The Reviving Christian’s Most Important Task
Richard Owen Roberts has dedicated his life to studying, teaching, and writing about the reality of revival. He is a well-known itinerant preacher and a contributor to the Behold Your God series.
In this devotional, adapted from Roberts’ stirring pamphlet, Lord, I agree, he writes of the vital importance of agreement with God in all things.
Over the years I have learned something of the urgent necessity of a steady walk with Christ and of the frightening power of Satan in drawing me away from my deepest commitments. The years have proven how carefully the concerns of the soul must be cultivated and how easily backsliding sets in. One small disagreement with God is sufficient to halt forward spiritual progress and to enable backsliding to gain its toehold….
Full and explicit agreement with the Lord Jesus Christ is the reviving believer’s only choice. Agreement with the Lord in all things is the only possible guarantee of spiritual prosperity. To agree fully with Him in all things and at all times is to experience continuing reviving. To disagree with God in anything is to assure spiritual declension and the loss of those reviving graces of Jesus Christ so greatly needed in your life at this time….
Reviving believer, Jesus Christ is Lord! This must be believed! This must be yielded to! This must be acted upon! Failure here is failure everywhere!
Learning to enter into complete and explicit agreement with God in all things is the most important task the believer faces. Praising God is robbed of meaning if you disagree with Him. True worship only exists where there is harmony between the worshipped and the worshipper. Witness is only Spirit-empowered and God glorifying when harmony exists between life and lip. All religious acts are deprived of spiritual significance when unbelief manifests itself in disagreement with God.
The new believer may not agree with God in all things for he may not yet know very much. He must, however, agree with all he knows. As he grows in the Christian faith, his submission to all that God is teaching him must advance with his knowledge of God and his understanding of God’s claims upon his life. It is precisely here that so many go astray. Recollections of former submission is no substitute for present submission. It is not enough that I once agreed with God, I must agree with Him now. What possible value is there in having believed when I understood little if I do not believe when I understand much? Full and explicit agreement with God in everything is the only key to the joy and power you have been craving in your Christian experience.