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Reading the gospels, we may get the idea that when Jesus healed people, He simply spoke, and, just because of His great power, the person was healed. No cost, no pain, no trouble. That’s how we would like to start revival in our churches, too.

But when we look at the Scriptures we find that Jesus didn’t heal painlessly, and neither can we. “When the even was come, they brought unto him many that were possessed with devils: and he cast out the spirits with his word, and healed all that were sick: That it might be fulfilled which was spoken by Esaias the prophet, saying, Himself took our infirmities, and bare our sicknesses.” Here Matthew is showing us that even Christ paid a price to heal people. When one woman touched His clothes and was healed, He knew that virtue had gone out of Him. Couldn’t this be an indication that He knew that someone had been helped by feeling His cost?

Part of the cost of having and bringing revival is found in Mark 8:34 “And when he had called the people unto him with his disciples also, he said unto them, Whosoever will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me.” Denial, according to a dictionary, means, “A disowning or disavowal; repudiation.” (There are other meanings, but the Strong’s definition of the Greek word makes it fairly clear that this is the correct one for this verse.) So self-denial means that I repudiate self. It means that self, which was once in control of everything, loses all control, and the Spirit of God is now in control of every aspect of my life. It means that I commit myself to doing whatever the Spirit tells me to.

The difficulty in this, of course, is that self is me! What self enjoys is what I enjoy. The things that self delights in are the same things that I delight in! The things that self orders me to do are the things that I would like to do, because self is me! When I commit myself to doing whatever the Holy Spirit desires me to do, He will probably ask me to do things that I would rather not do. “If in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men most miserable.” Yet this is the only way to revival, to continually allow the Spirit to control my life. “I protest by your rejoicing which I have in Christ Jesus our Lord, I die daily.” God calls us daily to self-denial. We must never allow self to take control, or the Spirit of God can be quenched. I must follow the Spirit of God wherever He leads, whenever He leads, and ignore my selfish inclinations. If I am unwilling to let Him remove self and fill me with His Spirit, to guide and lead me, then I am not a candidate for revival, because self-denial is a requirement for revival.