revival

revival - to me - I am seeking a newest a permanent change toward His Likeness - grateful for the revival services that "end" this evening.

In praying and preparing for REVIVAL services, I think all of us say that you can't really schedule True Revival, but we can set aside time to press in and petition and create time and space for us to seek and receive. We can intercede, call upon Him, petition and worship. We can purify our hearts. We can fast and pray. We can come into a certain time with humble hearts of confession and Worship and bring to our God Thanksgiving, Honor, Worship, and Praise. We can look toward our God and press in. God responds to these things. I don't know of a single time in scripture when He did not respond to pure hearts doing the things above.

I can not say how pure my heart has been for the Lord reveals resistance and a division in my heart, but I can honestly say that I love my Lord my God so very much and though I am saddened by the disobedience, resistance, and division that still remain in me and the lack of fruit (and my barrenness in the Spirit). I can say without hesitation that I LOVE GOD so much! For who He is mostly. Because the Who He Is is very significant to me. I love HIM because He loved me first.... Okay all that said and established.

Sunday through this evening, has been/is the time set apart as Revival Services at Bethesda Church of God. It has been a powerful time of Worship and Teaching and of Seeking God. God has wonderfully and graciously responded.

But there is a desperateness in me, that wants it to be such a newness and reality. For I am far too extremely aware of the sinful nature in me and how powerless I am in myself my flesh alone to overcome it.

---pause---prayer---searching the scriptures---Romans 7-8---selah---

I do KNOW without any doubt that God reigns over all things. That the power of His Love and Resurrection and Redemption far exceeds the force of sin. I like what Paul says and how it is worded in English by the New American Standard Version, "we overwhelmingly conquer through Him who loved us".

(Speaking here about the sufferings of our present time...)
(16) The Spirit Himself testifies with our spirit that we are children of God,
(17) and if children, heirs also, heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ,
if indeed we suffer with Him so that we may also be glorified with Him.
(18) For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy
to be compared with the glory that is to be revealed to us.
...
(37) But in all these things we overwhelmingly conquer through Him who loved us


I want to live everyday FULL of the Spirit, abiding in the Spirit. The Father, The Spirit, and Jesus Himself, my God, all know of the war within and how I am longing for my full adoption, when I will be fully made in His likeness. But for now, for this time of working out my salvation with the fear and trembling, it is comforting and empowering to be reminded this morning that it is BOTH the SPIRIT and CHRIST JESUS who intercede for us before our HEAVENLY FATHER who at work in us to will and to act according to his good purpose. I can be confident and assured of an overwhelming victory in God, for what or who can stand against Him. It is the POWER of the LOVE of God which saved us and is changing us into His likeness and not only that but intercedes for us. It is indeed the Power of the Resurrection seeing to completion, the work He began in each of us for His Glory and Renown, and by the Law of the Spirit begun by the Work of the Cross and Resurrection.

(((I am really running late to work now))))

PRAYER:
Lord, My God, who I bow humbly before, with a trembling spirit I ask for Your Spirit to fill me up more and more. I do want to be found worthy of sharing in your sufferings becoming like you until death and so somehow to attain to the resurrection from the dead. I thank you for your Love and Power and Testimony that I am indeed Your Child, nothing can or will stand against that power and the long reach of it. I walk in that confidence crying Abba Father. I will focus not on my flesh and it's nastiness still waging war in me, but aware of it's presence, I seek to focus in on the Power of God dwelling in me ... that is ... You Spirit. I bow my sin/flesh driven will before you and ask again Fill me to the Fullest with You, and I choose to abide in you, being driven and obedient to Your Spirit within me. I ask all this and more for my family (home, of origin, of bond of heart, of community, of my church home, of my marketplace). By the blood of the Lamb of God and in and by the Name of Jesus Christ. AMEN

Philippians 2:12-16 (Amplified Bible)
(12) Therefore, my dear ones, as you have always obeyed [my suggestions], so now, not only [with the enthusiasm you would show] in my presence but much more because I am absent,
work out (cultivate, carry out to the goal, and fully complete) your own
salvation with reverence and awe and trembling (self-distrust, with serious
caution, tenderness of conscience, watchfulness against temptation, timidly
shrinking from whatever might offend God and discredit the name of
Christ).
(13) [Not in your own strength] for it is God Who is all the
while effectually at work in you [energizing and creating in you the power and
desire], both to will and to work for His good pleasure and satisfaction and
delight.
(14) Do all things without grumbling and faultfinding and
complaining [against God] and [questioning and doubting [among
yourselves],
(15) That you may show yourselves to be blameless and
guiltless, innocent and uncontaminated, children of God without blemish
(faultless, unrebukable) in the midst of a crooked and wicked generation
[spiritually perverted and perverse], among whom you are seen as bright lights
(stars or beacons shining out clearly) in the [dark] world,
(16) Holding out [to it] and offering [to all men] the Word of Life, so that in the
day of Christ I may have something of which exultantly to rejoice and glory in
that I did not run my race in vain or spend my labor to no purpose.