Seeking Him

Over the past several weeks I have been co-leading a Bible Study at our church entitled Seeking Him. The study was written by Nancy Leight DeMoss & Tim Grissom with Life Action Ministries. God has done some amazing things in the hearts of all of us women attending the study. It has been such a blessing in my life that I have decided to share with all of you reading the blog the highlights of each week's study and discussion topics. Here's a recap of what we have learned thus far. Each week we begin our study with worship music, a video of Nancy Leigh DeMoss teaching on the weekly subject, small group discussion and prayer time, then we end the morning with a brief lecture digging a little deeper into the topic or sharing personal testimonies.

Week 1. PERSONAL REVIVAL
Memory Verse Hosea 10:12 "Break up your fallow ground, for it is time to seek the Lord, until He comes and rains righteousness on you."
We had a short lesson about "farming" this week. The message focus was to understand that God initiates revival in the hearts of his children, and that this revival process is sometimes painful at first, but it will produce a harvest of blessings if we persevere and allow God to work. Breaking up the fallow ground is the first step in the process of plowing. It is a labor intensive, painful, slow process. It is the most difficult step in plowing because the ground is hard and the plow has to dig deep to break up the hardened surface. So, how does this relate to us? This is how God initializes the process of revival in our hearts-by breaking up and exposing what is hardened on the surface of our hearts. This is the beginning of God's work to restore us to our First Love-Him, to rebuild a desire for God's Word, prayer,praise and obedience, to help us resolve conflicts in our lives and repair broken relationships, to remove bitterness, fear and worry, to refresh our spirits, to renew our minds and to reform our lives. This sounds wonderful, doesn't it? So, how do we allow God to revive our hearts? James 4:7-10 will help answer that question. "So humble yourselves before God. Resist the Devil, and he will flee from you. Draw close to God, and God will draw close to you. Wash your hands, you sinners; purify your hearts, you hypocrites. Let there be tears for the wrong things you have done. Let there be sorrow and deep grief. Let there be sadness instead of laughter, and gloom instead of joy. When you bow down before the Lord and admit your dependence on him, he will life you up and give you honor." Revival, refreshing, restoration- it all begins with our humility.
My friend, Teresa, spoke that morning and shared her testimony about a time in her life when God took her away from everything and everyone she knew so that she would seek and find Him. It was in that place that she experienced His healing, grace and love in a very powerful way, but it didn't come without tears and honesty. Her advice to all of us was to "hang on"- as difficult as this process may become, the end result of a wonderful harvest will be worth it all. Thank you, Teresa, for sharing your sincere and transparent heart to begin a heart-changing study. What an amazing way to begin our year!

Week 2: HUMILITY
Memory Verse Luke 14:11. "For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted."
Biblical humility-recognizing oneself as a sinner before the holy God-is a prerequisite for starting down the path of revival. As God begins preparing your heart for revival, He will convict us of our sin and call us to return to Him. See Chronicles 7:14. From this passage, we learn that there are four conditions set forth for God's people. They include humbling ourselves, praying to God, seeking God's face and turning from our wicked ways. Each of these are steps we must take to fully experience personal revival. This week's focus is on the first condition-humbling ourselves before our God. C.S. Lewis stated "It was through pride that the devil became the devil: Pride leads to every other vice: it is the complete anti-God state of mind." So, how do we know if we have humble contrite hearts? The way we respond to Him in moments of conviction reveals the true condition of our heart.Our view of who God is and who we are plays a key role in our humility or our pride. Humility comes with a great awareness of God's holiness and our sinfulness. Our awareness of His holiness is what drives us to acknowledge our sin and receive God's forgiveness. Humility and brokenness are essential for the process of revival.C.S. Lewis offers this advice for acquiring humility; "If anyone would like to acquire humility, I can, I think, tell him the first step. The first step is to realize that one is proud....if you think you're not conceited, it means you are very conceited indeed." There are numerous examples throughout both the Old Testament and the New Testament of God's opposition to the proud and His favor to the humble. And we, as God's children, have two choices: we can be proud and have God oppose us, or we can be humble and have God dwell within us and draw us near to Him.
My friend, Jodi, spoke that day and shared with us a wonderful acronym to help us become humble servants of our Lord. It was BOW. B-end my knee in prayer. O-open my Bible with eagerness. W-orship the Lord with thanksgiving. Prayer, Bible and Worship-that is where humility begins. Thank you, Jodi, for gently and humbly reminding us that God's revival in our hearts begins on our knees.

Week 3: HONESTY
Memory Verse: Proverbs 28:13. "Whoever conceals his transgressions will not prosper, but he who confesses and forsakes them with obtain mercy."
Our study on humility led us to the truth that the first prerequisite for revival is the willingness to be honest with God and others about our true spiritual condition. God cannot bless or revive a heart that refuses to acknowledge the truth. Our Bible reading led us through Psalm 15 and Psalm 24. In both of these Psalms, David speaks with profound wisdom through experience, of the need to speak truthfully to God before one can walk blamelessly before Him. If you ask God to search your heart, He will reveal to you what is inside. The discussion in our small group revolved around the sin that, for the most part, only God truly knows about- not the sins that are displayed for all the world to see- but the sins generated by our thoughts which reveal the true condition of our hearts. The good news is that God is willing to "cover" (with the blood of Christ) every sin that we are willing to "uncover" before Him. Our study book reminded us that no sin is so large that God cannot forgive it; and no sin is so small that we can afford to keep it hidden. The truth that we are all sinners is known to God and God's Word warns us against pretending or even convincing ourselves that we have no sin. 1 John 1:5-8 says "If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us." The willingness to be honest and confess our sin is an evidence of genuine salvation and is vital to experiencing God's forgiveness and restored fellowship. God's faithfulness leads us to conviction of sin and genuine repentance. When God reveals the sin in our hearts the best response for true liberation is an honest one. The workbook ended this week with a quote by Charles H. Spurgeon: "Nothing can enter heaven which is not real; nothing erroneous, mistaken, conceited, hollow, professional, pretentious, insubstantial, can be smuggled through the gates. Only truth can dwell with the God of truth."
My friend, Christy, was willing to expose the "two-sides of Christy" in her lecture. The first was what we see on the outside of her, the second was what was happening in her heart. For example: The outside Christy had a sign that said "you look nice today." The inside Christy was holding a sign that said "Jealous." Her lecture brought tears to many eyes because we personally understood our "surface-self" compared to our "inner-self." Thank you, Christy, for willingly exposing your heart to all of us. Your honesty led me (and others...I'm sure) to fall before the throne of God and agree with Him about the sin he revealed hidden deep in my heart. Confessing that sin and asking God to give me the strength and grace to continue this revival process was truly liberating.

Week 4: REPENTANCE
Memory Verse: Psalm 51:10. "Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me."
This week we gained a better understanding of what produces and results from genuine repentance. The act of returning to the Lord, forsaking known sin, and obeying what He says- is repentance. This is a crucial step for all who are seeking God for revival. Repentance is both a change in the way we think and a change in the way we act. I liked the definition that it is a change of mind that results in a change of behavior. So, what is is that we need to change about the way we think? It is the way we think about our sin. We must learn to hate our sin because God hates our sin. The humility and honesty phases were critical to helping initiate the process of repentance by the honest exposure we had to sin in our hearts. If the sorrow we feel over our sin is genuine than we will turn away from that sin and turn toward Christ for forgiveness. This is process that must be continual in the lives of God's children. Nancy L. DeMoss explains it like this "from the point of regeneration until the day we are finally free from the presence of sin, our heart attitude must always be: Lord, I am willing to forsake any sin that You show me, in order to have a pure heart and glorify You. In other words, once a repenter, always a repenter."
My discussion that day was taken from 2 Corinthians 7. In this scripture, Paul describes how he felt after he sent a letter of rebuke to the Corinthians- and their reaction to his letter. It grieved Paul to have to cause pain in their lives but the purpose of his rebuke was only to restore and reconcile them to their Lord. The sorrow he caused was Godly sorrow (as opposed to worldly sorrow) and it led them to repentance, reconciliation to God and salvation. So, as Christians, we should cautiously follow Paul's loving example to be willing to cause Godly sorrow when the salvation of a believer is at stake. And we should follow the examples of the Corinthians to humbly go before the Lord when rebuked and allow His searchlight to penetrate our hearts, exposing and convicting us of our sin, confess our sin, then completely turn from that sin. Jesus told us that if our hand causes us to sin, we should cut if off. So in order for repentance to be genuine, we must take measures (no matter how extreme) to insure that we will not be tempted to fall into that same sin again. Changing what we think, how we act, and pro-actively looking forward to a life of holiness are all vital for genuine repentance in our lives.

Week 5. GRACE
Memory Verse: Hebrews 4:16
"Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need."
Grace, God's grace....what an amazing gift. This week we had a slight reprieve from the soul-searching and sometimes gut-wrenching walk we've been walking on the path to personal revival. It's been amazing seeing the way God has convicted the hearts of His women in the study and I have to admit that this "plowing" process has been difficult. God has been breaking the hardness of many hearts and gently softening and healing them. The topic this week was refreshing and humbling. We discussed God's wonderful gift of grace. We know that God has expectations of His children, but the good news is that He does not ask us to meet His requirements on our own-in fact, He knows we can't live humble, holy, obedient lives without His grace. It's amazing, it's extravagant and it's powerful.So, how do we get this amazing grace? Well, God's only requirement for His grace is our humility. See James 4:6. I liked John Piper's explanation of grace. He said "Grace is not simply leniency when we have sinned. Grace is the enabling gift of God not to sin. Grace is power, not just pardon." We studied the passage in Titus 2:11-12. From this we gained a better understanding that God's grace helps us to have the desire to no longer sin, as well as the power to not succumb to worldly passions and to be self-controlled. Jerry Bridges had this to say about grace. "Your worst days are never so bad that you're beyond the reach of God's grace. And your best days are never so good that you're beyond the need of God's grace." Praise God for his wonderful, free gift.
My friend, Lizz, discussed the differences between saving grace and sustaining grace. She led us to Jeremiah 32:37-42 to show us a Biblical example of God's sustaining grace and four promises of this grace. 1)God will be our God. 2)God will change our hearts and cause us to love and fear Him. 3)We will not turn away from Him. 4) God will do this with Infinite Intensity. Thank you, my dear friend Lizz, for your wonderful insight and for reminding us to be extremely grateful for the benefit, gift, and divine influence of grace in our hearts.