Most of us are familiar with the story of the “Mutiny on the Bounty.” Many have at least seen one of the two film versions of the story.
There was the one classic with Clark Gable and the other with an actor you may have heard of named Marlon Brando. But as usual, the movies fall short of telling the actual story as written in the book.
The full tale begins much like the cinema portrays it, in the 19th century; crew members of the HMS Bounty took over the ship, their captain adrift in a lifeboat, and ended up at last on Pitcairn Island in the South Pacific.
But that is only part of the story. What happened to the mutineers after they landed is something else altogether.
Those rough and tough, godless sailors, together with the wives they had taken with them from the island of Tahiti, spent their days on Pitcairn drinking, gambling, carousing, and fighting among themselves.
Soon the fighting led to battle. One by one they killed off each other until the colony was reduced to a handful of people. Among them was a man named Alexander Smith.
Rummaging through his trunk one day, Smith found a Bible that his mother had put there. Thank God for our moms who always pack clean underwear, extra socks and a Bible.
Smith began to read it, and his life was transformed. As he read to the survivors, a dramatic change began taking place in their lives as well, and when that island was discovered by outsiders some years later, the inhabitants had become a model community.
There was no jail because there was no crime.
The citizens loved God and each other. The Bible read and the Scriptures lived had totally changed their lives and their society.
What happened then could happen again if we would not only memorize verses but begin to allow the living Word of God to be seen loud and clear through us.
This could be a season of revival if the people of God would stop sounding the trumpet call of retreat. What if we charged into every day wholly devoted to allowing the Holy Spirit to write His story upon our hearts?
Pastor Rick Warren wrote not too long ago these powerful and timely words: “If we are going to have resurgence in our nation, a revival, a reformation, a renewal, a re-configuration of the church, when you study church history it always starts through certain stages and the first stage is personal renewal.”
Every major movement of God begins with men and women humbling themselves in the sight of the Lord. This inspires a thorough confession. When we stop pretending that we are something we aren’t and invite the Lord to clean us up both inside and out, we are made ready to become instruments in the hands of the Master.
There can’t be a revival in the community until there is a revolution in the heart.
I can always sense when it becomes more about Him and less about us. The church no longer cares what we do as long as we do it for the glory of one and that we do it together.
One of the ways you know a church is experiencing Jesus is the singing gets better and louder and more personal and passionate. You also observe that people aren’t in such a hurry to leave.
They linger, and they pray for one another and share a heart-to-heart connection. If you go to a church and there is more spectating going on than participation, you don’t have church; you are attending an event.
I believe God is not looking for a crowd, but longing to lead a body of committed Believers.
Revival always begins with human pride falling aside. People begin to confess their sins, and get right with each other, and that’s when the church starts growing more deep than wide.
Christians are open to deal with their hidden issues, like finally admitting that racism isn’t a skin problem; it’s a sin problem.
If God’s people want to be glad all over, we need to come clean with how we’ve been bad all over. God is not ready to bash us but rebuild us. Renewal, resurgence, revival, restoration, reformation, whatever you want to call it; it must be the shared heart of the church family.
Mutiny is what human beings do best. Surrendering to the Holy Spirit is what we need to learn how to do.
I have always prayed that God would make it hard to go to hell from Cape May County. We don’t need religion; we need to enter fully into the relationship we can have with the God who made us and now wants to save us.
For too long it’s been too much about what we don’t do. Today is the day to make it about what we do and who we are and who God wants to make us. If God is at work, it changes more than a person.
He changes the place and the pace of living we do. It is either mutiny on the bounty or the Bible in the county. I choose the latter! How about you?
The author is the senior pastor of The Lighthouse Church, 1248 Route 9 South, Court House.
