Preparing Our Hearts for God's Move.

Thanks, Abbie. Yeah, so good morning. My name is Nicole, and I'm part of the community here at New Culture. And so, yeah, first of all, though, I would like to thank Abbie and the community and leadership for just the opportunity to speak with you today on the topic of revival.

Because I work for a ministry, and what we do is revival education and calling students and young adults to repentance and consecration. Yeah, and so I just feel very honored and I'm very thankful. Abbie, in particular, for the way you steward our community and just your gentle persistence and patience in encouraging me to step into this and get to share it with our community.

It is a beautiful way in which I feel like what I'm doing with my ministry is coming together with where I live and the community I'm part of. And so I'm also really thankful to see God moving in my life in that way.

My desire is that you would just be encouraged by the journey I've been on for the last year or so. I've been learning a lot about revival and yeah, that Jesus would speak to you through something that I say or have prepared.

So first of all, my I have the so what and now what just like what Abbie does. And so the so what today is God calls each of us to personal revival that will lead to revival in our communities. And the now what is, are we ready or willing to experience personal revival?

Yeah. And so I just thought I would start with just sharing a little bit about myself. And so Jesus has always been working in my life, even before I could say that I really knew him instead of knowing about him. And trusting that Jesus also has been working over the generations of my family, even for many of my family that don't yet know Jesus.

And so as we step into learning about revival, like the big picture of what I'll be speaking about today, just like an important note to know that we all have successive experiences or moments of encounters with Jesus, who is always calling us and always trying to awaken us to his reality and his presence in our lives at all times. And this is just the nature of God. He can't help but do that because that's who he is.

And so he's calling us into revival, which is really just a journey of patterns where Jesus is in every season in our lives, calling us to more deep, calling us into the deep with him and continuing to form each of us.

My story

Just a little bit about my story is that I grew up in a rural community north of Madison, and I was raised Catholic. Faith is really important to my father, but I didn't grow up understanding or experiencing a sense of strong faith or the Holy Spirit in my community and I understood it primarily as an obligation.

But in my heart as a child I know that God like kind of turned my heart to him because I was just really genuinely always interested in Jesus and who he was. And so I was, as I grew up, just confused about a gap of like things that we were to read or just like who the apostles were or who Jesus is and the things he did. But like the community that I was a part of just was not transformed and they weren't even like people in my family are not even comfortable about talking about faith.

So it just kind of led me to you know question like well what is then the purpose. And so that was the time in which I see like Jesus was already sowing seeds of like yearning in my heart for revival.

One significant moment in this fledgling faith that I had was a catechism teacher who had put our Catholic workbooks away and we opened our Bibles to read from scripture. And I remember that in the moment that we read from scripture that I experienced an unexpected leap in my heart. And it's clear to me now that the Holy Spirit was like moving. And I just didn't realize what that meant.

And so that same teacher, he led us to a prayer chapel then that was nearby. He showed us the 24-7 prayer chapel. He invited us to like sign up and you could like pray there. And I was just so moved that I just really obediently went to sign up.

And then as a young adult, even though like no one was mentoring me, I just like went every week to pray. And during that time, I was just really wrestling with like what I felt like was a desperate plea of like wanting more from God, but didn't have like anywhere to like find it.

So God really honored me, though, when I was wrestling with him in those years. And so I didn't see any fruit during that time, like, at the Catholic Church, praying. Obviously, God was, like, doing things. And yeah, he saw my longing, basically, for community and wholeness, which was what that was.

I came to UW-Madison as a freshman, so I went to school here. And I was really full of anticipation and hope. But I didn't really have a sense of direction for my life. And yeah, I made lots of new friends, new classes, you know, like it was very full. But I didn't have a sense of myself and I didn't really like myself.

So all of those things kind of, you know, were affected by this part of my heart that didn't like myself or didn't know like who I was. But thankfully God also still working in my life. He had made me just really tenderhearted and I just had this strong tension of just like wrestling, even though like I didn't know it was like a spiritual wrestling, but it existed.

So I came to faith through InterVarsity on campus. I put my name down at the student org fair. And one of my best friends today, who's actually here today, because they're traveling through, is Christy. And she was the faithful witness who invited me over and over to lunch. And I started going to their small group.

And it was her persistence and kindness that really encouraged me to meet new friends. It's an emotional story. Yeah, so she was the one who encouraged me to meet new friends, and that's where I found people who vibrantly lived their life with Jesus.

And so I went to many Bible studies and a weekend retreat, and I was just overwhelmed by the presence of the Holy Spirit. And I just really loved how this group of quirky, intellectual, and loving people were living out their faith.

And so I just very quickly determined that this is what I want and I want what they have. So I gave my life to Christ. And it was just a really significant time of both really growing in my faith very quickly, but also just like a grief too of like I had to let go of a lot of things that weren't good for me at that time or friends who didn't really care about who I was.

And so there was a two-sided coin of, and like my family and their friends who literally said to me, like, you're just really different. And I was like, I am. Like, I met Jesus. Like, I don't know what that means to you, but this is, yeah.

Fast forwarding through my time at UW, I majored in French and environmental studies. And I lived abroad for one year in southern France. And that kind of uncovered my love and heart for Europe. And it led me to do ministry in Berlin, Germany after graduation where I worked with refugees and their families with children.

Yeah, and so now you know where I came from. But why am I teaching about revival today? So I have a vocational calling in my life that I've wrestled with to be in ministry. And right now I work half time for a non-profit called Revive Europe. And so we're a small team that serves the entire European continent or region, but our vision is just simply this, global revival in the student generation.

And our mission is to be like John the Baptist, basically, preparing a way for a move of God among European students and young adults. And so I manage lots of backend operations. I clearly don't live in Europe right now, so I work remotely, and I lead our registration team for conferences and more importantly I'm moving into a spiritual formation role.

So for the last year I've been just traveling and visiting colleagues and learning about revival at different conferences. Yeah, and so because I've been working for Revive Europe for two years, but it's not until the last year when I kind of I kind of realized I don't know what revival is and I don't know what this actually looks like and I was just kind of faced with that question.

What is revival?

So when you think of revival, what comes to mind? Does anyone have anything at the top of their mind that they'd like to shout out? Back to life. Yeah. So a quick search on the internet will tell you what revival is, or that revival is an improvement in the condition or strength, or to come back to life. Right on the nose.

I had previously thought of revival strictly as a communal, overdramatic expression of faith, but that also probably comes from my, like, more, like, timid Catholic upbringing of how I experienced faith community. I was admittedly skeptical, for example, of the Asbury outpouring from last year. And it challenged me to consider that I don't really know what it means to be in the strong presence of the Lord or what that really is like.

And because I thought, you know, I already know Jesus, like, what is then revival that makes it really different, that people are just so transformed by being in his presence? What does that mean in everyday life? Because we're not experiencing crazy, like, bouts of revival all the time. It's not super common either.

So, yeah, I think Tim Keller summarizes revival well. The definition, I think it'll be up on the board so that you can read it if you want. So in revival, Tim Keller says, Sleepy Christians wake up. Nominal Christians get converted. And non-Christians get reached.

A sleepy Christian may believe they're a Christian, but they don't have a real sense of God's holiness, their own sin, or the depth of his grace. They may be a moralist or a relativist or living inconsistent lives. Nominal Christians may be going to church but have never really been convicted of sin or received salvation personally.

When sleepy and nominal Christians get revived, they become attractive and bold in their witness. People who would never have believed before begin to get converted. Revival has many connotations, but classically refers to a time when the ordinary operations of the Holy Spirit, not signs and wonders, but conviction of sin, conversion, assurance of salvation, and a sense of the reality of Jesus Christ on the heart, are intensified. So that you see growth in the quality of the faith and the people in your church.

Yeah, I feel like what he says is pretty powerful of what it means for people in their hearts and how they're living. And revival is really a process of personal and communal movement from darkness to light, from death to life, from chaos to order, from despair to joy, from anxiety to peace, and ultimately just from brokenness to wholeness.

And it's traditionally come to communities or people who are most desperate with a watchful eye, and their hearts have been made incredibly tender to chaos and brokenness in our human reality, which drives us to this desperate cry to God for more.

And so if you look over history, our Christian history is the story of successive seasons of revivals, starting with the day of Pentecost in Acts 2, when Jesus first poured out his Spirit on his followers and the church of Jesus Christ was born.

Consecration: where revival starts

Yeah, and so one of the first points for revival of what's important in experiencing revival and transformation is consecration. So revival starts in our own hearts and it overflows and begins with repentance. So just like what Abbie said, repentance is just really ultimately, it's very important and it's like a process that's daily.

Calvin Miller writes, "We confess not so that he will know our sins for he already knows. We confess so that being honest will open up our hearts and make us free."

It's just simply truth telling and the Lord already knows everything we've done or what's in our hearts or even things that we don't even know that's in our hearts. But confession is an act that's really for our benefits and our relationship with Jesus that brings us greater measures of wholeness and righteousness, which brings God glory. Like your wholeness and your transformation is pleasing to the Lord.

I've just been really inspired by, like with Revive Europe, we hold conferences and our entire theme is on repentance, which is not always like a very popular theme or subject. But yeah, to invite students to give up idols or things in their life that they place above the Lord or to seek forgiveness or to just go through a process of repentance is really the beginning of a transformative experience.

And yeah, and I've experienced just, like, in seeing that and what we're teaching and also experiencing that through some of the programs that we've done, I started to realize, like, I have a whole, like, laundry basket of things that, like, when I'm really taking the time and making room to be in the presence of the Lord, it's just required of his holiness that he's going to bring these things up.

And I was just really convicted of, you know, like, I really need consecration and I need to be practicing this daily. And yeah, so God has been very patiently teaching me about things in my life that I need to let go or that weren't good for me.

And it's yeah, he's just very patient. It's been like experiences where I feel like as you're a kid and you're on the diving board and you're like, all right, I'm ready. I can do this. And then you get to the end and you're looking down at the pool and you're just like, I don't know. I can't do this. This is too scary.

And I just feel like I've really sat in that place for like an embarrassingly long time. But the Lord doesn't really care. He's like the mom in the chair, like drinking a smoothie. And he's like, I've got all day to like keep waiting for you. I mean, and it was more than a day, it was months. Like, it was a really long time. But I just really felt an overwhelming sense of the Lord just being like, I will wait, you know?

And yeah, it was just like really moving, just like in wrestling through the tension of sticky things that God's going to bring up. And that's why repentance is so important. It does not always enjoyable, but it will lead to greater freedom and transformation.

Dependency: only God can bring revival

The second point about revival that's really important is dependency. And so revival can only come from God and we can do anything apart from him. And an outpouring of the Holy Spirit leading to revival is not something we can produce or work for. It's a mysterious product of faithfulness.

There is no formula to make it happen. In a personal level, God turns our hearts to him. And in a communal level, God is uniting all of us to himself. And both of the personal and communal revival could either be both slow and faithful, or a sudden intensity of his presence. It exists in both ways.

An example of dependency, a snapshot of the Hebrides revival that occurred in 1949. It occurred in one of the farthest and smallest islands on the northern tip of Scotland. And it started from two women, Peggy and Christine Smith, who were 84 and 82 years old. Peggy is completely blind, and Christine was bent over with arthritis.

But they were so burdened for their island, for the depressed spiritual state, that they sensed the Lord when they would pray faithfully, that he said,

I will pour water on the thirsty land and streams on the dry ground.

Isaiah 44:3

And so this led these two women to pray in their small cottage two to three nights per week from 10 p.m. to 3 a.m. And after weeks of praying, Peggy had a vision of her church being crowded with young people and an unknown preacher preaching to them.

And so they sent for their minister. And I met a woman who's the granddaughter or the daughter of someone who's experienced this revival. And she said, this woman kind of strong-armed her minister and said, the spiritual leaders, you know, like we must pray together every week. You know, like let's pray together for this because the Lord wants to bring young people to life and bring revival to the island.

And so after several weeks of praying, after several weeks of praying, on an evening when they were praying a psalm, God's presence fell over their village and like a preliminary outpouring of his spirit. And that group of intercessors who had this rhythm of praying and leaving, they discovered that just like in their village and actually in the physical region of the area they were in, that men and women were kneeling on the roads because they were just brought to like repentance and conviction in their hearts because of God's presence was so strong over the land.

And even every home had lights on and nobody could sleep because the awareness of God was so strong that they were all in the spiritual like tension of God's presence. And so Peggy sent for her minister and told him that he's supposed to invite someone named Duncan Campbell. And then he eventually came and preached and nothing happened. Everyone was leaving the prayer meeting until there was one last young man remaining and he had a heart for a revival and he desperately pleaded for God to fulfill his promise of bringing water to dry land.

And so nothing happens, they're leaving, and then that's when they witnessed the revival of that island, that many hundreds of people were drawn to the church sovereignly and they all came from a dance hall where God like fell upon them at the time of prayer that the people left the dance hall to come to the church and they were just drawn there. And that many other people who lived in the area were also drawn there already there because they just got out of bed and got dressed and they came to the church.

Yeah, and so this hunger and thirst for God overwhelmed the people and so many were saved. Like the account talks about like so many people like being like revived in their faith. And it in these stories that I've read or like heard from other people like storytelling, that it's just like transforms you in such a way that your faith is never the same.

And so, I mean, this is a very like particular story where God's presence was like very regional and like physical in a place and that like moved to those people. And no story is the same.

Friendship: revival moves at the speed of friendship

And so the next point for revival is friendship. And so one thing that I've learned, especially from the Asbury leaders who were part of that outpouring, is that they say that revival moves at the speed of friendship and partnership. And that we need each other and to seek to honor each other and not make a name for ourselves, and that maintaining relationships and unity in the spirit is really essential.

So to consider this pocket of revival of what friendship means, a little snapshot of the Moravian revival, which is like what the gallery will be about tonight, is that it occurred in a rural village just off of the Czech border in Germany. It's very rural. I've been there. I went there last year. It's in the middle of nowhere.

And then 1722, there's a young man, aged 22, who purchased a parcel of land from his grandmother. And he wanted, he was spiritually burdened to make a place of religious freedom, which is unheard of at that time, because most people were part of church institutions. And they were, yeah, these church institutions were very severe.

So a lot of these people who were experiencing the Holy Spirit in a way that the church didn't approve of were being persecuted. And so many people groups from Saxony, Moravia, and then eventually all of like Western Europe started coming to this land because they were like, I would like religious freedom. This is a novel idea.

And it started to create great division among the people because they came from so many religious sects and languages and cultures. And the dissension became so great that the entire community was on the verge basically of breaking down and like almost violent.

And so the man, his name is Count Nicholas Zinzendorf. He is the man who purchased the land for the people to settle. He became burdened and he started a radical movement. And he assigned members of these different groups of people into small bands so that they would study scripture together and study how we live in unity.

And so they created what was called a brotherly agreement. And then the community really started to change because they were really forced to like bear with one another. And it wasn't, yeah, it was over time that this happened.

To maintain this practice, they would often like walk in these beautiful woods that's in the area. And they carved even sitting areas out of stone so that they would meet. And it was really a critical movement or moment of revival for Europe that the Moravians church never got bigger than 300. But they sent the majority of their people in missions because when revival poured out on that community, they were so burdened that they had to leave and share. Even though they wanted, some of them said, we've been persecuted so much, we finally have a place where we can stay freely, but I can't like, I can't bother to stay because God has moved my heart so much.

And so this is just a good story of just how like, God moved these people to have to bear with one another and find unity. And they became really a ready vessel for the outpouring that they experienced. And then God has just blessed the church in the way that God moved there in that community.

Preparing the way: revival is poured on prepared ground

And then the next point is preparing the way, which is very John the Baptist. Revival is poured out on prepared ground, and that ground is prepared first and foremost just through lifestyles of prayer and repentance. And that's what Revive Europe is doing.

We feel like this is a time and a place that God has called us and different organizations in Europe. We feel a burden of preparing hearts for a move of God. And so really we are just very forgetful creatures, and there are a million things that vie for our attention on a daily basis.

And so preparing the way to maintain a revival in our hearts and to look to greater revival amongst our communities, it needs both the hope that we look to in our mundane daily existence. So for example, our church at New Culture here, we've already started revival rhythms. And that's like the point of the set apart summer that we've been studying. And so we have the daily rhythms and just even the rule of life and our small groups just like learning about what does it mean to be set apart? What does it mean to be consecrated?

Other rhythms include daily devotionals, prayer groups of two or three for accountability and prayer, studying scripture, spiritual embodiment like meditation, spiritual walking pilgrimages, or celebrating the liturgical church calendar.

It's just really beautiful because I see it. I've been learning as I've been looking at revival rhythms. It's unifying the church. Like, I came from a Catholic background. I learned about saints. They follow the liturgical church calendar. And I think those, I've been having to, like, revisit that background that I have and see how it, you know, actually does fit together. And it is unifying.

It is for all churches to look at how people before us have lived their faith and done it well, or not done it so well, you know. Yeah, and just the liturgical calendar.

For me, for example, last Advent, I used these John the Baptist cards. It was an artistic rendition of his life, and I studied it day by day during Advent. And it was really enriching, and I learned a lot about his story. And it was just a season where, like, every church I went to was, like, preaching on John the Baptist. I was like, oh my gosh, John the Baptist is my man right now. Like, I'm learning so much about John the Baptist.

But it was like really exciting and it was like yeah. I think it was a part of like God, like I made room for him and he was really speaking to me through it. And I think that's the point of like revival rhythms. It's just you all you have to do is make room. It doesn't matter what you choose or what you pick. Of course scripture is really important. So I would say that should be one of them.

But just making room for Jesus to speak to you in these times and places of your ordinary day, and he's going to work in your heart.

Word and Spirit: what revival is rooted in

And then the last one is the Word and Spirit, another just important factor of revival. So revival at its best is a renewed love for the person of God, the Word of God, and the Spirit of God. Just digesting scripture, sharing faith with one another, your closet time, meaning just the time you practice by yourself with the Lord in his presence. And revival is just basically the desire to maintain your intimacy with Jesus.

It's like keeping a simmer on the stove. Like you just have, there has to be action or movement for it to stay alive to simmer. And then like a communal revival, the way in which God has poured out his spirit is because people kept that simmer alive and he made it and allowed boil.

And so, yeah, and it's beautiful. We might outpourings are like not common. You know, God deems when he's doing it and in what measure. His presence is always with us. You know, so that's the one thing we can always bank on.

Yeah. And so I have a scene from Rings of Power. I don't know if you know Rings of Power from the Amazon Prime series, but I feel like it helps encapsulate the big picture of what I think revival is so that if you walk away from here that you would maybe at least remember the scene.

So Rings of Power is part of the Lord of the Rings story. It precedes the Lord of the Rings, if you've seen those movies. And the beginning of the season starts with Galadriel, who is a royal elf whose origin story is explored in the series. As a child, she lives in a land called Valinor, and she sets her paper boat to sail on a stream. But she is horrified when her peers sink it because they're throwing stones at it. The boat sinks. Her older brother arrives just in time to prevent her from fighting her friends, and he asks her, do you know why a ship floats and a stone cannot?

And she responds, or sorry, I'm just messing it up. Do you know why a ship floats and a stone cannot? Because the stone sees only downward and the darkness of the water is vast and irresistible. The ship feels the darkness as well, striving moment by moment to master her and pull her under. But the ship has a secret for unlike the stone, her gaze is not downward, but up. So fixed upon the light that guides her, whispering of grander things than darkness ever knew.

Yeah. And I just think this was a, when I watched it, I thought it was a beautiful, like, portrayal of just that we must keep our eyes transfixed on Jesus, like the boat that fixes its gaze upon the light that guides her.

Let us keep our eyes fixed on Jesus, on whom our faith depends from beginning to end.

Hebrews 12:2

And I just think that's really critical to our faith, that Jesus is both our light and our counselor who shows us grander things or more beautiful things or calls us to the deep. And we can't ever really imagine where that journey brings us. And yeah, being fixed on Jesus and dependency to let him lead is is also part of just like letting go. It's that surrender to like trusting as you're doing these, these ordinary like rhythms that Jesus really is leading and his presence is real and that's the reality he's inviting us into. Not the reality that we always experience or know that we see that's in front of us.

Yes, and so as the series continues, Galadriel spends centuries of her adulthood searching for Morgoth, which is the evil source that has destroyed the light in Valinor. I'm sorry, it sounds very nerdy. And created war and destruction in Middle-earth. But no one has seen the resurgence of evil for a while. And elves and men alike are really glad to forget, and they start to pretend that he doesn't exist.

And her Elvish friend Elrond tries to convince her to cease her journey. But she tells him, you have not seen what I have seen. Evil does not sleep. It waits. And in the moment of our complacency, it will blind us.

And I just think that is like a good quote of just the urgency that there is ultimately of you have to keep the simmer going. And it is really important to be aware that Jesus is with us in every moment. He is calling us to the deep. But we do live in a broken world.

For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against wickedness in high places.

Ephesians 6:12

For the enemy really desires two thrones, the chair of the Almighty, which he's already lost, but the chair also of your own will, which owns the center of your life. And so our minds are really truly, our minds and our hearts are the true battlefield.

And so what does this mean for us? It just means that we really do must. We must contend for revival for ourselves and for our communities together. So yeah, I guess the invitation here is to stand. And I'm going to pray that the Holy Spirit would highlight if there's something that the Holy Spirit has highlighted that we can ask the Lord what to do with it.

Yeah, remembering that revival comes from. I mean, revival is the Lord's. But in observing revival, we've noticed that it includes consecration, dependency, friendship, preparing the way, and the Word and Spirit.

And so yeah, Holy Spirit, I just thank you for the work that you do. For the work of your spirit and the ways in which your ways are higher than our ways and your thoughts are higher than our thoughts. Yeah, that it is from the Father that he brings revival. That he turns hearts. That he's always working in our lives.

And so, Jesus, I just, I thank you for you contending on all of our behalves on the behalf of the church. Yeah, and I just invite you, Jesus, to highlight anything about revival in our hearts or highlight things in which you want to bring into the light for repentance. Lord, yeah, and so I just invite you to consider what the Lord might be speaking to you and ask him what you should do with it and where he's working in your heart.

Thank you.