Renewal is a work of the Holy Spirit. However, you did not find the apostles shutting themselves away in a room waiting for the Holy Spirit to come and bring renewal… ok, well maybe they did… but that is not normative.
The Holy Spirit had not then been given – at least not in the same way as we have it today.
The normal way the apostles worked was through preaching and teaching. After Pentecost, we never hear of the Apostles saying to the Ephesians or Galations, just spend time waiting on the Lord and seeking the Holy Spirit to bring Renewal – they taught, they preached, and they admonished.
While we MUST seek God, (in prayer), to send the Holy Spirit in renewal, in the conviction of sin, in bringing a powerful sense of the Holiness of God, we must also make sure that within our churches there is a return to good preaching and teaching.
When I say good preaching and teaching, I do not mean, nice, enjoyable, entertaining, or even with great oration, (and all of those are great by the way), I mean with Biblical, Evangelical, content. Doctrinal teaching, covering sin, substitutionary sacrifice, hell, judgement, eternity, the holiness of God, etc.
Calling sin sin.
This may need a moving away from the use of modern wishy-washy Bibles, to a good translation that is not coloured by political correctness, the feminist/humanist/ecumenical/multi-faith agenda etc. There is a whole book, probably a library that could be written, has been written on this subject. After many years of being a strong advocate of the NIV and after many years of research I have now moved back to the KJV and strongly recommend it. If you can not bring yourself to preach or teach from it publicly, I strongly recommend you at the least use it in your preparation and check your theology by it.
For example:
In 1 Corinthians 6:18 Paul is talking about our bodies, the bodies of believes are members with Christ, and we therefore need to treat our bodies in certain ways, or with particular care.
The New American Standard Bible says:
“Flee immorality. Every other sin that a man commits is outside the body, but the immoral man sins against his own body.” 1 Corinthians 6:18 (NASB)
This gives wide possibilities for what is being alluded to.
The New King James Version says:
“Flee sexual immorality. Every sin that a man does is outside the body, but he who commits sexual immorality sins against his own body.” 1 Corinthians 6:18 (NKJV)
Sexual immorality give you a little more idea what Paul was talking about – but sexual morale change and boundaries of what is acceptable move. Most young people, probably more people would not think that sex before marriage was immoral. A great many would see nothing wrong in same-sex sex, many would have some standards about faithfulness – but that would probably be only about temporary faithfulness, or cereal monogamy.
The King James Version says:
“Flee fornication. Every sin that a man doeth is without the body; but he that committeth fornication sinneth against his own body.” 1 Corinthians 6:18 (KJV)
Which make it rather clearer what Paul is on about. Now, you may have to look up what fornication is, but when you have you know what to do, or rather… not to do.
Chambers 21st Century Dictionary
‘fornication noun voluntary sexual intercourse outside marriage.’
We need to be able to teach clearly and unambiguously. And yes I know that from the context of 1 Corinthians 6 you can imply that the morality that is being spoken of is sexual, or even sex with a prostitute, but it is a job to go on to show that consensual sex outside of marriage is what is being ruled out of bounds.
