“And when the day of Pentecost was fully come, they were all with one accord in one place. And suddenly there came a sound from heaven as of a rushing mighty wind, and it filled all the house where they were sitting.”
(Acts 2:1 – 2:2)
Dear brethren, seeing that tomorrow is Pentecost Sunday, I’ll like to talk on the importance of unity to revival. I’ll like to present to us, here, the role unity plays to our revival.
In his sermon, “The Unity That Brings Revival,” A.W. Tozer pointed out that we are fund of praying a wrong prayer. We often ask God to send his Spirit upon us so that we can be united, but on the contrary, we ought to pray that God should unite us so that his Spirit can come upon us. The text above shows clearly that it was the being in one accord of the apostles that caused the Spirit to come upon them on the day of Pentecost.
The church has been looking for revival for a long time now, but she shall see no revival until she has known the importance of unity, remove all divisive elements from within her, and becomes indeed united. For the reason of the orderly nature of the Spirit of God, we must be united for him to abide with us. Without unity we’d be abandoned to be alone.
The Spirit of God is an orderly one. It would work with us (collectively) when we are united. The Devil knows this so well and that is why he keeps fighting against our unity through every possible means. He knows that our success lies in our unity. But unfortunately we don’t seem to know this. So we take our fight to other things that are so unimportant to us. We talk about evangelism, we talk about missions, church growth mechanism, etc. Things which can by no means help us. But it is in unity that we can succeed in God’s mandate.
Hosea 7:1 says, “They return, but not to the most High: they are like a deceitful bow: their princes shall fall by the sword for the rage of their tongue: this shall be their derision in the land of Egypt.” People wanting to be Revivalists keep yelling that we must return yet not knowing where to return to. Some would point us to one old evangelist, others to one church system, yet others to one saint. But these are the wrong places to return to. The verse above gives us a good description of such actions. It says they return (just as we wish to return) but not to the most High. We don’t return to his will to be united as he is united in the godhead. We keep creating our own ideals and ask people to return to those ideals. This, rather than creating unity, further divides the church and creates a confusion that can be hardly gotten rid of. If we must return, it must be to God and not any old evangelist or church system. Do we want revival? Let us return to God and unite. Ignore church founders and owners, ignore ideals of men, resist the constraint they place on us, and let us unite in the purity of God’s word. Herein lies the answer to our realizing of the long overdue revival.
Prayer: Dear Lord, Father, and Friend, the church is over due for revival and how I see that we are the ones keeping ourselves from that revival. Help us o Father to stop denying ourselves this blessedness of being revived. Help us to come to together in the purity of your word that we may be revived indeed. This we pray in Jesus’ name. Amen.
