Repentance Brings Refreshing _ Revival Pastor Christine Miller

Praise the Lord, and that is the truth. We thank the Lord for the refreshing that comes from the presence of the Lord. We give glory and honor and praise for what you want to do tonight, oh Lord. In the mighty name of Jesus, amen. Praise God, we worship the Lord. Thank you, worship team. We might have you come back up in a little bit. Why don't you be seated? Thank you, Jesus. Thank you, Jesus. Thank you, Jesus. Let's turn to Acts chapter 3. Acts chapter 3. And my mind is alert. I came to receive. I came to respond. It's going to be good. In Acts chapter 3 and verse 19, it says in this, I'm in John, that won't work. Repent therefore and be converted that your sins may be blotted out so that times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord. I had asked Isaac to dig up that song which has been way in the past because I couldn't stop hearing it in my spirit today. And it says in that he may send Jesus Christ who was preached to you before whom heaven must receive until the times of restoration of all things. Notice that phrase, until the times of restoration of all things. Which God has spoken by the mouth of all his holy prophets since the world began. Now, we've been talking over the last few weeks, not last week because we weren't here, but we've been talking about the topic of prayer. And praying for the nations, praying for the rain, praying for the harvest. And I said really all of this is about the harvest. And I had started reading Brother Joel's book on repentance and revival a few weeks back. I don't remember how many weeks now, I'm losing track of time. Everything's blending into each other. And so we wanted this to be the book of the month for May. Some of you had it and I hope you started it. But I can't stress enough how important it is to read the books that we're asking you to read. If we can't even make time to read a book, we're kidding ourselves that we're going to have revival. Not just this book, but any book. Because the purpose of having a book of the month is not to make money because we make very little. It's to keep us all in unity and on the same page and going in the same direction. You know, what is God saying? And Brother Joel has some of the best books I've ever read in my life. I mean, he's clearly anointed for this time to come up with these books. And I seldom can put them down when I start reading them. But it also depends on how hungry you are. If you pick up this book and you're not hungry, you will not have an easy time reading it. But this book is the answer to why so many churches are not having revival. Because, I mean, there's some good information in here that we need as a church. So I want to continue to encourage you to read it, to get the book if you don't have it, and read it. But the thing that we see is all of history is moving towards this goal of Jesus returning to the church. And we saw that it's dependent on this gospel being preached to the ends of the earth. And then the end will come. But we see here in this passage that we just read, I mean, look at it as plain as can be, verse 20, that he may send Jesus Christ. But we see that some things have to happen before that. His return is connected to and dependent upon other events. So the first thing we see, number one, is the times of restoration of all things. Well, what is a restoration? You know, a restoration is something that's brought back from a place of deterioration. Right? And it has to be brought back into new condition. And we could say this, that's the condition of every human spirit that's not born again. It's deteriorated. It needs to be restored. It needs to be renewed. It needs to be born again. So part of this restoration, the times of restoration of all things, is people receiving the gospel and receiving their salvation. But then also the fullness of the church age, the believers that are already saved, that have already had their spirits born again, we need to be filled with God and flowing with his power. That's part of restoration. The church, you know, if the book of Acts started out one way, and we don't even look at anything remotely like that today, we have not arrived. Right. We've had times of revival, times of refreshing, but we haven't arrived yet. Glory to God. We don't always see Christ's body flowing with God the way that it should be. And I'm a church, you know, we are not a huge church, and that's changing because there are too many people on their way to hell. But the human flesh, whether you're saved or unsaved, resists the flow of God's spirit. Human flesh is uncomfortable with the flow of God. And so a lot of the church puts the brakes on it. And even if it starts flowing, even in a church like this, some will jump in and some just sit. Until everyone's jumping in, we're not going to be in full revival. Amen. Good. And there was a time, you know, when I look back on the late 90s, when we had the strongest revival I can remember in this church world. Pretty much everybody was in. And there were well over 100 of us in unity. Everybody was what? We looked like a mess on the outside, but we were full on the inside. So there's some things that have to happen. It's obvious we have to have some changes in our lives. And really all I'm going to be preaching tonight is a little bit of a summary of some of the things I've been reading in this book. But it goes hand in hand with what I've been talking about. This prayer that we're talking about, it's all connected. I mean, we want people to be saved, but they won't be saved until repentance is granted to them. Repentance is granted through the prayers of the saints. People have to have their heart in a condition or a position to receive. Revival is about the church getting in the place where it should be so that we can have maximum impact. And if we don't have this condition in the church, we are not going to see the end of the ages. We are going to continue to wait and wait and wait and wait and be frustrated and disappointed and lethargic and wonder why isn't Jesus coming back yet? Why is nothing changing? And we're thinking God's the one that's supposed to bring the change. And what we don't realize is we start the change process. We have to start the process, not God. So until we start making the change in one area, seeing ourselves the way Jesus sees us. By the time you start meditating along these lines and decide to make the change, all hell will come against you and tell you how unworthy and what a critter you are. Because the devil is trying to stop you from seeing yourself for who you are because he's afraid of the impact you will make when you finally get the revelation of who you are. He wants to keep a church like this under the barrel because then you can't be effective. And I'm telling you, he's afraid of churches like this. There has definitely been supernatural opposition to the growth and advancement of this church, but it has to bow to me. When we're full and we're spending more time in the Spirit, it will bow to me because Satan is still under our feet. So we're not going to experience the fullness of our restoration until we start seeing ourselves the way God sees us and until we start living really full of the Word and the Spirit. Now, the restoration of all things, this is what it should look like. Everything that God has ever done, every act of power, every gift of the Spirit, every expression of love and compassion. Just reading through the Bible, you have an abundance of things to look at. Just looking at the ministry of Jesus. Every miracle of healing and provision is fully flowing and working at full potential. That's what restoration of all things looks like. And we ain't there yet. Not just this church, but most of the church world. So this is not a rebuke just to you individually sitting here. This is something that has to be preached, that has to be meditated upon. We all have to actually want to make a conscious change for it to happen. But change doesn't come without hearing. So for Christ to return, we have to see this on the earth. We have to see the times of restoration of all things. And then the second thing, times of refreshing from the presence of the Lord. Now let me just read this again from Acts chapter 3. Repent therefore and be converted. Now here, Peter is preaching to sinners. But you know, even the church world can stand to hear a few repentance messages. Because repentance is not just repentance from terrible sin. And I'm going to get to that. But repent and therefore be converted that your sins may be blotted out. So that times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord. And that he may send Jesus Christ who was preached to you before. Whom heaven must receive until the times of restoration of all things. So until the restoration of all things, Jesus is not coming back. Now this times of refreshing. Prior to the return of the Lord, there must be a great outpouring of his spirit. That's the rain. The rain of the spirit. The outpouring of the spirit. Thank you Jesus for the rain. We can't make the rain happen. He pours it out. But we have to be in position. And we need to be thanking him for it. So this rain, and also we've said it this way. The wave like Dr. Dufresne talked about. It contains all the gifts and manifestations of the spirit. When you read that book about the miracles of Azusa Street. You saw the outpouring of the spirit. You saw the gifts of the spirit in operation. Many of the people, they had the faith to get there. But they didn't really have the faith to believe for their own healing or miracle. You saw in the Azusa Street revival. A premium example of rain so abundant. So many gifts of the spirit. Because we know this. The gifts of the spirit are primarily for the unbeliever or the young in the Lord. And that's who was coming to those meetings. They didn't talk about the miracles that they saw in each other. They shared about the miracles for the people that came. And so we're talking about full power. Full potential power of gifts and manifestations of the spirit. Now the word refreshing. When we talk about times of refreshing. It actually means reviving with fresh air. Take a deep breath. Now that's just natural refreshing. When I have a tendency. And my family probably knows this because they hear it. If they hear me going. They know that I'm tempted to be stressed about something. And you know taking deep breaths is the way you naturally relieve stress. I didn't even know that for many years. I just did it automatically. Do you do that? If I can feel the pressure rising. And now my Apple watch reminds me it's time to breathe. I know I'm supposed to breathe. I'm breathing. What it means is 60 seconds of deep breathing. And at the end of 60 seconds your heart rate should come down. And you should feel relaxed. Because you're controlling the breathing movement. So that affects the sympathetic nervous system. Autonomic nervous system. Well normally it's automatic. But then when you take control of it. You change something. And it brings that relaxation. Okay. So in the natural you take a deep breath. You get refreshed. Amen. But we could say this way. Refreshing really means revival. Yeah. You get revived. It's a reviving. Times of reviving from the presence of the Lord. It's time for prolonged intense seasons of revival. Actually let's not just say seasons plural. A season. Between now and the time Jesus comes back. One long intense prolonged season of revival. And it's going to push us toward the end of the age. And we all have heard about it. Read about it. Thought about it. Wanted it. Coveted it. Prayed for it. But we haven't seen it yet. So don't get weary. But we're still moving towards that. So if we dismiss the times of refreshing or the revival. We prolong the coming of the Lord. So every time the spirit starts to moving in here. And someone starts giggling or laughing. There are some people that jump in and giggle and laugh with them. And then there are other people that are secretly quietly thinking. I wish they wouldn't do that right now. I wish this would end already. I don't want this to happen right now. I'm not in the mood for this. And if you have enough people with that attitude in a church service. You quench what the spirit of God is trying to do. And you stay toe deep. You're not moving up to the ankle that time. And the thing is we're not supposed to even be ankle deep. We're supposed to be beyond the knee. Beyond the hip. Beyond the shoulder. We're supposed to be all in in this revival. But every time we quench it or we think this is uncomfortable. I don't think I want to do this right now. People are watching the live stream. Oh, gosh, we have three visitors today. What's going to happen? Well, they're either never going to come back again or they're going to jump in. That's right. I mean, what do we have to lose at this point? Honestly, if the church really fully understood that getting completely in would be the game changer. Not the scare away event. Because those that don't want it will go. But those that are really hungry are going to be drawn. Think about Azusa Street. They came from the uttermost parts of the world to be in this tiny ghetto building. It was not in the nice side of town. It was a run down old feed barn. And people came from all over the world in every economic status or whatever to be where the power of God was. God needs to have places that will flow with his spirit and not shut it down. You know, many people don't want revival because it doesn't usually look or act dignified. And, you know, my flesh would rather be dignified any day of the week. Now, it's interesting, in my own church, if the spirit's moving, I don't really have any trouble jumping in with it. I have more trouble in other places. Because I don't like to be looking like a fool around people I don't know that well. That's my natural side. But, you know, when God's spirit really gets moving, if you'll just yield to it, oh my gosh, just throw caution to the wind. And you're going to see some exhibits of flesh because that always happens with the movement of God. We'll just have to navigate through it and make corrections and people will have to be teachable. But, you know, even back when I told this story about how when Dr. Dufresne came in the year 2000 and we had been through a terrible situation with the church. And it wasn't anything that we had done. But I was desperate. I was in a place of desperation for help. And I spent a lot of time in prayer on my face. And that morning Dr. preached at our church and there was another family missing. And I called them that afternoon only to hear them say, we won't be back again. And I just remember I fell to the floor. I just collapsed and I just began to cry out to God in prayer. Because I thought, not another one. Not what is going on here. And I knew something wasn't right. This had been going on for two years. And I knew there had to be a reason and a way out of it. But no matter how hard we tried, we couldn't do it ourselves. Do you know the thing about corporate prayer? You bring a supply of the Spirit that has to be brought by more than one person. There are some things in life that you're not going to get by yourself. And in this particular case, we didn't just need corporate prayer, we needed the prophet's office. And so when I came back to church that night, Dr. Dufresne was trying to preach and he kept getting interrupted. And he said, well what is it Lord? And finally he said, I see that, I see that spirit. And there was a hideous spirit sitting there that had caused the whole thing for two years. You needed the prophet's office to deal with that thing. But the reason why I said all that is because then he ended up laying hands on me. I can't even remember exactly why, but the power of God hit me so hard. I fell to the floor and this huge groan and cry just came out of me. And I mean literally half of my body was under the chairs. And I'm there weeping and groaning and weeping and groaning so loud. And the whole time this is happening from the depth of my spirit. My mind is saying, you're making a fool out of yourself. You're making a fool out of yourself. You look like a fool right now. You know you can be having an argument in your head when God's doing a work in your spirit. That's true. But the desperation of what I needed from God that day overruled my flesh wanting to be dignified. I could have shut it down. And I'm bringing that story for a reason because God's going to want to do some things and your flesh will want to shut it down. But we've got to be sensitive enough to say, wait a minute, I need this work of the spirit more than I need to be dignified right now. And not only do I need it, but for the sake of the whole. We need this for the sake of the whole. Amen. Pastor Jeff and I are both, I will be admitting this, we are both in the natural a little more reserved than some people. And we know that. We may attract some reserved people for that reason. But this church does have people in it that know how to work with the spirit, thank God. It's really miraculous if you think about it. There's been times where I know my kids wish we weren't so reserved because we all feel the effects of that. We all are affected by what believers have or have not. And we're not trying to resist God or be something. Sometimes you are what you are based on your natural upbringing. So there are some people, like I'm thinking, like Reverend Ricky Edwards, where, oh my God, that Andrew's meat rod gets up, does a twirl and runs all over the place. Every time he feels just an inkling of the spirit moving. And I don't even know if I have the agility to do that naturally. It would have to be God. And because he's that way, his kids are that way. It runs in the family. Well, I'm here to apologize that we're not quite that way. We are who we are, but we're working on it. We all need to work in this direction. I'm not saying be crazy just to be crazy. You have to be led by the spirit. Right, exactly. But when we do have those situations here, don't you feel refreshed afterwards? That's what the spirit moving does. See, if all you ever do is have the Word taught, the Word taught, the Word taught, and you never have a look at the spirit, you dry up. You become imbalanced. So we need these times of refreshing. We need times where Chris doesn't stop laughing and acts silly. Just the sound of his laugh makes me laugh. And then I think, oh, God. And most of the time, if I start laughing, it's because something one of you is doing just tickles me the right way. And then I can't stop laughing. It's like sometimes I'll just look at my husband, a certain face he makes. And he's serious as all getup, but I can't stop laughing. You know, whatever your trigger is, fine. If it's God, go for it. So, you know, we have to. Neither revival nor restoration takes place without us. We are part of this formula. And, you know, I know we're going to be having visitors as we continue to move on this year, but we have to still always remember the Holy Spirit. Well, what did Jesus say? He, unless the Lord builds the church, they that labor, labor in vain. He also told Peter, upon this rock of revelation, I will build my church, and the gates of hell will not prevail against it. This church doesn't belong to us and our dignified ideas. It belongs to Jesus. And if the Holy Spirit wants to do something, and we don't let him, and we have just taken authority over the higher authority, and that's just not right. So, in order for us to have revival and restoration, it requires repentance. Repent, therefore, and be converted. We talked about this weeks ago, about you have to come to God as a little child. Repentance is not just asking for forgiveness of sin. Repentance, for the believer, is making a change in your life to align with God. So, sometimes when we hear that word repentance, we think of it's an ugly word, like a swear word, almost. And, you know, people will, in the world especially, don't like that word because they're full of the devil and they don't want to repent. Even, anybody ever see Pollyanna? I love watching movies where they have preachers and gospel scriptures in them. We just recently watched one, Driftwood. And I love that with little Natalie Wood. Black and white, a lot of famous people in that movie. And she was raised by her great-grandfather who was a preacher. And so, she quotes a lot of scripture in that movie. It's excellent. You ought to look it up. But anyway, so, in Pollyanna, you've got this preacher. And what do they make him look like? He gets up to the pulpit on Sunday. It's kind of hysterical. His name is Carl Muldin. Anybody know who that is? If you're older, you know. Really big nose. In those days, actors had crooked teeth and big noses and nobody cared. And so, the church is singing their song with the piano player. And he walks in, walks up to the pulpit, puts his head down. Death comes suddenly! And then he preaches this deep, short message about unless you repent and be born again from your sins. And he just goes on and on. And they just try to make him look like a foolish, repentant preacher. Well, and of course, Pollyanna looks up and sees the light, the chandelier shaking when he's preaching. And she's like, whoa. But repentance is not an ugly word. If it's presented properly and scripturally. Amen. It is making a change to align with God. You know, as we were driving home from Kentucky, I was pondering about the events that took place. They led up to one of the greatest revivals we had in our church in the 90s. And what happened was, Pastor Jeff and I, we had gone to a church that had a rhema grab because he was having a rhema person speak that we wanted to hear. This was back in 96. And while we were there, we got invited to his home to have dinner with some other preachers. And then they began to tell us these stories of how the problems they had had in their church, especially with some of the married couples that were coming to him for counseling. And then some of these couples drove down to this revival in Missouri. And he said, I spent years trying to counsel them. And they go to this revival, and they come back transformed. And enough people kept going and coming back and were transformed to where he became convinced that he needed to go see what was happening. So he got a bunch of his staff and his family in the van, and they drove there, and they were all just changed. And so they encouraged us to come back to hear this man who was preaching revival, and we did. And I went with fear and trembling, determined to hold up the wall, so to speak, and not be affected by nonsense. And at the end of the message, they had an altar call, and I found myself going forward. Now, I've learned a lot of things since then, and I wouldn't necessarily go that route again, but it was a true revival. And I found myself walking to the front with crowds of other people that came to the front, and they never touched you, but they would have different people standing in different places across the altar. And I find myself ushered in front of a 13-year-old girl. And my first thought was, oh, my God, what's this 13-year-old girl going to be praying for me, which was not the right thought. But when I got up there, she never touched me. She just prayed, and the power of God hit me like a ton of bricks, and I fell to my knees, and I cried so hard from my spirit like I'd never cried before. I was like wrung out like a wet rag by the Lord. It was all God. It wasn't the wrong spirit. And I was changed. I was a changed person. That was a true heart repentance. Sometimes we think we don't really need to repent because we come to church, we pay our tithes, we're involved in the ministry of health, and we don't always realize, unless the spirit does a work in us, what really needs to be changed. The lead needs to get taken out. Sometimes we just tend to be more critical of people than we should, even if we don't voice it, we get impatient. We just do things that really aren't becoming of a believer, but we don't really think much about it. It's just part of our lives. And I just remembered after getting touched by God that way, I suddenly had this compassion and love for people that I'd never had before. There were things that changed in me because the spirit of God did a work in me. Now while we were there, the Lord also, because I'd been reading and meditating, and actually we came back and got the kids and got Kathleen, and she came and helped us with the kids. And one day we were sitting at the pool at the hotel. That was just one perk in between services. And I'm sitting there with my Bible and the Lord just, I mean, because you're so touched by the power of God. Well, actually, this happened in the church in Illinois, but then we all packed up and went down to Missouri ourselves. So we're in Missouri and I'm sitting at the side of the pool, and the Lord unveiled a message. It was straight revelation from heaven. And when it was time to come back home, nobody at our church knew what had happened. Nobody knew what had happened to us. So there was no way I could come to church and they could just act a certain way because they knew what was going on because they had no idea what was going on. And then my husband decided he was going to stay on longer, so we came home and I had to preach that Sunday. And I preached this message. And when I got done, you weren't even there. I don't even remember, sweetheart, but that's not... No, no, this is the service where at the end of the message, I had an altar call and all these people came forward, and I didn't touch anybody, and they fell to the floor just like I did and started crying. One man in particular, a big man that was a bodybuilder, said, I've never cried so hard in my life. I thought my eyes were going to pop out of my head. There was no power of suggestion in that. I didn't tell them they were supposed to respond that way. I didn't tell them that's what happened to me. It was the Spirit of God doing the work in people. Now, I'm not saying that's what this is going to look like. I'm just giving you an example of something that happened. But here's what the Lord took me to. Let's go to 2 Samuel 11, 2 Samuel. And, you know, here's the reason why I know I need to share this today. I read through the Bible in a year, every year. And guess what I read this morning that just happened to be today's reading. So I'm pondering this on the way home from Kentucky. I'm thinking about if I should preach this message sometime. And lo and behold, it's right in front of me this morning. 2 Samuel 11. Verse 1. Is everybody awake? It happened in the spring of the year at the time when kings go out to battle that David sent Joab and his servants with him and all Israel, and they destroyed the people of Ammon and besieged Rabbah, but David remained at Jerusalem. David remained at Jerusalem. This is the time when kings go to battle, but he didn't go. Then it happened one evening that David arose from his bed and walked on the roof of the king's house, and from the roof he saw a woman bathing, and the woman was very beautiful to behold. So David sent and inquired about the woman, and someone said, Is this not Bathsheba, the daughter of Eliam, the wife of Uriah the Hittite? Then David sent messengers and took her, and she came to him, and he lay with her. For she was cleansed from her impurity, and she returned to her house. And the woman conceived, and so she sent and told David and said, I am with child. Now I don't know if you've ever read it this way, but what we have to realize is she was raped. This was not with consent. She was set for by the king, and she was raped. She's a married woman, and now she's pregnant with another man's child. So she's a victim of something that was against her will, and now she's suffering the consequences of this. Then David sent to Joab saying, Send me Uriah the Hittite, and Joab sent Uriah to David. When Uriah had come to him, David asked how Joab was doing and how the people were doing and how the war prospered. And David said to Uriah, Go down to your house and wash your feet. So Uriah departed from the king's house, and a gift of food from the king followed him. But Uriah slept at the door of the king's house with all the servants of his lord and did not go down to his house. So when they told David saying Uriah did not go down to his house, David said to Uriah, Did you not come from a journey? Why did you not go down to your house? And Uriah said to David, The ark and Israel and Judah are dwelling in tents, and my lord Joab and the servants of my lord are encamped in open fields. Shall I then go down to my own house to eat and drink and to lie with my wife? As you live and as your soul lives, I will not do this thing. This is a man of integrity. Then David said to Uriah, Wait here today also, and tomorrow I will let you depart. So Uriah remained in Jerusalem that day and the next. Now when David called him, he ate and drank before him, and he made him drunk. And that evening he went out to lie in his bed with the servants of his lord, but he did not go down to his house. So even stone drunk he refused to compromise his integrity. In the morning it happened that David wrote a letter to Joab and sent it by the hand of Uriah. And he wrote in the letter saying, Send Uriah in the forefront of the hottest battle and retreat from him, that he may be struck down and die. So it was while Joab besieged the city that he assigned Uriah to a place where he knew there were valiant men. Then the men of the city came out and fought with Joab, and some of the people of the servants of David fell, and Uriah the Hittite died also. Then Joab sent and told David all the things concerning the war and charged the messenger saying, When you have finished telling the matter of the war to the king, if it happens that his wrath arises, etc., etc., but they told him he's dead. Now verse 22, So the messenger went and came and told David all that Joab had sent by him. And he said, Uriah the Hittite is dead also. Verse 25, Then David said to the messenger, Thus you shall say to Joab, Do not let this thing displease you, for the sword devours one as well as another. Strengthen your attack against the city and overthrow it. So encourage him. Now when the wife of Uriah heard that Uriah her husband was dead, she mourned for her husband. And when her mourning was over, David sent and brought her to his house, and she became his wife and bore him a son. But the thing that David had done displeased the Lord. I would say so. Now here's the thing I want to say before we get into chapter 12. First of all, what I see, you know, David, the Bible said he was a man after God's own heart. The reason he became king and Saul lost the kingdom is because Saul did not know how to repent when he did wrong and rebelled against the commands of the Lord. So David's raised up. He's a worshiper of God. He loves God. He's zealous for God. He believes in God. He's got big faith. And he refused to touch Saul the whole time he had him in his grasp because he was honoring God. He's an honorable man. But see, what happens is you can love God. You can be a man or a woman after God's own heart. You can do things right. You can honor Him. You can have all the right actions, and you can have integrity in your heart and mean well, and you can actually slip from God as time goes on and get to a place where you become too idle. And idle was his problem because he should have been out at war, and instead he decided, I'm just going to stay back and take it easy. You know, don't allow yourself to slip so far from the things of God that you become idle because now the devil has access to you. So when temptation comes, he acts upon it, and instead of owning up to his actions, he tries to cover up for it. His initial plan was let Uriah come home and sleep with his wife and let them think it's his child. But the thing is, Bathsheba would have known all along it's not his child, so then she's going to be forced to live the lie. It was a bad situation, and instead of just owning up to it, he made it far worse. And sometimes in life, now I'm not saying any of us have done anything like this, but the point of the story is sometimes we can think we're doing okay with God, and maybe we're not. Now chapter 12, Then the Lord sent Nathan to David, and he came to him and said to him, There were two men in one city, one rich and the other poor. The rich man had exceedingly many flocks and herds, but the poor man had nothing except one little ewe lamb, which he bought and nourished, and it grew up together with him and with his children. It ate of his own food and drank from his own cup and lay in his bosom, and it was like a daughter to him. And a traveler came to the rich man who refused to take from his own flock and from his own herd to prepare one for the wayfaring man who had come to him. But he took the poor man's lamb and prepared it for the man who had come to him. This is called a Holy Ghost setup. So David's anger was greatly aroused against the man, and he said to Nathan, As the Lord lives, the man who has done this shall surely die. He still had the righteous indignation in him, and he shall restore fourfold for the lamb because he did this thing and because he had no pity. He was ready to have a man killed for taking a sheep, not even a human. And I love this line. Then Nathan said to David, You are the man. Whoo! Thus says the Lord God of Israel, I anointed you king over Israel, and I delivered you from the hand of Saul, and I gave you your master's house and your master's wives into your keeping, and gave you the house of Israel and Judah. And if that had been too little, I also would have given you much more. You know, God has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in heavenly places in Christ Jesus. He just would give us anything if we're pleasing to Him. He said, Why have you despised the commandment of the Lord to do evil in His sight? You have killed Uriah the Hittite with the sword. You have taken his wife to be your wife and have killed him with the sword of the people of Ammon. Now therefore the sword shall never depart from your house because you have despised me and have taken the wife of Uriah the Hittite to be your wife. Thus says the Lord, Behold, I will raise up adversity against you from your own house, and I will take your wives before your eyes and give them to your neighbor. And he shall lie with your wives in the sight of this sun. For you did it secretly, but I will do this thing before all Israel before the sun. So David said to Nathan, What? What have I done wrong? Now that's how Saul responded. Right. No, David said, I have sinned against the Lord. Now look at the purity of this. No making excuses. Right. No blame game. Yeah. No trying to, you know, shove it off as no big deal. Well, I'm the king. No, he said, I have sinned against the Lord. This was true repentance. That's good. And Nathan said to David, The Lord also has put away your sin. You shall not die. So it's very important that even though I realize this is Old Testament, David belonged to God. He had a covenant with God. And he sinned against God because first of all, the idleness of his time was a bad thing. We need to be filling our lives with the Word, with prayer, not with dumb things. But at least he had the sense when he was finally confronted with sin to say, I've sinned. I repent. I'm turning this thing. I'm going the other direction. And so, you know, we have to, as believers, not looking at the intensity of the sin that he committed here, but looking at the fact that you can be a person that loves God and God loves you. You can be a person who's involved. You can be a person who gives, but you can still not be aligned with God like you should. And God wants us to do this. He wants us to line up the areas of our life. Amen. Thank you, Jesus. You know what happens after you line yourself up? Refreshing. Revival. Refreshing and revival comes. And we see, which we're not going to take the time to read, but then as the story goes on, the child that she conceived did die. But there was a refreshing that came to them later. David comforted his wife. He had a relationship with her. Brother Joel actually talks about it in this book, too, which was the third confirmation today from when I got to it, towards the end of the book. And the things he talks about regarding Bathsheba are particularly good. Very eye-opening. But, you know, think about it. In the Old Testament, you read these stories and you've got these kings and they've got all these wives. And the first thing that hits my mind all the time is, how sad. You know, how can you have a relationship with that many women? Well, you can't. They didn't really live with these women. They just called upon them when they wanted them. But these women basically would raise their children and had their own separate quarters and it wasn't really a great life. And so Bathsheba would have just been one of the bunch. And here she had one husband, one home, was happy, and it all got shaken up and taken away from her. But something happened between her and David where she was able to forgive him. And they were able to have a relationship. And they had another child. And then look at, you talk about refreshing and restoration, that son Solomon became the greatest king that Israel ever had. So God, when you get to a place where you recognize, I need to repent of complacency. I need to repent of lethargy. I need to get the lead out. I need to repent. And it has to be true repentance, not just, well, I know I should. When you really do get to that place where you repent, the refreshing that comes and the revival that comes brings so much more into your life. The outcome of it is always good. Amen. But if we refuse to heed the warning and in pride we think we have nothing to change, we just fall into deeper deception. And this has happened to a lot of believers, just even in the last few years. There's a lot of disagreement about should your church be open or not. Should we have the move of the Spirit or should we tone it down? Well, you'll just fall into deeper deception if you don't make the change and align with God. Amen? The revival that God desires for us is more than excitement and miracles. It's also about the harvest of souls. We have to be revived so that we can be our best to be a witness to the world. We have to be revived so that if we want the signs and wonders to follow what we tell people and it can change their life, that doesn't come through complacency. So the ultimate purpose of any revival is the salvation of the lost. So how can Christians do their part to reap this harvest? Number one, have a working knowledge of the Word of God, which we do pretty well in this church. Number two, develop your spirit by praying, speaking, and singing much with other tongues. Back to this thing called prayer. The more time we spend in prayer, the more sensitive we become to the Spirit. The more time we spend in prayer, the more filled with the Spirit we get. And when we come together, then we start out at a higher level because we came full instead of empty wanting someone to fill us up for us. It is easier to come and sit and let somebody else do the work. But that's not the highest and the best. It takes longer and we won't get to where we're supposed to be. So number one, have a working knowledge of the Word. Number two, develop your spirit through much prayer. Number three, serving in the ministry helps. Believe it or not, natural jobs that are done in a spiritual setting require spiritual skills. You could say, well, I know how to change a diaper. But you may know how to do it naturally, but do you have the spiritual skills to do it? Well, what spiritual skill? I think one of the biggest reasons for the ministry helps is it develops humility in us. Because it's the one place where you don't always get to do things the way you want to do them. We come here, we have an assignment, we have to do something a certain way, and especially initially, you're going to have to do it whichever way has been lined out in the rule book or however the procedures or the policies are. You may not agree with it, you may not think it's the best way, you may not like it, but bless God, you're doing it anyway because it's developing character in you. So it's a natural job, yes, in one sense, but think about it, it's the local church, not the corporation. It's the local church, not a business somewhere. And so in the local church, we come and do natural jobs, but we do it with a spiritual emphasis and we're developing something. It does require spiritual skill. You know, when you come to this church, no matter what position you are in, you should always be keenly aware of things in the spirit because somebody's always got to be watching what's going on. Who just came in? What condition could they be in? Is someone talking to that person or are they wandering around with no one to talk to? I always see those things, but if you're not seeing those things, that means you have some filling up to do. You know, and I can't always be the one that jumps and does all the talking with everybody. That's why we need the whole body. But there are things that we perceive by the spirit. If you're working in the children's department, you may perceive this child needs something. They may need an impartation. They might need a word of encouragement. They might need to be saved. It takes spiritual skill. And so serving in the ministry helps develop us in these areas that you won't develop in otherwise. And then number four, waiting on the Lord. This requires getting quiet before the Lord. Actually, Isaiah chapter 40 verse 31 says, They that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength. They shall mount up with wings as eagles. They shall run and not be weary, and they shall walk and not faint. Praise the Lord. One of the things that Reverend Joel said about this, he said there's nothing more unappealing to the flesh and mind than the thought of getting quiet before God. But such times are necessary if we are to develop spiritually. Notice in the verse that we read the connection between waiting on the Lord and spiritual strength and progress. Believers who will learn to wait before Him will find themselves able to do things that they previously could not do. It doesn't seem like a big deal, but if you just do it, you'll find out what a big deal it is. Amen. Let's do this. Let's have everyone stand up, and we can shut down the live stream. Thank you for watching. God bless you.