What revival means to me    My friend Ben is a rafting and fishing guide. He takes people rafting and fishing all summer and gets paid for it. As we were contemplating what "revival" means Ben shared an interesting thought. He said, "Do you know Acts 2? The part about `They devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and to the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer. Everyone was filled with awe...` (see verses 41-47). The only place I've heard the word revival outside of Christianity is in fishin', when you have to revive a fish before you throw it back in the water. You basically just move the water over its gills for a while but it doesn't do anything. Then when it's ready, all of a sudden it will start moving. Then you can throw it back in the water and it will swim off and be OK."
   I could see the connection to revival in the Christian context. After all "re" + "vive" does me to live again, or bring to life again. And that is what we seek in revival, to bring the church back to life. But what really got to me was the way Ben finished his analogy. He said, "The thing is, when you revive a fish it's not doing anything new. It's not doing anything special that it wasn't doing before, it's just back to how it used to be. Read Acts 2. I think you'll get a good idea of what the fish used to look like."

   Just a few days earlier I had been talking to Shawna. We were talking about a praise song which has the chorus: "We will dance on the streets that are golden; the glorious bride and the great Son of Man. And every tongue and tribe and nation will join in the song of the Lamb". We were talking about the joy of the celebration in heaven, the wedding ceremony of all wedding ceremonies. Dancing in the streets and singing and laughing and worshipping our bridegroom Jesus Christ. How excited we get about weddings here on earth! Am I that excited about my union with Christ? He has promised Himself to us, and given us His Holy Spirit as an engagement ring to seal the promise (Ephesians 1:13-14). "Would I dance in the streets today, because I love Him so much?", I asked Shawna.
   Shawna is working on a degree in Human Development and Family Studies. She told me some of the things she was learning about marriage in her marriage classes. She told me about some of the preparations that go in to marriage, especially as a bride. She told me about the purification process. You have to get cleaned up before the marriage: not only cleansing your body but cleaning up your home, cleaning up your life, getting rid of old things you don't want to take into the marriage, old habits that would not be beneficial to the marriage, breaking off harmful relationships (with previous boyfriends, for example). I said, "Time is running out. We want to be ready when He comes to get us. There is a lot of work to be done, Shawna!" And she said, "Yes, like sending out invitations!" (see Rev 19:9) Sweetness.

   Only a few days later I was having a chat in the kitchen with two of my housemates. I was telling them all that God had been teaching me recently about revival through the human love and marriage relationship. Thomas Davis (who is a nice boy) said, "Can I just interject one thing? You never really KNOW someone until you become one with them. You may think you know someone who you're in love with, but before you marry them there is so much you don't know about them."
   I began to think aloud, "Well that must be part of the reason God said `For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and they will become one flesh' (Genesis 2:24). He wants us set apart for Him. When we come to Him He doesn't want us messing around with our old boyfriends (Exodus 20:3-5a --> I am a jealous God). For we see in 1 Corinthians 6:17 that "he who unites himself with the Lord is one with Him in spirit".

   The interesting thing about Thomas' comment is that it seems at first inappropriate to speak about God in such intimate terms. Yet as I read God's word I hear Him calling us to pursue Him and desire Him with the greatest of passions. There is Psalm 42: "As the deer pants for streams of water, so my soul pants for You, O God. My soul thirsts for God, for the Living God. When can I go and meet with God?..."; Philippians 3:10: "I want to know Christ and the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in His sufferings..."; Ephesians 6:21-33 commands that husbands love their wives, that wives to submit to their husbands, and then reveals that, "This is a profound mystery - but I am talking about Christ and the Church."; and Deuteronomy 6:5 (cf. Matthew 22:37-38): "Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might." Indeed he allows for no greater passion than our passion for Him. Matthew 10:37 says, "He who loves father or mother more than Me is not worthy of Me; and he who loves son or daughter more than Me is not worthy of Me" and Luke 14:26 emphasizes that our love of these people should be hatred in comparison to our love for Him.
   "Do you love me, unselfishly, willing to sacrifice your life for me?", Jesus asks me.
   "Yes Lord, I love you", I tell Him.
   "Do you really love me?, Jesus asks again.
   "You know I love you Lord", I tell Him.
   "Do you even love me as you would love a friend?", He asks.
   Do I?

   However, there is one book of the Old Testament and one book of the New Testament which leave no question in my mind about the passion our Lord has for His bride and the reciprication of love He desires (and deserves).
   The introduction to the Song of Songs in my Hebrew-Greek Key Study Bible states regarding the book that, "For the Jews it referred to God's dealings with his bride, Israel. The early Christians saw it as representing the relationship between Christ and His bride, the Church." If God gave us this love poem for that reason, then He has put his banner of love over us (2:4), and He cherishes every part of the body of Christ, His bride (4:1-7, cf. 1 Corinthians 12:14-27). In order to respond in a manner like the passionate bride, we must say: I no longer belong to myself, I belong to Him (2:16, cf. 1 Corinthians 6:19-20); I continually think about Him, I seek Him and won't rest until I find Him (3:1-2); Lord, have Your way with me (4:16); I am ready for You to come at any moment (5:2-6); I love to gaze upon Him, meditate on Him, His strength, His power and glory (5:10-16); I love to get away and have long periods of time alone with Him (7:10-13).
   However, the next love story is even more interesting to me. One reason I find it more interesting is that this love story is no longer an analogy, it's the real thing, it's history. I see it as the Song of Songs of the New Testament. It's the book of Acts. Read Acts and see Christ tending to the care of his new bride. He is taking care of her every need. He's helping her to grow. He's helping her to know Him better, to know how to serve Him and how to love Him. He's helping her to finally understand His plan to reach the whole world with His good news, so that she can labor along with Him. He does not send her out alone but is with her everywhere she goes and in everything she does. He is proving himself faithful to all the promises he made while still alive. He allows her to experience pain and suffering, but is there to hold her hand through it.
   Meanwhile, the bride is still reveling in the excitement of her honeymoon. She is experiencing all kinds of new and exciting things that have never been seen before: the baptism of the Holy Spirit, miraculous signs and wonders, and most of all sightings of a risen Saviour. She is in awe of Him, she admires Him and loves to talk about Him. She wants all the whole world to know the Glorious One whom she has found.
   The early church did, in fact, in one generation reach out to Jerusalem, and all Judea and Samaria, to the ends of the known earth (Acts 1:8). She did it not out of obligation or guilty feelings but out of the mouth speaking from the overflow of the heart. A man once said, "When you love somebody, you love to talk about them." Fall in love with Jesus so much that He is your life, and then try to keep that to yourself. Just try to keep it in. You can't do it.
   This seems to be a needed key to a lifestyle of evangelism today. Peter and the apostles ignored the Sanhedrin and continued to preach the gospel despite persecution (Acts 5:17-42). They rejoiced that they had been counted worthy of suffering disgrace for the Name (Acts 5:41). Stephen preached Christ to those were executing him for preaching Christ (Acts 7:54-60). Paul was flogged, imprisoned, and stoned for preaching Christ (Acts & 2 Corinthians 11:23-29). Why did they do this? Their mouths spoke out of the overflow of their hearts. They just could not keep it in.
   The word we are talking about here is "passion". But this love story would be incomplete if we began in Acts. For just as God designed men to seek and pursue, and women to respond, so the passionate bride of Acts was merely responding to the One who had already shown her His ultimate love. We need turn back only three chapters from the beginning of Acts to John 19 to find the record of what is so aptly called "Christ's Passion".
   Imagine getting married one day and then going back to work the next day as if nothing had happened. It is unthinkable. And it was unthinkable to the early Christians to go about life as usual, as if nothing had changed. Their dead Messiah has risen back to life! He had actually fulfilled His promise! Everything had to change. Nothing could go back to the way it had been. There was no longer anything worth living for except to know this Christ and to make Him known (Acts 20:24). They had betrayed Him. They saw their mistake. They had the passion. The passion was there. Acts - the Song of Songs of the New Testament.

   Unfortunately, as these things go, their passion waned. Even before the close of the first century the passionate bride had become "lukewarm" (Revelation 3:15-16). The problems which plagued the lukewarm church of Laodicea seem to speak down through the ages to us today, particularly in America. In various places around the world Satan has used and still does use persecution to try to stamp out the gospel of Jesus Christ. But in Laodicea and America the devil has found an invisible tool that works much more subtly, but perhaps much more powerfully. Revelation 3:17 - "You say, `I am rich, and have become wealthy, and have need of nothing,' and you do not realize that you are wretched and miserable and poor and blind and naked."
   God has shown me six words to describe the invisible work of Satan in our day: apathy, disinterest, distraction, comfort, conformity, and convenience. Having all that we need at our fingertips (convenience) we do not realize the desperate spiritual condition we are in (comfort). Therefore we see no need to hunger and thirst for the truth, to seek God, or whatever might be out there, with every fiber of our being (apathy & disinterest). Anyone who does have a passion for these things is "very religious" or a "fundamentalist", and we don't want to stick out (conformity). And finally, when we do realize that we need to put forth some effort to seek after God, something more pressing always seems to come up; we can get to it tomorrow (distraction).
   I realized that several of the non-believers I had talked to lately told me essentially that if God was real and everything in the Bible was true, they didn't see how it would make any difference in their life. How symbolic of these days, I thought. Then, as I prayed, God began to pull on the plank in my eye. He said, "Zach, if your life is not completely different because of me, why in the world would you expect those around you to care? If your life says that school and work are your main pursuits in life, why do you expect others to seek first My kingdom? Why would you expect someone to desire to know Me if you are complacent in your relationship with Me?"

   So I ask myself: What kind of wife would I want? I would want a wife who is excited about me. I would like a wife who cannot keep a straight face at the mention of my name, who gets excited to see me. I would like a wife who loves to spend time with me, lots and lots and lots of time, and who misses me when we're apart. It would be nice if she was always thinking about me, because then I'd know how much she was in love with me. I would like a wife whom I can daydream with, plan for the future with, and make all important decisions with. I would be so happy if she was ready and willing to leave family, friends, and home to be with me in another part of the world. I would like to get to know my wife better every day, and I would be honored if she wanted to know me more everyday. I would hope that she would always remain passionate about our marriage, never taking it for granted, but valuing it more and more everyday.
   I would know that she loves me because she would tell me often, and by the way she acted, because she would not live in a way she knew I disapproved of. I would be reminded of how much she loved me when I talked to her friends and family, because they would say, "She loves you SO much. She never stops talking about you. She has so many wonderful things to say about you, you must be an amazing man!" Maybe even some of her friends would dislike me, for some reason, but would say, "You know I don't like you, but your wife must see something in you that I don't because she sure loves you." And perhaps they would eventually give me another chance at getting on their good side.
   Of course, I'm not actually talking about the kind of wife that I want, but am I talking about the kind of wife I want to be to Jesus as a part of His bride, the Church. There is no where to be found a more awesome husband, a more worthy husband than Jesus. He alone is worthy of all these things. However excited I get about an earthly relationship, I should be so much more excited about Him. But have I ever been as excited about Him as I would be about a person?

   So what were we talking about anyway? Oh yes, revival. What's the conclusion? In light of all that has been said, in light of the church of Acts, it is no wonder to me that God says in Revelation 2:4-5, "Yet I hold this against you: You have forsaken your first love. Remember the height from which you have fallen! Repent and do the things you did at first." In other words: remember what this fish used to look like.