When I asked His forgiveness and surrendered my heart, will, and life back to Him, I instantly felt His love, forgiveness, and the restoration of our fellowship. What a wake-up call when I heard Him speak to me! I remembered His goodness and love for me and chose to turn my life back over to Him (Romans 2:4). The Holy Spirit had been convicting me of my sin and wooing me to come back to the Lord. I had accepted the lies of the devil instead, and I turned away from God and went my own way.
How could He allow this to happen to me! I couldn’t believe that God could heal my marriage or that He was looking out for me. I thought God had failed me, and I couldn’t trust Him with my life. Even though I had asked Jesus to be my Savior as a child, I didn’t know Him experientially, intimately. I had walked away from the Lord three years earlier, following a devastating breakup of my marriage.
I knew the scripture verse in the Bible as John 14:15, “If you love Me, keep My commandments.” It was at that moment that I knew that I had to make a decision for or against Christ. The one that says, “I love you, Lord, and I lift my voice to worship you.” As I was singing, I heard Jesus speak to my heart, saying, “If you love Me, you’ll obey Me.” His words took me by surprise. On July 29, 1979, I was singing a worship song to the Lord in my apartment. Do you remember what it was like when you first surrendered your heart and life to Jesus Christ? I do, and I’d like to share this brief testimony with you. We pull Him into every area of our lives and talk with Him throughout the day and night. Spending time in worship, prayer, and His Word in the morning sets our day up to be thinking of Him all day long, turning our attention to Him and aware of His presence in our lives. Our first thoughts should be of Him in the morning upon awakening. They were a priority, and you couldn’t wait to see them again! Well, that is how our relationship should be with God. You wanted to do everything together and to talk about everything.
Remember what it was like when you were first in love? You couldn’t wait to hear that person’s voice and to spend time with them. Jesus is calling us to return to our first love (Revelation 2:1-7). Are you sold out for Jesus (Luke 9:23)? We are to love the Lord with all of our heart, soul, mind, and strength (Deuteronomy 6:4-5 Matthew 22:36-37). We examined the condition of our hearts and His call to action to repent and surrender wholeheartedly to Him. We need a spirit of conviction, holiness, and intercession (prayer, fasting, and protection see Ezra 8:21-22) to come upon us. We must humble ourselves, pray, seek His face, and turn from our wicked ways, repent, and then He will hear from heaven, forgive our sin and heal our land (2 Chronicles 7:14). Repentance is the first step for revival because it may turn God’s judgment away from us and allow Him to pour out His Spirit and blessing upon us (Jonah 3:5-10 Revelation 2:5). We are to awaken from our sleep, come into alignment with God’s kingdom and our kingdom assignment, awaken to the things of the Spirit, righteousness, and an awareness of what the Holy Spirit is doing today. Are you on fire for the Lord? Are you hungry for more of Him and a move of God in your life and your nation? Do you burn with the passion and zeal of the Lord, holy fire? Do you want revival in your life and your nation? Last week we posed the question, are you ready for revival? We saw that there are things that the Lord is calling us to do.
0 kommentar(er)
