I’ve just finished reading a 60 year old book “The Calvary Road” (click to download for free), and I thought of sharing some of my notes from this wonderful book of Roy Hession about Revival (brokeness).

Revival is just the life of the lord Jesus  poured into human hearts. Jesus is always victorious. In heaven they are praising Him all the time for His victory.

Whatever may be our experience of failure and barrenness, He is never defeated. His power is boundless. And we, on our part, have only to get into a right relationship with Him and we shall see His power being demonstrated in our hearts and lives and service, and His victorious life will fill us and overflow through us to others. And that is revival in it’s essence.

If, however, we are to come into this right relationship with Him, the first thing we must learn is that our wills must be broken to His will. To be broken is the beginning of revival. It is painful , it is humiliating, but it is the only way. It is being “Not I, but Christ,” and a “C” is a bent “I”. The Lord Jesus cannot live in us fully and reveal Himself through us until the proud self within is us broken.

This simply means that the hard unyielding self, which justifies itself , wants it’s own way, stands up for it’s rights, and seeks it’s one glory, at last bows it’s head to God’s will, admits it’s wrong, gives up its own glory that the Lord Jesus might have it all and be all. In other words, it is dying to self and self-attitudes.

It’s self who is often doing Christian work. It is always self who gets irritable and envious and resentful and critical and worried. It is self who is hard and unyielding in it’s attitudes to others. It is self who is shy and self-conscious and reserved. No wonder we need breaking. As long as self is in control, God can do little with us, for the fruit of the Spirit (Galatians 5) with which God longs to fill us is the complete antithesis of the hard, unbroken spirit within us.

Being broken is both God’s work and ours. He brings His pressure to bear, but we have to make the choice. If we are really open to conviction as we seek fellowship with God.

The willingness of Jesus to be broken for us is the all-compelling motive in our being broken too. We see Him, who is in the form of God, counting not equality with God a prize to be grasped at and hung on to, but letting it go for us and taking upon Him the form of a Servant- God’s Servant, man’s Servant.

We see Him willing to have no rights of His own, willing to let men revile Him and not revile again, willing to let men tread on Him and not retaliate or defend Himself. Above all, we see Him broken as He meekly goes to Calvary to become men’s scapegoat by bearing their sins in His own body on the Tree.

Lord bend that proud and stiff-necked I,
Help me to bow the head and die;
Beholding Him on Calvary,
Who bowed His head for me.

You see, the only life that pleases God and that can that be victorious is His life – never our life, no matter how hard we try. But inasmuch as our self-centered life is the exact opposite of His, we can never be filled with His life unless we are prepared for God to bring our life constantly to death. And that is what revival is.