Not only was I learning to be less ashamed of small things, I was beginning to imagine that small things might save us all. But we might have to be like children, comfortable in our own smallness, to receive that salvation (Matthew 18:1-4). + Mandy Smith, Unfettered: Imagining a Childlike Faith Beyond the Baggage of Western Culture
Along with We Died Before We Came Here and A Time to Heal, Unfettered (What a fantastic word! Unfettered means "unrestrained" or "uninhibited"; "unfettered artistic genius") and Longing for Revival are important books and stories that continue to fuel my thoughts, prayers, and meditations during 2021 as I get to walk with unhinged resurrection hope and wonder in light of what Jesus is up to in the days ahead.
Unfettered: All the Small Things that Save and Renew Us
I knew revival meant a change in the hearts of human beings to draw us back to God and his mission. I knew revival meant that in times that seem desperate, when we feel our cultural power slipping, we finally stop grasping for it and turn to our true source of power. And revival does not mean more of the same adultish maneuvering, but rather the revival of our ability to receive the kingdom as children ...
What if we were to let the desperation change us? Romans 8:15 says, "For you did not receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received a spirit of adoption. When we cry, 'Abba! Father!' it is that very Spirit bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of God" (NRSV). ...
What would it look like to feel the desperation, not as slaves but as children? If you're a slave and you feel overburdened, you resent your master and work harder for fear of ramifications. If you're a child and you feel overburdened, you do the only thing a child can do: you cry out to your father. Children often don't even know what to ask for; they just know whom to turn to. So, maybe what we most need is simply to cry, "Abba! Father!""Abba" is found only three times in the New Testament, but in every case it is not a word said about God but a word said to God. It is cried out by those who know their dependence on him, who know how to trust his goodness and provision. We need to say "Abba!" because things are getting desperate.
Our most pressing problem right now is not to "fix" our brokenness on issues of sexuality or the shrinking church or even racism and poverty (as important as all those are). Our most pressing problem is our belief that the burden of fixing is entirely ours. This is not a belief we often admit but a belief we regularly live. What if we stopped our slavish, fearful striving long enough to remember we're not slaves and to cry out like children to our Father? It may not provide an instant, obvious fix to the pressing problems of the church and the world, but it could bring a different, better solution – even renewal.
Marva Dawn proposes a hopeful possibility: "I believe this could be a time of revival if we let weakness be the agent for God's tabernacling."
When we cry, "Abba! Father!" his Spirit testifies to our spirits that we are indeed his children. His Spirit reminds us that we are not alone, that our world is his, our work is his, that his Spirit is striving with our spirits, longing with our spirits. ... Revival is measured in hearts turned to him. And so, as humbling and uncomfortable but surprisingly simply as this may seem:
+ Revival begins when God's people acknowledge their need for him.
+ Revival begins when human hearts remember how to cry, "Abba! Father!"
+ Revival is inevitable when we learn to receive the kingdom like children.
There's a wonderful possibility hidden in this very desperation that we fear is our undoing. But only if we let it teach us our need for him ...
God gives me a tiny seed – a hope, a whisper, a glimpse, a sense, a promise.
He asks me to take it and steward it.
The beauty of its hidden potential overwhelms me.
The questions it raises awake my curiosity.
I want to see, to understand.
Why has he given me this seed?
So I can tell others? But I don't know enough.
So I can make it grow?
So I can celebrate when it grows?
I hold the seed but I hunger for the fruit.
The closest way to get fruit from a seed is to suck the seed – try to taste any remnant.
But seeds don't grow in mouths.
Shall I dissect the seed? But wouldn't that kill it?
Give me the patience to sow the seed – even in soil that seems rotting – what fertile soil it will become!
Mine is not to be the sun or the rain, to burst the germ or bring forth the shoot.
Mine is to tend, to watch, to wait, to be ready when it breaks through!
The Roman Empire would have made front page news. Its political, economic, and military power were unsurpassed. The generals could be named, the walled cities could be measured, the riches could be weighed, the centurions could be numbered. But where is that empire now?
Meanwhile, the early church was virtually invisible. It is hard to measure a ragtag bunch of misfits, meeting in homes, eating and praying and serving their neighbors together. Such an immeasurable thing seems impotent. And yet such a relational, human-scale thing is almost impossible to overthrow or contain. This seemingly insignificant movement has outlived that immense Roman Empire. We long to have institutions, power, measurable effects – to be able to name the leader, see the building, count the resources, report the outcomes – but perhaps it's our organic nature that makes the kingdom truly transformative and unstoppable.
Alan Kreider calls this the patient ferment of the early Christian movement:
It was brewing, but not under anyone's control. It was uncoordinated, it was unpredictable, and it seemed unstoppable. The ferment was spontaneous, and it involved ordinary ingredients that at times synergized into a heady brew. The churches grew in many places, taking varied forms. They proliferated because the faith that these fishers and hunters embodied was attractive to people who were dissatisfied with their old cultural and religious habits, who felt pushed to explore new possibilities, and who then encountered Christians who embodied a new manner of life that pulled them toward what the Christians called "rebirth" into a new life. Surprisingly, this happened in a patient manner.
+ Alan Kreider, The Patient Ferment of the Early Church: The Improbable Rise of Christianity in the Roman Empire
Longing for Revival: One Story of a Small Thing that Became a Bigger Thing (Hebrides Revival)
When we cry out to God, we're putting ourselves in a position to wait on his timing and perspective.
Crying out to God means persistent, whole-hearted praying, where we unload the full freight of our hope onto him, withholding none of it for our plans and strategies. God's promise to those who cry out to him is that they will not be overlooked (Luke 18:1-8).
The enemy of our souls wants to keep us quiet and keep the struggle locked deep inside. It can feel foolish, or worse yet, forced. Or it just makes some of us uncomfortable. But the Spirit will often inspire us to cry out, to release the burden in order to find strength in him. And this kind of whole-hearted praying is recorded throughout the book of Psalms:
All night long I flood my bed with weeping and drench my couch with tears. ...
Evening, morning and noon I cry out in distress, and he hears my voice ...
LORD, you are the God who saves me; day and night I cry out to you.
Off the coast of Scotland lies a diverse archipelago called the Hebrides. It contains some of the oldest rocks in Europe, and consists of more than 136 islands – of which fifteen are inhabited. Although high in latitude, the Gulf Stream keeps those islands rather temperate, and from 1948 to 1952, they played host to the Hebrides Revival.
In November 1949, on the island of Lewis, two women in their 80s – one of them blind – were burdened by the spiritual state of their church. Not a single young person was a part of their parish, so the women started to pray twice a week, often from ten o'clock at night to three or four o'clock in the morning. As they prayed, one of them received a vision of their church packed with young people. They called their parish minister about it and challenged him to host his own prayer meeting at the same times – Tuesday and Friday nights. He accepted and started to pray with seven men.
After a month and a half, a young deacon in the church read Psalm 24 while they prayed in the barn: "He that has clean hands and a pure heart who has not lifted up his soul into vanity or sworn deceitfully, He shall receive the blessing (not a blessing, but the blessing) of the Lord." Then he closed his Bible, and looking down, he said words straight from his heart: "It seems to me to be so much humbug to be praying as we are praying, to be waiting as we are waiting, if we ourselves are not rightly related to God." Then he lifted his two hands. It would be hard not to hear the tremble in his voice, as he cried out,
"God, are my hands clean? Is my heart pure?" ... Conviction hit the room. "A God-sent revival must ever be related to holiness." And the power of God swept in.
Later, at a nearby dance hall, the presence of God would move in so dramatically that the music stopped, and in minutes the hall emptied of its one hundred or so young people, and they all went to church. Soon after, 800 – with many young people – poured into the church and prayed until four in the morning. And the revival would last for three more years.
Revivals, both personally and corporately, depend on this kind of praying, because revivals depend on God's power, not our own.
+ The content above includes excerpts from Chapter 3: Receive and Chapter 5: Respond in Unfettered: Imagining a Childlike Faith Beyond the Baggage of Western Culture by Mandy Smith along with excerpts from Chapter 6: Contending in Longing for Revival: From Holy Discontent to Breakthrough Faith by James Choung and Ryan Pfeiffer.
Here are links to some other previous City Notes books: Tattoos on the Heart; Drop the Stones; Glorious Weakness; Discovering the Freedom of Limitations; How to Be a Saint in the Darkness; An Exercise in Hope; Prayer in the Night; A Time to Heal
Christ is all,
Rev. Mike “Sully” Sullivan
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