Check your belly!

 
   The center of your being, your belly as the Bible calls it, establishes everything about you.  Your center, you "belly" can be you, it can be family, money,  career, etc.  In the spiritual realm, it can be some doctrine, faith, good works, prophecy, prosperity or any number of other seemingly good things.  From your belly, the center of your being, flows all your dreams, desires, actions.  Your theology is established from your belly. Your relationship with God is affected by what the center of your being happens to be.  

  In recent times I have began to see that revival also has to do with what is our center.  If a person's center is a particular message or doctrine, when that doctrine is preached again, they feel renewed or reaffirmed in what they are. They may call it revival.  For example, people whose center of being is the faith confession message will feel renewed when that message is preached and reaffirmed to them.  Their world revolves around that idea.  People whose center is heaven experience the same thing when they hear heaven preached or sang about in a strong convincing way.  They feel renewed.  However, if such a message is not your center, you may not share that feeling of renewal.

   Here is the problem:  The Bible declares that "times of refreshing" (revival) come from the manifested presence of God (Acts 3:19).  If the Holy Ghost, God manifested among men, is at the center of your being and you get close to His presence, you feel revived, or refreshed.  That is the revival the Bible points us to.  That is the revival I crave!  Jesus told us that if we believed and came to Him thirsty, He would give to us a drink of the Holy Ghost such that out of our "belly", (the center of our being) would flow rivers of living water (Jo. 7:37-39).  That is revival - if the center of your being is God among us.  This process of coming to Jesus, beliving, thirsting, hungering is the process by which He establishes, renews, revives, the belly of our being and make it what it should be - a fountain from which "rivers of living water" flow.  That is what a revived belly looks and feels like. 

   A "belly" change is truly what Holy Ghost baptism is about - it is a change of the center of your being.  It puts Him in your belly.   And, being filled and refilled with the Spirit is about the center of your being experiencing revival.  Every time you get a fresh drink, fresh touch, fresh anointing, you belly flows life again and that flow affects your whole being, your witness, your ministry.   Those whose center / belly is something other than the Spirit, will let Holy Ghost revival, the manifested presence of God pass them by quite easily, since it had no affect on the center of their being anyway.

   For me, I can't be deeply renewed by a message or a particular slant on the Word.  Oh, I can enjoy,  be challenged and educated but not really revived.  Revival, renewal comes for me with a time in God's manifested presence, the wonderful Holy Ghost, the center of my being, the axis my world rotates upon.  When I get around those whose center is different I am well aware of it.  What excites them does not always excite me.  The Bible says that he that is joined to the Lord is one Spirit.  Every now and then that becomes experiential and we call it "revival".  Paul once said that Christ must have "preeminence" in all things and that only happens when the Spirit of God is the center  of our being.  The Bible says only by the Spirit can we call Jesus Lord.