The Christian Walk - Daily Revival
The Christian faith is not a single moment of intense belief, nor is the Christian life weekly church attendance. The Christian faith and life is a journey, a walk. The first step is to believe in Christ Jesus and receive Him as your Savior and life. From that moment, faith is not something we simply cling to, but a life that we live out moment by moment and day by day. Just like our physical and mental health, our spiritual health is mostly based on our habits. God has surely promised and provided strength for the journey ahead, but we need to cooperate with Him by building healthy spiritual habits. What can we do to make every day in our Christian walk count? And what are the most helpful practices and habits for a successful walk with God? In this new series, we’ll explore the Christian walk. We’ll look at the habits that the Bible reveals are indispensable to our daily walk with Christ and how to develop and practice them.
In the Christian life and for our Christian walk, we continue as we began, by receiving Jesus Christ. Christ is not only the life we receive once for all, but also the life supply that we need for every day of our Christian walk. In a previous post, we saw that the Bible reveals that Christ Jesus came not only to save us from our sins and God’s righteous judgment, but also to be our life. (John 5:26; 10:10; 11:25; 14:6; 1 John 1:2; 5:11-12) On the day we believed in Christ Jesus and received Him into our hearts, we were not only saved but were also born again by virtue of receiving a new life. Our regeneration is a spiritual enlivening.
Ephesians 2:5 tells us, "Even when we were dead in offenses, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved)." Both our human life and our spiritual life are full of potential at birth. But the health and strength of both depend on daily care and maintenance. Our initial spiritual vitalization needs to be sustained by healthy spiritual practices. And the first practice we’ll consider for our Christian walk is daily revival.
What Is Daily Revival?
The word "revival," derived from Latin, means "to live again." We like this literal definition because it highlights the simple and practical goal of this popular but often misunderstood Christian word. Throughout our Christian life, we should, of course, experience greater revivals, special seasons when God stirs our hearts to love and follow Him in new and powerful ways. But we should also, and more importantly, be revived every day. Daily revival is not about powerful emotional moments but simple interactions and conversations with Jesus Christ. It is one of the most essential spiritual habits for a healthy and consistent Christian walk because it sets the trajectory for our day. If we start our day by contacting Christ through prayer and by reading His Word, our day will have a solid spiritual foundation. If we begin each day by contacting Christ, we spontaneously “live again” because we touch Christ, Who is life. For our Christian walk, we need to contact Christ and be revived every day.
Why We Need Daily Revival
Why do we need to be revived? If we desire to follow Christ and walk with Him daily, we will undoubtedly encounter resistance. Every day is full of challenges and temptations, and it’s impossible not to notice just how dark and evil the world is. But we need to realize that Christ fully expected His followers to walk with Him in such an environment. In John 17:15, Jesus prayed to the Father, “I do not ask that You would take them out of the world, but that You would keep them out of the hands of the evil one.” Daily revival is the means by which we receive God’s provision to walk with Christ.
Imagine the world and its influence as a river with a strong current. Every leaf, twig, or other inanimate object is swept along and powerless to resist its mighty flow. But a fish, something with life and strength, has the power to swim against the current. 1 John 5:19 says, “We know that we are of God, and the whole world lies in the evil one.” Everything without the divine life and strength floats along passively in the current of this age. The unbelieving people can not help but be swept away. What about us? As Christians, we have the divine life; this is a fact. But even though we may be genuine believers and love God, we can still experience weakness and be subject to the tide of the age. We need strength to swim against the current and walk with Christ, and strength for the Christian walk comes from our spiritual diet. Daily revival is our spiritual breakfast. Through it, we receive strength to swim upstream, against the current of the world.
The Principle of Morning Contact
Every day we need to eat, and every day we need to receive the divine life supply by coming to Christ Jesus. He is not only our life, He is also our spiritual food. (1 Cor. 10:3-4) He Himself said, in John 6:51, “I am the living bread which came down out of heaven.” An instructive allusion accompanies this revelation. Exodus 16:21 shows us that as God’s people were journeying in the wilderness, He supplied them daily with bread from heaven. But they still needed to cooperate to receive what God provided: “And they gathered it morning by morning, each one according to his eating; and when the sun became hot, it melted.”
Just as God has ordained the laws and principles that govern the physical universe, He has also established spiritual laws and principles. The record of God’s people gathering the manna shows us one of these principles: the best time to be revived is in the morning. If we wait to be revived, we find that the busyness and distractions of our routine can “melt” our spiritual supply. Although Christ can not be melted away, our experience nonetheless confirms this principle. The longer we wait to contact Christ after we wake up, the more difficult it seems for us to be revived.
Lamentations 3:23 tells us that God’s compassions are “new every morning,” and David wrote, in Psalm 5:3, “O Jehovah, in the morning You will hear my voice; In the morning I will set forth my words in order to You, and I will watch.” Even Jesus Himself honored this spiritual principle and contacted God early in the day. Mark 1:35 says, “And rising very early in the morning, while it was still night, He went out and went away to a deserted place and there He prayed.” We may not be able to rise before the sun comes up, but we can give God the first place in our day by contacting Christ as soon as we wake up.
Practice Daily Revival
Try having a daily revival every day for a week, and you’ll notice a difference in your Christian walk. Do it for a month, and your Christian life will be revolutionized. Start small and aim for consistency. Five minutes of prayer and Bible reading to contact Christ is time well spent. The stronger your daily spiritual foundation, the healthier your Christian walk.
