Emotionless Revival

Emotionless Revival

2CO 3:17 Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.

There has been a growing dispute between those who claim that all revival should be relatively emotionless, and those who believe that when God's Spirit moves upon a human being during revival that emotions do in fact occur. Now obviously we should not be doing things out of our flesh, but on the other hand we should not label all emotional _expression during revival as being evil. God created our emotions and when you feel His great love and joy flowing through you, you cannot help but express it in some way. Revival is full of passion and we need not feel ashamed of feeling what God is doing in our hearts. We are not Vulcan's we are humans, and feeling is OK.

MT 21:15 But when the chief priests and the teachers of the law saw the wonderful things he did and the children shouting in the temple area, "Hosanna to the Son of David," they were indignant.

Those that are legalistic usually tend to be very controlling and shun emotion like the pharisees of old and the idea of something going on that they cannot understand or directly manage is usually quite unsettling to them. Revival is usually not like Burger King where you can just have it your way, it is something that we let the Holy Spirit be in control of and lead. The quickest way to squelch an outpouring of God's Spirit is to tell Him what He can or cannot do. Will there be some manifestations of flesh or demons during revival? Yes of course, but for those who have spiritual discernment we can distinguish what is of God and what is not. The main question is whether we will trust God to lead in a revival or not.

AC 2:13 Some, however, made fun of them and said, "They have had too much wine. "

I would encourage you in the coming days to be open to whatever the Holy Spirit wants to do in your life during revival and to not allow the modern day pharisees to cheat you out of what God wants to give you that may or may not involve some emotion. Many times as God is moving upon someone during revival they do in fact feel strong emotions such as love, joy, or even sorrow. The main thing is that we allow God's Spirit and word to lead us during revival and that we not allow satan to shut things down through a religious spirit. We need God's love in order to bring in this harvest and there will always be legalistic people there to try to squash it. We can trust God to be in control during revival including our emotions.

LK 10:21 At that time Jesus, full of joy through the Holy Spirit, said, "I praise you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and learned, and revealed them to little children. Yes, Father, for this was your good pleasure.