Revival Means Humiliation by James Burns

My pastor sent me this:

To the church a revival means humiliation, a bitter knowledge of failure, and an open and humiliating confession of sin on the part of her ministers and people. It is not the easy and glowing thing many think it to be, who imagine that it fills the empty pews, and reinstates the Church in power and authority. IT COMES TO SCORCH BEFORE IT HEALS; it comes to rebuke ministers and people for their unfaithful witness, for their selfish living, for their neglect of the Cross, and to call them to daily reunciation, to an evangelical poverty, and to a deep and daily consecration. This is why a revival has ever been unpopular with large numbers within the Church. Because it says nothing to them of power such as they have learned to love, or of ease, of of success; it accuses them of sin, it tells them that they are dead, it calls them to awake, to renounce the world, and to follow Christ.