THE PASSION OF HIS PRESENCE
Lingering in the still morning hours, something in me shifted. The Spirit of God began drawing me closer, and Isaiah 30:15 came alive: “In returning to Me and rest you shall be saved; in quietness and confident trust is your strength.” Then, in the very next breath of the verse, came the piercing words: “But you were not willing…”
Willingness—that was the key to my renewal! Without realizing it, God had already begun answering the prayer I had been vocalizing for weeks from Psalm 51:
Create in me a clean heart, O God. Renew a loyal spirit within me… Restore to me the joy of your salvation, and make me willing to obey you. (Psalm 51:10 & 12; NLT; emphasis mine)
David did not try to muster up passion or fix himself. He simply asked God to create willingness within him, and God did. Desire is born in prayer, especially when we admit that we should be willing but are not. God meets honesty with help.
Psalm 51 shows us how renewal unfolds. David prayed it at the lowest point of his life, when his secret sins of adultery and murder were finally exposed. Compromise had twisted his heart and dimmed his discernment. Yet instead of beginning with his failure, he began with God’s mercy and compassion. He began with, Have mercy on me, O God, because of your unfailing love. Because of your great compassion, blot out the stain of my sins (verse 1).
David then did the hardest thing: he named his sin plainly. He saw that his failure revealed something broken within, and that honesty opened the door to transformation. He asked for cleansing only God could give, but he knew forgiveness alone could not repair what sin had damaged (verses 3-7).
So he prayed the central miracle of this Psalm: “Create in me a clean heart.” The Hebrew bara means to create out of nothing. It’s the same word used in Genesis 1:1. David is not asking for improvement; he is asking for a Genesis‑level act of new creation.
He asked for a renewed spirit, for restored joy, and for a willing heart. He asked for the kind of heart that wants God, leans toward His will, and delights in His ways. Psalm 51 is not merely confession; it is a map of restoration. It shows how a dull, fatigued, or spiritually numb heart finds its way back into the presence of God.
This is why this Psalm matters. It traces the journey from distance to nearness, from straining to joyful surrender. It reveals a God who does more than forgive—He recreates, restores vitality, bending the heart toward Himself until faithfulness becomes the natural expression of love.
This is exactly what God did in me. I did not struggle in prayer; I simply asked Him to reignite my heart, and He responded. Scripture promises that if we draw near to Him, He will draw near to us (James 4:8). We come weak and without spark, and He meets us with holy fire.
Desire did not return instantly; it grew slowly, morning by morning. As my heart awakened, I began to lose interest in the distractions that drain energy and scatter my attention. I realized that engaging with Him is far better than anything else. When He changes our desires, the struggle fades, and new momentum rises. With just a taste of His goodness, we gladly forsake the lesser loves that once pulled at us.
HIS NEARNESS REKINDLES HOLY PASSION
The closeness of the Lord’s very being ignites holy passion within us. We see this pattern in Luke 24. On a dusty road, two disciples were walking toward the village of Emmaus, completely stunned and heartbroken by the brutal events of the crucifixion. As they walked, the risen Jesus drew near and walked alongside them, though they did not recognize Him. Later that evening, as they finally sat together at the dinner table:
He took the bread and blessed it. Then He broke it and gave it to them. Suddenly, their eyes were opened, and they recognized Him… They said to each other, ‘Didn’t our hearts burn within us as He talked with us on the road and explained the Scriptures to us?’ (Luke 24:30–32; NLT; emphasis mine)
Jesus’s presence awakened the passion of God in them. It is the same for us today. When the Savior draws near, His holiness purifies, illuminates, and transforms us.
This same divine flame appears throughout Scripture: Jeremiah felt it burning in his bones, the psalmist felt it rise within him as he meditated, and the early church saw it rest upon them at Pentecost. This is the glory of God; it sparks the fire that purifies like refining silver, awakens the heart, and alters the life of all who approach the One who is Himself a consuming fire (Jeremiah 20:9; Psalm 39:3; Acts 2:3-4; Malachi 3:2-3; Hebrews 12:29).
DESIRE PURIFIED BY HIS FIRE
Desire is a powerful, inescapable force within the human soul. Scripture never asks us to silence this inner drive, but to redirect it. The Hebrew word ḥēphets beautifully captures this. It speaks of a heart bending and inclining toward its treasure, marked by an earnest craving and pursuit. God does not extinguish this capacity for passion; He purifies and reshapes our desires so they align with His own.
This is the shift revival is meant to produce. True revival is not a fleeting emotional event, but a profound reordering of affection where God resets the heart toward Himself. We see this pattern in past outpourings, where waves of repentance and holiness rise like a tide to restore broken relationships, break lifelong addictions, and rescue exhausted leaders from burnout.
Ultimately, revival is God causing us to be still long enough for Him to expose our self-centered motives, correct our misaligned steps, and breathe into us a fresh vision of His ways. In these quiet environments of simple worship, honest confession, and reconciliation, ministries shift from performance-driven religion to presence-led living. The lasting fruit of an awakening is not an emotional high, but a permanent transformation of the soul. And once we taste His nearness, we will never again settle for a Christianity built on self-gratification, ambition, or the question, “What’s in it for me?”
The Lord wrote this truth into my own story in a moment I will never forget…
“I HAVE NOT PASSED YOU BY!”
It was during the final days of the Brownsville, FL revival that I traveled with a group of women to a three-day conference. Every day, the sanctuary filled to capacity with women from across the country, all of us carrying a deep, aching hunger for a fresh touch from God. For the first two days, I sat silently, waiting and hoping the Lord would speak to me.
But as the hours and days passed, a deep heartache began to press heavily on my heart. I couldn’t seem to connect with the Lord. I felt completely left out; like an onlooker on the sidelines, watching everyone else experience His presence while I waited to hear my name, but it was never called.
On our last morning there, my friend Liz (Meaders) Langlinais suggested we skip breakfast to slip into the sanctuary and pray before the service started. I was so desperate to hear and experience God that I jumped at the chance. I still remember walking side by side with her down the center aisle of that massive auditorium. A few women were already scattered around the altar, praying softly.
Then, the moment my knees touched the floor, everything changed. The Lord’s voice broke through. Like a bolt of lightning, powerful and clear, vibrating the very depths of my soul, He said: “I have not passed you by!” The sheer weight of those words broke me. I collapsed onto the floor and stayed there, weeping, until the service ended.
In that time on the floor, the Lord began to show me the things that had secretly stolen my heart away from Him. He showed me the sneaky time-wasters, the ambitious “good ideas” driven by my own pride, and all the little loves I had allowed to crowd out my devotion. Realizing how far I had drifted, I repented.
None of us are immune to this slow, invisible undertow. The adversary operates with a cunning subtlety, much like termites silently eroding the structural timber of a home. He works within the hidden chambers of our minds, slowly, methodically dismantling our godly passion while whispering comfortable lies that lull us into a dangerous spiritual slumber.
In revivals, we often look for the dramatic—the fallouts, the big-bang moments. But looking back, I realized the error in my own mindset. Sitting back and observing what was happening around me kept me from experiencing the Lord for myself. This can easily happen to us in any Sunday service. We listen, we watch, we sing, but our hearts remain unengaged. Instead of offering God our whole hearts and focused attention, we let our thoughts wander, and we drift.
In that revival service, Jesus had been all around me, but He did not have my personal attention. I kept waiting for something explosive to happen in the room, but nothing came… not until I became desperate enough to seek Him with focused intention and offer Him my whole heart in secret.
Thinking back over that moment, the Lord taught me something profound and something woven throughout Scripture long before revival meetings existed. In the Old Testament, the priests never rushed into worship. They prepared the sacrifice with care: selecting what was whole, washing what needed cleansing, removing what did not belong, and arranging the offering intentionally upon the altar. Only then did the fire of God fall. Worship was not casual; it was deliberate. It was the offering of something fully surrendered. (Leviticus 1, 3, & 9)
That ancient pattern reveals the heart of worship today. God doesn’t just want us to show up; He wants a heart ready to surrender.
He waits for the heart that turns away from everything else and turns fully toward Him. True worship is so much more than singing songs or watching others encounter God. It is bringing our whole selves to Him, shutting out distractions, removing what does not belong, and laying our lives down as a living sacrifice.
Scripture calls the believer into radical surrender in Romans 12:1: Give your bodies to God because of all He has done for you. Let them be a living and holy sacrifice—the kind He will find acceptable. This is truly the way to worship Him (NLT; emphasis mine). This is the essence of true worship, and David gives voice to it in Psalm 25:1: “LORD, I offer myself to You.”
But Romans 12:1 does not leave the word “acceptable” vague or undefined. The Greek term signifies something well‑pleasing, something that brings profound delight to God’s heart. It reveals that He is not looking for whatever we happen to toss in His direction, nor the leftovers of our time, attention, or devotion. He is not a place for discarded scraps or things we no longer need. Even David said, I will not present burnt offerings that have cost me nothing! (1 Chronicles 21:24; NLT).
Throughout Scripture, the unmistakable sign of an acceptable offering was divine fire descending from heaven to consume the sacrifice on the altar. When the offering was wholehearted, personal, and intentional, heaven responded. And this pattern has not changed. When a life is placed before Him in this acceptable way, the Lord’s fire still falls. His holy passion consumes what is surrendered, and love that once felt distant becomes rekindled and alive again (1 Kings 18:38; 2 Chronicles 7:1; Acts 2:3-4).
Through my encounter with Jesus, I saw clearly that He never passes us by. It is we who pass Him by when we withhold ourselves, offering fragments instead of the whole. But when the entire life is placed on the altar, His delight meets it with holy passion.
DUTY TURNS TO DELIGHT
When our soul settles, and our attention returns to Jesus, the promise of Psalm 37:4 unfolds: Take delight in the Lord, and he will give you the desires of your heart (NIV). This is not a transaction (If you delight, God will give you what you want); it is a transformation (As you delight, God will reshape what you want). The Hebrew points to God placing His own desires within us, planting the very inclinations that align with His will.
In our personal time with the Lord, He tenderly reaches into our innermost being to prune away selfish ambitions. He gives us a fresh heart that echoes His own, allowing us to say with joyful sincerity: “I delight to do Your will, O God” (Psalm 40:8).
While there are moments in history when holy fire falls instantly, as at Mount Carmel (1 Kings 18:38) or during the Azusa Street revival in Los Angeles in 1906, God often moves in a different rhythm. Instead of sudden flame, He usually begins with quiet transformation. We do not generate this heavenly enthusiasm; we simply ask for it, and He starts a slow, steady work of reshaping our innermost being. This daily immersion of the heart in His goodness is the revival that lasts. It does not rise and fall with emotion, because it is sustained by God Himself. The Lord’s nearness makes us tender enough to see what we once ignored and strong enough to face what we once avoided. The same fire that warms us also shines a light on the hidden stones that hinder our growth. And this is where the journey leads next; into the necessary work of letting Him uncover and remove the soul stones that have shaped us.