"Mercy and truth preserve the king: and his throne is upholden by mercy."   (Prov. 20:28)

If there is any one message that can be deemed the most important of all, it is the message of mercy.  The Apostle Paul wrote that charity is even more important than faith and hope, the two pillars that our salvation rest upon. 

It is not enough to be righteous before God.  The Pharisees were so righteous that they were squeaky clean, and yet they wound up in Hell.  It is to the merciful that God will show Himself merciful, not the righteous.  Mercy is the core of God's personality.  Without it, He would have empty mansions in Heaven with no one to fill them.

And yet, I constantly hear Christians drone on about all the right doctrines that they believe in and the things they have done for the Lord.  Their conversation always seems to center around themselves, but when is it going to be about others?

The Gospel of Jesus Christ is not about you ... and it will never be about you. It is about others, others, others.  If you never grasp this, you will never understand the Cross.  Jesus didn't die so we could be blessed, have a good time in the Lord, and attend a wonderful church - He died to save sinners, and He commanded us to do the same.  There is a reason why it is called the Great Commission.

Revival starts with the merciful.  The forerunners who contended for hours of travail on their knees long before the fire of revival ever fell were not praying for themselves - they were crying out to God for the lost.  Hours of crying and wells of tears spring from a fountain whose source is that blessed burden for lost souls. No revival comes without the sacrifice of these faithful warriors.

Where does that burden come from?  From prayer itself. You have to ask God to give it to you before you can ever have the strength to drive past flesh and self-will to contend to that intensity.  No human will power is enough to overcome the spiritual barriers that Satan throws up before these saints.  This is a battle of spiritual power, not flesh and blood. Only the power of God can press this kind of a burden upon us to take us up, through, and over this kind of warfare.  We are victors only through the Blood of Jesus and the power of God. 

When we ask God to give us a burden for lost souls, it starts in motion the process that leads to revival.  This is where it always begins, for no revival will ever take place without a core of prayer warriors burdened with this weight to rip through the skies to bring down the fire from the Altar of God. 

But you have to ask for it, because we are not born with it.  It is contrary to human nature. You have to have a desire for the desire; you have to want to want; you have to deny thyself and ask for the Cross.  But when you ask, you are asking for His own burden, and He will give it liberally to those who sincere ask. That burden is the God-given essence of His own heart, and it is planted in our hearts by Him alone.  But you have to ask.

When we pray for a deep, overwhelming burden for the lost, God will reveal the stark reality of Hell to us.  Until then, we are numb to the realities of Eternity. When the veil is ripped away from our fleshly understanding and we see with eternal clarity the extent of the torments of everlasting destruction and the rock solid assurance of judgment, the focus of our entire world forever changes.  Nothing else matters - not money, blessings, peace, or any of this world's entertainments or comforts ... and certainly not ourselves.  The enormity of Hell and judgment to come looms before us and dominates everything we see.

This is the thing that drives us to labor in the furnace of God's prayer room with inexhaustible fervor.  This is what births revival: charity, mercy, and a burden for lost souls.  Without that, we are nothing but a tinkling cymbal and a sounding brass, wells without water and clouds without rain, and taken with our own vain jangling in a desire to be wise and righteous.  For revival to come, we must take our focus off ourselves and put it on others. That is the essence of the Spirit of Jesus Christ, the true meaning of the Cross, and the heart of God.

I fear that this is the dividing line between the sheep and the goats.  Belief in God, doctrinal integrity, and church attendance will not get you into Heaven.  He is looking for something in your heart that transcends the flesh and brings you into the presence of God.  That thing is mercy.

"He that dwelleth in the secret place of the most High shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty."   (Psalms 91:1)