Bill Johnson shares about his favorite revivalists in history, and the common values in their lives. Joy is a consistent theme, and is to be our source of strength as we partner with Holy Spirit to see His Kingdom come today.
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one of the things
that uh people ask me about is uh
historic figures some of the great
revivalists of the past
uh some of the great revivals i i love
to study this stuff i love to read about
it just it just makes me burn inside
and one of the questions that that came
up to the forefront today is
is historic revivalist experiences what
would my favorite be and two quickly
come to mind
one evan roberts i have such a
fascination with evan roberts who
really was used by the lord to be kind
of the spark plug in many ways
of the great welsh revival which then
spread to azusa street
the pentecostal revival that has since
spread all over the world so
it was a very unusual move of god
and the the thing that touches me
perhaps
most is evan roberts as a young man he
was thought to be
almost kind of crazy because he was so
happy people would walk
watch him walk down the street and he
was just taken up with such
delight in god this joy that he had with
the lord that it was just
it just he could not contain it and he
would he would burst forth and laughter
and joy and celebration
he would do the same thing in the middle
of the night he would wake up so early
in the morning and
and have such this passionate delight
and cry for god
when you oftentimes when people think of
revival they think of these very somber
harsh individuals and that’s just the
opposite
of this great great move of god they had
great fear of god they had a great
a respect for the move of the holy
spirit they never wanted to violate what
he was doing
but the bottom line was as they had
absolute delight and pleasure in the
lord
the other story that comes to mind is a
great great hero of the faith
here in the united states and that is of
charles finney charles finney was an
extraordinary revivalist
and his own personal account of
the encounter that changed his life
forever
was one where he experienced the love of
god so
in such an extreme way but he
experienced the joy of the lord
in a fearful extreme
way i picked those two stories because
we tend to gravitate sometimes towards
the serious
more sober encounters and not realize
that the god of all pleasure
designed us to be able to enjoy him and
enjoy this life that we have
and this those two stories just stand up
for me as i see the people that i have
such admiration for that are alive today
every single one of them are people that
can get very intense they’re extremely
focused and devoted
they’re the same in the pulpit and out
of the pulpit they’re the same
in both realms and they’re people of
great
great joy i think it’s time that we get
strong
the joy of the lord truly truly is our
strength