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    Keeping the Fire: Discovering the Heart of True Revival
    Keeping the Fire: Discovering the Heart of True Revival
    Keeping the Fire: Discovering the Heart of True Revival
    Ebook142 pages2 hours

    Keeping the Fire: Discovering the Heart of True Revival

    By Rolland Baker and Heidi Baker

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    About this ebook

    Bestselling Author and Missionary Rolland Baker Reveals the Heart of True, Lasting Revival

    "There has been much talk in recent years of revival," says bestselling author and missionary Rolland Baker, "so much so that I wonder at times whether revival itself has become the object of devotion."

    Too often believers seek out revival, not the Reviver. When unchecked, they often pursue an emotional or physical experience or focus on how many came to Christ, rather than worship Jesus himself. Yet the heart of true, lasting revival is Christ--of falling in love with him so deeply that you can't help but tell others about him. And that, says Baker, is what has fueled him, his wife, Heidi, and all of Iris Ministries over the last thirty years.

    "This book is about sustaining revival over decades," says Baker. "By that I mean it is a book about falling in love and staying in love with the person of Jesus Christ. Revival is about the Reviver, nothing more and nothing less. My prayer is that you will fall in love with him with all your heart as you read these pages, and that you will not be able to resist giving that love away, wherever you place your feet."
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBaker Publishing Group
    Release dateOct 4, 2016
    ISBN9781441230683
    Keeping the Fire: Discovering the Heart of True Revival
    Author

    Rolland Baker

    Rolland Baker and his wife, Heidi, are the founders of Iris Global (www.irisglobal.org), whose mission is to bring the Kingdom of God to earth by "stopping for the one"--the poor, broken, destitute or forgotten. After serving as missionaries in Indonesia and Hong Kong, the Bakers followed God's call to Mozambique in southeast Africa in 1995. Through their ministry, they watch God provide miraculously for well over 10,000 children every day, plus many more through the Iris network of more than 15,000 churches, Bible schools, primary schools and remote outreach programs. They live in Mozambique, Africa.

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      Book preview

      Keeping the Fire - Rolland Baker

      © 2016 by Rolland Baker

      Published by Chosen Books

      11400 Hampshire Avenue South

      Bloomington, Minnesota 55438

      www.chosenbooks.com

      Chosen Books is a division of

      Baker Publishing Group, Grand Rapids, Michigan

      www.bakerpublishinggroup.com

      Originally published in the UK by River Publishing & Media Ltd, East Malling, Kent

      Ebook edition created 2016

      All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—for example, electronic, photocopy, recording—without the prior written permission of the publisher. The only exception is brief quotations in printed reviews.

      ISBN 978-1-4412-3068-3

      Library of Congress Control Number: 2016938477

      Unless otherwise indicated, Scripture quotations are from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996, 2004, 2015 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.

      Scripture quotations identified MESSAGE are from THE MESSAGE. Copyright © by Eugene H. Peterson 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, 2000, 2001, 2002. Used by permission of NavPress. All rights reserved. Represented by Tyndale House Publishers, Inc.

      Scripture quotations identified NASB are from the New American Standard Bible®, copyright © 1960, 1962, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1975, 1977, 1995 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission. (www.Lockman.org)

      Scripture quotations identified NIV are from the Holy Bible, New International Version®. NIV®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.™ Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide. www.zondervan.com

      Cover design by Kirk DouPonce, DogEared Design

      Contents

      Cover    1

      Title Page    3

      Copyright Page    4

      Foreword by Heidi Baker    9

      Preface by Elisha Baker    11

      Prologue    15

      Introduction    19

      1. Find God    33

      2. Depend on Miracles    47

      3. Go to the Least    65

      4. Suffer for Him, If Necessary    83

      5. Rejoice in the Lord    101

      Conclusion    115

      Epilogue    125

      About Iris Global    131

      About the Author    137

      Back Ad    140

      Back Cover    141

      Foreword

      For 35 years I have walked with my beloved Rolland among the fields white for harvest. Together we have passionately loved Jesus! Together we have learned from and loved the poor. Together we have pursued with every fiber of our beings our God, who is worthy of it all. Together we have raised our beautiful children, who teach us what love looks like. Together we have fellowshiped in His sufferings and experienced more of His glory than we ever dreamed we would.

      We believe for a huge tribe of lovers of God to burn with His holy fire and to go to the darkest places on the planet. As you read Keeping the Fire, you, too, will be set ablaze!

      Heidi Baker

      Mozambique

      October 2015

      Preface

      This is a work about lineage.

      I am not referring to a lineage of flesh and blood, but one of a spiritual nature. Families often pass on a spiritual lineage, because children are often (though assuredly not always) in an excellent position to stand upon the heights that their natural parents have captured for them. Such a lineage exists in and belongs to those with the will and the grace to take hold of it. It is for those who honor spiritual fathers to be spiritual sons.

      Several years ago my father nearly died of cerebral malaria. When I visited Mozambique one recent summer—as I have done every summer since I moved to America—I was told I should tell him good-bye.

      Technically, I suppose this was a unique experience. But for me it was not an unusual one. My mother and father have been imprisoned, mugged, deported, robbed and assaulted by more diseases of the developing world than we have means to diagnose. They receive more death threats than we bother to count. They have been beaten with varying degrees of severity, and stood many times at knifepoint or gun muzzle. They have often faced armed extortion, angry mobs, blackmail, carjackings and street muggings. I have heard dire warnings from many doctors about their imminent demise. My mother, in particular, has recovered from more than one diagnosis of some incurable disease (and for all the miracles we have seen, I still hope each one is the last).

      They have faced riots, some personally directed at them; the latter having arisen because desperate people wanted more from them than they had to give. They have faced accusations from spying for the CIA to drug trafficking to selling the organs of orphans on the black market (providing children’s brains to the witch doctors for potions, as one rumor had it—for which a furious crowd once chased one of our staff members through a cluttered marketplace in Maputo). My mother has never been shipwrecked, quite, but last year she came very close during bad weather off the coast of northern Mozambique. Her boat was swamped, and she was given a ride home by a canoe full of naked fishermen. One of the men swam to shore and back to fetch them all clothes, so that she would not be uncomfortable while they rowed her back to civilization.

      My family has taught, by the entirety of their lives, these words: He who seeks his life shall lose it, but he who loses his life shall find it (see Matthew 16:25). All of my instruction as a youth has taught that it is worth any price to serve the Lord. Constantly to offer your life for His sake, and for the sake of those He loves—even for the sake of those who are yet His enemies—is the only kind of life that is worth living. This is the truth. You are born for union with God. In a way that is uniquely proper to you, you are to act as God toward the world, and as the very Almighty toward all who are in it. The danger of doing this is exquisitely real. It is also inseparable from its glory. You are to be glorious. To live out this union risks pain for you, your loved ones and all who love you. For Jesus it led to torture and death—and ultimately to the similar deaths of most of His disciples. If you are like Jesus, your pains will come through no error of your own. If, however, your mind is not yet entirely conformed to the likeness of His (and who claims this?), some of your pains will also come from your own errors.

      It is nonetheless worth risking the possibility of errors, and the greater errors that descend from greater dreams. It is worth daring to act like God. It is worth stepping out of a boat in the belief that you can walk on water. It is worth going to the ends of the earth. If need be, it is also worth staying in a place that may kill you. It is—take my word on it—absolutely worth putting even your children in a certain kind of danger. In this world you cannot keep them from danger. But your absolute obedience to God will be to them the greatest inheritance imaginable. It is a mighty lineage.

      Do this, and they will indeed have to choose for themselves how to respond to the trials you will have subjected them to. Whether in response to your successes or your failures, they may make foolish choices. They may hurt. They may fail. They may learn things that you did not. They may fall short. They may surpass you. They may do both, in different times and ways. But in this way, and in this way only, you will have given them the best that any parent can give. If they wish to take up these trials, then at their hands will lay immortal riches, refined by fire. These are worth the cost, for our Lord did not lie:

      No one who has left home or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or fields for me and the gospel will fail to receive a hundred times as much in this present age: homes, brothers, sisters, mothers, children and fields—along with persecutions—and in the age to come eternal life.

      Mark 10:29–30 NIV

      If you walk hand in hand with your loved ones through the valley of the shadow of death, fear no evil. I say He makes no promise that you will never have to lay your firstborn upon an altar. But God loves your children more than you. And lineage—lineage! Leave this lineage to them in its purity, and you will yet see a great mystery, as great as the sacrifice of God’s own child.

      By that mystery, in all the heavens it will surely be said of your children—as many as desire that which you have left for them—He will cover them with His feathers, and under His wings they will find refuge; His faithfulness will be their shield and rampart. They will not fear the terror of night, nor the arrow that flies by day, nor the pestilence that stalks in the darkness, nor the plague that destroys at midday. A thousand may fall at their side, ten thousand at their right hand, but it will not come near them. Because they love Me, the Lord will say, I will rescue them. I will protect them, for they acknowledge My name. They will call upon Me, and I will answer them. I will be with them in trouble. I will deliver them. I will honor them. With long life I will satisfy them, and show them My salvation (see Psalm 91:4–7, 14–16).

      Elisha James Baker

      Prologue

      There has been much talk in recent years of revival. So much so that it makes me wonder at times whether revival itself has become the object of devotion.

      I want to begin by saying that historically and biblically, the focus and subject of revival is not the work of the Holy Spirit or the dramatic increase in numbers in the churches that are affected by the breath of God. It is Jesus Christ, born of a virgin, who suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, buried, resurrected, ascended and glorified.

      Revival is about the Reviver, nothing more and nothing less.

      When the Holy Spirit falls upon a community, a city or even a country, many people discover a new affection for the person of Jesus. They bow down under the weight of the glory of God and they

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