Rejoice! All of our revival rhythms lead to rejoicing! Psalm 85:6 says, “revive us again, that we may rejoice in You!”

As a singer and musician, I love the word rhythm. It’s light, lyrical, and indicates a sense of movement. My hope for you as you walk through each of our revival rhythms is for God to move you from a place of survival to revival. Because movement stimulates growth - for our mind, body, & soul.

Resist the enemy by rehearsing truth. Rehearse is our next revival rhythm. Rehearse Truth. What we choose to fix our thoughts and our minds on matters.  Paul writes in Colossians 3:1-2, “Since you have been raised to new life with Christ, set your sights on the realities of heaven, where Christ sits in the place of honor at God’s right hand. Think about the things of heaven, not the things of earth.”   He goes on to write in verse 10, “Put on your new nature, and be renewed as you learn to know your Creator and become like Him.” …

Receiving the Holy Spirit is a rhythm of trust and surrender to God yet also a rhythm of war against the enemy of our souls. When we begin to experience revival, the enemy will want to come after us and try to make us forget who we are and Who we belong to. He will want to distract us from remaining in Jesus and receiving guidance from the Holy Spirit.

So our next revival rhythm is RESIST. Resist the enemy. This is a powerful rhythm to begin the new year…

Receive is our next revival rhythm. Remain + Receive. These two paired together are a daily rhythm of faithfulness.

Jesus says in John 15-16, “I will send you the Advocate, the Spirit of truth.” He says that it is good that He goes away because He is sending the world something better than Himself…

The Holy Spirit. Our Helper. Our Comforter, Advocate, Spirit of Truth. He leads and guides and strengthens and sustains us day by day.  If we allow Him in…if we engage, embrace, receive this Gift…

Our third revival rhythm from our prayer walk is: Remain.

Remain in Him.

When we start to experience revival, our hearts and heads may be distracted by the things of this world or attacks from the enemy. Jesus encourages us to remain in Him and He will remain in us. Apart from Him, we can do nothing. We are nothing. We must daily depend on Him, walk with Him, work with Him. Remain in Him…

Release and Remember.

These two go hand in hand. A rhythm.

Once we release our burdens, our emotions, our dreams, our expectations at the foot of the cross - when we surrender and come back under the authority of Jesus Christ - He helps us remember Whose we are.

We are chosen, set apart, filled with His Holy Spirit, equipped to do His good work. Deeply loved, fully known, and created with special purpose. We find out who we truly are by remembering Whose we are.

Our first Revival Rhythm for our prayer walk is Release. 

Release your burdens at the foot of the cross.

Many of us may need to release burdens such as life circumstances, relationships, emotions (grief, despair, discouragement), doubts, questions…we spoke of this at Revive in May….

But how many of us need to release the burden of SELF? Self-centeredness. Selfishness. Self-promotion. Self-contempt. Self-condemnation. When we kneel at the foot of the cross and release our burdens - we also need to release our very self. We yield to the authority of Jesus. We receive His Holy Spirit and invite Him to fill us, to use us, to show us where He is working so that we can join Him in His work.... 

This was not exactly the way I pictured the “joys of being a parent” looking…I was exhausted, struggling to hold everything together, and when the spit hit the floor, I just didn’t care anymore. It wasn’t at the top of my list to have clean floors (or clean clothes for that matter). But do you know what I do remember from that season Every night at the end of an exhausting day at work, I held and rocked our baby to sleep and sang “You are my Sunshine”. Every night I laid him down to sleep and prayed over him. Every night I took 10-15 minutes to simply be with him. It wasn’t what we had originally planned or pictured…both of us working full-time to help make ends meet for our little family but being present with our child & spending time with him at the end of the day became our biggest priority....

Symptoms indicated that all was not well . . .Outbursts of anger, frequent frustration, bitterness taking root within my heart that led to unkind thoughts in my head. My soul felt stressed and strained . . . sick. I don’t know what this current season looks like for you, but I would imagine it hasn’t been easy. Perhaps certain areas of your life are broken, strained, or even running on empty. Perhaps, like me, you have been longing for peace, rest, and hope to be restored within your heart & home…

Tears slipped from my eyes as I turned from side to side to study my reflection in the mirror after jumping out of the shower that morning. My head bowed low in shame, I couldn’t even bring myself to look up and give myself the normal pep talk. “You’ve had three kids. You should be thankful that you are healthy. It’s what’s on the inside that counts…..”

30 years old: a believer my whole life . . . yet never baptized . . .I was infant baptized, yes, but that was a decision my parents made for me. I’ve participated in many other baptisms - usually, serving as a part of the worship team - but I never actually made the decision myself. The older I got, the more I kept feeling like that should have been done when I first made the decision to put my faith in Jesus Christ (I was 4 then), so I kept feeling like I had missed my window…