This winter, I have been preaching through a sermon series that I have entitled Revival. This series came out of a conviction that God has so much more available for us individually and as a church, but if we choose complacency, if we give ourselves to worldly pursuits while relegating him to an afterthought, then we will miss out on all the power, the joy, the love, and the wonder that He had for us. Oh, that we would not live our lives and never experience the power and reality of our great God! May we give ourselves to Him and earnestly plead for a revival of our souls and of our church, that His kingdom would come and His will would be done on earth as it is in heaven.
Earlier in this series, I mentioned what Richard Lovelace calls in his book Dynamics of Spiritual Renewal the two preconditions of revival: an increased awareness of the holiness of God, and an increased awareness of the depth of our sin. By holiness, I mean that God is transcendentally separate from us in His perfection. By sin I mean our rebellion against God, our inability to measure up to His holy standard, and our brokenness. The more we are aware of the greatness of God, the high expectations of God, the incredible promises of God, along with our own inability to live up to His expectations and the terrible effect of our sin on ourselves and others, the closer we are to revival. You want to see revival in your life and in the church? Pray for those two things – Lord, increase my awareness of your holiness and the depth of my sin.
Over the past few weeks, I’ve been trying to dive deeper into the second part, the awareness of the depth of our sin, and to do so by looking at the Beatitudes, the beginning of Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount. The beatitudes describe the blessed life, the characteristics of the man or woman who is favored by God, what a life touched by revival will look like. This morning, we will be looking at Matthew 5:7 – “Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy.”
