Monthly blog from BUGB President Kingsley Appiagyei

PREPARING THE WAY FOR REVIVAL, PART 3 - MARCH 2010

It is only the Lord who determines revival. However, in December and January, we looked at the fact that although revival is determined by God, what we can do is to prepare the way for it to happen. In doing so, we need to:

1 PREPARE TO HEAR HIS VOICE
What is the Lord saying? These days we are too busy to hear him. There is the tendency to run around the clock with no time for God. There are too many voices seeking and competing for our attention. This is the time for us to hear the voice of our master.

2 PREPARE OUR HEARTS
Our hearts must be broken. We must decrease. He must increase. We must see our spiritual poverty and cry unto him - he is the potter, and we are the clay. We must repent and turn from our wicked ways. There will be no renewal without purity. God will not put new wine into old wine skins – we must prepare our hearts in repentance and return to missions, discipleship, godly values, the sanctity of marriage and life.

For full details of the two points above, refer to earlier blogs. In continuation, we need to be determined to:

3 PREPARE IN THE ‘DESERT’
Many weep for being in the desert but it is the place that God gets our attention. There will be no revival till we recognise that the only way out of the desert is to seek God.

The desert is a place of preparation. John the Baptist cried from the desert – ‘Prepare the way of the Lord’ (Mark 1: 3 ESV)

Physically the desert is a place of isolation and loneliness, but spiritually, it is the place to deny self of isolation and concentrate on God alone.

The desert also looks like a place of rejection because in the desert it seems God is distant. There, God removes all the weapons we physically trust in, and causes us to look to him alone.

The desert also looks like a ‘no hope’ situation – when God seems distant, and we think it is too late, but in reality, it is in the desert that God gets our attention. I have heard people say the situation in the United Kingdom in terms of its spirituality is now almost too late, and that whatever will happen will now happen anyway. I differ very much on that. Even in a desert experience, we can cry unto the Lord, because he will hear us.

The UK may be in a ‘desert’ situation. The Church generally is in a place where it is regarded as irrelevant. However, this is the time to surrender it all to God and ask for a fresh anointing of his spirit, to do things his way. Jesus was driven into the desert by the Holy Spirit, and returned in the power of the Holy Spirit.

To be continued next month

Kingsley Appiagyei