What A Revival Costs In 2023 - How To Budget For A Revival

Watch this content on YouTube

Stan Grant, in an article for the ABC this week, said that the freshly minted federal Budget is a “moral document” - I agree, but I don’t agree that the choices that were made in the writing of that document were what decided its moral virtue, good or bad…it runs so much much deeper than that.

What we know is that a document like the Australian federal budget, or your personal family budget, or your calendar, or the choices you make about the company you keep all flows downstream from vision, which flows downstream from values, which flows downstream from belief…and core beliefs are forged in the fire of a THE HUMAN HEART, not in the head.

So when you look at a personal household budget or a national budget, it reveals what is at the very core of its authors’ belief system (or in their HEART).

Therefore the ONLY way to ensure a document like a federal budget, family budget, or any plan we may have for our lives or for the hopes we might have for whatever it is that we are leading, to reflect the Kingdom of Heaven, is for us to have a heart for Jesus because JESUS is the King of the Heavenly Kingdom.

No other place on Earth deals solely with the condition of the Hunan heart…it is only the Church that cuts through all the noise of systems, processes, procedures, and ideologies and gets to the heart of what matters most…where are you with Jesus?

Because if Jesus isn’t king in your heart, His Kingdom will never be exercised in your world!

Church matters most of all. Nothing matters more.

I want us as leaders to be open to having our hearts affected by the presence of God in this current season of Revival…Why? Because I sense that this revival season will demand something from us as leaders that we haven’t had to give yet… New seasons expose us to new conditions, and we must be willing to change to meet the needs of this new season of God in our world….I want to show you what the Beyond Church Budget might look like if we are to pay the price for this next season:

It will be a YES to:

Uncertainty

Change

Growth

Tension

Brokenness

Selflessness

Sacrifice

Suffering

And it is to say NO to:

Ego

Agendas

Security

Stability

Now, growth in character occurs to the degree that we accept being forgiven as a greater gift than life itself. If the greatest gift is not what I see but how I am seen by the living God, then my gratitude knows no limits. It can grow immeasurably as I suffer through the loss of illusions, the death of dreams, and the shattering of success. Suffering grafts our hearts to grace. - Dan Allender, Walking with a Limp

Suffering grafts our heart to grace…so I don’t say that to scare you, but I say it to prepare you…You get to participate in the greatest work that anyone can do, leading this community of faith…through a season of revival. That will come at great costs…but the cost…can never outweigh the greatest gift of all, forgiveness and grace, and being SEEN by God!