Interview with James MacDonald on Personal Revival

by Worship Leader magazine

Why do you think people lose their inspiration for walking passionately with God?

While there are many answers to this question currently popular in western world evangelicalism, the biblical answer is sin.As long as we call what kills our passion for God by any other name we will not experience the cleansing and transformation God has for us.Yes, people disillusion us at times, but failure to face that and forgive them is sin. Yes, we sometimes get busy and fail to prioritize the spiritual disciplines that cause our faith to flourish, but James 4:17 exhorts that if we know the right thing to do and fail to do it, it is sin.

Only sin clogs the spiritual arteries and keeps the life-giving flow of God’s Spirit away from our souls. Though greatly neglected in the pulpits of our day, sin is the culprit for which Christ and His Cross are the cure, not just in conversion but in every step of our spiritual journey to completeness in Christ.

How can we keep from letting our Christian life become routine and stale? Why are we so complacent with where we are?

Fasting, prayer, Scripture reading, study and meditation, acts of humility and generosity toward the poor, bold witness for Christ and service in His kingdom, heartfelt worship personally and in a believing community—each of these is a source of spiritual vitality.If they are neglected, the heart becomes first dry, then cold and finally hard. That is why the Scripture so regularly exhorts us, “if today you hear his voice, do not harden your heart”(Hebrews 3:8, 3:15, 4:17). If through these acts of faith we are drawing near to God, He will draw near to us, (James 4:8). Every person reading this magazine who experiences a dryness in their walk with God can be in a phenomenal place with God by midnight tonight if they sincerely draw near to God with a ‘no limits’ approach.God is not reluctant; the “routine and stale,” as some put it, is of our making not God’s.

What does it mean to return to the Lord?

That is of course the subject of the entire Downpour book.To put it succinctly, ‘returning’ is the biblical concept of repenting.We have lost that in the church today.We have substituted a superficial confession for genuine repentance.Everyone knows that “confession” according to 1 John 1:9 means to say what God says about our sin. However, it is pretty difficult to say what God really says about our sin until we see what God sees.Repentance is the process of moving from what I have rationalized because it roused me and seeing it as something that I regret and am repulsed by.When biblical repentance is happening in a human heart, genuine confession to God flows easily. Without genuine repentance, confession is just a surface makeover. That is why so many Christians are trapped in an endless cycle of “sin/confess, sin/confess, sin/confess.” Repentance is what breaks that cycle and is the centerpiece of returning to the Lord.

What is the difference between doing what it takes as a Christian and being gripped by the presence of God?

Seeing the manifest presence of God in transcendent holiness is the first step in returning to Him. This is where the “downpour starts.” God on the throne: a picture of holiness. Everything good flows from a right view of God. God is not “the man upstairs;” God is not our buddy that sort of reminds us of Colonel Sanders. God is transcendent glory and He dwells in unapproachable light. No one can see God and live; Hebrews 12:29 says our God is a consuming fire.

Personal revival begins when God is revealed to you through His Word, by His Spirit as He really is. This is when “doing what it takes as a Christian,’ moves from duty to delight.

What keeps us from receiving the full power of Christ in our lives? And what should we do to change that?

It’s sin (see question #1), but I really believe many Christians do not know that. They rightly believe that they have the eternal forgiveness of their sin through faith in Christ but they fail to see that sin is still ruling them even as believers, and blocking the blessing of God from their lives. “Truly, these times of ignorance God overlooked, but now commands all men everywhere to repent” (Acts 17:30). Not knowing is no longer an excuse.Genuine, heart-felt, ongoing repentance is the pathway to a greater fullness of God’s power in your life.“Repent therefore, and turn again, that your sins may be blotted out, that times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord” (Acts 3:19-20). The church today wants the times of refreshing but we don’t want to come on God’s terms.

How would the inward change of returning to the Lord affect our outward relationship to the world around us?

The closer you are in genuine fellowship with the Lord, the more you have His heart. We are witnessing in our day a significant upsurge of compassion for the impoverished and downtrodden of society here and abroad.This is very encouraging as Scripture repeatedly connects purity of religion with compassion for the “least of these”(Matt. 25:40, James 1:27, etc.). The historic absence of compassionate evangelicalism reflects contentment with external conformity.A willingness to perform Christian duty apart from the deeper heart transformation brings a broken heartedness for the immense social injustice and spiritual poverty around us.

The busyness of our everyday lives has a way of keeping us “tapped out” when it comes to being filled with the personal joy of living for Christ. How do we find a way to prioritize and really find that “fresh surge of energy” and renewal that you talk about?

If having a true spiritual vitality that lasted more than a few days beyond the ‘big event’ was easy, everyone would have it. Fact is, you cannot have a dynamic walk with Christ and meet the demands of your career, your family, and your own flesh. Self-denial is an essential ingredient of continuous revival. In Matthew 16:24-25, Jesus told His disciples, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.” But the wonderful promise of Christ is that in losing our life for His sake, we truly find it. No one gives up anything for Christ; that is an illusion. It’s our ceaseless activity that creates the cavity in our soul that can only be filled by God.

What gave you the idea for these Downpour events, and what has been the response?

The idea for these Downpour events came in response to a circumstance in my own life and ministry and a dream I had. The response has been overwhelming with hundreds of people converting to faith in Christ and countless numbers filling the front and entire floor of these arenas weeping and crying out to God.

Excerpt from book describing how “Downpour” was envisioned:

During this time I began to study and pray and sometimes fast about the subject of personal revival, asking God to do it with me. Then one night I had a very special dream. I hesitate to share it lest you think I am being presumptuous. I do not claim that the dream was a revelation or even that God was directly involved, only that He has greatly used it. Nothing like this had happened to me before, nor has anything like this happened since.

Let me tell you about my dream.

In my dream, God was working in my life and in our church and in our country in an awesome, unparalleled way. Like a mighty river overflowing its banks, God’s Spirit was washing across our nation bringing repentance and revival in a way that has not been seen for centuries. In my dream, I remember knowing without a doubt that it was the “Lord’s doing and it was marvelous in my eyes” (Psalm 118:23). Every willing heart was caught up in a heaving sea of grace and love that was God Himself. I felt a joy and peace that eclipses any human experience I have ever known. It was just a taste of something that obliterated anything I had ever called satisfaction.

In my dream, I stood stunned and silent as gentle tears of rejoicing ran down my cheeks. Then I awoke to a pillow wet with tears. I quickly slipped out of bed to collect in my memory all that I had dreamt. I can only say this; what I felt and observed was so moving and so strongly my heart’s desire that my consuming passion ever since is to live in a day when God moves like that.

As I stood in the darkness and soaked in what I had seen, an outline came into my mind. Faster than you can read the rest of this chapter, five things came forcefully to my thinking and I have not altered a single word to this day. In fact I prayed about these five things for a whole year before I even told the elders of our church. These five points have been the subjects of my preaching and the continuous thoughts of my heart from that day to this. Together they form the remainder of this book and I believe a biblical pathway to personal revival. These five subjects are the way to get under the downpour that God is ready to shower upon your life.

#1 God on the Throne: A Picture of Holiness.
#2 Sin in the Mirror: A Picture of Brokenness.
#3 Self in the Dirt: A Picture of Repentance.
#4 Christ on the Cross: A Picture of Grace.
#5 Spirit in Control: A Picture of Power.

They are, I believe, the pathway to personal revival. I want to lead you and travel that road with you, but first there must be that crisis of returning. Take some time now and come to that crisis with the Lord.