Recently, my Dad called and asked me to run by his house to make sure he had turned the burner off where he had made breakfast. My mother was in the hospital after having knee replacement surgery and he had made her her favorite breakfast to run up to the hospital. In his haste, he couldn’t remember if he turned off the burner on the stove.
I got all the way to their house and realized I didn’t have the key to their house! I had left the key to their house…at MY house!!!
Without a key to what is locked, there is no entering in.
When I was growing up, we had these week long events at our church where an evangelist would come and preach with such fervor in hopes of salvations, and of firing people up and getting them excited again about Jesus! They called it a revival.
Revival is an interesting word. “Re” means “again” and “vival” comes from “vitality” which means “life”. Revival means then “to bring to life again”. That definition insinuates that the life was once there, but was no longer.
In John 10:10, Jesus says, “The thief comes to steal, kill and destroy but I have come that you may have life and have it abundantly.” A few verses later, Scripture says that we are in the palm of God’s hand. If that is indeed the case (which it is because the Bible is perfect and infallible), then what can the enemy steal, kill and destroy from you? The abundant life Jesus came to give you!
In Acts 16:6, some of the disciples are on their way to worship and they are interrupted by a “haunting spirit”. Now we have all experienced the enemy attack when trying to get to church on Sunday mornings, but I didn’t know anything about a “haunting spirit”, so I looked up what it meant in the Greek. The word actually means “python”. It is a demonic spirit that acts like a python to suck the life out of you. Wow.
The enemy wants to suck the life out of you.
With all that we are experiencing in this world, if we are not careful, we will slowly but surely allow the life to be sucked from us. We need to be revived! We need some life! We need a revival! But do we really need a person to come in and fire us up? The truth is that they could preach their guts out and you could still choose not to be effected by it. But,
What if we are the key to our own revival?
The enemy is attacking us to suck the life out of us when we are needed most. We are locked up within our concerns, fear, and unknowns. We need a revival in our nation, in our churches, and it starts with personal revival in every Christian! Without a key to what is locked, there is no entering in. And the key to unlocking this revival is YOU!
You must choose joy instead of sadness. Peace in spite of trouble. Love instead of fear. Faith instead of frozen. Hope instead of hopelessness. We must choose to be in God’s Presence with God’s people and let our hearts be revived. We must choose to trust in Almighty God, the God who is bigger than anything we face! We must choose to joyfully anticipate all that our great God will do as we look to Him.
It is time that we unlock our own personal revival. Instead of allowing the enemy to attack us and isolate us, sucking the life from us, we MUST fight to be together, to worship together, and to encourage one another!
That is why I am personally inviting you to join me for the second annual Deeper Retreat for women. We are simply going to gather around the presence of God and let Him revive our hearts. But we have to choose it.
You have the key. You ARE the key. I hope you’ll join us and unlock revival in your soul.
You are loved,
Jena
For more information or to join us for The Deeper Retreat, click HERE.