[Darris McNeely] Have you ever found yourself spiritually down? You’re in a slump. You need to break out. You need to get yourself revived once again spiritually, and back on top of your game. We’ve all gone through that. I have. In fact, what we are describing is something that we at times come to, where we need to be revived and experience what is a revival – a spiritual revival of faith, of commitment, of zeal, and of urgency.

I’ve recently done a Bible study that’s on our site about the prophet Haggai. And in line with some other study that I had been doing in the prophets that are in a sense – are near connected with the general time period of the prophet Haggai, there was another statement made by a prophet called Habakkuk in chapter 3 and beginning in verse 2, where the prophet in a dialogue with God is going back and forth. The prophet says at one point, “O Lord, I have heard your speech and was afraid; O Lord, revive Your work in the midst of the years! In the midst of the years make it known; in wrath remember mercy” (Habakkuk 3:2). An appeal by the prophet to God to revive Your work. Well, you know, the work that God is doing today is a mighty work of preaching the gospel of Jesus Christ and the kingdom of God through His church, but He’s also working in our own lives. We are the spiritual temple of God and we all need to be revived from time to time, and use God’s Spirit, use God’s word, and draw close to Him in a relationship that gives us a revival spiritually, to where we are able to resist the pulls of our own lives and this world and be close to God.

The prophet Haggai that I referred to, who spoke to Judah within a hundred years after the time of the prophet Habakkuk – Haggai, a very short book of prophecy – again, in the Old Testament – in chapter 1 delivers this message from God in verse 7: “Thus says the Lord of hosts: ‘Consider your ways!’” (Haggai 1:7). Consider your ways. Which is just another way of saying we need to be revived. Consider what you’re doing, the relationship with God, and he goes on to show how in – especially with the prophet Haggai – God says there’s a need to consider your ways. He was talking to the people, the Jews who had returned to Jerusalem to rebuild the temple in that day. We’re not building a physical temple today, but God is building a spiritual temple. The New Testament reveals this very clearly to us. And God’s spirit with us is the spiritual work that He is doing today, and there’s always a need for us to consider our ways and to, from time to time, even, experience or have and seek from God a revival. And just as Habakkuk asked God, “Revive Your work”, take that as a promise and as a point for us all to consider from time to time – and just going to God and saying, “God, please revive me. Revive Your work within me through Your Spirit, so that I might be a better instrument in Your hands, a better light to my neighbors, to my family, and a better servant and a better disciple of Jesus Christ.”

Consider your ways. We all need a revival from time to time. God is with us and God can help us in that. A lesson from the prophets.

That’s BT Daily. Join us next time.