Christians on Campus at the University of Utah
Living Christ to magnify Him
To be revived is simply to be touched by the Lord anew. Everyone can have a morning revival. Without this new beginning every morning, we cannot have a proper Christian life during the day. The best time to be revived is in the morning!
2 Corinthians 3:17 And the Lord is the Spirit; and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.
John 4:24 God is Spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truthfulness.
Ephesians 6:17 And receive the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which Spirit is the word of God,
Ephesians 6:18 By means of all prayer and petition, praying at every time in spirit and watching unto this in all perseverance and petition concerning all the saints,
John 6:63 It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh profits nothing; the words which I have spoken to you are spirit and are life.
Fellowship
The goal of morning revival is to get revived and we can get revived by touching the Lord. Because 2 Corinthians 3:17 tells us that the Lord is the Spirit, we know that we have to use our own human spirit to contact Him. Our human spirit corresponds to the Lord as the Spirit. The Lord Jesus even instructs us in John 4:24 to use our human spirit to contact Him!
Did you know you had a human spirit? This is a spiritual organ deep inside you. When you call on the name of the Lord you are exercising your spirit. When you tell Him you love Him you are exercising your spirit. Essentially, whenever you turn your being to the Lord and direct your heart and your speaking to Him, you are exercising your spirit. Reading only with our eyes and our mind, like we do for school, is not enough for us to touch the living Christ who is the Spirit today. What we need is to pray to contact our dear Lord Jesus all the time, even while reading His word.
Here are some examples. If you reply to the Word of God with an “Amen Lord,” that is to contact the Lord. If you begin to read a verse with, “Oh, Lord Jesus,” and then read the verse, then this is also an excellent way to contact the Lord, that is, to touch the Lord through prayer as you read.
There is not one way to pray-read. Ephesians 6:18 shows us that we should receive the Word by means of all prayer. This means all kinds of prayer. When pray-reading, you can be calling on the Lord, confessing, or petitioning the Lord. All prayer is good. In fact, using John 6:63 as an example, you can say to the Lord, “Lord, It is the Spirit who gives Life; Lord, You are the Spirit and You give life. Lord, give life to me!”
Those who have tried pray-reading have discovered that it is one of the quickest ways to get out of our selfishness and into the enjoyment of God. God has put His very thoughts into the Bible. By praying and reading the Bible, His selfless, loving, and pure thoughts get into us and can even become our thoughts. This is a part of sanctification. By pray-reading, we are being sanctified! Moreover, John 6:63 tells us that the Spirit gives life. Therefore, whenever we pray-read, we not only receive God’s thoughts, but even His life.
Do practice contacting the Lord while reading His word. If there are several verses that you read, pick one and linger there, praying with the words from that verse, and contacting the Lord Jesus. This is an excellent way to be revived morning by morning.
Romans 3:23 For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God
Matthew 1:21 And she will bear a son, and you shall call His name Jesus, for it is He who will save His people from their sins.
1 John 1:7 But if we walk in the light as He is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus His Son cleanses us from every sin.
1 John 1:9 If we confess our sins, He is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness.
Psalm 103:12 As far as the east is from the west, / So far has He removed our transgressions from us.
When we sin, there is a separation between us and God; we just can’t look Him in the eye so easily because there is a real guilt of sin with us. By confessing we can be free from this guilt and this separation. This is something we should deal with as soon as we can. When we come to the Lord in the morning and are conscious of any sin we’ve committed, we should confess to the Lord right away and receive His forgiveness.
Notice how 1 John 1:9 says, “that if we confess our sins, HE IS FAITHFUL and RIGHTEOUS to forgive us…” In other words, His forgiveness is based on who He is and what He’s done. All we have to do on our side to receive His forgiveness is to confess. This is the best news of the day! For anyone who confesses, Jesus Christ is there to forgive. Hallelujah!
God actually has to forgive us – not only because He said that He would and He would surely not go against His own word, but because He is even righteously obligated to forgive us. To see this, we must understand God’s righteousness. God required the shedding of blood for our sins. God is righteous, altogether just. He cannot simply turn a blind eye to injustices. He judges sinners righteously, and, because He cannot tolerate any sin, the Bible tells us that the wages of sin is death (Romans 6:23).
In His great mercy and wisdom, God made a plan to save us from the wages of sin. He sent His only Son, Jesus Christ, this One who is God, Jehovah, the Great I Am (John 8:24, 58), to die in our stead and to pay the price for our sins. Isaiah 53:5 says: “But He was wounded because of our transgressions; / He was crushed because of our iniquities; / The chastening for our peace was upon Him, / And by His stripes we have been healed.” and verse 8 of the same chapter says that, “He was cut off out of the land of the living / For the transgression of my people to whom the stroke was due”.
Jesus Christ was the sinless one. He did not have to die for Himself because He had no sin. Yet he paid the price for all the sins of mankind. The debt that we owed was fully paid. By His death on the cross, all of God’s righteousness could be fulfilled. God required the blood, and Jesus’ blood satisfied God’s requirement. Matthew 1:21 says: “And she will bear a son, and you shall call His name Jesus, for it is He who will save His people from their sins.” Had you realized that Jesus was born to come and die for us? How we praise and thank Him! We were supposed to die for our sins, but God gave us Jesus as the provision to satisfy God’s righteous requirement. (UUCOC.org, Forgiven because God is Faithful and Righteous , Dec 23, 2020)
Psalms 8:1 O Jehovah our Lord, / How excellent is Your name / In all the earth, / You who have set Your glory over the heavens!
Psalms 8:2 Out of the mouths of babes and sucklings / You have established strength / Because of Your adversaries, / To stop the enemy and the avenger.
Matt 21:16 And they said to Him, Do You hear what these are saying? And Jesus said to them, Yes. Have you never read, “Out of the mouth of infants and sucklings You have perfected praise”?
The Lord Jesus quoted the Septuagint translation of the Old Testament when He said, “Out of the mouth of infants and sucklings You have perfected praise.” That’s precisely what is happening in our morning time with the Lord. God is perfecting our praise. Let us open to Him, not holding back. He is the worthy One and we are His chosen little ones. No matter how young we are, we can praise Him!
When we praise the Lord, we transcend whatever situation we might be in. In fact, praising Him when all is going well does not glorify God as much as when we, His children, praise Him when things are not going so well. This is why Hebrews 13:15 reminds us: “let us offer up a sacrifice of praise continually to God.” It is a sacrifice because we don’t have to feel so good before we praise. God sees our praise as a sacrifice when we praise Him in the middle of trials. So let us not wait for a better time. Praise the Lord!
The Bible reveals Jesus Christ as our wonderful Savior. One way we can be perfected in our praise is to use the very words of the Bible to praise Him!
Mark 12:30 And you shall love the Lord your God from your whole heart and from your whole soul and from your whole mind and from your whole strength.
1 Corinthians 2:9 But as it is written, “Things which eye has not seen and ear has not heard and which have not come up in man’s heart; things which God has prepared for those who love Him.”
When we we wake up in the morning, our heart may not be turned to the Lord and our mind may naturally rush to things other than the Lord. We always need to warm up our heart with love toward the Lord. Telling Him that we love Him surely warms our heart and turns it toward Him! In fact, this is one of the easiest yet most enjoyable exercises we can do! Try to do this every day when you wake up, before you do anything else, even before you get out of bed: say, “Lord Jesus, I love You!”. What a sweet and even romantic start to your day! “Lord Jesus, I love You!” You wont’ become a religious Christian in this way. You’ll become a romantic Christian.
Then once you are up and begin having a definite time with the Lord you can try telling the Lord once again:
“Oh Lord I love You, I really love You.”
Other Suggested prayer:
“Lord, I love You. Attract me, that I may love You more. Rekindle my love for You this very day. Every day I want my love for You to be fresh and sweet. Come and make Your home in my heart. You are the One I desire.” (Life Messages, vol. 2, p. 206)
You shall love the Lord with all your heart
You shall love the Lord with all your soul,
You shall love the Lord with all your mind,
With all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind.
Oh, Lord I love You for all the things You are!
Oh, Lord I love You for all the things You do!
Oh, Lord I love You. Help me love You more,
With all my heart, with all my soul, with all my mind.
Isaiah 12:3-4 Therefore with joy you will draw water From the wells of salvation. 4 And in that day you will say: “Praise the LORD, call upon His name; Declare His deeds among the peoples, Make mention that His name is exalted.” – NKJV
We start our days off on the “right foot” by being refreshed and revived by the Lord in the morning. Therefore, our goal when contacting the Lord in the morning is to be refreshed and revived by Him! Contacting the Lord Jesus in the morning is like taking a drink of water after a night of dryness. It is also like washing your face in the morning.
The simplest prayer is to call on the name of Jesus. You can say, “Lord Jesus!” and even “Oh, Lord, Jesus!” As you call upon His name repeatedly, it is like drinking of God as a refreshing fountain. Yes, we can think on the Lord, but opening our mouth to audibly say His name makes Him so sweet and rich to us, truly reviving us. Romans 8:12 tells us that the Lord is rich to all who call upon Him!
As with anything teaching you how to exercise, the main thing is for you to try it for yourself.
Oh Lord Jesus!
Oh Lord Jesus!
Oh Lord Jesus!
Psalm 5:3 O Jehovah, in the morning You will hear my voice; In the morning I will set forth my words in order to You, and I will watch.
Psalm 88:13 But I, O Jehovah, have cried out to You; and in the morning my prayer comes before You.
Lamentations 3:22-23a It is Jehovah’s lovingkindness that we are not consumed, for His compassions do not fail; they are new every morning…
John 4:10 Jesus answered and said to her, If you knew the gift of God and who it is who says to you, Give Me a drink, you would have asked Him, and He would have given you living water.
Proverbs 4:18 But the path of the righteous is like the light of dawn, which shines brighter and brighter until the full day.
To be revived is simply to be touched by the Lord anew. Everyone can have a morning revival. Without this new beginning every morning, we cannot have a proper Christian life during the day. The best time to be revived is in the morning!
Every morning, after rising up, go to a definite place in your home, tune everything out, and contact the Lord Jesus.
Let us begin to build up the practice of morning revival. You might start out with 5 minutes, but don’t worry too much about the time; just do your best to contact the living Christ. If you are new to this practice, great! That’s what this series is about, for us to help one another!
Here are some of the many things you can do do be revived each morning. And below is an excellent video tutorial.
The Word of God Daily Devotional.
Invite your friends to install Partaker so they can enjoy God’s riches together with you!
While we sat there, we shared portions of the word with one another. When one student came by and was interested in knowing what made this Bible different, we were able to show them a verse we were enjoying. We opened up to Matthew 13:8, where the Lord Jesus tells a parable about a sower who went out to sow. The seeds he sowed fell in different places. The verse says:
But others fell on the good earth and yielded fruit, one a hundredfold, and one sixtyfold, and one thirtyfold.
The other verses in chapter 13 as well as the footnotes in the Recovery Version helped us to understand what the good earth really is. Here’s one of the footnotes for verse 8.
The good earth signifies the good heart that is not hardened by worldly traffic, that is without hidden sins, and that is without the anxiety of the age and the deceitfulness of riches. Such a heart gives every inch of its ground to receive the word that the word may grow, bear fruit, and produce even a hundredfold (v. 23). – New Testament Recovery Version
The student smiled and thanked us for giving her the word of God. Just that alone was such a sweet encouragement to us. Thank the Lord for these sweet opportunities.