Devotions

It doesn’t matter what kind of manifestations you see in a so-called revival. It is not a true move of God unless it is focused on the harvest! Holy Ghost rains always fall to produce an ingathering of souls.

God poured out His Spirit at Pentecost to soften and prepare the ground for the gospel seed to be sown. Spirit-filled believers were sent out from the Upper Room into the entire world to make disciples of Jesus Christ.

After almost two thousand years of sowing and growing, it is now time for harvest! All who died in Christ up to now represent the first fruits or the early harvest. The Lord has been waiting patiently for His final, mighty harvest.

“Therefore be patient, brethren, until the coming of the Lord. See how the farmer waits for the precious fruit of the earth, waiting patiently for it until it receives the early and the latter rain” (James 5:7).

“And I will pour on the house of David and on the inhabitants of Jerusalem the Spirit of grace and supplication; then they will look on Me whom they pierced” (Zechariah 12:10). This passage speaks of the promised latter rain that must precede the final harvest.

Many so-called Holy Ghost movements have vanished quickly because they were man-centered — focusing on gifts, self-improvement, happiness. But if a move is truly of the Spirit, it will result in a hunger to reach a lost and dying world. In fact, Jesus tied the harvest to lost souls when He said, “Pray the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into His harvest” (Matthew 9:38).

Any true outpouring of the Holy Spirit will focus on this prayer of Jesus. The very few revivals documented as genuine all were blessed with great harvests of souls. There is no true revival without a great ingathering of lost souls!

“Jesus is beautiful.” I hesitate to use this phrase because it carries so little power to convey the awesome reality of His glory. And I’m not using “beautiful” the way we normally do, meaning, “Isn’t she lovely?” or “Isn’t he handsome?” We can’t fathom all the depths of Jesus’ beauty —how glorious, amazing, wonderful, separate and unique He is.

Yet all His attributes bear saying again and again and again. Jesus is tender, kind, precious. He is full of majesty and splendor. He is wondrous, strong, mighty, powerful. He is clever, wise, outstanding. And He never fails!

Jesus never slips, He’s never weak and He’s never knocked down for a single moment. He is always listening to us and He always advocates for us. He never takes a break from fighting Satan for us, and never stops loving us even when we fail.

The Bible describes Jesus in ways it would never describe us. Isaiah says there was no deceit in Him, meaning He had no false motives. He didn’t preach to attract crowds or heal to impress people. It also says He was tempted in all ways, meaning that He was subject to every kind of battle you and I face. Yet He is so beautiful that even in those temptations He was without sin. In fact, He said of the Father, “I am pleased to do Your will.”

So how did Jesus describe Himself? He says He is gentle and humble in nature. Yet His use of the word “humble” does not mean self-effacing; His meaning is much stronger, suggesting He willingly lowered Himself from His rightful place in heaven to become human flesh. He set aside His reign from on high to take on a dependent form of divinity, so that as a man He relied on His Father to empower all His divine activities on earth. Talk about real humility! Who gives up power once they have it? And nobody has the kind of power Jesus possessed. What He did is beautiful!

To the believers in Thessalonica, Paul wrote, “Do not put out the Spirit’s fire” (1 Thessalonians 5:19). Amazingly, although the Holy Spirit is fully God, it is entirely possible for believers like you and me to hinder His work and quench His sacred fire.

Some people falsely believe that whatever God wants to do, He will do. Consider Jesus’ invitation to His own church in Laodicea: “Here I am! I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with that person, and they with me” (Revelation 3:20). If He is Christ, and He wants in, why doesn’t He just come in? Why does He bother knocking and asking? That’s the mystery of God’s sovereignty and our free will. We must respond to Him or we will miss out on His planned blessing.

At one time Paul told Timothy to stir up the embers, to keep the fire going (see 2 Timothy 1:6). We need to do the same! For some of us, the embers are faintly glowing, and we need to tend to them, stir them up, breathe on them so they will burst into open flame. 

We need the fire of the Holy Spirit changing our lives and our local assemblies. We need it spreading throughout our towns and cities, spreading so that Christ can be glorified. May this be our prayer today: “Send the fire, God. Burn, penetrate, change, renovate, illuminate. Do as You promised, as we wait in Christ’s name.”

Jim Cymbala began the Brooklyn Tabernacle with less than twenty members in a small, rundown building in a difficult part of the city. A native of Brooklyn, he is a longtime friend of both David and Gary Wilkerson. 

David instructs us, “Those who trust in You in the presence of the sons of men! You shall hide them in the secret place of Your presence” (Psalm 31:19–20). It is time to shut ourselves in with Christ and pour out our hearts to Him.

When the fury of the storm strikes, we will need our own individual supply of strength. When we are in the midst of the storm, none of us will be able to make it on the strength of anyone else. We won’t be able to draw on our mate, our pastor, our friend, even a prophet of God.

We see this truth illustrated in Jesus’ parable of the foolish virgins. When the virgins tried to borrow oil from their wise counterparts, they were told, “Go and buy oil for yourselves. We don’t have enough for both us and you” (see Matthew 25:9).

Do you hear what Jesus is saying in this parable? He is warning all His children: “No one else has enough faith to carry you. You must have your own supply of belief and trust in Me.”

It is so very simple: You need your own supply of strength. Yet you can’t get this by merely reading books or listening to sermons and/or teaching tapes. Neither can you get it by just being involved in corporate worship or doing good works. This strength comes from being alone with the Lord in His presence.

I speak now to every Christian: The time has come for you to draw near to Jesus. You need His presence more than ever!

The Psalmist says of those who appear before the Lord in Zion: “They go from strength to strength” (Psalm 84:7). We are being told, “The praying believer will not faint in hard times. He is going to grow stronger and stronger because he trusts in God.”

The writer of Hebrews praises the testimony of those believers who were strengthened through faithful prayer: “You endured a great struggle with sufferings: partly while you were made a spectacle both by reproaches and tribulations . . . and joyfully accepted the plundering of your goods” (Hebrews 10:32–34).

Think about it: The people being described here had lost their homes, their livelihoods, everything. And yet they could testify along with their pastor, Paul, “In spite of every trial that came our way, the Lord stood with us. He came daily to give us all the strength we needed to overcome.”

Beloved, have you come to this place? I trust you can say, “In spite of it all, I know Jesus will keep me in hard times. And He will give me everything I need because He is my source of strength.”

Paul learned this secret of strength at his conversion. After being blinded on the road to Damascus, he spent three days fasting and praying, determined to experience the actual presence of this Lord who had revealed Himself to him.

It was then that the Lord directed a believer named Ananias to go and minister to Paul. “For, behold, he is praying” (Acts 9:11). Scripture next says of Paul, “[He] increased all the more in strength” (9:22).

We see this truth illustrated in a parable Jesus told regarding the man who sought bread from his friend at midnight. The man had no bread himself, but he knew that his friend had all the bread he needed. So he kept pounding and knocking on the door until his friend got up, opened the door and gave him bread.

Beloved, that friend with the bread is Jesus. He sticks closer than a brother, and He will supply us with everything we need. This includes not only food, clothing and shelter (see Matthew 6), but also encouragement, strength and peace.