Will God Use Me in Revival? The Servant of the Lord, Isaiah 49:6-7

⁶ He says:

“It is too light a thing that you should be my servant

    to raise up the tribes of Jacob

    and to bring back the preserved of Israel;

I will make you as a light for the nations,

    that my salvation may reach to the end of the earth.”

⁷ Thus says the Lord,

    the Redeemer of Israel and his Holy One,

to one deeply despised, abhorred by the nation,

    the servant of rulers:

“Kings shall see and arise;

    princes, and they shall prostrate themselves;

because of the Lord, who is faithful,

    the Holy One of Israel, who has chosen you.”

The third main task of the servant is to go out to the ends of the earth. Jesus told his disciples, the first church that waited in Jerusalem for the coming of the Spirit: “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age” (Matthew 28:18-20).

God rewards our faithfulness to him, not our results. So often when we operate out of our own strength, we fool ourselves. “It’s my money. I earned it.” “This church would be nothing without me.” “If only I could get more people in worship, we would be the most dynamic church.”

A. W. Tozer puts it this way, “We want to be blessed by God, but we want God to bless us on our terms. We look pensively to God for victory, but we will not bring our giving into line. We will not practice family prayer, rushing off without it. We will not take time for secret prayer and will not forgive those who have wronged us. We will not seek to be reconciled to those with whom we have quarreled. We will not pick up our crosses and say, ‘Jesus, I my cross have taken, all to leave and follow Thee?’” Who will God use in revival? Those who follow him in all aspects of their lives. God doesn’t bless our compartmentalization of faith!

God says to his servant in verse 6, “I am calling you to something greater than you imagined.”  The servant is not just called to the lost in Israel, but to the non-Jew as well.  God’s plan is for worldwide salvation.  It is Jesus who commands us to “go and make disciples of all nations.” And this is the work of the church. This is our Messiah-given mission.

To give you some statistics: The Bible has been translated into more than 350 languages. About 2000 languages have at least one book of the Bible, but over 4000 languages have nothing. This group represents over 400 million people. It is estimated that 200 million people pray for revival daily. The church is growing faster than ever before—three times the rate of the population explosion. More Muslims in Iran have come to know Jesus over the past decade than in the last 1000 years. 20,000+ people a day become Christians in Africa, and Asia is seeing dramatic growth as well. What is our task as God’s servants today? It is to tell people the Good News and warn them of the dangers of rejecting God. What Jesus did in his life is now the life-work of the church.

Do you know who Norman Shelly is? A week after the demoralizing defeat of British and French troops by Germany at Dunkirk in 1940, Winston Churchill made one of the most stirring radio addresses in history. Speaking to the English public, he declared, in no uncertain terms, that the British would not fold. “We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender.”

Historians say this speech provided the morale-boost that helped England summon the strength to continue the war effort and ultimately win. But Churchill didn’t make the speech. He was too busy to appear on the radio, so he asked Norman Shelly, an actor who had perfected the Churchillian delivery to such a degree that few people could pick out which voice was Shelley’s and which was Churchill’s.

You and I are called to perfect the Jesus delivery to such a degree, that people mistake us for Jesus.

Will God use me in revival? Like Shelly impersonating Churchill, we need to perfect our imitation of Jesus. Our words and character and lives must reflect his. Our lifestyle must be consistent with his message.  If we want God to use us in revival, we must be willing to give ourselves wholly to him to use us in his mission.