20 Signs That You May Need Revival

by R.O. Roberts

Take a look and prayerfully consider this list...not as a score sheet or as a point of pride that none of these apply to you.  Self-inquiry in the Biblical sense should never stir us to condemnation, but it can be used by the Holy Spirit to stir us to action and provide an opening for His grace to touch our hearts and His light to penetrate our darkness.  


One definition of a backslider:
"Backsliders are people who were once emptied of their own ways, and filled with the ways of God, but gradually allowed their own ways to seep back until they are all but empty of God and full of themselves again."

 


Passivity, coldness, and world-mindedness may have seeped back into your life when:

1 Prayer ceases to be a vital part of a professing believer's life.
2 The quest for Bible truth ceases and one grows content with knowledge already acquired.
3 Bible knowledge possessed or acquired is treated as external fact and not applied in practice.
4 Earnest thought about eternal things ceases to be regular and gripping.
5 Services of the church lose their delight and there is no music in your soul and no song in your heart.
6 Pointed spiritual discussions are an embarrassment.
7 The need for recreation and entertainment become a large and controlling part of your lifestyle.
8 Sins of the body and of the mind can be indulged without an uproar in your conscience.
9 Aspirations for Christ-like holiness cease to be dominant in your life and thinking.
10 The acquisition of money and goods becomes a preoccupying part of your thinking and pursuit.
11 You can mouth religious songs and words without heart.
12 You can hear the Lord's name used in vain, spiritual concerns mocked, and eternal issues flippantly treated and not be moved with pain and indignation into action.
13 You casually allow yourself to watch degrading movies and television and read morally debilitating literature.
14 Breaches of peace in the brotherhood of Christ's Body are of no concern to you.
15 You adjust happily to the world's lifestyle and the slightest excuse seems sufficient to keep you from spiritual duty and opportunity.
16 You become content with your lack of spiritual power and no longer seek repeated re-fillings of the Holy Spirit power from on high.
17 You pardon your own sin and sloth by saying the Lord understands and remembers that we are dust.
18 Injustice and human misery exist around you, and you do little or nothing to relieve the suffering.
19 You are willing to cheat your employer or renege on business duty and excuse your self as no different than others.
20 Your tears are dried up and the hard, cold spiritual condition of your heart or life can not unleash them.


Search me, O God, and know my heart; try me, and know my anxieties; And see if there is any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.  Psalms 139:23-24 (NKJ)