How To Have Personal Revival - A. W. Tozer

 

Any Christian who desires to may at any time experience a radical spiritual renaissance, and this altogether independent of the attitude of his fellow Christians. The important question is, "How?"  Well, here are some suggestions which anyone can follow and which, I am convinced, will result in a wonderfully improved Christian life.

 

1.  Get thoroughly dissatisfied with yourself.  Complacency is the deadly enemy of spiritual progress.  The content soul is the stagnent soul.  

2.  Set your face like a flint toward a sweeping transformation of your life.  Timid experimenters are tagged for failure before they start.  We must throw our whole soul into our desire for God. 

3.  Put yourself in the way of the blessing.  It is a mistake to look for grace to visit us as a kind of benign magic, or to expect God's help to come as a windfall apart from conditions known and met.  There are plainly marked paths which lead straight to the green pastures; let us walk in them.  To desire revival, for instance, and at the same time to neglect prayer and devotion is to wish one way and walk another.

4.  Do a thorough job of repenting.  Do not hurry to get it over with.  Hasty repentance means shallow spiritual experience and lack of certainty in the whole life.  

5.  Make restitution wherever possible.  If you owe a debt, pay it, or at least have a frank understanding with your creditor about your intention to pay, so your honesty will be above question.  If you have quarreled with anyone, go as far as you can in an effort to achieve reconciliation.

6.  Bring your life into accord with the Sermon on the Mount and such other New Testament Scriptures as are designed to instruct us in the way of righteousness.  An honest man with an open Bible and a pad and pencil is sure to find out what is wrong with him very quickly.

7.  Be serious-minded.  You can well afford to see fewer comedy shows on TV.  Unless you break away from the funny boys, every spiritual impression will continue to be lost to your heart, and that right in your own living room.  The devil's ideals, moral standards, and mental attitudes are being accepted by you without your knowing it.

8.  Deliberately narrow your interests.  The Jack-of-all-trades is the master of none.  The Christian life requires that we be specialists.  Too many projects use up time and energy without bringing us nearer to God.  If you will narrow your interests, God will enlarge your heart. 

9.  Begin to witness.  Find something to do for God and your fellow men.  Refuse to rust out.  Make yourselves available to your pastor and do anything you are asked to do. 

10.  Have faith in God.  Begin to expect.  Look up toward the throne where your Advocate sits at the right hand of God.  All heaven is on your side.  God will not disappoint you.

 

If you will follow these suggestions, you will most surely experience revival in your own heart.  And who can tell how far it may spread?  God knows how desperately the church needs a spiritual resurrection.  And it can only come through the revived individual.