When God Moves
“These who have turned the world upside down have come here too.”
Isn’t that beautiful? I will read that again - It is so beautiful!
That is in essence what revival is. I looked up the Oxford Dictionary to get the exact definition. It means to restore, to regain life, it means consciousness or strength and it means a reawakening of religious fervour.
Now John Wesley said the definition of revival is a people saturated with God. These people have also been called 'troublemakers' for Jesus’ sake.
Remember King Ahab? That is what he called Elijah the Tishbite, that great prophet from Israel: “Oh troubler of Israel, what do you want with us?” Folks, it is time for revival - it is time to get back to God. It’s time to encourage one another.
You can’t revive an unbeliever, an unbeliever needs to be saved first. A revival comes through the church. It comes through Christians who have grown weary, tired, who have become despondent.
Do you remember? I know I am talking to tens of thousands of men who have been to the Mighty Men Conferences, all over the world.
I remember like yesterday the story I heard when we had the big tent on the farm. The biggest tent in the world - built in Britain and enlarged in Europe and brought out to South Africa for the World Heritage Conference, and we brought it down to the farm.
I think it was 17 pantechnicons... Do you remember? It took three weeks to put it up, it was an incredible sight to behold. We had 30,000 men inside that tent and 30 thousand men outside that tent. We fed them for a full weekend, I distinctly remember the guys slaughtering 40 oxen for one meal! That was amazing.
But you know when God moves, no-one can dispute it.
The Muslim community in Greytown were asking me years afterwards: “When are you going to have another Christian meeting?” They were enjoying the business - The boys bought everything that was in every shop in Greytown, it was amazing.
I just want to tell you one little story of what took place.
There was a little boy who was there with his dad, this boy was about 12 years old, his dad and his granddad were not talking to each other.
They were both at the meeting but they weren’t sitting together, they hadn’t driven down together. He said to his dad: “Dad... if I can find grandad will you speak to him?”
And of course he said, “Yes,” because he knew that he wouldn’t find him.
During a five-minute break with 60 thousand men milling around off went this little boy.
He went straight up to the reservoir, there was his grandad - can you believe it, talking to his friends!
He said: ‘Oupa (grandad), Dad wants to speak to you!”
And grand-dad came down.
They looked at each other, they couldn’t believe it in that crowd.
They embraced.
They started weeping in each other’s arms.
The little boy held his grand-dad and his dad together. That is revival. Let’s do it again!
God bless you.