Category: Devotion of the Day

“Vival” or Revival?

Enoch walked with God.
Genesis 5:24

Enoch did not need a revival every year to keep him going. Most Christians and churches need a periodic stirring up, but it should not, and need no, be so. We are in danger of thinking of revival as an occasional shot in the arm, a spurt of religious enthusiasm that soon plays out. God never meant that His children should live by fits and starts, and up-and-down experience. Some husbands and wives live that way, with periods of indifference, quarreling, and then making up again. How much better is that steady and constant companionship, not perfect, but faithful and dependable day by day!

With churches on almost every other corner, it is pathetic that we should have to have a special reviving every year. If we walked with God and kept up to date with Him we should never need to all in a preacher to get us back to normal. For real revival is simply normal New Testament Christianity, not an unusual religious spree.

If we had a daily “vival” we should not need an occasional revival. Let us walk as children of the day and we shall not need to be awakened every year.

Be Your Age

That we henceforth be no more children.
Ephesians 4:14

We are to be childlike (Mt. 18:3) but not childish (Mt. 11:16). Those who pursue the study of the deeper Christian life often miss the way and become Faddists, studying it as a novelty, playing with it, like the world plays bridge. Others become Freaks, going off at tangents on “death to self” or the filling of the Spirit or some other point, making the part greater than the whole. Still others become Failures, giving up the whole thing in disillusionment.

There are not enough wholesome, healthy, normal Christians who “grow up.” We either freeze or fry, it seems. What a picture Paul paints here of saints and churches, carried about with every wind of doctrine instead of maturing in Christ! And we grow up in Him, Christ in His fullness, not in some phase or feature of His fullness however precious. How many saints, babes on milk instead of meat, need to “be their age!”