 In John 20, the risen Lord surprisingly appears to his weary and defeated followers. The disciples believe in Jesus and the Lord takes a deep breath. He breathes on them and he tells them receive the Holy Spirit. This Greek word that gets translated spirit is the word pneuma from which we get our words pneumonia or pneumatic. Pneuma means wind or breath. When Jesus breathed on his disciples he drew from deep inside and he gave them something of himself. The Spirit rose from deep within Jesus carrying the nature of Jesus to continue the work of Jesus. In that moment the Holy Spirit came as a gentle puff of breath to indwell his followers. You might say deep passed unto deep. Eternal life, the life of Jesus, was imparted from the Lord to his disciples. He breathed on them. But what was a gentle puff of breath following the resurrection became a windstorm seven weeks later at the Feast of Pentecost. It was perhaps in that same upper room the disciples had gathered again and once more received the Holy Spirit. But this time there was a greater intensity. It was a new manifestation. Listen again to how Luke describes the disciples monumental experience. Suddenly there came a sound from heaven as of a rushing mighty wind and it filled the whole house where they were sitting. The breath of Jesus had intensified into a windstorm and this was not the last spiritual windstorm in the book of Acts. They reoccurred on a frequent basis. In fact they can even happen today. I've been praying that the wind will begin to blow in this room even as I speak. Physical windstorms are powerful forces of nature that come in various forms. Dust storms and sand storms and thunder storms and blizzards and hurricanes and tornadoes. The wind swirls in and blows hard. It drives the dust or sand or rain or snow or hell. It picks up whatever object it captures and it unleashes it like a torpedo. Tornadoes can pack winds as strong as 250 miles per hour. They can cut a swath a mile wide and 50 miles long. Hurricanes are massive windstorms. They can swell the 300 miles in diameter and impact an entire coastline. My wife grew up in South Florida and she tells stories of her father preparing her house for a hurricane. He would board up the windows of the house and then he would climb up into the palm trees and he would pick the coconuts lest they become storm-perpelled cannonballs. In both a tornado and a hurricane it's not just the wind that causes damage but the debris it catapults. And this is what happens in a spiritual windstorm. The power, the dynamic of the Holy Spirit swirls into a church. He sweeps this community of believers up off its knees and propels the church into action. The Spirit is now the driving force behind the witness and service and love. A church that was just taking up space now becomes an influence on its community. As in a physical windstorm a gust of supernatural stirs up the debris. The Holy Spirit captures whatever happens to be in his path and launches it with heavenly propulsion. And if the wind is the Holy Spirit that means you and I are the debris. Now I hope you're not offended by that analogy but spiritually speaking there's really no better symbolism. Psalm 103 verse 14 says of God for he knows our frame. He remembers that we're but dust. On our own we're as useful to God as the dust off the top shelf. We're nothing but lint until God's Spirit grips us in his influence. When we're caught up in the wind of the Spirit worthless debris gets turned into spiritual missiles. A church has no lasting influence on its community until it's been stirred up and launched out by God's Spirit. Heard of a news report from Cheyenne Wyoming a large twister blew through the area amazingly missing the downtown. It did though strike a church on the outskirts. The next day the local newspaper read thankfully the cyclone that destroyed Cheyenne community church did no real damage to our town. How tragic is that? How sad? Such a statement should never be said about a church that if it were gone nothing would be lost yet this is the case with many churches today. If we're going to make a difference in our community we need fresh breezes and strong gusts of the Holy Spirit and when this happens we call it revival. This is what I want to speak to you about today spiritual windstorms. I want to discuss the subject of revival. All the Baptist churches I attended as a child always had an annual revival. The revival usually lasted several nights in a row. The best ones seemed to be held in a tent. They'd bring in a guest speaker maybe at a soloist or a musical group maybe somebody who could relate to the youth. There might even be a prize for the person who brought the most people. The whole idea was to generate some excitement in the local church but this is not what I mean when I speak of revival. A biblical revival is more than a block of meetings on the church calendar. It's a spiritual windstorm. It's a move of God's Spirit in the hearts of God's people. Throughout history the Holy Spirit has graciously visited humanity with these kinds of spiritual awakenings. These movements have shaped the church and saved the lost and set society in a more godly trajectory. Scottish preacher William Nicole once wrote, it is by revivals that the church of God makes its most visible advance. When all things seem calm, when no breath stirs the air, when the sea is like lead and the sky is low and gray, when all worship seems to have ended but the worship of vanity, it is then that the Spirit of God is poured upon the church. Suddenly the Christianity of the apostles and martyrs, not that of the philosophers and liberals, rises from the catacombs of oblivion and appears young and fresh in the midst of the obsolete things of yesteryear. And it's for this that we long, for real Christianity to rise up and for God's kingdom to advance. This is what happened in the 12th century AD with Peter Waldo and his Waldensians. These believers renounce the materialism of the church and believe everyone should have a Bible in their own language. It was a prelude to a further awakening that was to come. The Protestant Reformation lasted over a hundred years and left behind the five solas of orthodoxy by faith alone, by grace alone, by Christ alone, by scripture alone, to the glory of God alone. We could also point to the 18th century's first and second grade awakenings as tremendous times of revival. The first great awakening led to the abolition of slavery in England and changes to child labor laws. The second great awakening saw American churches packed to the gills. In the south, both slave owners and slaves gathered in open fields to worship God because the churches weren't large enough to accommodate the crowds. It was the beginning of the camp meeting, a tradition of southern evangelicalism. In 1904, a Welch coal miner, a man named Evan Roberts, had been praying fervently for revival. He was just 25 years old, a tall, skinny fellow, an unlikely flashpoint for anything of colossal proportions. He'd been studying for the ministry when he asked his pastor if he could hold some evening meetings in the church. Well at first the attendance was sparse but before long shops were closing early so that employees could get to the church and reserve a seat for the meetings. Soon the roadways to the church were clogged with out-of-town seekers coming to see what was happening. Often the services would last until 4.30 in the morning. Sin was confessed. Sinners converted. Homes and families were restored. For the next couple of years all across Wales bars closed, jails emptied, churches were filled. My, even soccer matches were canceled to avoid conflicts with the revival. Welch miners were so transformed by the Holy Spirit their mules had to be retrained to work without the prodding of curse words. During the Welch revival of 1904 two kids were heard one day offering their explanations for what was going on in their community. One child said to the other, do you know what is happening in our town? The other child replied, no I don't accept that Sunday comes every day now. The first child added why Jesus has come to live in our town. And here are two great definitions for a revival. It's when Jesus comes to reside and rule in a community and when it feels like every day is a day of worship. Of course our family Calvary Chapel was born in a revival. In the 1960s we saw a generation disillusioned by materialism, the war in Vietnam, racial inequality. The youth rejected the shallowness of their parents' morality and immersed themselves in drugs and free sex. But that's when God sent a Jesus movement which taught the Bible giving the young people the truth that they lacked and emphasized the Holy Spirit providing them the heavenly high for which they craved. It began in the heart of Chuck and Kay Smith on the beaches here in Southern California and it swept the world. When it comes to a revival I like the observation by preacher Alexander Whitey. He says there is a divine mystery about revivals. God's sovereignty is in them. In other words when the spirit of God moves in revival, patterns and predictability fly out the window, God takes the helm. The unexpected occurs. Baptist preacher Vance Habner once said, when I was a boy preachers talked about holding a revival but what we really need is somebody who will turn a revival loose. Revival is more than just holding a meeting. It occurs when God turns his spirit loose in the church and then turns the church loose on a needy world. And this is what happened on the day of Pentecost. A spiritual windstorm sent from God's throne caused the church in Jerusalem to soar and roar. Luke paints the picture in Acts 2 verse 2, and suddenly there came a sound from heaven as of a rushing mighty wind and it filled the whole house where they were sitting. When you do a close inspection of verse 2 you find some interesting insights regarding spiritual revivals. I'd like to share a few with you. First this Greek word translated suddenly it means unawares or unexpectedly. When the Holy Spirit came upon the disciples it happened spontaneously. You know in nature when serious winds begin to stir the storms get tracked by our meteorologists. As conditions become conducive for a tornado a watch gets issued. When a tornado is spotted it's upgraded to a warning but when the Spirit came upon the church there wasn't a watch or warning. They were just waiting as Jesus had told them. Resting in what God had promised. Trusting in the power God had promised. Waiting implies no anxiety, no uncertainty, just the expectation that what the Father promises He will deliver. When the Spirit came upon the disciples a sound was heard. The word translated sound is the word echoes from which we get our word echo. Here's its definition. It's a sound of uncertain affinity, a loud or confused noise, a roar. I've never been in high winds that would constitute a tornado or a hurricane yet here's an account I read from someone who has. The wind blew so hard the walls of the house shook. We looked outside through a window and surprisingly everything was flying away. We couldn't even open the door because it would have been impossible to close it afterward. One unforgettable thing is the whistle of the wind like a train approaching near your house. This is what happened on the day of Pentecost when God's Spirit came upon the church. It was like a wind storm. They heard the roar of this ferocious wind. One author paraphrases Luke's description. Without warning there was a sound like a strong wind gale-forced. A wind from heaven rocked their world. Remember immediately after His resurrection Jesus drew a puff of air and He breathed gently on His disciples but here He blows on them in a mighty rushing gale-force wind. Both experiences were indicative of the encounter the disciples had with the Holy Spirit at the time. In John 20 the disciples saw the risen Lord and their faith was rewarded with the indwelling of the Holy Spirit but now in Acts chapter 2 at Pentecost when the Spirit came upon them it was for empowerment. This time Jesus blew hard on His disciples. He filled their sails with wind that would cause the gospel ship to sell to its destination despite the storms it would inevitably face. Don't forget the early church was born in a firestorm of persecution. The Greek word translated witness is martyr. Today a martyr is a person who dies for their faith. The meaning developed when most of the first witnesses paid the ultimate price to take a stand for Jesus and yet even in such a discouraging climate the church still prevailed in its mission thanks to the Holy Spirit. Notice too the word rushing it means to carry and this is what a strong wind does it captures stuff and carries it through the air. Remember the impact of a windstorm is produced not just by its high velocity winds but the winds pick up debris and propel them at tremendous speeds and for far distances and this is what God does with us in a revival. When the debris that He wants to launch and sin and use to strike targets when that debris is filled with the Holy Spirit suddenly it gets thrown out of the nest. It gets launched out. God begins to send people out to spread His love and truth. Folks get stirred up and sent out in a windstorm. Missionaries get raised up in a revival. God sets out marching orders in revival times servants of God who were content to pack a pew begin to get involved and notice the wind here in Acts chapter 2 it was a mighty wind. The amplified version correctly renders it the rushing of a violent tempest blast. This is not a mild breeze that leaves you untouched. It's a rustling wind. The Holy Spirit picks up the pieces of our lives blows them about and then rearranges them as He pleases. The spiritual windstorm is a strong wind that impacts you that dramatically alters your life. You're different after you've been touched by a mighty wind of God and like a tornado or a hurricane you don't experience a mighty wind without incurring some damage. The power of the Holy Spirit cleans you up before He sends you out. Conviction occurs. Repentance takes place. Brokenness sets in. Sin gets confessed. Old habits are abandoned. Evil gets renounced. Don't think you can be an effective follower for Jesus and conduct business as usual. To seek revival is to invite a windstorm of change to blow into your life and blow out all of your selfishness and pride. This rushing mighty wind definitely had a violent impact on the early church. Days later Ananias and Sapphira lied to the Holy Spirit. They played the hypocrite. We're told God judged them quickly. He struck them dead as with most storms there were casualties. Hey the only people who stand in a windstorm are those who bow down. Just ask Ananias and Sapphira. Reminds me of the three preachers who were discussing the revivals that had occurred in each of their local churches. The Baptist pastor he said praise the Lord we had ten new people give their lives to Jesus. Not to be outdone the assemblies of God pastor he fired back he said well we had ten new people filled with the Holy Spirit. That's when the Presbyterian pastor he said I've got even better news than that. As a result of our revival we had ten contankerous people leave our church. Sometimes that's what happens in a revival. Stubborn and unrepentant folks who dig in their heels and refuse to change. They get convicted or they get ejected. A spiritual windstorm is both peaceful and disturbing. God brings peace to our hearts but an unsettledness to our lives the Spirit takes us over and shakes us up and begs us in the fires of adversity and it makes us into what he intended us to be. A windstorm is the confluence of all kinds of pressure cells and atmospheric stresses. My point is is that if your goal is to maintain the status quo and simply keep your life neatly arranged according to predetermined plans then a windstorm is going to be an uncomfortable place for you to be. When stuff starts swirling about you're no longer in control but if you want to touch God and to know his power then you're gonna want to be in the wind. Another great spiritual awakening reached the shores of Britain and Ireland around the year 400 AD. Men like Ninian and Patrick in Colombo risked their lives to spread the gospel among the local nature worshipers and the spiritual awakening that ensued had powerful and far-reaching effects. Celtic Christianity snatched the British Isles from the darkness of paganism into the light and truth of the Word of God and history tells us that this brave brand of Christianity had a special name for the Holy Spirit. They called him On God Gloss. It's a Gaelic phrase that means the Wild Goose. To these fearless Christians not only was the Holy Spirit the gentle dove who rested on Jesus at his baptism he was also the Wild Goose who roams the skies and who lands wherever he pleases. And I love this idiom for the Holy Spirit. A Wild Goose can't be trained or tracked. You can't control him or bend his instincts to your will. He has a mind of his own and the same is true of God's Spirit. A Wild Goose is noisy and raucous and aggressive. The bird's hawk is loud and challenging up close. A Wild Goose can be unnerving even frightening. At Jesus' baptism the Spirit cooed like a dove. But in Acts chapter 2 he swooped down from heaven and he filled the disciples with new wine. Overwhelmed with joy they were ecstatic in their praise and bold in their witness. Later they were even accused of a morning drunk. In Acts chapter 2 the Goose was on the loose. God's Spirit stirred up his church made his men bold and daring and dangerous. They became a threat to the enemy. The other day I had a firsthand encounter with a Wild Goose. There's a lake near my house. Wild geese are often on the lake. I was strolling by just minding my own manners. Just taking the day in. When one of the birds decided to land on me. He might have hawked but I had my headphones on so I didn't hear him. But he almost hit me. This huge Goose, I mean this big. It sailed in right behind me at head level. And it sailed inches from my head. It landed. Its trajectory took it about three feet in front of me. The near flyby scared me to death. Hey if I hadn't ducked that Goose might have hit me. It was nearly my swan song. It was definitely some foul play. I'm just not down down with the idea of Wild Geese roaming my neighborhood. Gives me goose bumps. From now on I'm looking around. I'm taking a gander. I'm definitely trying to be more nimble in case I have to jump out of the way. Hey today I'm playing at Lucy Goosey. Well enough with the punishment. But here's my point. Selted Christianity got it right. Sometimes the gentle dove acts like a wild Goose. Thus our faith needs to be flexible. We should all live Lucy Goosey. You never know when the spirit is going to drop in on you and do a new thing. We're to be led by the spirit and live in the spirit and walk in the spirit and friends be filled with the spirit. In a nutshell the Christian life is a wild Goose chase. Before he died the world's foremost authority on the subject of revival was a man named Jay Edwin Orr. In the early 1970s he was presenting a series of lectures on revival at the Columbia Bible College. It was there that a student asked him Dr. Orr besides praying for revival what can I do to help bring it about? Without any hesitation or reply you can let it begin with you. Revival that's community wide even worldwide. It always begins with a mighty rushing wind of the spirit that blows through and cleans out God's house first. Again verse 2 this rushing mighty wind filled the whole house. Here's another revival insight. The word translated filled it means to cram or to permeate. The wind of the Holy Spirit filled up every corner of the room. Believers became so saturated with the spirit. His influence colored all that they thought and all that they did. Again the amplified version describes the disciples in the upper room. It says they were all filled, diffused throughout their souls with the Holy Spirit. Have you been diffused throughout by the Holy Spirit? When my wife Kathy cooks a roast she slow cooks it in a crock pot. Oh my all day long that aroma from that roast rises up and invades every corner. I get hungry just thinking about it and when it's time to eat everybody knows what's for dinner. All day long our senses have been primed. And this is what happens in a revival. Spiritual perception gets heightened. Folks sense God's presence and power. His love and joy is so thick you can cut it with a knife. His presence is palpable it's tangible. In a revival sometimes people get saved before the pastor preaches. They walk in and they sense so strongly that God is here they immediately want to respond to Him. In an actual windstorm say a sandstorm on the edge of the desert there's nowhere to escape the wind in the sand. It seeps into the house through its cracks and crevices. It comes under the doors it gets in between the window panes. The wind's influence is inescapable and this is the influence of the Holy Spirit in a spiritual windstorm. Revival produces such a weighty revelation of the reality of God that people are forced to consider Jesus and deal decisively with their sin. It's as if they get sand blasted by the Holy Spirit. He cuts through the layers of veneer and gets to the real issues. In today's world it's so easy for people to just ignore the things of God. Just sort of shrug their shoulders at Christianity. Assume a kind of take it or leave it attitude. The answer for this ambivalence is a spiritual windstorm. And notice in Acts 2 the word whole. The influence of the Spirit filled the whole house where they were sitting. The Greek word is wholus from which we get our word holistic. It means complete or thorough. Holistic medicine is the treatment of not just the body but the body and the soul, the whole person. And the influence of the Holy Spirit is always holistic. He lives inside us not just on Sundays but seven days a week. He alters not just our eternity but our today. He governs not just my religion but my sexuality. He affects me not only spiritually but morally as well. He touches me not only at church but on the job and in the home. He influences not just what we say or think but how we go about living our daily lives. When a spiritual windstorm begins to blow no corner of our lives remains unaffected by the Holy Spirit. Throughout the book of Acts the author is describing a revival, an ongoing windstorm. In Acts 2 the wind blows hard. You even hear it whistle. By the end of that first day 3,000 souls had been captured in its swirl. In Acts chapter 4 the house physically shakes. In Acts chapter 5 the wind whips violently. It takes out a hypocritical couple but even the wake-up call doesn't diminish the freshness and the power of this mighty wind. It creates a storm of love that permeates all that the disciples do. Acts chapter 4 sums up life in the midst of this windstorm as great grace and great power. And for the remainder of Acts this wind howls and blows and sends Jesus' disciples to the four corners of the earth as his lights and as his witness. Friends, I want to get caught in a windstorm. In my research for this message I discovered that hurricanes originate in a geographical area known as the Daldrums. It's a narrow belt of ocean with low pressure little if no wind and generally calm seas. The Daldrums lie near the equator between the trade winds. In the Atlantic Ocean the Daldrums are north of the equator thus there are no hurricanes in the South Atlantic. In the Pacific the Daldrums are on both sides of the equator thus typhoons can hit in either the northern or the southern hemispheres. Ironically all windstorms originate in the middle of the Daldrums. And let me say the same is true spiritually. Fresh winds of the Holy Spirit, new gusts of supernatural strength, heavenly hurricanes of revival also start in what we might call the Daldrums of life. One day a Christian or a group of Christians decides they've wasted too much time in the spiritual Daldrums. They get honest before God. They admit that their life is lacking, that they're just going through the motions of devotion, that they're living well below what God intended. Their Christianity is powerless, their witness is listless, their service for Jesus has grown tedious, their spirituality has become a notness, their morality seems meaningless. One day this person or persons wakes up floating in the Daldrums. They admit their discontent and they become desperate enough to pray to God to send the wind. Here's what you should realize. If you or I find ourselves in the Daldrums this morning, if we've hit a lull spiritually it only means that we're in perfect position to catch a gust of wind. The Holy Spirit starts His work at the point of our neediness. God begins His movements in our Daldrums. Again, Vance Habner wrote, the greatest need for America is an old-fashioned heaven-born God-sent revival. Throughout the history of the church when clouds have hung the lowest, when sin has seen blackest and faith has been weakest, there have always been a faithful few who have besought the Lord to revive His work and God has always answered such supplication, filling each heart with His love, kindling each soul with fire from above. I love that quote because it highlights the two keys for spiritual revival, our desperation and God's willingness. Friends, God is willing. Are we desperate? You know, I once thought that as the years went by, pastoral ministry would get easier. Instead, it's gotten harder. Without the Holy Spirit, I'm just a sailboat on a stagnant sea. I'm dead in the water. As the years go by, I realize more and more how much I need to win. Pastors tend to be like Kevin Fast. Kevin is a Lutheran pastor and a strongman competitor from Canada. On September the 18th, 2009, Kevin set his ninth Guinness World Record in the category of heavy pulling. He strapped himself into the harness connected to a C-17 cargo plane. This aircraft weighs 400,000 pounds. With his sneakers digging into the runway, he leaned forward. And with all his might, he started to pull. Kevin moved that airplane 8.8 meters. That's nearly 30 feet in a record time of one minute and 16 seconds. Setting the world record for the heaviest aircraft pulled by human being. It was a tremendous act of near superhuman strength. And yet sadly, Kevin's feet resembles the approach many pastors and churches are taking toward God's work. Spreading the gospel and planning churches and discipling people can be like that huge airplane. The enormous strength of a few gifted individuals can pull it along for short distances and for brief intervals. But guys, there's a much easier way to move a C-17 cargo plane than pull it. You can crank it up and let it fly. And this is what happens in a revival. When we get the wind of the Holy Spirit under our wings, we begin to soar. Rather than inch forward, God's work takes off. If Pastor Chuck told Calvary Chapel's once, he told us a thousand times. He so often would quote from Galatians 3, having begun in the Spirit, are you now being made perfect by the flesh? See, in the church as on the sea, the voyage is always better when the wind is at our back. This is why we need revival. We need a windstorm. Several weeks ago, May 6th, our country marked an annual observance that you might not know about. It's sponsored by the National Weather Service. It begins hurricane preparedness week. Americans in coastal areas are supposed to spend May 7th through 12th in preparation for hurricane force winds. But I believe if we could get a glimpse of God's calendar, this is also what these days are about. For all of us who live close to the heavenly shore, we need to be preparing for a windstorm. There's nothing we can do to deserve such an outpouring. It's by grace, but we can care enough about God and enough about people to ask, are you asking God to send revival? I am. Don't you long for more of God and His influence? That God's presence would be heavy as we gather, that the strongholds of sin would be broken, that love among God's family would flourish, that God's peace would flow down like a river, that a spiritual awakening will occur that stops the crime in our communities and shuts down the gangs and drives up the drug traffic and brings back respect to our schools and causes racial groups to live in harmony and blesses marriages and awakens men to be the leaders in their home. Don't you long for this kind of a revival? I do. These days I'm asking God for a spiritual windstorm and I'm anticipating the first gusts any day now. I hope you'll join me in the asking. Let's cry out to the Lord Jesus for a true heaven-sent Holy Spirit revival and let's pray that it begins with us. Why not us?