Thursday, October 23, 2008

Barbecue and revival

Have you ever been invited to someone's house for a barbecue?  If not, then you are truly missing a blessing!  There is truly no culinary delight to compare with slow cooked, slow smoked pork or beef.  I don't care if it's sliced, pulled, shredded, or ribs!  I can eat it wet, dry, muddy, with bread, on a bun, with a fork, with my fingers.  I love a good barbecue. 

Except, sometimes, I've been invited for a barbecue, only to discover that the person defines barbecue as 'cooking something outside over a gas grill' and has selected a lovely herb-seasoned chicken breast to cook.  Now, I like grilled food too.  In fact, give me an LP tank and a good burner, and I can grill you a masterpiece.  But it's not Barbecue.  Just because you give it that name, doesn't make it that!

With that thought in mind, I'm going to lunch, while you read the rest of this:


"Real revival comes only from God.  He alone is the fountainhead.  A spiritual awakening cannot be scheduled, worked-up, or humanly engineered."--Lewis Drummond

We have a tradition of planning guest preachers and singers and calling it 'revival.'  But that's not what it is.  Revival is when the people of God turn their hearts back to Him because He has moved them so passionately to follow Him that they cannot help it.  Revival then spreads to our community because God's people cannot help but share His word and His love with everyone, and cannot help but live as close to His holiness and truth as humanly possible.  The one thing we can do to make it happen is to pray.  The best revival advice I ever heard was that each believer should go home, kneel down, draw a chalk circle around themselves, and pray that revival will start in that circle.  And don't quit praying until it does...

Otherwise, we're not barbecuing...we're grilling.  And it's not the same!

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