MBC Arlington | A Vision Of Personal Revival

Eric Saunders (0:01)

Let me see, Arlen, so what's going on this morning? How are we doing? Doing all right? All right, let's do this. If you got a Bible with you, go ahead and turn to Psalm 51, Psalm 51 That's where we're going to be. So listen, there are just certain things that you just have to keep doing over and over again. I was sitting with some friends recently and the topic of haircuts came up. My barber, Tyson, he's the best barber in the DMV. I got a standing appointment with him every single two weeks, right? So every two weeks, my man has to be fresh, has to shade tight, right? And so I'm with a group of people. It's a different groups of people. I mean, it's a group of people, people with different cultural backgrounds. And topic of haircuts come up, and I share that I get a haircut every two weeks. And another person from another cultural background looks at me and she says, every two weeks? Why? And I look back at her and I simply tell her this, because it keeps going. It keeps going. That's why I cut it. Listen, some things we wish they stayed the way we left them. I wish my hair stayed the way it looked after I left the barber shop. For some of you who have yards, you wish your grass stayed the way it looked after you cut it. And what is true about fades and what is true about lawns, it's also true with soles.

You see our hair and our lawns drift in directions we don't want them to go, so we need to correct them. And here's what our soul does. Our soul often drifts to places we don't want it to go. Eric, what are you talking about? If you are a follower of Jesus Christ, you are saved by grace, but your soul is in a fight. You are constantly drifting away from living by grace. How easy it is. All of us know how easy it is for us to drift towards sin and towards self. And because the drift is real, hear me this morning, we are in constant need of revival. We are in constant need of revival. And you may wonder, Eric, what are you talking about when we're talking about revival? I'll tell you this. Real revival is when a people experience an intensification of the work of the Holy Spirit and what we see as a result of that is that we see sleepy Christians wake up, people who thought they were Christians become Christians, and the lost get saved. This is what we see. You might say, Eric, why are you talking about this this morning? Because the last few weeks, we've been talking about vision in the life of our church. And what we're asking God to do through our church is nothing less than revival. We're asking God for us to see 20 million people around the world not only hear the gospel but get saved. We're asking for the 10,000 people of McLean Bible Church to wake up from their slumber and to give themselves and be astounded and live in response to the grace that God has extended to them and be a vessel of God's grace to other people. We're asking God to help us multiply to start five new congregations and we're asking God for us to take our eyes off of ourselves so that we see the one right in front of us so that we'll actually reach them. We say one, five, 10, 20 And for some of you who are on the fence about whether or not you should get behind this vision, let me remind you this is not simply a vision for McLean Bible Church. This is a vision that every single Christian should have.

Every Christian should have this. To see God's power and grace on display in the world. But hear me this morning, the reason why we're in Psalm 51, it's because we will never experience this. We will not reach the world together. We will not see revival and renewal in our city if we don't experience it personally.

I actually hit this from another angle. Listen, we can't control revival in our world. The spirit moves wherever the spirit moves. Too many people that I've talked to, they secretly believe that they can just do something to engineer corporate revival. Some of you believe this too. You think, man, if I just go to a different place that's experiencing it, or if I just go to a different church somewhere, or if I simply jumped around and raised my hands, or if Eric just yelled a little bit more in his sermons, then somehow we can just trigger corporate revival and we simply can't do that. The spirit will do whatever the spirit will do. However, what if instead of worrying about our neighbor and corporate revival, what if you worried about you? What if you worried about you? What if every single one of us pursued God with all that we had? What if every single one of us said, I'm going to stop making excuses for my spiritual laziness? I'm going to stop making excuses for my sin? I'm going to stop blaming others for where I am? I'm going to seek God with all that I have?