A Heart for Revival is a 21-day prayer guide designed to quicken your spirit and focus your heart regarding personal and community revival.
(I’ll be sharing devotions from it each Tuesday for the next several months — though, if you’d rather enjoy them in a daily format, the eBook or PDF versions are available here for download.)
“For he knows our frame; he remembers that we are dust” (Psalms 103:14 ESV).
“Secondly, the people who get revival will be a humble people.”
— Excerpt from Leonard Ravenhill’s Revival Praying
From the text we must remember (because He remembers) that we are but dust. This is accomplished by recalling that our life originated in a different way from our body. The Preacher penned,
“and the dust returns to the earth as it was, and the spirit returns to God who gave it” (Ecclesiastes 12:7 ESV).
It was God’s breath that brought life to dirt then and it cannot be forgotten now.
I believe this is one reason why the Father despises pride—how can dust think it is anything without the Breath that made it alive? James plainly says that God resists the proud but gives grace to the humble (cf. James 4:6). James also connects pride with envy (James 4:5). Commenting on this passage Bob Sorge in Envy writes,
“Because envy is rooted in pride, it will easily lead to boasting about oneself. When in the presence of someone who has been given more than us, envy will want us to advertise our own merits. But such boasting usually comes from an inflated opinion of ourselves. So instead of speaking the truth about ourselves, we lie against the truth of who we are and what we have” (p. 12).
Revival will not come when there is envy over what God may be doing in another church instead of yours. Revival will not come when its desire is to bring personal recognition or corporate acknowledgment. Revival will not come unless there is an emptying of self from this body of dust.
Isn’t it interesting that something seen as dusty has a connotation of being unused, as in the idiom to “collect dust.” Maybe in spiritual terms “I” need to collect dust, meaning that “I” need to decrease so He may increase (cf. John 3:30). Then it would be time for God’s breath to “blow” my self-serving dust away so He can do His work in me and revival could come.
Prayer Focus
Pray James 4:10, “Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will exalt you”; be willing to take your appropriate place in the dust…as dust.
