Revival

 
Words change their meaning as the years pass.
    The word "Freedom" to the early settlers in North America meant
        liberty to worship and obey God without restriction.
Today "Freedom" is taken to mean liberty to do whatever I want without restriction.

The word "Revival" seems also to mean less today than in past years.
    We think of conversions, enlarged churches and more people like ourselves.
Perhaps a simple definition of revival would be "a Visitation of God which manifests the Glory of God."

When Acts 4.31 says "the place was shaken" maybe it represents something more than the building.
    Maybe it represents a coming of the Spirit of God which also shook every life which was in the building.
        Maybe within lives things were displaced and rearranged in that shaking,
            and through the shaking lives were prepared and the Holy Spirit was outpoured.

Our tendency is to make everything simpler and less costly than God intends,
with the result that we will be satisfied with a poor imitation of the real thing.
Do we have a true idea of what is meant by "Salvation"?
    or Surrender, Dedication, or Prayer?
        or Praise, or Worship?
            or Testimony, Service, or Ministry?

Our minds are conditioned by the definitions we attach to words,
    and in order to truly understand the words we read, hear and speak,
        we need an illumination which only God can bestow.
        
Would God we could forget our supposed knowledge of all that surrounds us,
    and seek with all the intensity of our being
            the Light which alone illuminates the soul of man.
Would we could find the intensity to pray
    until the darkness would lift and all be filled with Light.
        in order to see and know the things of God as He would have us see.