There are three significant things we should be praying and working towards in our lives, cooperating with the Holy Spirit in seeing them develop.
The initial one is a continual nurturing of our first love for Jesus. This is the most important one, as from it will flow the other two. This is what Jesus said he wanted from the church at Ephesus. He complimented them for their positive points, but said without nurturing their first love, the rest were worthless.
Second is an ongoing, daily revival. Revival is what will come out of an ever deepening first love, for in our close walk with Jesus, we will daily see more of His holiness, more of our sinfulness (our innate depravity) and more of how much He has forgiven and loves us. This is what Isaiah experienced in chapter 6. The result brought an “undoing” so God could “redo” him and prepare Isaiah for a life long very tough ministry. So God wants to “undo” us, sometimes in a great crisis or revelation, but more often a little bit each day. He calls us to cooperate with Him in this venture.
Third is a continual shift of our world view. As we have renewal of our first love, and an ongoing revival, we are going to be seeing more and more points where the Word clashes with the worldview we grew up with. We will be called upon to choose: will we live the comfortable, self-protective, self-indulgent way of our culture, or will we step out to deny self, take up our cross daily and follow Jesus?
In following entries we’ll look more in depth at these three aspects of our walk with God.
