We have heard everything lately from “We are using the wrong Bible, or the Bible should not have been written in Greek”, to “We need to keep all of the Jewish festivals and we must incorporate the law into our teaching,”.  We also hear the other extreme of “It doesn’t matter what you do after you are saved, you can live with people or party or whatever”, to every other extreme demonic teaching there is.  It’s not bad enough that people are being deceived but they are actually boldly going after others in the church to persuade them.

The enemy is trying not only to bring these people into deception but to discourage the rest of us into thinking there is no sanity left in the church and that all of our teaching, preaching, and discipleship has been in vain.  At times you want to say, “Beam me up now, Scottie,  There is no intelligent life left on earth, even in the body of Christ”.  Ha!

However, there will be those who will be rescued and those we will still reach and we must concentrate on those.  The church has always had a tendency to swing like a pendulum from one ditch to the other. I heard people discussing the other day how they would choose The Word in a moment over revival, or the moving of The Holy Ghost, if they had to make the choice.  What we must remember though, is that we don’t have to make that choice.  We are to be a people of both The Holy Ghost and The Word of God.  It’s not that difficult and I don’t know why people make it difficult.  If you only have the word, you’ll dry up.  If you only have The Holy Spirit, you’ll blow up but if you have both you’ll grow up and when the rapture takes place, you’ll go up, and when the offering plate comes around you’ll pay up.

There are those who say they love revival, signs and wonders, and yet still get flaky.  When that happens,  we want nothing to do with what they have.   People can really disappoint you when they do not display loyalty or commitment, and do not stick with anything when the going gets rough, especially when they claim to be hungry on-fire people.  That’s when we tend to say “If they are revival people, I don’t need any of that”.  We must remember though, that they are not true representatives of revival.  They are counterfeits.

I have been through that long pilgrimage.  I grew up in pentecost.  We had a lot of good teaching that has helped hold me steady through the years.  I also saw a lot of “junk” and flakiness that I refused to let effect me permanently.  I joined the Word of Faith Movement and received some of the best teaching on the planet that has also helped hold me steady through life.  However, I was still hungry for more, as we should be.  Then, in the nineties revival struck and God ministered to me more than I’ve ever known before.  His power and manifestations were like water, an oasis to hungry, thirsty people.  I was one of them.

This has never been complicated to me.  I am to grow up in God, hunger for His Word and His Spirit, becoming more like Him every day, from glory to glory.  I am to be changed unto His glorious image.  The Bible tells us to be planted in a good, local church that preaches the fulness of Christ.  It says to “not forsake the assembling of ourselves together and even more as we see the day approaching.”  This lets me know that I can never get “too spiritual for church”.  It says that we need each other in the body of Christ and that we are to be submitted one to another.  It says that I am to walk in love and forgiveness.  It lets me know that pastors and teachers are set in the body and that we need each other.  It tells me that I am to give up my life and to be a servant.  In another words, it’s not all about me.  I am to learn basic things about integrity, loyalty, and submission.  It’s not about what’s in it for me.  It’s about growing in faith and love, serving where I’m at, and becoming more like Jesus.

In the last year and a half, I’ve had the privilege of marrying into a family that has more faith, courage, love, and integrity than I’ve ever experienced.   I just watched my husband bury his daughter and rejoice in The Lord at the same time, promising to tear up the enemy’s kingdom all the more.  I’ve watched him forgive people and love on them in spite of what they do to him and not even asking him for forgiveness.  He goes to hospitals and prays for people who have left his church and broken his heart.  He still does what the Bible says.  That’s a man that you and I can follow as he follows Christ.  That’s stability.  That’s the Bible!  Give us some more of that.  Yet, he too still wants more and cries out for revival like we’ve never seen yet.  He knows it takes more than The Word.  We must have a move of God that shakes our nation and the world.

So, I will choose the entire Bible, His Word, and His Spirit, freedom and discipline, love and forgiveness, submission and authority, discipleship and servant-hood, from glory to glory.  As long as we will guard our hearts, stay in a good Bible-believing church, yield to His Spirit, stay teachable and humble, we will not be deceived.  We must be on-guard, both for ourselves, our families, and one another for these are indeed, the last days.

As I am now a pastor’s wife and also seeing this more and more in the churches I preach in, I realize it is one of the major deceptions in the last hour.  It can cause a church to start losing momentum.  Then the others get discouraged and want to leave what they think is a sinking ship.  Whatever happened to endurance, tenacity, strength of character, keeping your word to your hurt, laying your life down and not taking count of any wrong-doing.  Whatever happened to “You can depend on me through thick and thin.”?  Whatever happened to integrity?  One of the things that would help is if pastors were made up that way.  The more I watch my husband, the more I see Christ.  He is a man of His word and believes in commitment more than anyone I know, even when it hurts.  He told me that he signed a covenant in our city years ago that said he wouldn’t even receive people from another church without talking to their previous pastor, and arranging a meeting between them all to try to rectify the situation.  I watch  him keep that covenant all by himself while many do not reciprocate.  He said that he will do what’s right no matter what others do.  He walks in love and forgiveness when people he thought of like his own sons and daughters rip his heart out without even a simple meeting or explanation.  He continues to pray for them and love them.

Revival must go deeper.  No one loves the manifestations any more than I do.  However, if we do not get up off the floor changed, we had best get another dip.  I have had the privilege of meeting many ministers around the world in the last few years.  While many practice what they preach, others treat people like dirt in a back room, are jealous and competitive, think more highly of themselves than they should, manipulate and control, and the list goes on.  I used to go to my hotel room and cry and say to The Lord and sometimes my assistants, “Lord, don’t ever let me get like that.”  I would rather be a waitress that become like that.  Now, I will be the first to admit I’ve made some poor decisions when it comes to my personal life in who I trusted.  I’ve allowed God to show me how that happened and to change me.  He has restored me and given to me my heart’s desired in a wonderful husband.  None of us are perfect and we have all missed it in different areas.  Though I’ve made judgment mistakes, I don’t believe I have ever been a person or minister who treats people badly.  The presence of God means too much to me.  It comes back to the old song, “To be like Jesus, all I ask is to be like Him”.

12′Even now,’ declares the LORD, ‘return to me with all your heart, with fasting and weeping and mourning.’ 13 Rend your heart and not your garments. Return to the LORD your God, for he is gracious and compassionate, slow to anger and abounding in love, and he relents from sending calamity. 14 Who knows? He may turn and have pity and leave behind a blessing — grain offerings and drink offerings for the LORD your God. 15 Blow the trumpet in Zion, declare a holy fast, and call a sacred assembly. 16 Gather the people, consecrate the assembly; bring together the elders, gather the children, those nursing at the breast. Let the bridegroom leave his room and the bride her chamber. 17 Let the priests, who minister before the LORD, weep between the temple porch and the altar. Let them say, ‘Spare your people, O LORD. Do not make your inheritance an object of scorn, a byword among the nations. Why should they say among the peoples, ‘Where is their God?” 18 Then the LORD will be jealous for his land and take pity on his people. 19 The LORD will reply to them: ‘I am sending you grain, new wine and oil, enough to satisfy you fully; never again will I make you an object of scorn to the nations.

As my husband and I were going down the road listening to a southern gospel group by the name of Sweet Presence, I heard a song that so ministered to my heart, called “Gotta Get Back to the Glory”.  Many of us have known great glory in the past but it is so easy to let go and not continue to hunger and thirst and press in for more.  I began to weep as The Lord began to give me this message.  I trust that it will minister to you as it did to me.  I delivered it to our church here in Aberdeen, Washington three weeks ago, as the first sermon of my campmeeting that week.  I am going to divide it up into different journals for you over the course of the next few weeks.  This is part one.  This is a message to individuals, families, and our nation. 

The Bible has a lot to say about returning to Him.  It is so easy to drift, get luke-warm, apathetic, bitter, and compromise.  It is easy to get away from God & His presence. Many begin that process by becoming bitter at His people and “forsaking the assembling of ourselves together” as the Bible speaks of.  We quit attending services, are too tired to make it to revival meetings, start skipping mid-week and Sunday evening services.

The Bible tells us that on the night that Peter betrayed The Lord he began to follow afar off.  He warmed himself at the fire of the unbelievers.  We must be careful who we let comfort us and speak into our lives.  He loved The Lord and had no intention of denying Him but began by making compromises and soon he was at the breaking point.  The prodigal son knew the father’s love and provision but left the house and eventually lost everything.  The Bible tells us that the stories of Israel were given to us for examples so that we would not backslide and lose out with God as they did.  Evidently, The Lord knew how easy it would be for us to begin to cool off, even those who have been touched profoundly in revival.  All we have to do is look at the lukewarm Laodicean church, all of our preceding church and revival moves, denominations and fellowships, to see that history has a  way of repeating itself.

In the beginning we think that our little 1% grade of back-sliding is unimportant.  However, a boat veering off 1 degree or a missile veering off the same way will end in world-wide disaster if allowed to continue that way.  It will miss its intended destination by thousands or millions of miles in the end.  That’s why we need to catch it early.

Revival history proves this out.  Every movement that started out in the fire ended up in the ice.  I have been reviewing healing revival, Azuza Street, the Kentucky Revivals, The two Great Awakenings, the Charismatic renewal, the Jesus move, the latter rain move, the word of faith, Toronto, Pensacola, our own recent revival meeting over the last twenty years, and others who have been leaders in revival.  It’s important to compare these to the Bible warnings and history.  It’s easy to see patterns and obvious things that are only obvious in hind-sight.

The children of Israel never thought they’d be left out of the Promised Land, exiled, miss the Messiah, and be cut off from God.  They always thought there would be another time to get right with God and that His grace would cover everything.  They thought they weren’t that rebellious, stubborn and hard-hearted.  They thought it might happen to others but it would not happen to them.

It’s also important to look at the good history in the Bible and in present day moves to find out how others stayed on fire.  In the book of Acts we see that we’re still supposed to be living in this book.  It’s not finished yet and we are the ones who are supposed to finish it.  We see the disciples who were turning the world upside down with mighty signs and wonders, seeing multitudes saved, healed, baptized in The Holy Ghost, delivered and having financial miracles doing certain things.  They were giving themselves to prayer, not forsaking the assembling of themselves together, coming back to their own company.  They were in one accord, one place, one mind, one prayer meeting, and one soul.  They were full of faith & power.  They had great signs and wonders operating among them. They were full of boldness. They did mighty miracles.  They believed that nothing they had was their own.  They remained full of the Holy Ghost.  They were a giving church.  They fasted, and many were added to the church daily.  They continually prayed without ceasing.  They were constantly filled with The Holy Ghost.  They spoke the word boldly. They were persecuted, imprisoned, lost their heads, were boiled in oil, crucified upside down, exiled, pulled apart, but immovable.  They always looked at the bigger picture, the kingdom, not their own lives.

When I look at the history of the Methodist church founded by John Wesley, I am reminded of how quickly we can lose the fire.   About one hundred years ago, to be ordained as a Methodist minister, one had to fast two days a week, speak in tongues, and cast out devils.  If you study the history of the Quakers you will find a similar fire.  They got their name because of the unique signs and wonders, including shaking under the power.  We can look at the great Azuza Street outpouring, of which every major Pentecostal denomination was birthed out of and realize how mighty that revival was.  Yet again, most of these denominations have ended up as cold as an Alaskan glacier.

I grew up hearing about the fire and wanting the anointing upon my life in a desperate way.  I was determined to get it and now am determined to not lose it and even see it increase.  I don’t want to repeat the same mistakes others have made in losing the anointing.  I am determined that to keep what I have and get more where that came from.  Yet, most people think they’ll be different from anyone else in history.  We must learn from history and not let revival fire wane in our lives.  In the future, we will begin to deal with some of the things that cause hunger to wane, like unforgiveness.  For now, I want to encourage you to get hungry all over again.  I have an audio series on this subject that I believe will bless your socks off.  It is some of the best preaching I have ever done and I believe the best product that we have out.  Countless people have told me that they could live the rest of their Christian life with only this series.  In any case, get hungry, hungry, hungry!!