When renewed and revived, we discover the same phenomenon –a person or a handful of people who have gotten to the end of themselves, who cannot tolerate it anymore, who fall at the feet of Christ and are filled with His presence, who become infectious agents of His Kingdom in the world. Contenders for His renewal. + Mark Sayers, Reappearing Church: The Hope for Renewal
Along with We Died Before We Came Here, A Time to Heal, Unfettered (What a fantastic word! Unfettered means "unrestrained" or "uninhibited"; "unfettered artistic genius") and Longing for Revival, Reappearing Church: The Hope for Renewal by Mark Sayers is another key book that continues to fuel my thoughts, prayers, and meditations during 2021. Praying and contending that I will get to walk with others with unhinged resurrection hope and wonder in light of what Jesus is up to among us in the days ahead.
Reappearing Church: Personal Renewal Is Friendship with God
"It is time for you, noble friend, to be known by God and to become his friend," wrote the early church father Gregory of Nyssa. This is the root of personal renewal – a friendship with God ...
... Freed from the rule of the crowd, from our instinct to anxiously herd into the group-think, from the buzz of constant distraction, we turn from the faces of those around us to look upon His face.
As we do this, we begin to grasp who He really is, and strangely as we look toward God, our true selves come into clear view. We are struck by how far we fall short of Him, how we have tried to remold Him in our own image; our pitiable games at playing god are exposed, the ruse of radical individualism is shown for the fraud it is. Just at the moment when, in comparison to God, it seems that we as humans could not shrink any smaller, the divine hand of grace reaches out to remake us. Shocked by the seeming incongruence of such a moment, we find ourselves again standing before the paradox of the cross, in which justice and love are held together.
Every renewal and revival begins with people who reach such a moment, who truly come to the end of themselves, discovering the depth of their own sin and the immensity of a holy God who is intent on removing rebellion, evil, and ill from the world, yet who sent His Son to die upon the cross to invite us to be on His side in the remaking of the world.
Such moments then become seeds planted in harvest. No longer do we face the heavy task of defining ourselves, or crafting our own identity; instead, He will do that now, when we fully give ourselves over to Him. He will begin molding us into a redeemed version of ourselves we could never believe possible. For He wishes to shape us, so we can return to our original purpose of partnering with Him in His plan to move history to His purposes, flooding the world with His presence.
Reappearing Church: The Searching Manifestation of Presence
(With true friendship with God), the barred rooms reserved for our personal autonomy must be opened up, the keys must be handed over. His presence must be invited to flood in, filling every inch of our lives.
For our goal is not self-actualization, nor self-expression; rather, it is life with God.
Life with the presence. We must decrease, so He can increase. For as we decrease, we become more filled with His presence, taking His presence with us into our lives, into the web of relationships in which we move, the places we visit, the moments in time we inhabit ...
But the Western life system has formed us in a particular way that creates people who resist the move of God in subconscious ways. The average Westerner is a radical individualist who is deeply afraid of compromising their autonomy. He or she determines their self-worth and identity primarily horizontally, via the media, culture, or peers. We are shaped by the passive-aggressive tone of consumerism, where we want maximum say with minimum responsibility. We are shaped primarily by our fluid and ever-shifting feelings. We yearn for community and connection, yet fear commitment and consistency. We wish for justice while desiring hedonistic payoffs. We religiously point the finger at others while jealously guarding our own right to do as we please. All these factors place us in a spiritually precarious place.
The hard truth is that even when we come to the end of ourselves, stepping into a holy discontent with our culture, these patterns have deeply shaped us. They have turned us into the kind of people ... who most likely will resist renewal ... J.I. Packer writes that "it is with this searching, scorching manifestation of God's presence that renewal begins, and by its continuance that renewal is sustained." His presence is both the destination and the road. As His presence comes among us during renewal, our flesh – that part of us which wishes for autonomy, to achieve our own kingdom separate from God – is confronted. It feels the scorching of His presence. This can happen on both a personal and corporate level as God shapes and prepares us for the end of history when His presence will fill the earth, and to mold us into agents of His presence in the world, partnering with Him in His renewal plans.
Reappearing Church: Holiness, Conviction, Confession
God is holy, and so are His dwelling places. His temples – our lives, the Church, or creation – must be filled with His holiness. In 1904, a revival touched Wales. Upwards of 100,000 people came to faith in an outpouring of God's presence that radically changed the face of the country. A crucial spark that lit the fire of revival occurred when a young man named Evan Roberts prayed with a small group of young people after a service. He left the Lord challenging them to do the following:
1) You must put away any unconfessed sin.
2) You must put away any doubtful habit.
3) You must obey the Spirit promptly.
4) You must confess Christ publicly.
All seventeen responded, choosing the way of holiness. This quiet and sacred moment, a foundation, must be seen in relation to the incredible and visible victories that occurred in the large-scale move of God across Wales. For renewal cannot come without holiness. God wishes to rid His temples of what does not please Him ...
Conviction can be met with defensiveness and avoidance, or even then temptation of self-condemnation, yet its true partner is confession. When God lovingly shines a light on an area in which we fall short of His standards, it is an act of mercy.
The divine sword comes, but its intent is to cut us free of the net that ensnares our hearts. For as James instructs, confession brings spiritual power and effectiveness: "Confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous person is powerful and effective" (James 5:16).
Reappearing Church: Hardened Soil Turned Back into Fertile Earth
We recently renovated our home. Our backyard was dug up, and a truckload of fresh, rich, fertile soil was brought in. We sowed into the ground a bag of expensive grass seed to ensure a lush lawn. However, it was summer, and the scorching sun was arriving. Apart from a few areas, the grass struggled to grow. Months later, the grass still was in patches, and the fertile rich soil had hardened into a grassless surface. My suggested solution was simply to buy some more seed online and throw it on the hardened ground. Much wiser was my wife, who went out one afternoon with a rake, breaking and digging up the hardened soil. It was an act of destruction that had to precede the creation to come. If I had gone ahead with my foolish plan, the seed would have sat on top of the hardened layer of earth, only to wash away when the rains came.
Before His rains of blessing and renewal come, the soil must be broken up, turned over, so we can be ready to receive. Hardened soil must be turned back into fertile earth. In renewal, the breaking down must come before the building up. God prepares the soil of heart by sending His presence to convict us.
As God's holy presence comes among us, because it comes to fight the flesh, a conviction regarding sin will be felt strongly. In light of His presence, what was accepted before can no longer be tolerated. Sin must be discovered and exposed to the light of His coming. When this happens, "it is time to cease excusing our sins by calling them shortcomings or natural weakness, or by attributing them to temperament or environment. It is time to cease justifying our carnal ways and materialistic outlook by pointing to others who are the same," writes Arthur Wallis, noting that we must step into this conviction, which removes the way in which our flesh is resisting His Spirit, for "we must face our sins honestly in the light of God's Word, view them as He does and deal with them as before Him. Until we do, it would be well that God should withhold the rain of revival."
Reappearing Church: Contenders for His Renewal Through Prayer and Fasting
The Church begins when a disparate and dishevelled group of very ordinary people, crying out to God, are filled with His presence. This handful of renewed people, with no army, no political power, and little funds, would turn the world upside down.
At every moment the Church has been renewed and revived, we discover the same phenomenon – a person or a handful of people who have gotten to the end of themselves, who cannot tolerate it anymore, who fall at the feet of Christ and are filled with His presence, who become infectious agents of the Kingdom in the world. Contenders for His renewal.
I shall see no hope until individual members of the Church are praying for revival, perhaps meeting in one another's homes, meeting in groups amongst friends, meeting together in churches, meeting anywhere you like, and praying with urgency and concentration for a shedding forth of the power of God, such as He shed forth one hundred and two hundred years ago, and in every other period of revival, and of reawakening. There is no hope until we do. But the moment we do, hope enters.
+ Martyn Lloyd-Jones
Those renewed, experiencing a microcosm of revival within themselves, those who are hungry and thirsting for righteousness, find each other.
We discover that much of our holy discontent is born of a life that is suffering from what Richard Foster calls "the agony of prayerlessness." Our lives are designed to be in intimate relationship and friendship with God. When we don't pray, we become spiritually dehydrated. Understanding now that the challenges of life are to be met not with futile human striving but on the bended knee, prayer becomes indispensable to living.
As we step into contending prayer, no longer do we fill awkward silence with perfunctory prayers and laundry lists of inconsequential requests. Instead, rumbling, reverberating, desperate prayers begin.
Prayer begins: Eventually holy discontent forms into a desire to pray that can no longer be ignored. With the status quo no longer tolerated, the only way forward is to cry out to God for His intervention into the world. Prayer moves from something desirable but rarely practiced in the Christian life to something indispensable and foundational.
Small groups begin praying: A handful of people find each other. They are united by their driving desire to pray and contend for God to act. In the north of Scotland, two elderly disabled sisters prayed together by their fire, leading to the Hebridean revival. The revival broke out in New York during the nineteenth century can be traced back to a handful of businessmen praying at lunch in a small room in Wall Street. The awakening that occurred in South India in the 1930s was contended for by three preteen boys, who had become transformed by God, and early each morning prayed in the jungle on the edges of their town.
Contending and standing in the gap: Prayer that proceeds God moving is contending prayer. To contend is to struggle, to stretch for something. This is proactive prayer, beseeching God to move, in which we cry out for God's mercy on behalf of ourselves, our communities, and nations. To, as the book of Ezekiel states, "Stand before me in the gap on behalf of the land" (22:30).
Contending prayer is spiritual warfare: As we adopt the posture of contending, it becomes vital to understand that we are not contending against those who come against us in opposition, but as Scripture teaches us, the powers and principalities, the forces that resist Christ's rule, wishing to keep us in a state of enslavement, and oppose God's plan of renewal in the world. We practice contending prayer, then, to acknowledge that God fights our spiritual battles for us.
Key Renewal Principle: Renewal Only Comes with Prayer and Fasting
Contending prayer then becomes normative amongst those seeking renewal. Such prayer asks God to change our churches, our culture, and our world, yet it also changes us as we pray, reshaping us in the patterns of the Kingdom.
+ The content above includes excerpts from Chapter 9: Preparing for Renewal and Chapter 12: Remnants in Reappearing Church: The Hope for Renewal by Mark Sayers
Next post: CN | Honest Advent: Assumptions & Surprises
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; Unfettered in Seemingly Small Things
Christ is all,
Rev. Mike “Sully” Sullivan
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