“And the people
feared the Lord…”
— Haggai 1:12b (NIV)
Revival is always preceded by a
great repentance (2 Chronicles 7:14). As people, or as the people, respond to God’s eternal voice — for righteousness and
justice over the land — they’re blessed in the earthly realms by a blessed
obedience for their acts and impetus for further obedience — the means of
revival, be it personal or corporate or national. In other words, they’ve been given
more power to obey for their
obedience of repentance.
The obedience to repent brings
about God’s Spiritual power to continue to obey.
The people of Haggai’s time were too
busy building their own houses and their own lives to build the Lord’s house. They were inwardly focused
and it dismayed the Lord that his
own people would be so self-centred.
Haggai prophesies to Zerubbabel
(the Governor of Judah) and Joshua (the high priest), admonishing them as
representatives of the people — both in terms of secular State and spiritual
State. Judah is a State of the Divine — a people of God. Their leaders (Zerubbabel
and Joshua) are both addressed. This oracle goes out to all the people. And all
the people respond. The nation responds. And something special happens:
revival. Something is stirred in their spirits… Zerubbabel is stirred to
repentance and action. So, too, Joshua. And “the remnant of the people.”
The book of Haggai teaches us that there’s
a blessed empowering in our turning back to God.
The blessing we automatically think
of is we’re rightly oriented to life again. That’s only part of it. Being
blessed in the returning means not only are we rightly oriented in life again,
we’re also empowered to obey.
We cannot obey God unless we have
repented, but repentance, in itself, is a kind of first fruit of obedience.
The people of Judah learned that,
in fearing God once again, in returning their hearts back to him, his Holy
Spirit would empower them to be rightly motivated to work on the rebuilding of
the Temple. Their obedience to turn back was blessed by God through an empowering
for further obedience.
Obedience
is blessed with power to obey.
The more we obey God, the more
we can obey him.
To repent is to experience God’s
power. To repent is to advocate God’s truth. God’s truth is magnified in us in
our repenting, and God’s truth bequeaths power to us.
When we obey God we receive God’s
power to do what he wills us to do.
When we repent, God makes us willing and able to do the things he’s planned for us from eternity to do.
Revival depends first on
repentance.
© 2015 Steve Wickham.
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