Need for Revival Culture

Thursday, October 12th, 2017

I believe the Lord wants us to be a people with a paradigm of presence, that we pray looking for the presence...
Ryan LeStrange

TRANSCRIPTION

I’m Ryan Lestrange with Ryan Lestrange Ministries. Welcome to God Today. I want to talk to you about the need for revival culture. I believe God wants to bring something into our lives that’s deeper than just a singular experience. Many people have a paradigm. They have a concept of revival just being an experience, that if they just have some kind of experience with God that that’s enough and I believe experiences with God are critical but we need a culture in our lives of revival. Now in Acts 3:19, it says therefore repent and return so that your sins may be wiped away in order that times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord. We see that the repentance was a catalyst for the revival, that here in Acts 3:19, the outpouring, the times of refreshing came on the other side of a repentance.

Now when we read that, we think of it from this standpoint, we think of it as bowing to an altar and saying God, I’m sorry for that. But there’s something deeper that opens up the understanding of the precedent for revival culture. The Greek word repent there is the word metanoeō. It means to think differently. It means after a change of mind. Literally what the picture is here is think differently afterwards. We see a picture in this scripture of the changing thought patterns altering the direction of the church, that after they begin to think differently, now the outpouring came, now the move of the Spirit came and a key to revival culture is to begin to change the way you think. I believe the Lord wants us to be a people with a paradigm of presence, that we pray looking for the presence, that we live looking for the presence, that in the marketplace we’re looking for the presence, in our church services we value the presence of God. If the presence doesn’t come, it doesn’t matter what we learn, it doesn’t matter what prayers we pray, that we just set up and establish a paradigm of presence, a culture that honors the presence of God and this is something we can apply to our practical everyday lives.

We can begin to think differently. What would it look like if God was talking to me on a regular basis? What would it look like if every time I had a God thought, I acted on it? What would it look like if I believed I was assigned to my job to be an intercessor? That’s thinking differently and the times of refreshing or the appointed outpouring will come when we begin to think differently. It’s really a course correction in our lives and then the presence of God comes on the scene. The Holy Spirit moves after we begin to think differently. So, Father, I just pray today that we would begin to have a greater understanding of revival and the move of God in our lives, that we would have a metanoeō to think differently and to be people of presence. In Jesus’ name. Amen.