Pandemic Tip #7

March 28, 2020

I have a “love/hate relationship” with words like revival, refresh, and renewal.

My dislike for those words come from the idea behind the prefix “re-“ which means, in English, “again.” In other word, to “renew” means to make something new again. “Revival” means to bring to life again. "Refresh" means to make something stale fresh again. The point is that something that was once is no more. Kind of like “refuel.” We refuel our vehicles because they are low on fuel.

Okay, maybe that’s something necessary. If we are low on energy we need to “refuel” through energy giving actions. It works that way spiritually. God describes Himself in Isaiah 57:17c, “I restore the crushed spirit of the humble and revive the courage of those with repentant hearts.” [NLT] This is God’s character. It’s what He does because it is who He is…

The first key is to be humble. Over and over in the Bible, we are told God opposes the proud. Repentance, on the other hand, is the key to entering a right relationship with God. We cannot be "saved" without having a repentant heart. We cannot walk with God without having a repentant heart. We cannot enter heaven without a repentant heart.

But what does that mean? I am so glad you asked!

Being humble is to understand yourself correctly. Not more highly than you should. Being humble means you are not drawing attention to yourself but point people to Jesus. Being humble requires intentional reorienting your life toward God.

To repent means to admit “I am wrong and God is right.” The Hebrew word for repent means to change the behavior. The Greek word means to change the mind (which in context of the culture meant changing behavior). We don’t use words like wrong and right anymore, because we do not like the possibility… 

Modern humanity wants to deny the existence of God. We gravitate to anything that would give us a plausible excuse for not believing there is a God. The thing that comes to mind first is the “theory of evolution.” Evolution’s core belief is “survival of the fittest.” Have you noticed when “the rubber meets the road” our society is doing everything it can to protect the venerable? So we have disconnected belief and praxis (action based on principle). 

But, maybe that happens on a smaller personal level as well. We say we follow Jesus, but we do things that Jesus would not do. We say we follow Jesus, but refuse to do what Jesus would do. That is were humility and repentance come into play. We need to confess these things are “wrong.” Theologically speaking we say they are “sin.”

It’s not a far reach to suggest these dark and dank things are draining you of your spiritual energy. Like the fuel tank running low needs attention. So our spiritual lives need constant and deliberate attention. The odd part about all this is if you are still reading and feel you are fine; two possibilities exist. Either you are fine or you have shut off the voice of God from your life. (Meaning spiritually dead or dying.)

Time to fearlessly check your life’s orientation.