On the morning of October 22, 2007 the word of the Lord came to me saying, “If we pray for His goodness to be revealed, we will see revival like never before.” The Lord gave me the following two scriptures to explain what He meant.
“…the goodness of God leads you to repentance.” (Rom. 2:4)
“…I will make all My goodness pass before you, and I will proclaim
the name of the LORD before you…” (Ex. 33:19)
Because repentance and revival walk hand in hand, the key to this revival is praying for and seeking the goodness of the Lord, not the conviction of the Holy Spirit. When we encounter the goodness of the Lord, it will bring about a change like we could never imagine. The goodness of the Lord will literally change the atmosphere. Moses cried out, “Lord, pleeeaaaase show me Your glory.” Moses had seen the miraculous of the Lord, but he wanted to see more. God’s response was to display all His goodness before Moses and so it was that when Moses came down from Mount Sinai that the skin of his face shone. The Hebrew word for goodness is tuwb (St. # 2898). Besides meaning the obvious: goods, good things, and goodness, the word also means: property, fairness, beauty, joy, prosperity, discernment, and goodness of taste as in; “taste and see that the Lord is good. (Ps. 34:8) When God revealed His goodness to Moses he was captivated by God’s beauty, by His fairness. The Lord’s joy became his strength, he tasted God and it changed him inside and out forever.
God’s power didn’t change the hearts of the Israelites in the wilderness. Though He freed them from Egypt, parted the red sea, fed them manna, brought water from a rock, and moved with them in a cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night their hearts remained hardened and dull towards Him. They never encountered God in the relational way that Moses did, because while they drew back in fear, Moses pressed in.
“If My people who are called by My name will humble themselves, and pray, and seek My face, and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin and heal their land.” (2 Chr. 7:14)
Humble: This word in Greek is tapeinoo St. #5013 and means:
Literally “to make low.” Metaphorically, the word means not rising far from the ground. It describes a person who is devoid of all arrogance and self-exaltation.
Because I know this is the first step to any true encounter with the Lord for He indeed resists the proud, I have spent years trying to humble and break myself. I hear the word humble and feel like it is a verb. I spring into action; I must repent for I am a sinner with horrible thoughts, words, and deeds! Whereas, yes that’s all true and thank You God for the blood of Jesus, the reality is I can’t break myself. This mentality just leads me to actions that are produced out of a heart full of guilt and condemnation.
True humility will be found in the kisses of His mouth for out of His mouth goes a two-edged sword that will puncture every vain imagination and “…every high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God, bringing every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ.” (2 Cor. 10:5) In this encounter the goodness of the Lord is revealed to us. We cannot find genuine humility within ourselves; we can only receive it from Him. In the kiss we decrease/deflate and He increases. “Let Him kiss me with the kisses of His mouth.”(Song. 1:2)
In the kiss He will impart His nature. Jesus said that He is lowly in heart. “Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and humble in heart and you will find rest for your souls.” (Matt. 11:29 NAS) Humility is defined by the motive of the heart. Beloved, true revival will come only as our hearts change after personally encountering the goodness of God.
Turn: We are brought to our knees by the goodness of God as He reveals His beauty to us. This is the repentance that His goodness will impart. “…then I will hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin and heal their land.”
Heal: Ahh…and here we have the promised revival. The repentance is not the revival. The repentance is weak man finally realizing he/she needs God. Life and life abundantly is revival. In February 1904, during the days of the Welsh Revival, a young girl by the name of Florrie Evans, who had only been a believer a few days, rose and with a trembling voice said, “I love Jesus with all my heart.” God heard from heaven her sincere, earnest confession spoken from her heart and her words had the effect of a lightning strike of the Spirit in the congregation. Person after person arose and made full surrender to Christ. An early eyewitness of the revival said, “It was the beginning of the visible manifestation of the Spirit breaking out in life-streams which afterwards would touch thousands of souls.” I want you to notice what the eyewitness said; it was the beginning of the signs. Her encounter with the goodness of God caused words of unbridled adoration to be spoken into the atmosphere and revival broke out in that place because of it.
I had never researched any revival and on October 14th, 2007 I was looking up something when I stumbled upon the Revival Fire associated with the Welsh revival of 1904. That same day while warming up and running sound checks prior to worship, the fire alarms suddenly went off. We evacuated the building and had to wait for the firemen to deem it was safe to re-enter. As we waited, I told the worship leader what I had discovered about the revival fire in Wales and felt this was a prophetic sign that revival fire was coming. Was this a sign to just that particular church? I dunno.
As Tiffany Ann Lewis, a handmaiden of the Lord, I do not represent any one church, I represent my global God. I don’t believe that was a false alarm but rather a prophetic sign to the “people of God who are called by His name”. There is never great, widespread revival without personal revival first. Let’s seek an extravagrant personal revival and see what God does from there.
Release Your goodness to us Lord that we could be a people burning for You. “…Who makes His angels spirits and His ministers a flame of fire.” (Heb. 1:7) This little light of mine, I’m gonna let it shine. Amen.
