Then came the prediction of Messiah that God was going to enter history Himself, Emmanuel, God with us, that God was going to bring heaven down to earth, and there would be a visitation. So John is introduced to us from Matthew's perspective here. John the Baptist came preaching in the wilderness of Judea, saying, Make ready the way of the Lord, make His paths straight. Make ready the way of the Lord, make His paths straight. Isaiah 40, when he talks about it, he says, Raise up the valleys and level the hills and mountains.

In other words, create a runway this plane can land on. So in the middle of a wilderness, in a barren situation, John is coming to say, God wants to land His glory. He wants to lay down His glory. And so many people began getting the message, according to verse 5, then Jerusalem was going out to Him and all Judea and all the district around Jordan, and they were being baptized by Him in the Jordan River as they confessed their sins. He says, heaven is ready to make a visitation, referring to Jesus, in history, but you're only going to see it if you repent. The kingdom of God is right next to you, heaven is right beside you, but you won't see it unless you repent.

The revival won't come unless you repent. But then there was this other group, he says in verse 7. And when he saw many of the Pharisees and Sadducees coming for baptism, he said to them, you brood of vipers. Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come, therefore bear fruit in keeping with repentance? And do not suppose that you can say to yourselves, we have Abraham for our father, for I say to you that from these stones God is able to raise up children to Abraham.

The axe is already laid at the root of the tree. He says, guess what now? The Pharisees and Sadducees, now these are the religious people, they were making their way out to John 2. John sees them, and it says, watch this, it says they made their way out to be baptized. When John sees them coming, he says, you bunch of snakes, brood of vipers, group of snakes, a viper is a little poisonous snake in the wilderness in Israel.

He says, you brood of poisonous snakes. But wait a minute, they were coming out to be baptized too. Why does he accept the first group and he baptizes them, but he condemns the second group who comes out to be baptized?

Because the second group wasn't doing something the first group was doing. The first group, it says, was baptized and confessed their sins. It says the Pharisees and the Sadducees came to be baptized. In other words, leave my life alone, just give me the religious part. Don't be dealing with how I'm living my life, don't be dealing with how I'm running my affairs, don't be dealing with what I'm doing and not doing, just give me the ceremony. Baptize me.

Don't mess with me. And that's what a lot of folks want when they come to church. Give me the service, give me the ceremony, give me the baptism, don't ask me to do anything with my life.

You getting too close. But if I don't deal with your life, you won't get a landing from this plane. You will not see heaven visit history.

The problem today is people want services and ceremony, they want information, but no transformation. They want you to make them feel good, but they don't want you to correct them for rebellion. They don't just want you to confront them with wrong, they just want you to make them feel right. And then they wonder, how come God is not showing up?

He can't land there. He says, you're a bunch of snakes. Because you want the ceremony and the service and the religion, but you're not doing what these other folk doing. You're not confessing your sins. You're not acknowledging that you have rebelled against the living and true God.

You're keeping God away. He says judgment is already at the door, the axe is already at the tree. In other words, time is running out. In our nation, I think I can definitively say time is running out, and the reason I can say it is because of the increase in intensity of remedial judgment. In the increase in intensity of remedial judgment. In other words, more stuff is happening, worse stuff is happening at a faster rate. 9-11 to hurricanes to financial collapse does not hit the whole world.

The axe is at the tree getting ready to hit the root. You better deal with this thing, because the next time won't be pretty. But that bad news is for a good reason. The kingdom of heaven is at hand. His motivation for the negative is the positive that I want to show up and show out for you, to you, through you, but on my terms, not on yours. And then he comes with his final piece. Verse 11, as for me, this is the prophet talking, I baptize you with water for repentance, but he who is coming after me is mightier than I. He can do stuff I can't do.

And I am not fit to remove his sandals. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. See, I can only give you water, but the one coming after me is going to baptize you with something else, and it's not water.

It's fire. The Holy Spirit and fire. The only relationship that you and I have with Jesus Christ today is through the Holy Spirit. The only relationship, Jesus Christ, the second member of the Trinity, guess where he is?

Seated on the right-hand side of the Father who is in heaven. If you want to locate Jesus the God-man, he is seated in heaven on the right-hand side of the Father. But you say, I thought I had Jesus in my heart. Well, the only way you have Jesus in your heart is because he put the Holy Spirit in your heart, which is called the Spirit of Christ.

That's how you have Jesus in your heart. You don't have a six-foot man who's lived flesh and blood living in your heart, but you have the reality of the second person of the Trinity because he left behind another of the same kind called the Holy Spirit. So the Holy Spirit is on the front page now. It's not God the Father. It's not even God the Son, although the Spirit glorifies the Son. The person doing the work on earth is God the Holy Spirit. So therefore, if there is no relationship with God the Holy Spirit, there is no relationship experientially with God the Son. And if there is no relationship experientially with God the Son, there is no experiential relationship with God the Father. It is your relationship to the Holy Spirit that determines how much of God you experience today.

So let me ask you a question. How was it in the book of Acts, the book of Acts, which is the book of the Holy Spirit? It's the Holy Spirit giving birth to the church. You mean to tell me the church grew and flourished and turned the world upside down with no sound system, no seminars, no Christian bookstores, no Christian radio stations, no Christian television stations.

Three thousand people are getting saved at one time. The Roman government doesn't know what to do with this birth of the new church because the Bible says when the Holy Spirit came, He came with tongues of fire. He lit stuff up. He lit stuff up.

Our problem is we don't have a relationship with the Holy Spirit so we don't see heaven. He says when the Son comes, He's going to baptize you with the Holy Spirit and the way you know it's the Holy Spirit is it sets things on fire. It comes with fire. It'll light you up.

Better yet, He will light you up because it's a person. He comes with fire. It was to introduce them baptism.

It was to introduce them to a whole other realm. The Bible describes the Holy Spirit, it says in Romans 14, I believe, He says that your Christian experience, the kingdom of God, is not eating and drinking. He says the kingdom of God is joy in the Holy Ghost. He says the kingdom of God, heaven visiting earth, comes from the work of the Holy Spirit in your life, in your situation, in your circumstance, and in our world.

You know what? We have missed the Holy Spirit in the name of Bible doctrine. And it's real easy to do that. It's real easy to so fall in love with the book about Him that you miss Him. You see, the Holy Spirit's job is to make God experiential, not merely informational. So quoting verses is not a relationship with the Holy Spirit.

Watch this. Neither necessarily is being emotional. Because some people think they're full of the Spirit because they got happy. They jumped. They shouted.

They waved their hand. Nothing wrong with emotions. But if you've been hit with fire, if you've been hit with something that's got fire associated with it, you're going to get emotional.

Okay, so let's get that straight. If you're on fire, you're going to feel it. But if you're going to fire, not only will you feel it, you're going to do something different. If you're on fire, you'll see people on fire standing still, talking about, I'm burning.

It's hot in here. No, if you're on fire, you're running, you're jumping, but you're jumping because you're trying to do something. We got folk who get happy who don't change.

We get folk who shout who aren't different. That's emotionalism. When you've been set on fire by the Holy Spirit, you may get emotional, but it's going to affect something changing because you've been lit up. Dr. Evans will come back in a moment with a look at three things that happen when that fire of revival starts burning inside of us. And if you want to learn how to fan the flames of faith into a revival that can sweep through your life, your family, your church, and even our country, then get ahold of Tony's complete current teaching series, Revive Us Again.

This two-volume collection contains 14 full-length messages, including some that we won't have time to share on the air, and they're yours with our thanks when you make a donation to help us keep Tony's teaching on this station. Along with them, we'll include a special limited-time extra, his brand-new book, God Himself. In it, he explains that most of us don't stop often enough to consider who God really is and why we worship Him. So this book is a journey through his attributes, revealing aspects of the Lord's nature and character that will probably surprise you. In a marriage, intimacy grows as spouses get to know each other. Well, the same is true in our relationship with God.

So don't wait. Make your donation online at tonyevans.org, and let us send you this double resource package as our investment in your growth. Again, that's tonyevans.org, or reach out to our resource center at 1-800-800-3222 for some in-person help.

That's 1-800-800-3222. I'll repeat our contact information later on, after part two of today's lesson, and this. Learn how to apply them in real-world situations. There's lots of exclusive content from Dr. Evans to keep you interested and motivated, and an online forum where you can ask questions, get answers, and collaborate with other students. The more you learn, the more you'll want to learn. Give it a try.

The Tony Evans Training Center, a world of discovery, anytime, anywhere. Let me say three things about fire. As you know, since when the Holy Ghost comes, he lights things up, fire, first of all, penetrates. Fire never stays on the surface. Fire not just up here. Fire gets up down, and when stuff is on fire, it gets down in the stuff.

It burns through stuff. In other words, you can't be on fire and be superficial. Anybody know any surface people? Surface people, they up here, you can't go deep with them. You can't be on the Holy Spirit, and God can't get down into your stuff, into your business. It's all light and stay up here, you know.

It's all way up here. No, no, when stuff is on fire, it burns through. That's why you get convicted, because it burns to the soul.

That's why you get challenged, because it burns through the soul. Secondly, fire guides. Israel was led through the wilderness by the fire at night. It says the fire led them, showed them which way to go.

The fire was a guide. The Bible says those who have been redeemed by God are led by the Holy Spirit, Romans 8. Very few Christians know what it is to be led by the Holy Spirit. For God to speak into their situation, they hear it in their human spirit, and be able to say with authority, this is the way God wants me to go. Who can say like they said in Acts chapter 13, the Holy Spirit said to the church, set apart for me, Paul and Barnabas, for the work that I have called them to do. And they knew that God had said it.

Yeah, when God speaks in His Word, that is the Holy Spirit speaking, but I'm talking about the Holy Spirit now taking God's truth and applying it to your specific situation, illuminating your understanding. So you know, He's not just talking to everybody, He's talking to me. Joshua. I was reviewing Joshua when he was going to fight Jericho, and the captain of the army showed up, and Joshua said, Whose side are you on?

And he said, I'm on neither side. And the Bible says, he said, I'm captain of the Lord's army. Then the Bible says, Joshua fell to his knees and bowed. He got low. The mountain got low.

The hill got low. He went down. Then the captain said, take off your shoes, for the place in which you are now is holy ground. Now the man had already bowed. The captain said, you're still too high. Because he had already bowed. The captain said, you're still too tall. Take off your shoes, you go lower.

He went lower. Joshua asked the captain, what do you want to do? That's a different question. The first question he asked, he said, was, Whose side are you on? Who are you going to help out? That was the first question.

After he bowed, he doesn't ask that question, he says, well, let me just take my question off the table altogether. What you want to do? What's your plan for this situation? I was out here trying to come up with my plan, and I didn't know what my plan was, so maybe you got a whole plan that I don't know anything about.

I'm bowing, so I'm listening. What's your plan? Now, when he asked that question, chapter 5 ends of Joshua. Chapter 6 begins. At the beginning of chapter 6, after he's bowed, thrown away his question, asked God, how you want to handle this situation that we don't know how to handle, it says that the captain told Joshua, Look, you get everybody up, you tell them walk around the wall once a day for six days, you tell them on the seventh day walk around the wall seven times, then tell them blow the ram's horn, then say everybody scream.

That's what he said. Tell everybody shout. And he says, and when everybody shouts, the wall will come tumbling down. Trust me, that is not a military idea. That is not an idea a normal human would come up with.

That is not a normal battle plan. But he didn't know what God had up his sleeves till he went low. He didn't know that God had a way of dealing with this problem that I have not seen, ere have not heard, and neither has it entered into the understanding of man how God's going to work stuff out. I don't know how he's going to fix your situation. I don't know how he's going to turn your thing around. I don't know how he's going to reverse your circumstances. I don't know how he's going to bring joy to your misery. I don't know how he's going to bring peace to your pain. I don't know how he's going to bring prosperity to your poverty.

I don't know how he's going to turn things around. I do know that unless you go low, you won't be led by the Spirit of God and fire. Because fire leads. Last thing about fire that I want you to know, because the Holy Spirit comes with fire, is that fire ignites. Fire lights up other stuff. Fire just doesn't light itself up.

It lights up anything it gets close to. Unless it's non-flammable. Fire will light you up. You don't have to be on fire. Just get close to it.

That's all you got to do. Hang out with fire and you get lit up. You know why we don't get lit up? Because we're not on fire and we're not near fire.

So we stay cold. We're not lit up. We just get emotional.

We get excited. But we're not lit up. We're not on fire.

We just get warm every now and then. Fire lights stuff up. It gets next to stuff and it causes stuff to get lit up. The reason why we're not having an impact in our world is we can't light anything else up because we're not lit up.

We're not lit up. The Bible talks about fire when it says in 1 Thessalonians 5, quench not the Holy Spirit. The word quench means to put out a fire.

Don't put this fire out. That God has placed in every true believer the Holy Spirit and the Holy Spirit is to light up your soul. The Holy Spirit, which is then integrated with your human spirit, is situated inside your soul. Your soul is your self-life, your personality. The Holy Spirit, when it gets linked up with your human spirit, what sits inside your soul is to ignite the soul and set the soul aflame. But unless there is the preparation, there won't be the landing. So if you're tired of religion, because religion can't help you, it can give you a momentary jolt.

Religion can't transform you. You come here to experience and meet the living and true God. I should come here to meet and experience the living and true God, and that should be our mindset as we live our lives to meet the living and true God so that the heaven which is at hand can land. And if not just spinning up in space, wait until this road gets straight. God, for many of us, has been waiting for years for a straight road to land on. He want to land, He can't land. You say, why are you landing over there and not landing over there?

Maybe over there they gave Him a road. Maybe over there there's a landing strip for His glory to be made manifest. All this havoc we're experiencing in the country and all of that, those are symptoms of God creating stuff to let you know this plane is ready to land.

Now, are you going to humble yourself, or are you going to keep the mountains of your independence, your self-sufficiency, your rebellion, and I'll just keep the plane up here? May God enable us to not be satisfied with business as usual. The question today is, are you ready for revival?

Because the kingdom of heaven is right in our midst. Dr. Tony Evans, with thoughts about getting ready for a fresh start with God to land in your life. As always, copies of today's teaching are available on both CD and digital download at tonyevans.org. The title is Are We Ready for Revival?

and the full-length version includes material we couldn't fit into our broadcast time. That's true of all 14 messages in Tony's current series, Revive Us Again. This two-volume collection will help you learn how God can renew us as individuals, families, churches, even as a nation. And remember, for a limited time, we'll send it to you, along with a copy of Tony's newest book, God Himself, as our way of saying thanks when you make a donation to help us keep this program coming your way. Just call our Resource Center at 1-800-800-3222 to make the arrangements today, or make your way to tonyevans.org. Again, that's 1-800-800-3222.

Or online at tonyevans.org. We've all had days when everything seems to go wrong. Unfortunately, it's not uncommon to have entire weeks, months, even years like that. Well, tomorrow, Dr. Evans explains not only how we get into patterns like that, but how we can get out. I hope you'll be with us. The alternative with Dr. Tony Evans is brought to you by The Urban Alternative. And it's made possible by the generous contributions of listeners like you.