My story: How does revival start?

How can we have revival, and how does it really start? Do we have to pray, fast and scream out, until God comes?

For me, calling to revival started with a very sexy woman. Now this story is not about this incredible woman, but God. So I’ll just say that she entering my life made me rededicate myself as a Christian, we got married in 2001 and God miraculously gave us two children.

I began going to a local church. I just wanted to rediscover my roots as a Christian, find the basics. I had no thought about visions, service for God, being used in mighty ways or anything like that. Revivals I hardly knew existed. I did not ask God for anything in that sense. I simply wanted to learn more about what it means to be a Christian.

The call

So even I had been a Christian for most of my life, I enrolled to an Alpha course. I was rather surprised when a letter came back, welcoming me to Christian leadership school. “Oh, they just did a mistake”, I thought and wanted to call them to correct the mistake.

Then God spoke to my heart: “It is no mistake. I have called you to leadership”.

So I went to the course, where I felt out of place. I knew little about leadership and nothing about leadership in Christian context. There was all these pastors and senior people, together with me, small mr Alpha Course.

That was the beginning of my calling. I did not cry out for revival to God. I did not beg him to use me. I did nothing.

The tiny powerful flame

God changed my heart. He started a fire there. It was small. Almost impossible to see and sense. When the devil first looked at the fire, he must have laughed: “Is that all? I’ll put that out in a minute”.

But he could not.

The fire just continued to burn and burn and burn. In times of living in sin and darkness, the fire was still there. In times of being long away from God, it was still burning. In times of big trial and hardship, that tiny flame did not die.

Nuclear reaction

Out of despair and agony I have tried to kill the fire myself, two times. It was times when it brought me to the limits of what I could endure, and then some. But I am powerless. I can’t put it out. It follows me. It fuels me. And it drags me back to God and his purpose time after time.

One time God showed me the tiny flame. And it was no tiny flame. It was like this huge nuclear reaction.

I am an involuntary volunteer. God took my heart.

So I do not think revival starts with people crying their hearts out. I think revival starts with God’s love. This love put fire in people’s hearts. And then they cry their hearts out. I think it’s how the Norwegian revival will start, and how most revivals starts. It’s not initiated on man’s will or doings.

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One Response to “My story: How does revival start?”

  1. Wayne Gaines says:

    You are exactly on target. We discussed this the other day as our local church desire revival and they are looking for it to arrive from the outside to some degree and in reality it has to be God reviving us from the inside. Bless you for sharing with clarity what God has shown you.

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