Revival Fire Quotes

Each of us is born with a box of matches inside us but we can't strike them all by ourselves; we need oxygen and a candle to help. In this case, the oxygen for example, would come from the breath of the person you love; the candle would be any kind of food, music, caress, word, or sound that engenders the explosion that lights one of the matches. For a moment we are dazzled by an intense emotion. A pleasant warmth grows within us, fading slowly as time goes by, until a new explosion comes along to revive it. Each person has to discover what will set off those explosions in order to live, since the combustion that occurs when one of them is ignited is what nourishes the soul. That fire, in short, is its food. If one doesn't find out in time what will set off these explosions, the box of matches dampens, and not a single match will ever be lighted.

The first of many autumn rains smelled smoky, like a doused campsite fire, as if the ground itself had been aflame during those hot summer months. It smelled like burnt piles of collected leaves, the cough of a newly revived chimney, roasted chestnuts, the scent of a man's hands after hours spent in a wood shop.

Don’t dismiss the elements. Water soothes and heals. Air refreshes and revives. Earth grounds and holds. Fire is a burning reminder of our own will and creative power. Swallow their spells. There’s a certain sweet comfort in knowing that you belong to them all.

The Gospel is not an old, old story, freshly told. It is a fire in the Spirit, fed by the flame of Immortal Love; and woe unto us, if, through our negligence to stir up the Gift of God which is within us, that fire burns low.

The wondrous moment of our meeting... Still I remember you appear Before me like a vision fleeting, A beauty's angel pure and clear. In hopeless ennui surrounding The worldly bustle, to my ear For long your tender voice kept sounding, For long in dreams came features dear. Time passed. Unruly storms confounded Old dreams, and I from year to year Forgot how tender you had sounded, Your heavenly features once so dear. My backwoods days dragged slow and quiet -- Dull fence around, dark vault above -- Devoid of God and uninspired, Devoid of tears, of fire, of love. Sleep from my soul began retreating, And here you once again appear Before me like a vision fleeting, A beauty's angel pure and clear. In ecstasy my heart is beating, Old joys for it anew revive; Inspired and God-filled, it is greeting The fire, and tears, and love alive.

When I looked, I knew I might never again see so much of the earth so beautiful, the beautiful being something you know added to something you see, in a whole that is different from the sum of its parts. What I saw might have been just another winter scene, although an impressive one. But what I knew was that the earth underneath was alive and that by tomorrow, certainly by the day after, it would be all green again. So what I saw because of what I knew was a kind of death with the marvellous promise of less than a three-day resurrection.

The most beautiful women in the world are the ones that can stand as rivals on the battlefield of love, yet they can still see each other’s pain. They can set down their swords for only just a moment to acknowledge the beauty of the warrior that stands before them—the passion, the fearlessness and the relentless fire that never gives up. It is in this moment that we learn that it is not the man that sees the worth of the hearts torn by battle in his honor; it is the women who have suffered for so long. Two women that can “see” clearly the worth of the other, even while they grow weary from their wounds is the only kind of beauty that matters. For if there wasn’t two worthy opponents there would be no war in love.

Precautions to be taken in the case Of freak reincarnation: what to do On suddenly discovering that you Are now a young and vulnerable toad Plump in the middle of a busy road, Or a bear cub beneath a burning pine, Or a book mite in a revived divine.

Every tree in the forest has a story to tell. Some of them were burnt but they endured the fire and got revived; some of them were cut, their barks injured, some people pick up their leaves to make medicines for their sicknesses, birds used their leaves to make their nests, etc. Upon all these, the tree is still tree!

It's unbelievable really, the reviving power of a hot bath, a cup of tea and a roaring fire.

Encouragement is a fire of flame. It refreshes the soul and revives the spirit.

When the hammer of logic and the fire of human zeal fail to open the stony heart, unction will succeed.

You coming?" She hesitated, weighing her options. Risk running back down the flaming aisles to find another exit? Or trust the guy who'd been stalking her all afternoon? The fire spread to the nearby shelves. The heat was growing unbearable. "You cut me deep," he said. "You'd actually choose a fiery death over the prospect of my company. I have to admit, that stings a bit.

We are not Protestants any more—just ‘‘non-Catholics’’! Of what and of whom do we protest? Were we half as hot as we think we are, and a tenth as powerful as we say we are, our Christians would be baptized in blood, as well as in water and in fire.

I stepped out to the lawn. I remember the air that night, and how it was so brisk that it could revive the dead. The fragrance of eucalyptus stoking a home fire, the smell of wet grass, of dung fuel, of tobacco, of swamp air, and the perfume of hundreds of roses--this was the scent of Missing. No, it was the scent of a continent.

Friction is necessary. Ease of life leads to complacency and the atrophy of the human will and spirit. Within our struggles lives our strength, within our trials lives our triumphs. Friction creates a platform for change, generates heat and or fervor and creates a motivational charge that gives us an opportunity to be better. A gem cannot be polished without friction and so neither a person without hardships. Friction within and friction without sharpens our senses and revives our internal resolutions. Friction is uncomfortable, hardships are distressing but both are necessary. We cannot light a match without friction nor can we hone steal. Uncomfortable as it may be, our adversity ultimately lights a fire and sharpens our very will to flourish. Today, let us not be discouraged, let us not be bitter in our suffering rather let us be encouraged as we look to our trials as a medium that will eventually make us better.

Conversion can also occur among those who already have the faith. Christians will become real Christians, with less façade and more foundation. Catastrophe will divide them from the world, force them to declare their basic loyalties; it will revive shepherds who shepherd rather than administrate, reverse the proportion of saints and scholars in favor of saints, create more reapers for the harvest, more pillars of fire for the lukewarm; it will make the rich see that real wealth is in the service of the needy; and, above all else, it will make the glory of Christ’s Cross shine out in a love of the brethren for one another as true and loyal sons of God.

do you love to converse about God? Is it delightful to you to speak of his character, of his person, and of his glory?

There are many great churches, ministries, denominations, and movements, yet God will always look for the humblest to begin the next revival.

I'll walk through the fire With my head lifted high And my spirit revived In Your story

Prayer is the Fuel for Revival Fire!

I waited for you through pain, despair, happiness, uncertainty of hope, while waiting to hear – I love you, to burn together, to revive the fire, leaving nothing but laughter in the end.

She had thought of literature all these years (her seclusion, her rank, her sex must be her excuse) as something wild as the wind, hot as fire, swift as lightning; something errant, incalculable, abrupt, and behold, literature was an elderly gentleman in a grey suit talking about duchesses… Orlando then came to the conclusion (opening half-a-dozen books)…that it would be impolitic in the extreme to wrap a ten-pound note round the sugar tongs when Miss Christina Rossetti came to tea…next (here were half-a-dozen invitations to celebrate centenaries by dining) that literature since it all these dinners must be growing very corpulent; next (she was invited to a score of lectures on the Influence of this upon that; the Classical revival; the Romantic survival, and other titles of the same engaging kind) that literature since it listened to all these lectures must be growing very dry; next (here she attended a reception given by a peeress) that literature since it wore all those fur tippets must be growing very respectable; next (here she visited Carlyle’s sound-proof room at Chelsea) that genius since it needed all this coddling must be growing very delicate…

The ugly fact is that altar fires are either out or burning very low. The prayer meeting is dead or dying. By our attitude to prayer we tell God that what was begun in the Spirit we can finish in the flesh. What church ever asks its candidating ministers what time they spend in prayer? Yet ministers who do not spend two hours a day in prayer are not worth a dime a dozen, degrees or no degrees.

What is known is that in 1805 in the dead of night a group of white landowners, chafing at the limits of their own manifest destiny, set fire to the last remaining indigenous village on the teardrop-shaped peninsula that would become Charon County. Those who escaped the flames were brought down by muskets with no regard to age, gender, or infirmity. That was the first of many tragedies in the history of Charon. The cannibalism of the winter of 1853. The malaria outbreak of 1901. The United Daughters of the Confederacy picnic poisoning of 1935. The Danforth family murder-suicide of 1957. The tent revival baptismal drownings of 1968, and on and on. The soil of Charon County, like most towns and counties in the South, was sown with generations of tears. They were places where violence and mayhem were celebrated as the pillars of a pioneering spirit every Founders’ Day in the county square.

The people are the meeting, not the preacher, once his short talk is ended, though his spirit remains to fire them to congregational rather than individual leadership.

when you think, and meditate, and pray, do you find in it a sweet, and tender, and all-satisfying happiness?

Some want to live within the sound of church or chapel bell; I want to run a rescue shop within a yard of hell. 

Occasion revived an illusion of discovery, as if one woke in a strange room to wonder afresh not only where but who one was; to shed assumptions, even certainties.

Some Christians cannot say when they were saved. But I never knew a man yet who was baptized with the Holy Ghost and Fire and was unable to say when it happened.

The Lord sends fire, but He does not abandon His covenant people or wipe them out. Instead, He intends to renew and restore and revive His people.

If the fires go out in the boiler room of the church, the place will still look smart and clean... but it will be cold. The prayer room of the church is the boiler room for the spiritual life.

Haute couture and getting hauter. Fire inches down the foyer wallpaper. Me, for added set dressing I started the fire. Special effects can go a long way to heighten a mood, and it's not as if this is a real house. What's burning down is a re-creation of a period revival house patterned after a copy of a copy of a copy of a mock-Tudor big manor house. It's a hundred generations removed from anything original, but the truth is aren't we all?

Every great vision begins with a heavy burden in the heart of a visionary. Any vision that never begins with a burden is a mere fantasy and will not carry any fire that’s capable of driving a change agent or the revivalist.

I thought of kissing Astrid under the fire escape. I thought of Norm’s rusty microbus and of his father, Cicero, sitting on the busted-down sofa in his old trailer, rolling dope in Zig-Zag papers and telling me if I wanted to get my license first crack out of the basket, I’d better cut my fucking hair. I thought of playing teen dances at the Auburn RolloDrome, and how we never stopped when the inevitable fights broke out between the kids from Edward Little and Lisbon High, or those from Lewiston High and St. Dom’s; we just turned it up louder. I thought of how life had been before I realized I was a frog in a pot. I shouted: “One, two, you-know-what-to-do!” We kicked it in. Key of E. All that shit starts in E.

I go forward, wondering about Finnick, who saved old Mags but will let her eat strange nuts. Who Haymitch has stamped with his seal of approval. Who brought Peeta back from the dead. Why didn’t he just let him die? He would have been blameless. I never would have guessed it was in his power to revive him. Why could he possibly have wanted to save Peeta? And why was he so determined to team up with me? Willing to kill me, too, if it comes to that. But leaving the choice of if we fight to me.

THOSE BORN UNDER Pacific Northwest skies are like daffodils: they can achieve beauty only after a long, cold sulk in the rain. Henry, our mother, and I were Pacific Northwest babies. At the first patter of raindrops on the roof, a comfortable melancholy settled over the house. The three of us spent dark, wet days wrapped in old quilts, sitting and sighing at the watery sky. Viviane, with her acute gift for smell, could close her eyes and know the season just by the smell of the rain. Summer rain smelled like newly clipped grass, like mouths stained red with berry juice — blueberries, raspberries, blackberries. It smelled like late nights spent pointing constellations out from their starry guises, freshly washed laundry drying outside on the line, like barbecues and stolen kisses in a 1932 Ford Coupe. The first of the many autumn rains smelled smoky, like a doused campsite fire, as if the ground itself had been aflame during those hot summer months. It smelled like burnt piles of collected leaves, the cough of a newly revived chimney, roasted chestnuts, the scent of a man’s hands after hours spent in a woodshop. Fall rain was not Viviane’s favorite. Rain in the winter smelled simply like ice, the cold air burning the tips of ears, cheeks, and eyelashes. Winter rain was for hiding in quilts and blankets, for tying woolen scarves around noses and mouths — the moisture of rasping breaths stinging chapped lips. The first bout of warm spring rain caused normally respectable women to pull off their stockings and run through muddy puddles alongside their children. Viviane was convinced it was due to the way the rain smelled: like the earth, tulip bulbs, and dahlia roots. It smelled like the mud along a riverbed, like if she opened her mouth wide enough, she could taste the minerals in the air. Viviane could feel the heat of the rain against her fingers when she pressed her hand to the ground after a storm. But in 1959, the year Henry and I turned fifteen, those warm spring rains never arrived. March came and went without a single drop falling from the sky. The air that month smelled dry and flat. Viviane would wake up in the morning unsure of where she was or what she should be doing. Did the wash need to be hung on the line? Was there firewood to be brought in from the woodshed and stacked on the back porch? Even nature seemed confused. When the rains didn’t appear, the daffodil bulbs dried to dust in their beds of mulch and soil. The trees remained leafless, and the squirrels, without acorns to feed on and with nests to build, ran in confused circles below the bare limbs. The only person who seemed unfazed by the disappearance of the rain was my grandmother. Emilienne was not a Pacific Northwest baby nor a daffodil. Emilienne was more like a petunia. She needed the water but could do without the puddles and wet feet. She didn’t have any desire to ponder the gray skies. She found all the rain to be a bit of an inconvenience, to be honest.

by a change of scene. The master told me to light a fire in the many-weeks’ deserted parlour, and to set an easy-chair in the sunshine by the window; and then he brought her down, and she sat a long while enjoying the genial heat, and, as we expected, revived

What adventures steel suffered, tempered by fire, shrunk by water, tired by use and revived by rest, keeping its vitality for longer than a man could, whether it was worked for centuries, rested in an armoury or left to rust out its virtue at the bottom of a grave!

was exceptional in suffering, which was often by the choice of others, but exceptional in prayer, too, which was by his own choice. If more were strong in prayer, more would be suited to suffer. Prayer develops bone as well as groan, sinew as well as saintliness, fortitude as well as fire.

In Genesis 3 the fire keeps the man who is under the curse away from the tree of life, away from God as the source of life. But in Exodus 3 the flame of fire visits the thornbush and indwells it. This indicates that through the redemption of Christ the very God Himself, the holy One whose holiness excludes sinners from His presence, can come to visit us, to stay with us, and even to dwell in us. Hallelujah, Christ has taken away the curse and has cast down to earth the fire of the Holy Spirit! Now that the curse has been taken away, we are no longer excluded from God as life.

She attempted to lie to herself and to believe his finely spun lies, too, in a desperate act of self-immolation. Yet it did no good, and when they moved toward the bed, she remained lost, alone, bone chilled. It was like trying to revive a fire when water has been poured on it: there was only smoke.

Whenever sinners are not being saved and believers sanctified, there is a lack of Holy Spirit power. When will our theological professors and our ministers learn the all-important lesson so illustrated in the Acts of the Apostles and so verified by all the ages, that the chief factor in ministerial success is the Pentecostal experience, the baptism with the Holy Ghost, the being "filled with the Spirit?

Finnick towing Peeta in off his metal plate. Finnick reviving Peeta after the force field stopped his heart. Mags running into the fog so that Finnick could carry Peeta. The morphling hurling herself in front of him to block the monkey’s attack. The fight with the Careers was so quick, but didn’t Finnick block Brutus’s spear from hitting Peeta even though it meant taking Enobaria’s knife in his leg? And even now Johanna has him drawing a map on a leaf rather than risking the jungle. . . .

It would seem that in twenty-first century Christianity, there are two crosses—the authentic and the counterfeit. The authentic cross calls us to surrender all while the counterfeit pats us on the back and assures us that we can take the world along for the journey. This is why true, sustained revival continues to evade us. We are becoming like the system we have been commissioned to transform. In compromising with the world by embracing another cross, we offer a great disservice to the very people who are desperately in need of God.

That new middle class soon grew concerned about the unruliness of workers, and especially about their drinking. Inspired by a temperance crusade led by the revivalist Lyman Beecher, a group of mill owners formed the Rochester Society for the Promotion of Temperance. Its members pledged to give up all liquor and to stop paying their workers in alcohol. Swept up in the spirit of evangelical revival, they began to insist that their workers join their churches; and they ultimately fired those who did not. In this effort, they were led, principally, by their wives.

I watch him sleep because the tenderness I have for him is what I have left of everything I started with. My brother was like him, frail blond curls framing a guileless face, he slept the same way, back where I started. A tenderness remembered tangentially, revived when I see this pale, yellow-haired man asleep, at rest, defenseless, incomprehensibly trusting death not to come. We are innocence together, before life set in. Sometimes I feel the tenderness for this man now, the real one asleep, not the memory of the baby brother - sometimes I feel the tenderness so acutely - it balances on just a sliver of memory - I feel it so acutely, it is so much closer to pain than to pleasure or any other thing, for instance, in one second when each knows what the other will say or without a thought our fingers just barely touch, I remember then in a sharp sliver of penetration my baby brother, pale, yellow-haired, curls framing a sleeping face while I lay awake during the long nights, one after the other, while mother lay dying. It is consumingly physical, not to sleep, to be awake, watching a blond boy sleeping and waiting for your mother to die.

During a famine, the father and stepmother of Hansel and Gretel abandon them in a forest so that they will starve to death. The children stumble upon an edible house inhabited by a witch, who imprisons Hansel and fattens him up in preparation for eating him. Fortunately Gretel shoves the witch into a fiery oven, and “the godless witch burned to death in a horrible way.” 41 • Cinderella’s stepsisters, when trying to squeeze into her slippers, take their mother’s advice and cut off a toe or heel to make them fit. Doves notice the blood, and after Cinderella marries the prince, they peck out the stepsisters’ eyes, punishing them “for their wickedness and malice with blindness for the rest of their lives.” Snow White arouses the jealousy of her stepmother, the queen, so the queen orders a hunter to take her into the forest, kill her, and bring back her lungs and liver for the queen to eat. When the queen realizes that Snow White has escaped, she makes three more attempts on her life, two by poison, one by asphyxiation. After the prince has revived her, the queen crashes their wedding, but “iron slippers had already been heated up for her over a fire of coals.... She had to put on the red-hot iron shoes and dance in them until she dropped to the ground dead.

She said that each of us is born with a box of matches inside us but we can't strike them all by ourselves; just as in the experiment, we need oxygen and a candle to help. In this case, the oxygen, for example, would come from the breath of the person you love; the candle could be any kind of food, music, caress, words, or sound that engenders the explosion that lights one of the matches. For a moment we are dazzled by an intense emotion. A pleasant warmth grows within us, fading slowly as time goes by, until a new explosion comes along to revive it. Each person has to discover what will set off those explosions in order to live, since the combustion that occurs when one of them is ignited is what nourishes the soul. That fire, in short, is its food. If one doesn't find out in time what will set off those explosions, the box of matches dampens, and not a single match will ever be lighted. If that happens, the soul flees from the body and goes to wander among the deepest shades, trying in vain to find food to nourish itself, unaware that only the body it left behind, cold, and defenseless, is capable of providing that food. That's why it's important to keep your distance from people who have frigid breath. Just their presence can put out the most intense fire, with results we're familiar with. If we stay a good distance away from those people, it's easier to protect ourselves from being extinguished.

E-9 This is not a easy subject to speak on. I could think of many things that were easier to speak on. But, brother, if somebody don't stand out in this sinful, adulternous day that we live in and call the colors, what's going to happen? Somebody has got to speak the thing. Somebody's got to place it before the people. Perhaps Ezra didn't want to do it. But it was in his heart. And when you see a servant of God get so sincere till he's on his face with his hands in the air, praying to God, and blushing because the iniquity of the people, then you're going to see a revival start. A man cannot lay in the Presence of God, a church cannot stay in the Presence of God under repentance unless the Holy Spirit comes down and gives unction and power to start a move of God in there among those people. Just got to be. Show me a man. Show me another Calvin, Knox, Finney, Sankey, or any of those who feels the burden of the people, that'll lay on their face and cry and pray before God. Send us a John Smith of the Baptist Church again, who prayed all night for the iniquity of the people until his eyes would be swelled shut the next morning from weeping, till his wife would lead him to the table and feed him his breakfast out of a spoon. Show me a John Wesley again, a firebrand snatched from the fire. I'll show you a revival. ( "A Blushing Prophet" Preached on Sunday evening, 25th November 1956 at the Branham Tabernacle in Jeffersonville, Indiana, U.S.A - See Paragraph E -9 ).

The mere thought of that one name was nameless medicine, causing her thoughts to cease as she channeled a mesmerizing hate outward, a hate so exalting, so ennobling, that she found she was again capable of lifting her head, a reviving hate that warmed her as surely as though she were sitting before a fire, a hate-filled harbor, a safe hate, a hate beyond mortification and disgust, a redeeming healing consciousness of hate, canceling all new spheres of liability to pain, converting her within the instant into a statue, sitting upright, a divine hate, feeding her, a hate without qualification or appointment, without authority or opposition, an intentional hate, like a true religion without complexity or resolution, a hate that was pure joy.

The temperature was in the nineties, and on hot nights Chicagoans feel the city body and soul. The stockyards are gone, Chicago is no longer slaughter-city, but the old smells revive in the night heat. Miles of railroad siding along the streets once were filled with red cattle cars, the animals waiting to enter the yards lowing and reeking. The old stink still haunts the place. It returns at times, suspiring from the vacated soil, to remind us all that Chicago had once led the world in butcher-technology and that billions of animals had died here. And that night the windows were open wide and the familiar depressing multilayered stink of meat, tallow, blood-meal, pulverized bones, hides, soap, smoked slabs, and burnt hair came back. Old Chicago breathed again through leaves and screens. I heard fire trucks and the gulp and whoop of ambulances, bowel-deep and hysterical. In the surrounding black slums incendiarism shoots up in summer, an index, some say, of psychopathology. Although the love of flames is also religious. However, Denise was sitting nude on the bed rapidly and strongly brushing her hair. Over the lake, steel mills twinkled. Lamplight showed the soot already fallen on the leaves of the wall ivy. We had an early drought that year. Chicago, this night, was panting, the big urban engines going, tenements blazing in Oakwood with great shawls of flame, the sirens weirdly yelping, the fire engines, ambulances, and police cars – mad-dog, gashing-knife weather, a rape and murder night, thousands of hydrants open, spraying water from both breasts.

A hell-fire faith that uses the theatrical techniques of revivalism in order to stimulate remorse and induce the crisis of sudden conversion; a saviour cult that is for ever stirring up what St. Bernard calls the amor carnalis or fleshly love of the Avatar and personal God; a ritualistic mystery-religion that generates high feelings of awe and reverence and aesthetic ecstasy by means of its sacraments and ceremonials, its music and its incense, its numinous darknesses and sacred lights in its own special way, each one of these runs the risk of becoming a form of psychological idolatry, in which God is identified with the ego's affective attitude towards God and finally the emotion becomes an end in itself, to be eagerly sought after and worshipped, as the addicts of a drug spend life in the pursuit of their artificial paradise.

I suppose you think I should be thanking you, for stepping up to assist in reviving me.' 'I have no illusions that the day you thank me for anything, Rhysand, is the day the burning fires of hell go cold.' 'Poetic.' A low snarl. Too easy. It was far too easy to bait him, rile him. And though I reminded myself of the wall, of the peace we needed, I said, 'You saved my mate's life on several occasions. I will always be thankful for that.' I knew the words found their mark. My mate. Low. It was a low blow. I had everything- everything I'd wished for, dreamed of, begged the stars to grant me. He had nothing. Had been given everything and squandered it. He didn't deserve my pity, my sympathy. No, Tamlin deserved what he'd brought upon himself, this husk of a life. He deserved every empty room, every snarl of thorns, every meal he had to hunt for himself.

Less extreme leftists have been no less enthusiastic for war’s potential to transform the home front, Nisbet added. Leftist intellectuals were practically unanimous in favoring U.S. entry into World War I since they understood the opportunity it presented for institutional change at home. Wartime economic planning, they were convinced, would help to erode Americans’ conservative beliefs in the limits of government and the inviolability of private property. The experience of wartime planning never entirely faded from the national consciousness, and certainly not from that of the Left. When the Depression came, the Left jumped at the chance to revive the spirit of government planning it had so assiduously cultivated during the Great War. The rallying cry was “We planned in war”; now, therefore, we shall plan in peace. War symbolism was ubiquitous in the imagery adopted by Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal. “In terms of frequency of use of such symbols by the national government,” wrote Nisbet, “not even Hitler’s Germany outdid our propagandists.

THE TWO CROSSES Many years ago, A. W. Tozer said that whereas the old cross killed the sinner, the new cross redirects the sinner. Consider his timely words: The new cross does not slay the sinner, it redirects him. It gears him into a cleaner and jollier way of living and saves his self-respect. To the self-assertive it says, “Come and assert yourself for Christ.” To the egotist it says, “Come and do your boasting in the Lord.” To the thrill seeker it says, “Come and enjoy the thrill of Christian fellowship.” The Christian message is slanted in the direction of the current vogue in order to make it acceptable to the public. It would seem that in twenty-first century Christianity, there are two crosses—the authentic and the counterfeit. The authentic cross calls us to surrender all while the counterfeit pats us on the back and assures us that we can take the world along for the journey. This is why true, sustained revival continues to evade us. We are becoming like the system we have been commissioned to transform. In compromising with the world by embracing another cross, we offer a great disservice to the very people who are desperately in need of God.

While the Rumanian Radio was serializing (without my permission) How to be an Alien as an anti-British tract, the Central Office of Information rang me up here in London and asked me to allow the book to be translated into Polish for the benefit of those many Polish refugees who were then settling in this country. ‘We want our friends to see us in this light,’ the man said on the telephone. This was hard to bear for my militant and defiant spirit. ‘But it’s not such a favourable light,’ I protested feebly. ‘It’s a very human light and that is the most favourable,’ retorted the official. I was crushed. A few weeks later my drooping spirit was revived when I heard of a suburban bank manager whose wife had brought this book home to him remarking that she had found it fairly amusing. The gentleman in question sat down in front of his open fire, put his feet up and read the book right through with a continually darkening face. When he had finished, he stood up and said: ‘Downright impertinence.’ And threw the book into the fire. He was a noble and patriotic spirit and he did me a great deal of good. I wished there had been more like him in England. But I could never find another.

Napoleon entered Moscow on the morning of Tuesday the 15th, installed himself in the Kremlin (once it had been checked for mines), and went to bed early.* ‘The city is as big as Paris,’ Napoleon wrote to Marie Louise, ‘provided with everything.’10 Ségur recalled how ‘Napoleon’s earlier hopes revived at the sight of the palace’, but at dusk that evening fires broke out simultaneously across the city which could not be contained because of a strong north-easterly equinoctal wind and the fact that the city’s governor, Fyodor Rostopchin, had removed or destroyed all the city’s fire-engines and sunk the city’s fleet of fire-boats before leaving.11 ‘I am setting fire to my mansion’, he wrote to the French on a sign on his own estate at Voronovo outside Moscow, ‘rather than let it be sullied by your presence.’12 (Although he later was fêted for having ordered the burning of Moscow, some of it initiated by criminals he had released from the city’s jails for the purpose, towards the end of his life Rostopchin denied that he had done so, to the bemusement of his friends and family.13) That night the fires were so bright that it was possible to read in the Kremlin without the aid of lamps.

Then Strathcona discussed literature. He paid his tribute to the "Fleurs de Mal" and the "Songs before Sunrise"; but most, he said, he owed to "the divine Oscar." This English poet of many poses and some vices the law had seized and flung into jail; and since the law is a thing so brutal and wicked that whoever is touched by it is made thereby a martyr and a hero, there had grown up quite a cult about the memory of "Oscar." All up-to-date poets imitated his style and his attitude to life; and so the most revolting of vices had the cloak of romance flung about them—were given long Greek and Latin names, and discussed with parade of learning as revivals of Hellenic ideals. The young men in Strathcona's set referred to each other as their "lovers"; and if one showed any perplexity over this, he was regarded, not with contempt—for it was not aesthetic to feel contempt—but with a slight lifting of the eyebrows, intended to annihilate. One must not forget, of course, that these young people were poets, and to that extent were protected from their own doctrines. They were interested, not in life, but in making pretty verses about life; there were some among them who lived as cheerful ascetics in garret rooms, and gave melodious expression to devilish emotions. But, on the other hand, for every poet, there were thousands who were not poets, but people to whom life was real. And these lived out the creed, and wrecked their lives; and with the aid of the poet's magic, the glamour of melody and the fire divine, they wrecked the lives with which they came into contact. The new generation of boys and girls were deriving their spiritual sustenance from the poetry of Baudelaire and Wilde; and rushing with the hot impulsiveness of youth into the dreadful traps which the traders in vice prepared for them. One's heart bled to see them, pink-cheeked and bright-eyed, pursuing the hem of the Muse's robe in brothels and dens of infamy!

Somewhere in between are the rest of us natives, in whom such change revives long-buried anger at those faraway people who seem to govern the world: city people, educated city people who win and control while the rest of us work and lose. Snort at the proposition if you want, but that was the view I grew up with, and it still is quite prevalent, though not so open as in those days. These are the sentiments the fearful rich and the Republicans capitalize on in order to kick liberal asses in elections. The Democrats' 2006 midterm gains should not fool anyone into thinking that these feelings are not still out here in this heartland that has so rapidly become suburbanized. It is still politically profitable to cast matters as a battle between the slick people, liberals all, and the regular Joes, people who like white bread and Hamburger Helper and "normal" beer. When you are looking around you in the big cities at all those people, it's hard to understand that there are just as many out here who never will taste sushi or, in all likelihood, fly on an airplane other than when we are flown to boot camp, compliments of Uncle Sam. Only 20 percent of Americans have ever owned a passport. To the working people I grew up with, sophistication of any and all types, and especially urbanity, is suspect. Hell, those city people have never even fired a gun. Then again, who would ever trust Jerry Seinfeld or Dennis Kucinich or Hillary Clinton with a gun? At least Dick Cheney hunts, even if he ain't safe to hunt with. George W. Bush probably knows a good goose gun when he sees one. Guns are everyday tools, like Skil saws and barbecue grills. So when the left began to demonize gun owners in the 1960s, they not only were arrogant and insulting because they associated all gun owners with criminals but also were politically stupid. It made perfect sense to middle America that the gun control movement was centered in large urban areas, the home to everything against which middle America tries to protect itself—gangbangers, queer bars, dope-fiend burglars, swarthy people jabbering in strange languages. From the perspective of small and medium-size towns all over the country, antigun activists are an overwrought bunch.

But perhaps the best and most memorable way to explain the conflict that arose between honoring traditional honor, and honoring one’s individual psyche, can be conveyed in a story from World War II. In 1943, coming off his dazzling victories in the Sicily campaign, George S. Patton stopped by a medical tent to visit with the wounded. He enjoyed these visits, and so did the soldiers and staff. He would hand out Purple Hearts, pump the men full of encouragement, and offer rousing speeches to the nurses, interns, and their patients that were so touching in nature they sometimes brought tears to many of the eyes in the room. On this particular occasion, as Patton entered the tent all the men jumped to attention except for one, Private Charles H. Kuhl, who sat slouched on a stool. Kuhl, who showed no outward injuries, was asked by Patton how he was wounded, to which the private replied, “I guess I just can’t take it.” Patton did not believe “battle fatigue” or “shell-shock” was a real condition nor an excuse to be given medical treatment, and had recently been told by one of the commanders of Kuhl’s division that, “The front lines seem to be thinning out. There seems to be a very large number of ‘malingerers’ at the hospitals, feigning illness in order to avoid combat duty.” He became livid. Patton slapped Kuhl across the face with his gloves, grabbed him by his collar, and led him outside the tent. Kicking him in the backside, Patton demanded that this “gutless bastard” not be admitted and instead be sent back to the front to fight. A week later, Patton slapped another soldier at a hospital, who, in tears, told the general he was there because of “his nerves,” and that he simply couldn’t “stand the shelling anymore.” Enraged, Patton brandished his white-handled, single-action Colt revolver and bellowed: Your nerves, Hell, you are just a goddamned coward, you yellow son of a bitch. Shut up that goddamned crying. I won’t have these brave men here who have been shot seeing a yellow bastard sitting here crying…You’re a disgrace to the Army and you’re going back to the front lines and you may get shot and killed, but you’re going to fight. If you don’t I’ll stand you up against a wall and have a firing squad kill you on purpose. In fact I ought to shoot you myself, you God-damned whimpering coward.

Wormtail was speaking. His voice shook; he seemed frightened beyond his wits. He raised his wand, closed his eyes, and spoke to the night. “Bone of the father, unknowingly given, you will renew your son!” The surface of the grave at Harry’s feet cracked. Horrified, Harry watched as a fine trickle of dust rose into the air at Wormtail’s command and fell softly into the cauldron. The diamond surface of the water broke and hissed; it sent sparks in all directions and turned a vivid, poisonous-looking blue. And now Wormtail was whimpering. He pulled a long, thin, shining silver dagger from inside his cloak. His voice broke into petrified sobs. “Flesh — of the servant — w-willingly given — you will — revive — your master.” He stretched his right hand out in front of him — the hand with the missing finger. He gripped the dagger very tightly in his left hand and swung it upward. Harry realized what Wormtail was about to do a second before it happened — he closed his eyes as tightly as he could, but he could not block the scream that pierced the night, that went through Harry as though he had been stabbed with the dagger too. He heard something fall to the ground, heard Wormtail’s anguished panting, then a sickening splash, as something was dropped into the cauldron. Harry couldn’t stand to look . . . but the potion had turned a burning red; the light of it shone through Harry’s closed eyelids. . . . Wormtail was gasping and moaning with agony. Not until Harry felt Wormtail’s anguished breath on his face did he realize that Wormtail was right in front of him. “B-blood of the enemy . . . forcibly taken . . . you will . . . resurrect your foe.” Harry could do nothing to prevent it, he was tied too tightly. . . . Squinting down, struggling hopelessly at the ropes binding him, he saw the shining silver dagger shaking in Wormtail’s remaining hand. He felt its point penetrate the crook of his right arm and blood seeping down the sleeve of his torn robes. Wormtail, still panting with pain, fumbled in his pocket for a glass vial and held it to Harry’s cut, so that a dribble of blood fell into it. He staggered back to the cauldron with Harry’s blood. He poured it inside. The liquid within turned, instantly, a blinding white. Wormtail, his job done, dropped to his knees beside the cauldron, then slumped sideways and lay on the ground, cradling the bleeding stump of his arm, gasping and sobbing.

The heart of rock will always remain a primal world of action. The music revives itself over and over again in that form, primitive rockabilly, punk, hard soul and early rap. Integrating the world of thought and reflection with the world of primitive action is *not* a necessary skill for making great rock 'n' roll. Many of the music's most glorious moments feel as though they were birthed in an explosion of raw talent and creative instinct (some of them even were!). But ... if you want to burn bright, hard *and* long, you will need to depend on more than your initial instincts. You will need to develop some craft and a creative intelligence that will lead you *farther* when things get dicey. That's what'll help you make crucial sense and powerful music as time passes, giving you the skills that may also keep you alive, creatively and physically. The failure of so many of rock's artists to outlive their expiration date of a few years, make more than a few great albums and avoid treading water, or worse, I felt was due to the misfit nature of those drawn to the profession. These were strong, addictive personalities, fired by compulsion, narcissism, license, passion and an inbred entitlement, all slammed over a world of fear, hunger and insecurity. That's a Molotov cocktail of confusion that can leave you unable to make, or resistant to making, the lead of consciousness a life in the field demands. After first contact knocks you on your ass, you'd better have a plan, for some preparedness and personal development will be required if you expect to hang around any longer than your fifteen minutes. Now, some guys' five minutes are worth other guys' fifty years, and while burning out in one brilliant supernova will send record sales through the roof, leave you living fast, dying young, leaving a beautiful corpse, there *is* something to be said for living. Personally, I like my gods old, grizzled and *here*. I'll take Dylan; the pirate raiding party of the Stones; the hope-I-get-very-old-before-I-die, present live power of the Who; a fat, still-mesmerizing-until-his-death Brando—they all suit me over the alternative. I would've liked to have seen that last Michael Jackson show, a seventy-year-old Elvis reinventing and relishing in his talents, where Jimi Hendrix might've next taken the electric guitar, Keith Moon, Janis Joplin, Kurt Cobain and all the others whose untimely deaths and lost talents stole something from the music I love, living on, enjoying the blessings of their gifts and their audience's regard. Aging is scary but fascinating, and great talent morphs in strange and often enlightening ways. Plus, to those you've received so much from, so much joy, knowledge and inspiration, you wish life, happiness and peace. These aren't easy to come by.

Nevertheless, it would be prudent to remain concerned. For, like death, IT would come: Armageddon. There would be-without exaggeration-a series of catastrophes. As a consequence of the evil in man...-no mere virus, however virulent, was even a burnt match for our madness, our unconcern, our cruelty-...there would arise a race of champions, predators of humans: namely earthquakes, eruptions, tidal waves, tornados, typhoons, hurricanes, droughts-the magnificent seven. Floods, winds, fires, slides. The classical elements, only angry. Oceans would warm, the sky boil and burn, the ice cap melt, the seas rise. Rogue nations, like kids killing kids at their grammar school, would fire atomic-hydrogen-neutron bombs at one another. Smallpox would revive, or out of the African jungle would slide a virus no one understood. Though reptilian only in spirit, the disease would make us shed our skins like snakes and, naked to the nerves, we'd expire in a froth of red spit. Markets worldwide would crash as reckless cars on a speedway do, striking the wall and rebounding into one another, hurling pieces of themselves at the spectators in the stands. With money worthless-that last faith lost-the multitude would riot, race against race at first, God against God, the gots against the gimmes. Insects hardened by generations of chemicals would consume our food, weeds smother our fields, fire ants, killer bees sting us while we're fleeing into refuge water, where, thrashing we would drown, our pride a sodden wafer. Pestilence. War. Famine. A cataclysm of one kind or another-coming-making millions of migrants. Wearing out the roads. Foraging in the fields. Looting the villages. Raping boys and women. There'd be no tent cities, no Red Cross lunches, hay drops. Deserts would appear as suddenly as patches of crusty skin. Only the sun would feel their itch. Floods would sweep suddenly over all those newly arid lands as if invited by the beach. Forest fires would burn, like those in coal mines, for years, uttering smoke, making soot for speech, blackening every tree leaf ahead of their actual charring. Volcanoes would erupt in series, and mountains melt as though made of rock candy till the cities beneath them were caught inside the lava flow where they would appear to later eyes, if there were any eyes after, like peanuts in brittle. May earthquakes jelly the earth, Professor Skizzen hotly whispered. Let glaciers advance like motorboats, he bellowed, threatening a book with his fist. These convulsions would be a sign the parasites had killed their host, evils having eaten all they could; we'd hear a groan that was the going of the Holy Ghost; we'd see the last of life pissed away like beer from a carouse; we'd feel a shudder move deeply through this universe of dirt, rock, water, ice, and air, because after its long illness the earth would have finally died, its engine out of oil, its sky of light, winds unable to catch a breath, oceans only acid; we'd be witnessing a world that's come to pieces bleeding searing steam from its many wounds; we'd hear it rattling its atoms around like dice in a cup before spilling randomly out through a split in the stratosphere, night and silence its place-well-not of rest-of disappearance. My wish be willed, he thought. Then this will be done, he whispered so no God could hear him. That justice may be served, he said to the four winds that raged in the corners of his attic.

The Invitational Church In the invitational church, the focus is on growth. The goal of the church is to reach out and gather people into the church. Therefore, the church is designed as a consumer-oriented place that takes special care to make sure the red carpet is rolled out for visitors and guests. A highly trained staff puts forth great effort to ensure the very best experience for everyone who comes to the church, with special attention paid to visitors. Invitational churches are often successful at growth because this is a large part of their goal and focus. There are many wonderful aspects of the invitational church. I believe God sovereignly birthed the church growth and seeker movements to help the institutional church get beyond itself and start caring about the millions of people trying to find God who were unable to fit into the institutional church. I deeply appreciate and value invitational churches, because they have come up with a way to re-create a modern day “Court Of The Gentiles” aspect of the temple, a place where God-seekers can come and find God. They have unselfishly set aside their desire for church to be about themselves, and they have designed church services for lost people and seekers. What a refreshing change when invitational churches hit the scene! They have really harvested many people for Jesus and helped thousands of churches become outward-focused. This is a good thing! The difficulty with the invitational church is that the individual is essentially irrelevant. What I mean is, when most people walk into an invitational church, it really doesn’t matter whether or not they show up. Why is this true? Because the invitational church has, by default, set the bar very low to make sure that whosoever will may come. However, the inadvertent message is that the individual is not really needed. Little is asked or required of people, and it is very clear that if they aren’t part of the overall goal to facilitate growth, their gifts may not be needed. To prove the point: where do many of the people who have left institutional churches go? They often sit in the back of invitational churches where they can go unnoticed and where they can have very little asked of them. The invitational church is a great place to recover from the institutional church. Some go on and become involved in meaningful ways. But often over time, two negative things happen to believers who have been in invitational churches. One, they become sedentary, consumer-oriented Christians. Those who joined the institutional church and who wanted to make a difference have all but lost their initial fire. Often they no longer burn with zeal for God and His purposes. Instead, they unwittingly adopt the culture of the invitational church into their Christianity, and they, too, lower the bar to the point where, for all intents and purposes, they are now just showing up at a weekend service. Or two, they begin to feel the need for a more personal, relational church, and they move on to something more personal and meaningful to them.

Jesus says, “Follow me”—and that means all that we have, all that we are, and all that we ever could be belongs to Him. We now live to do His will, with our eyes set on Him, and our life goal is to know Him and make Him known, regardless of cost or consequence. That is normal, according to the New Testament.

A true shepherd leads the way. He does not merely point the way.

Because we have been saved by the Lord Jesus, we are no longer our own, and we do not have the right to live for ourselves. Rather, we have a lifelong debt to Him, and it is our joyful privilege to fulfill that debt, since living for Him is the only way to experience real life, which is eternal life.

But looking at God, I am full of faith and confidence because awakenings have come in our history during times when everything looked bleak and impossible.

It’s high time we quit trying to drag the Word of God down to our level of experience and commitment, trying to conform Scripture to our ways rather than conforming our ways to Scripture. Instead, we need to take hold of everything He has promised and everything He has called us to, and, by His grace, pursue and obey Him until His reality becomes our reality.

To seek the fulfillment of ourselves in God—that is, to seek only the blessings and refreshing of God, but not seek God for himself—this type of spirituality is the enemy of the cross of Christ. —ST. JOHN OF THE CROSS

God must be more valuable to us than anything. We must put God first as opposed to just trying to to squeeze Him into our lives.

the grace that God gives you is grace that comes with responsibility.

The test of how people will steward revival when it comes is revealed in how faithfully they cry out for it before it gets there.

The idea that the Lord wanted me to make prayer such a driving emphasis seemed counterintuitive to positioning the church for revival. How could it be that quite possibly the most unpopular activity in church culture could become a birthing center for a history-making move of the Holy Spirit?

Rest assured, if you feel directionless in your personal walk with God or your congregation when it comes to prayer, ask the Holy Spirit for divine strategy. He wants to make it practical and accessible. This is exactly what He did for our community as we sought to make prayer our great quest.

Recognize the importance of prayer in this hour. We can talk about revival all we want, but historically, landscape-changing revival has been preceded by tenacious men and women of prayer.

Some mistakenly assume that a prayer meeting needs to be spontaneous and unstructured in order to be Spirit-filled and dynamic. Spontaneity is usually birthed in structure. Without structure, there is no direction or vision for where you want to go. One of the problems we have all experienced with prayer meetings is feeling purposeless in our prayer efforts. If there is no system, order, or clear plan for a prayer meeting, it is easy for even the most “spiritual” people to pray for about ten minutes, and afterward feel bored. However, when you start with a plan, you have clear purpose in how to move forward.

If we want to experience a powerful visitation of the Holy Spirit, prayer is not an option—it is a necessity.

I remembered reading that Christ had to purify the temple first. After he’d cleared away all the debris that was not supposed to be there, He could make it a house of prayer where people from all backgrounds and circumstances could come to pray. As the people began to pray, God turned His house into a house of power where He could heal the sick and deliver the troubled in heart. That power would then quite naturally draw praise and thanksgiving from the people, making it a house of praise. Upon reflection, these four steps—purity, prayer, power, and praise—are essential if we are going to see God’s glory revealed in the Church today.

If the way we live outside the building is not characterized by holiness and sacrificial love for the Lord and the lost, that is not revival. And if everything that happens in our revival meetings comes through the hands of human vessels—without the supernatural visitations outside the church, without the abiding presence, without the clear evidence that God Himself has “stepped down from heaven” in power—that is not revival.2

There is hardly anything more fundamental to the life of a believer than repentance—hardly anything more life-giving, more liberating, more glorious. That’s why the devil has sought to discredit it.

There can be no possible return to God without repentance. Repentance speaks of turning back. The notion that repentance is merely a change of mind is a deficient definition. It is a change of mind and heart and life. It is a deliberate turning away from that which is wrong and destructive and a turning back to God and His mercy.

I Am coming to make all things new. I Am coming to revive your soul this year. The Dark Night is over and My Light is breaking forth. I Am coming to alleviate your pain. I shall heal your broken heart and your broken spirit. I shall restore you from this day on - you shall be healed and restored.

My promises shall be known. Come, come, come, come to Me. Sit and worship as I fill you up to send you forth in 2015. Revival starts in you and only can occur from intimacy. Await My promises...await My Mercy.

Whence has it come? All over Wales—I am giving you roughly the result of the questioning of fifty or more persons at random in the week—a praying remnant have been agonizing before God about the state of the beloved land, and it is through that the answer of fire has come.

As one revival convert put it, “I was born again in the fires of revival, and I do not intend to die in the ashes of its memory.

Ananias had come with money from the sale of property. He had presented it to Peter, claiming it to be the full amount of the sale. Instead of praising him, Peter had condemned him. Not for his generosity, which was commendable, but for his lie. “The land was yours,” Peter had told Ananias, his eyes flashing fire. “The money was your right to keep. But you have lied to the Holy Spirit.” And right on the spot, Ananias had collapsed on the cobblestones. They could not revive him, and he was dead. The women struggled to accept what they were hearing. But Philip was not finished with his report. Even more frightening, when Sapphira had arrived, the whole scene was repeated. They were gone. Both of them. In only the matter of a few hours. Peter had ordered some of the men to take them out of the compound and bury them.

At the day’s end, nothing man creates can compare to or substitute for the Spirit’s presence in our midst.

Revival is not something that happened in the 1800s during the Great Awakenings, or in the early 1900s with the Azusa Street Revival, or even in the 1990s during the Brownsville Revival or Toronto Blessing. What we define as revival is God’s pattern for normal Christianity.

we want to give you a practical plan for how you can live on fire for God when your world, your surroundings, your environment, your job, your school, your community, your family, and maybe even your church are not encouraging your walk with Him. Truth be told, regardless of where everyone else is in their pursuit of God, your relationship with Him is your responsibility. I have heard it said that you are as close to God as you want to be. Likewise, you are as revived as you want to be.

Christians decide that revival should not be limited to a special church service, meeting, or certain flavor of spirituality. Revival as an event will not suffice anymore. Events come and go, but a people who keep the fire of God burning on the altar of their hearts actually carry this fire within them…wherever they go. At this point, the fire becomes transferrable.

When the presence of God divinely visits a specific location, it is for the purpose of making a deposit. He wants to expose people to a glimpse of what normal looks like.

Normal is sustained, continuous transformation into the image of Christ, from glory to glory (see 2 Cor. 3:18). Normal is not perfection; it’s pursuit. Normal is living your everyday life under the influence of the Holy Spirit. Normal is saying yes to God in every season and situation, no matter what He asks. Normal is praying for the sick and tormented, and believing that the same power that raised Jesus from the dead lives inside you—and is able to bring wholeness to the afflicted. Normal is going against the rising tide of culture and yielding to the conviction of the Holy Spirit.

We don’t need another Holy Spirit; we need to yield our lives to the One who already lives within us.

Many talk of renewal, revival, and outpouring. The question is where is this nation-shaking move of God going to come from? Are we waiting for something new to come down out from Heaven, or are we pressing in for a great awakening of global proportion?

key to living a lifestyle of sustained, personal revival. It all begins with our willingness to say yes to anything and everything the Lord asks of us. It’s about saying yes to His word, His ways, and His direction. In view of who God is, how could we offer up any other response?

Prayer for revival starts with being so gripped by Heaven’s vision of the Christian life that everything you have embraced as normal becomes unacceptable, and you start pressing in for everything Jesus made available to you. Open your heart. Be expectant. You aren’t just reading words; I am confident you are receiving an impartation. Get ready to take your place as one who keeps the fire burning!

Only when we honestly confront our present condition can we truly cry out for holy visitation and divine transformation. This cry is awakened as we simply discover that where we currently are is not what God has made available to us.

Today, we have a Christianity made easy as an accommodation to an age that is unwilling to face the implication of Calvary, and the gospel of “simply believism” has produced a harvest of professions which have done untold harm to the cause of Christ. —DUNCAN CAMPBELL Do you have a hunger for God? If we don’t feel strong desires for the manifestation of the glory of God, it is not because we have drunk deeply and are satisfied. It is because we have nibbled so long at the table of the world. Our soul is stuffed with small things, and there is no room for the great. —JOHN PIPER The world has lost the power to blush over its vice; the Church has lost her power to weep over it. —LEONARD RAVENHILL