The Mercy of God's Judgement

I would have titled this article "When Revival Becomes Judgement," but as you'll read, that would have been very misleading. Recently I have spent a lot of time studying the effects of revival versus judgement on the human heart, and I wanted to share some of my conclusions with you. These conclusions break many false ideas we have about revival and God's judgement in the nations as we explore some plain Biblical texts.

Recently I was at a Christian youth retreat, and as usual there was a great ministry time on the final night of the retreat. The Lord was revealing his love to many teenagers in a fresh way and breaking off the lies that the devil had spoken over their identity. Truly, it was an amazing evening that brought everyone in the room to tears. Of course, there I was, in tears, and about 15 minutes into the ministry time I felt the strangest emotion come over me. The tears went away and all of the sudden I was burdened to pray that the students who were being touched would respond by living holy from that day forward. Suddenly I was praying for modern day Nazirites to come out of this meeting! I became obsessed with how the students would choose to live from that day forward. It was clear this was a pivotal experience for many lives, but all I could think about was, "How will this effect the way they live? Will it change them or will they fall back to the same old things once they get home?" It felt so random and out of touch with what was clearly happening in the room that I pondered this strange emotion for days on end.

It became clear to me that the only way to sustain breakthrough in our hearts is to live holy. None of us deserved what the Lord did that night. In fact most of the people that were touched that night were not living 'holy' before the Lord, but seemed pretty dull spiritually. Yet, we serve the God who calls for the things that are not as though they are (Romans 4:17), and He visited everyone in that room as an act of mercy, breaking through the dullness of our hearts. The fatal mistake comes when Christians live from breakthrough to breakthrough, relying on these rare occasions as the basis of their faith but never actually letting them effect how they live. Like I said, the only way to sustain the breakthrough, to actually live in it continually like we all imagine, is to let it effect the way we live. When God visited us in his mercy, he set a decision before us: how then will we live? I realized that for those who would relish in this rare event but not change the way they lived would actually have their hearts hardened. Thus the decision isn't just about how we will live but rather will we respond with a tender heart or will our heart grow harder as we deny the call to holiness.

You see, each time we experience breakthrough is different, and each time we can respond in a way that tenderizes our heart towards the Lord (by letting it effect how we live) or we can actually harden our heart by choosing sin again despite the encounter. Each time we respond with apathy, it becomes more and more difficult to respond with tenderness the next time. At the same time I reached this conclusion, I stumbled upon this verse...

"And when people escape from the wickedness of the world by knowing our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ and then get tangled up and enslaved by sin again, they are worse off than before. It would be better if they had never known the way to righteousness than to know it and then reject the command they were given to live a holy life." - 2 Peter 2:20-21 (NLT)

I see this played out frequently in the prayer room at IHOPKC. For some people, the prayer room may be the very worst place they could be. It starts small, just a few times each week one might show up and work from the prayer room, disengaging their heart in the midst of worship. Every time we disengage our spirit in the midst of God's presence, it gets easier and easier. Pretty soon, that person has forgotten how to engage in the prayer room, and suddenly the prayer room becomes trivial. I know people like this, to whom the requirement of the prayer room is their least favorite thing about IHOPKC. Well I have news for you, you're at a place where 24/7 prayer and worship is the center of what we do! Yet sometimes we become so overfamiliar with God's presence, fail to engage our hearts for so long, that it becomes a burden and we don't even realize it. Nothing could be more dangerous to the human heart. Of course then you see the visitors rush into the prayer room, having traveled thousands of miles just to sit in the very same presence we take for granted... I tell you Jesus has strong emotions about that level of arrogance and apathy.

The same thing happens with revival! God could send an outstanding revival and outpouring of his Spirit, and yet believers still respond in apathy and, as Peter says, are worse off because of the new level of dullness in their heart. I think God withholds revival in his mercy because he sees the depths of our hearts, and knows about our hidden levels of apathy. God purposefully withholds revival until the church is ready, because he knows because of the reality of 2 Peter 2:20-21 that revival could actually send more to hell than to heaven. It all comes down to how we are willing to respond.

I think we have romanticized revival to an extent in our minds. We imagine that if God would just send revival, everything would click, society would change, there'd be a culture shift, and everyone would get saved, but when the revival leaves our apathy could leave us even worse than before! The dullness of the church is the very reason God withholds revival, giving us a window of mercy to get our act together. What makes us think we would respond rightly to revival when we routinely respond with apathy to His daily whispers?

So then what? What wakes up the rebellious nation with an apathetic church? You guessed it, judgement. Judgement can accomplish the objective of revival when revival is not the answer. We often immediately associate judgement with a negative emotion, but even judgement can be God's mercy, giving us another chance to respond. Scripture says God chastens us in love (Pro 3:12, Heb 12:6), desiring that we would respond with what? Repentance. Tenderness. Holiness - the same objective of revival. Holiness makes us compatible with the Holy. The blood of Jesus saves us, but holiness makes us participants in the divine nature. But if we're so dull that revival won't wake us, so asleep spiritually that we don't even realize our apathy towards the Lord, a great shaking is our best hope to lead us back into partnership with God. At that moment, God's merciful judgement becomes our best friend.

Why else do you think Isaiah wrote "In the path of your judgements, oh Lord, we wait for you. . . for when your judgements are in the earth, the inhabitance of the world learn righteousness" (Isaiah 26:8-9). The time comes when the church needs a shaking to wake it up! If we really want to live in partnership with the Lord, we ought to welcome the little shakings in our lives that show us our hidden pride. We can avoid those shakings by regularly dialoging with the Lord about how we live. Go ahead and just give God his desired response! Talk to him! Wage war against the dullness of the human heart and get a spirit that is alive! Listen for the whispers and start responding in tenderness towards the Lord's presence and leadership now! If the church would do that, God would have sent revival years ago! Instead we've responded with apathy for so long that we aren't even compatible with the revival he wants to pour out!

But in all honesty, given what we've just learned about the mercy of God's judgement, I feel better about the Bible verses that talk about the judgements of God being released on the earth at the sound of the church's prayers. America needs to turn, and revival could produce that result, but God knows our hearts better than we do and judgement may actually produce the better result. It's a hard thing to determine, but we can make sure we are responding to the Lord in tenderness at every opportunity. That produces the heart that is alive.