Revival In Tavares, Florida

Revival In Tavares, Florida

On May the 23rd of 2010, we started what was scheduled to be a two week revival at the Covenant Holiness Church in Tavares, FL. where Brother J. R. Smith is the pastor. Although two backsliders came back to the Lord, for the most part, it was the polar opposite of the meeting we held in Busy, Ky. just prior to it. In Busy, I preached to the lost every night, seeing nearly seventy souls turn to Christ; in Tavares, God directed me to preach to the church.

When I came in the first Sunday morning I figured it would be business as usual; preaching on prayer, revival, drawing close to God, witnessing, etc.–messages provoking the lukewarm to repentance, causing them to cry out to God for the fire of the Holy Ghost. After I had preached and ministered around the altar, I sat down. It was at that point the Lord began to speak to my heart about the direction He wanted the revival to go. He told me to look upon the faces of the people. As I looked into each face, I discerned deep hurt and grievous pain. He revealed to me some very intimate details about each one of them, and then He thundered the following words into my heart and mind: “They have terrible wounds and I want to heal them. And if they will reveal it, I will heal it.”

When I came back to the Sunday night service, I preached about our marvelous God and His capacity to heal the wounded. On Monday night the Lord directed me to preach about God’s unfathomable love. On Tuesday night, I preached that there must come a point in our life that we divert our eyes off of our own selves; a point that we must stop the perpetual autopsy of a living person, and get our eyes upon the Christ. God used those three messages to catapult us into a mighty move of God; into a true revival.

Over the next three weeks, God healed hearts and minds in unspeakable ways. Great repentance and reconciliation took place night after night. We had several one hour, and even two and a half hour, altar calls. They were often without the accompaniment of music or singing; the only sound being the weeping of saints crying out to the Almighty God, asking Him to renew them and fill them with His Holy Spirit! I marveled as a six year old boy lay prostrate in the floor, weeping for over an hour. The second Sunday night service of the revival lasted nearly five hours! We experienced wave after wave of God’s glory; much of the congregation claimed to having been refilled with the Holy Ghost; three of the pastors children in one night! Great confession of sins was prominent, many of which the person said they didn’t even know they harbored within their hearts prior to God revealing it to them in that meeting. Backsliders, including a preacher, came back to Christ. And pretty much every member of the church professed to having experienced God in a deeper way than they had ever experienced Him before.

My heart leaped for joy after hearing the testimony of a precious sister. She said she had lost her hunger for lost souls. She had allowed her burden to be extinguished by the cares of this life. I wish you could have seen the excitement in her face, the sparkle in her eyes, as she told how God had placed a new fire within her to reach the lost at any cost! It was precious indeed!

I am presently thinking about the testimony a particular preacher offered up one night in testimony service. He said that before the revival, his prayer life, Bible study, witnessing, and zeal for the things of God were zero. In so many words, he conceded that he had been operating in a backslid condition, but proclaimed that God had restored him, that he was now praying and seeking God continually. The truth is there were many similar testimonies.

No one but God can get the glory for the things which happened in Tavares. In fact, my family was just as much recipients of that move of God as anyone else. One night, I rejoiced as my nine year old daughter was kneeling and crying out to God. When she got up from where she was praying, I asked her if God had helped her. She said, “Yes”. I asked her how and she said, “I can’t explain it. He just made me interested again”! Oh, how God made men interested in Him again during that revival!

On another night, as I knelt at the altar, crying out to God, I felt a very little person kneel down beside me. I looked down and saw my little pip-squeak-six year old daughter Rebecca Eden kneeling beside me. She can melt my heart in unspeakable ways already, but she was weeping which made it worse. I took her up and cradled her in my lap. I asked her if the Lord had helped her. With tears running down her cheeks, she said, "My heart hurts." I said, "My heart hurts too. Let's pray for the lost." So my six year old baby and I wept for the lost together, sitting in the floor of Covenant Holiness Church. It was a good day.

Honestly, I could go on and on telling all the wonderful things that God did amongst that precious people. The pastor told me that God not only restored the church, but put it in a higher place than it had ever been. God brought revival to the Covenant Holiness Church. He restored that which needed to be restored. He healed everything that was revealed. He put them back into a state of usefulness.

The Covenant Holiness Church had a real REVIVAL, now it’s time for them to seek God and do those things necessary to see an AWAKENING in Tavares, Florida. It’s time for them to go on the offensive, wreaking great havoc upon the enemy’s kingdom! Will they do so? I don’t know. Will they sustain the fire that God has placed in their hearts and lives? I don’t know. I believe they can and I hope they will; but they, just like you and me, have to make a conscious decision every day to be men and women of God; to be consistent; to never go back to their comfort zone; to choose everyday to be prayer warriors and intercessors for the souls of men. Yes, they must choose.

But I guess the real question isn’t will THEY do it, but will YOU and I do it?

David Lamb