Psalm chapter 85. And that is the message tonight. Preparing for renewal. And I wanna begin by reading a prayer for revival. This is a prayer that I think fits our church. It's a prayer that fits our nation. And it's a prayer that fits our conference coming up next week. And this psalm, chapter 85, it was probably written after the Jews had come back from their 70 years of captivity in Babylon. And I would encourage you to go over to the book of Ezra and read Ezra, chapter 6. 7, 8, and 9. Those are very appropriate passages. When we think about revival, when we think about renewal, that's what these people had just come from. And when you read Ezra, specifically chapter 6, and you read some of the prophets like Haggai and Zechariah and Malachi, you'll learn that life was very difficult for the Jewish people in the land, and they didn't always obey the ways of the Lord. Sometimes they, what we call, backslide. They had fallen back. They had fallen into sin, and so they needed a fresh start. They needed revival. They needed renewal in their lives. The Scottish preacher George H. Morrison, he said, the victorious Christian life is a series of new beginnings. And he's right. We've always got to make room for a new beginning. And this psalm, these verses that we'll see and then the other verses we look at tonight, it'll give us some instructions for renewal. I think that we need to prepare for the meeting next week. Some people think that you wait until that meeting begins and that that's when you begin trying to get things right in your life, but it's always best if you prepare ahead of time for a meeting like that, and instead of waiting until then, be prepared ahead of time for the Lord to do something in your heart before we get to it. Look at verse number four, the psalmist cries out in verse number four of Psalm chapter 85, Turn us, O God of our salvation, and cause thine anger toward us to cease. Wilt thou be angry with us forever? Wilt thou draw out thine anger to all generations? And then here's the famous revival verse. Wilt thou not revive us again that thy people may rejoice in thee? Show us thy mercy, O Lord, and grant us thy salvation. Now I want you to notice that this prayer, it's not really a prayer to change the world first. This was a prayer to change God's people first. Praying for revival, preparing for renewal, having a meeting like we're going to have next week. It's not just about asking for an event, but we're seeking the God of our salvation to renew us, to revive us, to refresh us. And so that's what we want to set our hearts on tonight, preparing for revival by preparing ourselves. preparing ourselves. The word revive, it means to live again, to be renewed. And so we talk about having a renewed conference, revival, those go hand in hand. What the people of God here needed in Psalm chapter 85, they needed that new beginning, they needed that fresh start, they needed the work of Christ at work in their lives. And that's the same thing that we need within us. The people of God, they had read, you go to the book of Ezekiel, you remember reading about the dry bones that lived once again? They had no doubt read or heard Ezekiel's message about those dry bones. And so the people of God, they're longing for that wind of God to blow by and to revive them again. And that's what we need in our homes. That's what we need in our lives. And this is not something that we can manufacture ourselves. We cannot manufacture revival tonight or next week. We can't work something up. That's not what this is about. It only comes from the Holy Spirit of God. So let's pray and then we'll jump into a few simple thoughts tonight. Lord, we ask that you would give your blessing to the reading of your word this evening. Lord, I pray that you would just move into our hearts, Lord, help us to take the... Subject of revival and renewal in our lives, seriously, Lord, help us to have a desire for that. Lord, stir those flames, let the wind of heaven come by our way. Lord, allow that to fan those revival flames, send that wind, send that oxygen that we need, that we would fall in love with you again, that we would be reignited, that we would be passionate about you again, Lord. We need you in our homes, in our lives, in our church, in our communities. So Lord, we pray that you would help us as we prepare for renewal. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen. We'll have four nights of preaching. Sunday night, Monday night, Tuesday night, Wednesday night. We'll have four nights of preaching with JD Weedo. There'll be special music. There'll be opportunities together as we seek God. But as we just said, this is not something we can manufacture. Revival is not automatic. just because we put this on the calendar. Just because we have this conference every other year. It's not a guarantee. I've told our teams before, it's interesting that two people can come to the exact same service, sit and hear the same songs that are sung, hear the same preaching side by side, and walk out the door and have two totally different experiences where one person thinks, man, that was the greatest service I've ever been a part of. That was amazing to see what God did. And the other person that was right beside them can walk out the door and think, man, that was the most boring hour and a half I've ever spent in my life. What's the difference? Our heart? How we've prepared? I always try to encourage the teenagers when we talk to them, hey, when you come to church, come prepared. There's some things that we need to do before we walk through the door. I've encouraged friends with this thought before as well, that you prepare yourself before you come to the service. If you will read Ezra 6 through 9 this week, it will walk you through how the people of God prepared. And there were some things that they did before God began to work. There were some steps that they took to make that possible. So next week, you can come to church Sunday night, Monday night, Tuesday night, Wednesday night. You can hear the songs. You can sing the songs. You can listen to testimonies. You can hear the preaching. J.D. Weedle always cries when he preaches. You can see the tears, but you can be unchanged by all of that. Or you can be prepared. You can walk into the door, sit in the services, and next week can be, if I can use this phrase, a turning point in your life. I hear a lot of talk about turning points right now. It can be a spiritual turning point for you. Psalm 85, verse number 6, that's a prayer. Will thou not revive us again that thy people may rejoice in thee? Now, revival, we've already said we can't manufacture that. Revival is God's work. That's his job. But it's our responsibility to be prepared. It's our responsibility to be prepared for it. And so right now across the country, people are talking about revival. They're talking, is there revival taking place in our country? Many have asked for years, would we ever see a national revival? I don't know. Before we leave tonight, Brother Paul has an article I want to give you this evening that Evangelist Scott Polly wrote a couple of days ago on revival and just some thoughts on what's taking place in our country. And I think it will be helpful to us going into our Renew conference next week. But people are talking about revival. It's at least on their mind. Is there a spiritual awakening? It's possible that there is. It's possible. We know that last week the gospel was proclaimed by multiple people, very high level people, plainly. The word of God was given, the gospel went out to millions and maybe upwards of billions of people at this point have heard it. Was everybody that spoke 100% sincere? I don't know their hearts, but I know what the Apostle Paul said. Scott Pauly addresses it, that whether or not everything that we see is genuine, we'll leave that up to God. It will work itself out if it's genuine or if it's not, that remains to be seen. But we know that the gospel went forth last week. Revival seeds, spiritual awakening, people seem to have an interest more in spiritual things right now than maybe they've had in a while. And so as a church, we have an opportunity to get in on maybe what God is doing. Sometimes we think about revival and maybe we want to put it in our own little box, but maybe revival is going to take place differently than the way we think that it might happen. We need to be ready though, if that's what's taking place, we need to be people, we need to be a church that is prepared for that spiritual awakening. Our church has to be in a state of revival for that to take place. We sing that song sometimes at the invitation, do not pass me by. If this is a moment, we're in our country, there's an opportunity for spiritual things to be taking place. We don't want to miss out on what's going on because our hearts are apathetic, because our hearts are cold, because our hearts are calloused. Revival is not just for us to feel good. It's for us to be renewed so that we can make heaven more crowded. That's been a phrase I've heard used quite a bit in the last week. We want to make heaven more crowded. I like that idea. Let's fill up heaven. And that's why this week matters. I shared that quote this morning from Vance Havner. Revival is God's people falling in love with Jesus all over again. That's what we want next week. We want to fall in love with Jesus again. But we ought not to wait until next week to start. We ought to be preparing ourselves now, ready for that to take place. Not just an event. We don't want to just be stirred. Sometimes we hear that song that's been sung in our church. Stirred, but not changed. We're not just wanting God to stir us. There's a lot of people in the last week that have been stirred emotionally and maybe spiritually. Will they change? There's a lot of Christians, they're talking about, man, we've got to get off the sideline, we've got to do something, we've got to get more engaged. And I hope that they do, but it's more than just a political thing. It's more than just talking about being spiritual. It's about walking through the doors of the church, being with our brothers and sisters in Christ, getting into the Word of God, than going out and actually telling somebody about it. We can't just post on social media about this spiritual awakening, about this revival that may be taking place. So revival is not a meeting. A revival is a movement of the Holy Spirit as he moves through the lives of his people. And so there's no substitute for the move of God. There's no substitute for the move of God. And the flesh can never produce a spiritual awakening. G. Campbell Morgan, old evangelist, he once wrote, we cannot organize revival, but we can set our sails to catch the wind from heaven when God chooses to blow upon his people once again. That's what we want to do next week. We want to have our sails set so that way if there is a spiritual awakening taking place in our country, if there is an opportunity for revival, that we've got our sails set so that as that wind from heaven blows, that it catches us and it moves us right along with it. Now the hardest part about revival isn't God sending it. God can send revival, can't he? That's not the hard part. He's more than able. The spirit that took the early church, that breathed on the early church, that caused the early church to turn the world upside down for Christ, that same Holy Spirit that shook those people can breathe fresh life into our lives and into our church and into our community and into our nation anytime that he chooses to. The real challenge is our hearts. Are we prepared? Are we ready? And so the biggest work is the work of preparation. The biggest work is the work of preparation. That's what we want to give ourselves to this week is being prepared for next week. If we'll give ourselves to that, we'll see God move. So how do we prepare our hearts for renewal? I'm going to give you four simple things. There could be more that's added to this. This is just four that came to my mind. First, we prepare by seeking God in repentance. We've got to have clean hands. We've got to have a pure heart. Flip over. You're in the book of Psalms. Flip over Psalm chapter 24. and look at verse number three, verse number four with me, because as we said, revival doesn't start out there with the world, okay? Revival doesn't start out there. That's not what we're trying to do next week. We gotta start in here with the church. Verse number three of Psalm 24, who shall ascend into the hill of the Lord? Or who shall stand in his holy place? He that hath clean hands and a pure heart. As we talk about revival, renewal, It means to live again. So it means that it has to be something that already had life to begin with, right? That's why maybe what we see taking place in our country might be better defined as a spiritual awakening. Maybe God's people are getting revived, but there's definitely a spiritual awakening going on to those who are lost. But revival directly deals with God's people. Next week is about God's people. renewal, revival. And so it's to restore what was alive. And so before we can help the lost, we've got to get revived in here first. We got to be stirred up in here. Scott Polly, he said in the article that I'm giving you this evening, He says when revival comes there will be a great gospel advance because a revived church is a witnessing church. So it's not that we don't care about the lost, but more than it just being an evangelistic meeting next week, it's about us getting revived and that in turn causes us to be a witness. We go out because of that. And so when believers get right, Scott Pauly says, when believers get right with God, when believers get right with one another, you can always rest assured more people will be saved because of that. And so we start with repentance. Now, the wickedness, it's easy to look at the news, it's easy to get on social media, and we can see the wickedness in our culture really easy, can't we? It's easy to point out all the deception, all of the sin, all of that stuff that's going on out there. But you know the most difficult wickedness to see? It's not what's taking place out there, it's the stuff that's in my own life. I'm kind of blind to it. I can point out Al's faults, I can point out Al's sins, but I don't want to point out mine. We've got to see our sin as God sees it. And when we allow that to just kind of subtly creep its way into our lives and into our home, it's a roadblock to revival. It's a roadblock to renewal. And so we have to start by seeking God in repentance. What is repentance? Some people think that when we're confessing our sin, if we confess our sin, He's faithful and just to forgive us. So if we're seeking God in repentance, that means that we've just got to be down on our knees and we're begging God to forgive us, right? No. What it means to confess our sin, it literally means that we say about our sin what God says about it, that we agree with Him about it. Yeah, I see my sin the same way that God sees it. I agree with what He thinks about my sin. And then I'm going to confess it, repent, I forsake it, I turn from it. It's a lot easier to confess somebody else's sin standing a hundred yards away though. But next week if we want revival, if we want renewal in our lives, in our church, we've got to start by making sure that we get our sin confessed, that we repent of our sin. our pride, our lust, our arrogance, our stubbornness, our rebellion. What's the song? We played it in the car this week. Harrison likes to listen to music. So we had that little kids song that was playing last week. It says, it's not my brother, it's not my sister, but it's me, oh Lord, standing in the need of prayer. That's what we're talking about is confessing my sin. I don't need to confess somebody else's. I need to confess mine. I need to get mine right. It's like trying to plant a seed in a field full of rocks and weeds. Until that ground is broken up, nothing grows. A good seed, you can scatter the good seed all over ground like that. The showers of blessings can come and they can fall. But if we've got rocks and weeds and thorns and thistles and junk, it doesn't do much good to throw the seed out there. What does the book of Hosea tell us? Hosea chapter 10 verse number 12, sow to yourselves in righteousness, reap in mercy, break up your fallow ground for it is time to seek the Lord till he come and rain righteousness upon you. As we talk about seeking God in repentance for the conference next week, we're talking about breaking up that fallow ground in our lives so that way when the preaching comes, when we hear four nights of preaching, it'll fall into good soil. John Hyde. He became such a man of prayer that history knows him as Praying Hyde. Back in 1904, he posed five questions to a group of prayer partners and I put these five questions on the back sheet that Paul's going to hand out here in a little bit. I would encourage you to read through these to think about them. They're kind of sobering. We got to answer these questions for ourselves. I'm going to read them to you first though. He asked his prayer partners They agreed that they would pray until a spiritual awakening came. He asked them this question, are you praying for quickening in your own life, your fellow workers, your church? Are you longing for greater power of the Holy Spirit? And are you convinced that you cannot go on without this power? You know, I think a lot of times we feel like we can do pretty fine in our own strength and our own power. reminds me back to the book of Exodus when God told Moses, hey, you can go on but I'm not going with you. You remember what Moses said? Moses told God, we're not going forward without you. It would be kind of pointless to move forward if God's not with us to go on. So are you longing for a greater power of the Holy Spirit? Are you convinced that you can't go on without this power? Or, oh, I can get through life fine on my own. He asked them, will you pray that you will not be ashamed of Jesus? Do you believe that prayer is the great means for securing this spiritual awakening? And will you set apart a half hour each day to pray for this awakening. You do imagine if as believers in this church, if we took those five questions and we were serious about that for the next seven days as we get ready for our revival next week, if we were to take 30 minutes a day and to pray and to ask God for these things, might we be prepared to experience renewal next week? This week ask God to search your heart We're talking about seeking God in repentance to be prepared. Let's get those things out of our lives, maybe some things that we tolerate, maybe some bitterness that we have, grudges that we've held on to, habits that we excuse. Before we ask God to send revival, we've got to clear the ground. We've got to break things up. You're still in the book of Psalm, flip over to chapter 139. We can pray with David. I think sometimes it's good to just pray through Scripture. Jesus prayed Scripture. David said in verse number 23, Search me, O God, and know my heart. Try me, and know my thoughts, and see if there be any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting. That's a bit of a scary prayer to pray, isn't it? God, start bringing out those things. Take your spotlight and shine it into the corners of my life and show me the things that need to get out. It's a little scary to pray that, but if we want to experience renewal next week, we've got to prepare by seeking God with repentance. Charles Tindley, he was a Methodist preacher, Brother Paul. back in the late 1800s, early 1900s. He was born a slave, his parents were slaves. He taught himself how to read and he became a very powerful preacher and hymn writer and one of his most well-known hymns is a great revival hymn. The story goes that after facing hardships and temptations in ministry, Charles Tindley prayed that there would be nothing, that there would be no trial, no test, no temptation, no sin, no ambition that would ever come between him and Christ. And out of that prayer, he began to write down these words, and sometimes we sing it. We may sing it next week in this revival meeting that we have. Nothing between my soul and the Savior not of this world's delusive dream. I have renounced all sinful pleasure. Jesus is mine. There's nothing between, nothing between my soul and the savior so that his blessed face may be seen. Nothing preventing the least of his favor. Keep the way clear. Let nothing between. We need to have repentance. We don't want anything between us and Jesus next week. If we're gonna have renewal next week, if we're gonna be ready to catch a wind of heaven, of revival that's blowing through, there can be nothing between. How else do we prepare? Number two, saturate yourself in the word. Saturate yourself in the word. We need to have a listening ear. Flip over to Psalm chapter 119. This is the longest chapter in the Bible, it's the middle chapter of the Bible, and it's an entire chapter dedicated to the Bible. The entire chapter is about the Word of God. Verse number 25 says, My soul cleaveth unto the dust, quicken thou me according to thy word. The psalmist knew that revival comes when God breathes life into his people through his word. The Word of God. If your Bible is closed Monday through Saturday, you'll be hard-pressed to get much out of the preaching on Sunday. If your Bible is closed Monday through Saturday, and you show up for the revival meeting next week, it will be a little more difficult for that to get through to you. But when you're already feeding on the Word of God throughout the week, when you're meditating on the Word of God, when it's on your mind and you're reading verses here or there, you sit down and read a chapter, you take time and read a book, You spend time in devotion and you listen to maybe other devotional podcasts and preaching throughout the week, and the Word of God is what is central in your life, and it's a habit, not just on Sunday, but seven days a week, to have the Word of God out, saturating yourself with His Word, your heart's more tender. When you hear the preaching next Sunday night and Monday night and Tuesday night and Wednesday night, your ears will be open and the seed of God's truth can take root quickly. Ever been outside on a hot summer day working, Sean? Ever been out in your truck or something? You get some water. You probably don't just take a little sip here or there. You're probably ready to kind of down a bottle of water, aren't you? Last week in Colorado, we were out. You could call it hiking, but it really wasn't. It was a very slow pace on a trail. We went about two miles, but still, we were about 9,000 feet elevation there. You get a little bit winded, and then you got a little two-year-old who doesn't want to carry his own weight around and wanted to ride in the, what do you call that thing, not the shopping cart, but a stroller, there we go, technical term. You got to push that stroller up some of those hills. When you got to the top of it, I was ready to have a sip of water. And you want to just kind of turn it up and drink it. That's how we ought to approach the scriptures. We ought to be thirsty for the truth, ready to just drink it in. My soul pants after Thee, O God, like a heart pants after the water brooks, the psalmist says. Blessed are they who hunger and thirst after righteousness, Jesus said in Matthew chapter 5. Emotionalism, hype, or even large crowds, those things don't prove that God is at work. We might have a packed out building one night next week and it might not be packed, but the size of the crowd and the amount of emotion that takes place is not going to be the test of whether or not we experience revival, okay? The test of whether or not we have revival, what proves that is if we're aligning our lives with the Word of God, if we're praying according to His will, if we're following what He wants us to do, then we can have revival whether the crowd's big, whether the crowd's small, whether there's a lot of emotion, whether there's snot and tears and everything being slung or not. One of the most powerful sermons ever preached, Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God by Jonathan Edwards was not one that you would expect to have been delivered the way that it was. He stood up and in manuscript form read word for word from his manuscript the message. There was no screaming, yelling, climbing on top of the pulpit, swinging from the chandeliers. But as he read that manuscript, the power of God fell in the room, and they say that those that were in the room that were lost were holding on for dear life, afraid that they would drop into the pits of hell before they could call on Christ for salvation. So there doesn't have to be emotionalism, there doesn't have to be a bunch of hype. That's fine if that takes place, but that's not the telltale sign of whether or not we have revival next week. True revival produces holiness. If you come out of next week and say, man, I'm aligning my life, there's some things that I'm changing in my life that I have forgotten, I've fallen in love with Jesus again, and I need to realign my life to the truth of God's Word, and you start going this direction instead of that direction, there's a sign that you've had some renewal in your life. Think about that soil before planting. It needs water. God's Word is that water. If the Word of God, if you will saturate yourself, I've encouraged you to read Ezra 6, 7, 8, and 9 this week. There's some other revival passages I put on the back of the handout for you tonight. If you'll spend time in God's Word this week, allowing the water of God's Word to just kind of soak that ground after we've repented, after we've broken it up, After we allow the water of God's Word to kind of just fall on that fallow ground, then next week on Sunday night, Monday night, Tuesday night, Wednesday night, when we hear the preaching of the Word of God from the evangelist, the seed won't just bounce off, it'll go deep, it'll begin to bear fruit. Saturate yourself in God's Word this week. Spend time reading God's Word this week. or listen to God's Word this week. Consume God's Word in some form this week. A lot of times when I'm driving down the road, I'll put my audio Bible on and listen to it. But get the Word of God into your life this week. That's why Jesus said in Matthew 13, the Word is the seed. And in these revival meetings of the preaching, that's the sowing. But the condition of your heart, whether it's stony, whether it's thorny or good soil, it's going to be determined before you ever walk through the door next week. The great Welsh revival of 1904, 1905, tens of thousands were converted in just a few months. But the fire of that revival, it didn't start with big meetings. It started in a very small group of believers that met around God's word, they got serious about praying together, they confessed, they repented, and they began praying scripture together. And that small work lit a fire, and then as a result thousands of people were saved. So this week commit to saturate yourself in the Word of God, read it slowly, meditate on it, pray over it. Don't just skim through a chapter and check off a box. You may only read five verses but you'd be better off to read those five verses and chew on it, meditate on it, than to just skim through a chapter and not have any clue what you read. I've given you some suggestions for some passages to read this week that might help you. When you come to God's Word, we're there in Psalm 119, look at verse number 18. This would be a good prayer to pray before you begin to read God's Word. The psalmist says, Open thou mine eyes, that I may behold wondrous things out of thy law. God, open my eyes, help me to understand what I'm reading. Allow the Holy Spirit to illuminate that, Lord. Open my eyes, give me something today. Number three, how do we prepare? We prepare by seeking God in prayer. We need to have an open heart. Second Chronicles chapter 7 verse number 14, you're familiar with the passage. If my people which are called by my name shall humble themselves and pray and seek my face, then will I hear from heaven. James chapter 4 verse number 8, draw an eye to God and he will draw an eye to you. So many times Christians say And we're praying for revival in our church, we're praying for revival in our country. Interestingly, when you read through the Word of God, we're never given a command to pray for revival. We are commanded to seek God though. When we seek God, when we find Him, when we get Jesus, we'll have revival. So yes, we need to pray, but not just for an event. No, we need to be praying that the presence of God Himself will move in next week. That He'll fill the room and that when God's presence shows up, that the revival won't be far behind it. That changes how we pray. Instead of just praying, Lord, send revival, what if we changed our prayer to, Lord, give us Yourself. Lord, give us Your presence. Give us a glimpse of your glory next week, Lord. Draw us near it, help us to empty us of ourselves so we can be filled with more of you. If that's our prayer, revival comes. Roy Hession, he saw great movements of God, wrote a wonderful book on it. He once said, when Jesus is enough, you'll have your revival. The Hebrides Islands in the late 1940s, believers there began to pray for God to work. Not just some event, but for God to move. It was a very spiritually dark place, resistant to the gospel. Missionaries had struggled for decades with very little fruit there. But on the island of Lewis, in the Scottish Hebrides, there were two elderly sisters, Peggy and Christine Smith. One of them was blind, the other was crippled. They began to faithfully pray for God to work in their home. They began to pray from Isaiah chapter 44 verse number 3, I will pour water upon him that is thirsty and floods upon the dry ground. And with these two sisters, a work began to take place. People began to humble themselves. They began confessing their sin. They began seeking God and the Spirit of God fell with unusual power and a revival started that lasted for over three years and waves of revival for generations beyond that. People, they said, people would be walking along the roads, out in fields, in barns, in homes, that would just suddenly fall under conviction of their sin and drop to their knees and begin praying to God, asking for His forgiveness and for His mercy. There's accounts that are told of ships that would dock in the harbor where sailors, before they had ever heard any sermon, that sailors said that as they just pulled into the port, that they just felt this overwhelming sense of conviction on them. They fell to their knees and cried out for mercy from God and they'd get off and they'd run into somebody there that was a believer and begin to share the gospel with them. The presence of God was so real that it was gripping hearts before a preacher ever spoke. In village meetings, they would get together at the end of the day. They'd go to each other's homes, cottages, barns. They'd begin to have prayer meetings and they'd pray till three or four in the morning together. weeping, crying, singing, because they just were overwhelmed by the presence of God that was taking place in their community. They were seeking God. And when God came down, their entire community was changed. People cried out. See, that's not something you can schedule. Put that on the calendar. but it was the presence of God that was filling his people. You know, that's what we need. It's not gonna be like next week, like we've ordered an Amazon package and one of those drones fly over with revival in it and just kind of drop it down on us. No, revival is when God is real to his people again. And if we'll seek him in prayer, we'll have all that we need. Here's the last one. We need to prepare by serving with expectation. We need to have a willing spirit. Flip over to Psalm chapter 100. Verse number two, serve the Lord with gladness. Come before his presence with singing. When we walk in through the doors next week, Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, revival won't end at the altar. Revival doesn't have to end at the back of the auditorium. Revival is going to spill over into action. A revived church, we said earlier, is a witnessing church. And when God stirs our hearts, it ought to move our hands and our feet, and we won't be a passive church. We need to pray that God will help us to awake out of our apathy, awake out of our lethargy, and to get back to serving Him. Think about it, when the Spirit was poured out in Acts chapter 2, The believers didn't just sit in the upper room celebrating what God had done. No, what did they do? They moved to the streets, they began witnessing and boldly proclaiming the gospel, they began serving, they began sharing because revival always leads to mission. During that Welsh revival, 1904-1905, we mentioned Thousands were saved, churches were packed out. But one of the most striking things about the movement, about that revival that takes place when you read about it from history, is how it changed daily life. Judges, they said they had no cases to try anymore because crime plummeted. Those people had gotten right with God, they'd gotten saved. Guys that were drinking, the liquor stores shut down and the taverns were dry. They went out of business because nobody was consuming alcohol. Those who were accustomed to cursing and their mouth filled with things like that suddenly had no desire to curse anymore. Their communities, instead, they were marked by singing. You would hear hymns being sung up and down the streets. Why? Because there's something that comes when revival takes place. There's action. And so if we want to prepare for revival, don't come next week just as spectators. Don't show up next week like you're going to a Razorback football game. There's not much to be excited about if you go to one of those, is there, Al? Man, ain't got no reason to stand up and cheer, nothing to look forward to. Most people, if you went to the game yesterday, most of the crowd got up and left at halftime. They'd already seen enough. Don't show up next week with that kind of attitude that I'm gonna come and sit and watch. No, come serving with expectation. Invite others. Be ready to sing. Be ready to serve. Show up early. We're going to start at 530 on Sunday night and 630 Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday. Show up early if you can. Be in here ready for the service to start. Be excited about what God's going to do. If you see somebody that you don't know in one of the services, be ready to walk by and give them a smile and a handshake and encourage them, thank them for being here. Welcome people with genuine love. I sing with all your heart when we sing the songs next week. Revived people. Singing always goes with revival. You just can't help but get that song out. So as we sing next week, prepare your heart. Prepare your voice. Warm up on the way to church. Sing a few songs. Invite those who are unchurched. If you know somebody who's lost, invite them to come. Come expecting God to move. You ever show up at church expecting God to do something? Sometimes God shows up and does something at church and everyone's like, wow, can you believe that God did something today? Shouldn't we show up at church? Shouldn't it be a surprise to us when God doesn't do something at church rather than the opposite way? We ought to show up at church expecting, I don't know what God's going to do tonight, but I know God's going to do something. And I don't know what anybody else is getting out of it, but I'm expecting that God's going to do something for me. And if every one of us walk through the doors next week with that attitude, I can promise you, you'll leave here thinking, man, I have experienced renewal, I have experienced revival. Scott Pauley was asked, what does true Holy Spirit revival look like? He said this, it looks like Jesus. The work of the Spirit is always to conform us to the image of Christ. And any genuine work of His will exalt Christ and develop His character in the lives who are touched by it. You get revived next week, if you experience renewal next week, it's going to make you look more like Jesus. That's the result that He wants. He wants us to be conformed to the image of His dear Son. Flip over to one last verse, I want you to look at this. Acts chapter 4. Acts chapter 4. I hope you come ready next week to give yourself to God. Give yourself to others. Come as a servant next week. And if we come with expectation, man, I think there can be an electric atmosphere of faith when we show up that way. Verse number 31 of Acts chapter 4. And when they had prayed, the place was shaken where they were assembled together And they were all filled with the Holy Ghost and they spake the Word of God with boldness. This is revival in one verse. This is renewal in one verse. The believers prayed. That's preparation. That's what we're talking about tonight. The place was shaken. That's the presence of God that showed up. And they were filled with the Holy Ghost. That's renewal. And they spoke the Word of God with boldness. That's the result because revived people are witnessing people In church, that's what we're asking God to do here. We want God to shake us. We want God to fill us. We want God to send us out with boldness to spread the gospel. Our mission is to make heaven more crowded, to let other people know about Jesus, to not be ashamed of him. It can take place, but only when we're prepared. Let's bow our heads and close our eyes. Let's take just a few moments here. It would be a shame to talk about being prepared. It would be a shame if we talked about