It’s raining this morning. You’d think that would set a somber tone to the day but actually, it feels refreshing, like washing away all the dust from the last few weeks. I don’t have any services until 6 pm tonight, so I can just sit here and muse and let the day roll along as it lumbers past me. I must be tired. Just a few more days to go.
There are two strong currents pulling on me. One is pulling on my heart to come home. I’m both physically and emotionally drained and desperately miss my sweetheart and all my girls. It is at this stage of every trip that I turn into a cranky old man and everything gets hard. I am so ready to go home.
But the other current pulls my heart to keep on going, one more church, one more city, one more soul, just a little more … The message I bring to these people works. It is transforming church after church and opening their eyes, not only to what revival is really about, but what it takes to get one. It’s as if this is the missing manual; the secret key to unlock the door; the hidden answer to the desperate cry of their hearts. It is hard to turn from them and head off to the comforts of America when they are so hungry for what the Lord has to give them.
Last night, I spoke to a group of university students. They had gathered to hear about revival from the white man from America. As I have heard in so many other places, they are expecting a soft message of peace, love and blessings with false promises that never come to pass. But there is always hope, so they came to listen. And once we began, they did not want to go home. It was as if they were clueless for answers about revival. All they have heard are messages of blessings and prosperity that they are finally coming to realize do not work. So where are the men and women of our past who had the guts to stand up and tell these people the truth and were not worried about what anyone thought?
I hear this all the time – Africans are tired of the message that they hear from the Americans who come here. One pastor told me that he has to be very careful about promoting someone from America because they always carry the same weak message. How sad that the country that once produced great men and women of power whose message transformed the world and broke the power of darkness now only produces weak and insipid preachers who have nothing but an anemic gospel to offer in its place.
I preach a different message than what they are used to hearing. There is a price to pay for revival and it begins on your knees. My first job is to shatter the illusion of “church”, and point them to the altar of deep, broken-hearted repentance. No revival comes until that threshold has been crossed.
Once the word gets out that here is a message with teeth that is accompanied by the power of the Holy Ghost, everything changes. People want to hear the truth, not some Pollyanna Gospel to make them feel good about themselves. And when they hear it, they come.
So you see, as much as I am dying to go home, there is a strong tugging on my heart to keep going – one more church, one more service, one more group of hungry hearts …
But it is time to go. Three more services and I am finished here in Burundi. My money is about gone, but thankfully, a church has offered to pay for my hotel and food for the last remaining days I am here in this town. As soon as I get home, however, I have to turn around and head for Nigeria – a conference in Abuja in March, a series of churches and meetings in Lagos for April, and then a tour of churches, kings, and crusades in the Delta State in August. I dare not stop until Africa is ablaze with revival. It is only then that the hope of that same fire will spread around the world and reach America.