Cyle Clayton

Satan is not sovereign. He cannot thwart what God intends. When God chooses to revive, He will. Yet while God is sovereign, we are responsible to respond to His Spirit in repentance, obedience, and faith. God moves; we respond. That’s revival. That’s the Christian life. So how does Satan try to disrupt revival? One day, he’ll launch a final assault against Christ and His people, leading the nations to rebel against the holy city (Rev. 20:7–9). He will fail then, just as he fails now when he attacks God’s people head-on. But he succeeds through subtler means. One of his most effective tactics is the divide-and-conquer tactic—especially in the weeks and months after revival begins. Here are some of the ways we unknowingly join him in undermining God’s work. 1. Sectarianism Sectarianism occurs when loyalty to a subgroup becomes divisive, leading to suspicion, rivalry, and exclusion. One group thinks they’re more spiritual because they raise their hands—or because they don’t. They sing h...

We’ve just come through an incredible week with Life Action and the Thirst Conference. God worked powerfully in many hearts. But now comes the question: how do we keep living in that spirit of revival instead of sliding back into “normal” Christianity until the next big event? Some might say revival can’t be hindered — that once God starts something, nothing can stop it. But Scripture tells a different story. The letters to the churches in Revelation, for instance, show that God’s work among His people can be resisted or neglected. Time and again in the Bible, revival was lost because God’s people drifted. I believe we can hinder revival after we’ve experienced it. Over the next few posts, I’ll share three common ways that happens. Here’s the first: 1. Neglecting Daily Disciplines — Bible Reading, Prayer, and Soul Care Revival is simply the manifestation of God’s presence and power among His people. But where is His presence most real to us? Not in the excitement of an event, but in ou...

For a couple of years, we called our disciple-making groups CORE groups. Robby Gallaty and Replicate ministries call theirs D-Groups. Everyone has their own nomenclature and reasons for it, but most of these groups share some things in common: small, same-gender, weekly groups whose purpose is to help their members grow into the image of Christ. We formed a disciple-making strategy team, worked through and prayed through a great deal of material, and finally came down to "What are we going to call these groups?" There were many suggestions, but I can't remember one except DLT. I remember one team member who said, "Well, let's call them doing life together groups. That's what disciple-making is. That's what it takes." That's how we got there. DLT groups are small groups of 3-5 people of the same gender who want to grow into the image of Christ together. They meet weekly, read and interact over scripture together, pray together, hold one another ac...

There are many families with children in Sabine Parish. There are 4,141 students in Sabine Parish schools, 6,353 under the age of 18, 29% of the parish population, and approximately 3,000 households with children. So, there are plenty of unreached families with children to reach. There are many churches in Sabine Parish. 70 churches. 1 church for every 313 people. Abilene, Texas brags about the highest per capita churches at 1 for every 563. The national average is 1 for every 1015. We beat the averages. So, we don't need more churches in Sabine Parish, but we do need more biblically sound churches, filled and controlled by God's Spirit, who are committed to God's mission, and who train their members to reach the unreached in our parish. There are far fewer people attending church in Sabine Parish. 7,000 people attend church, between 3,500 and 5,000 on any given Sunday. That attendance is half what it was 25 years ago. So, we need to make disciples, not just converts. Disc...

I n my opinion, we don't have to prove God exists. I've always been intimidated by brilliant people on both sides of the faith divide. Unbelievers who create and raise doubt, questioning the Bible's truthfulness and historicity, intimidate me because I spent over a decade of my life on their side. I have no intention of ever returning to unbelief, nor do I honestly believe I can since the Father keeps all He has given to the Son. Still, I fear becoming useless in my faith, by getting caught up in a web of doubt fueled by human intellect. Believers who can debate the skeptic sometimes make me uncomfortable. As I once did, I wonder if Christian debaters develop a debating mindset rather than a proclaiming mindset. They also often intimidate me because they are so adept in an area I struggle with. I have no doubt God calls and equips each of us in a unique way in order to accomplish His will, so I don't judge or condemn apologists. One of them, John Lennox, is a particular...

This is not a full analysis of growing and shrinking churches. It's just something I've thought about as I've listened to people talk and listened to myself think about the size of churches. I heard a Revivalist say the Spirit of God was clearly moving because the church was packed and the altar full. I listened to another when there were only a few that week at the church’s revival meetings say, “Well, we don’t have many, so God must be getting’ rid of the weeds so the wheat can grow. The real revival is just around the corner.” A Reformed preacher said his church was growing because the elect were hungry for the true gospel, and the preaching of correct doctrine was bringing them. Another Reformer told me he didn’t care that his congregation had shrunk. He would rather pastor a small group of the regenerated rather than a church full of the unregenerate. It seems that regardless of theological bent, we need to explain the numbers. A good shepherd will spend his days t...

God is gracious, but that's not why his grace is available to you. It's available because God is righteous, just, and compassionate. He is righteous because He cannot and will not tolerate sin. He's just because He's promised His wrath on all sins and sinners. He is compassionate because He's sacrificed His Son to satisfy His righteousness and justness. That's why His grace is available.  You will never, ever deserve His compassionate grace, "For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God," (Rom. 3:23). You will never, ever  do anything to deserve it because all of us who receive it "are justified freely by his grace," (Rom. 3:24a) You will never, ever love Him enough to deserve it, but He loved you more than enough to give it, proving "His own love for us in that while we were still sinners," in that, "Christ died for us" (Rom. 5:8) God is actually glorified by the greatness of the sin He forgives, Paul writing th...

Read the first chapters of Romans, and you'll see very clearly that all people are under the wrath of God and equally in need of redemption. Because of God’s universal revelation of Himself in creation and mankind’s universal rejection of Him, all are under His wrath. "For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who suppress the truth in unrighteousness, because that which is known about God is evident within them; for God made it evident to them. For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood through what has been made, so that they are without excuse." (Romans 1:18-20 NASB)   God's wrath against "all godliness and unrighteousness of men" will be finally expressed on the day of judgment but is currently expressed in his turning sinners over to their sin. "For this reason God gave them over to degrading passion...

God’s wrath against all sin is the reason there is a Gospel. For some time, a wind has been blowing through evangelicalism, emphasizing God’s wrath. This wind is a reaction to the partial gospel that emphasizes only God's kindness without preaching His wrath. If you’ve never heard about your sin, God’s wrath upon you, and the certainty of spending eternity in hell, you’ve only heard a partial gospel. You’ve also only heard a distorted Gospel if the wrath of God has been preached as the primary motivation for your repentance. Escaping God's wrath through repentance and confession is not the Gospel. God’s wrath leads us to fear Him, but it can also lead us to fail Him. Repenting and confessing our sins is not enough. If that’s all we ever do, we’ll spend a lifetime sinning and repenting, failing, and trying to be good. We may even deceive ourselves into thinking we’ve done that successfully, looking at others who are not as “righteous” as ourselves in judgment. That’s why Paul wr...

Given the approval of a Southern Baptist resolution ( read the resolution here ) regarding IVF and the mass of media and social commentary regarding that resolution,  I wanted to clarify my stance as the pastor of a local church in partnership with the SBC.  At the very least, this is important for the people I serve with as pastor at  Calvary .  IVF is a reproductive process whereby the ova (egg) of a woman is combined with the sperm of a man outside the womb to form a viable human embryo that is then implanted in the womb. The method is used for people who have difficulty achieving pregnancy. According to  HHS , in 2021, 2.3% of children born were conceived utilizing some form of assisted reproductive technology (ART) like IVF: 86,146 children in this country.  Why would the SBC resolve to oppose the birth of children?   Did the SBC resolve to ban IVF?  The answer to the second question is no. The SBC did not outright oppose it but urg...

Tommy Culwell, the pastor at First Baptist, Seymour, had scheduled a revival with a pastor friend. The pastor had to back out but recommended a Ft. Worth evangelist, John Karl Davis. John Karl came to FBC that year and the next. He came back to Calvary in Seymour, where I had pastored.  First Baptist churches in county (or parish) seats, have a unique reputation amongst pastors and evangelists. They're not known for being flexible and excited about the changes that true revival brings. FBC was a typical county-seat Baptist church, which means there were more noteworthy people at that church than at the others in Seymour.  I was told that the evangelist was a little scary because he addressed sin directly, and often personally. I was skeptical about evangelists in general and what I had been told about this one in particular. I was told he was blunt about sin, even personal sin, and that he could "read your mail." (Later, I came to believe he had the gift of discernment.) ...

Did God use the Cross Country Emmaus community and the Walk To Emmaus from 1990-1997 as a tool of revival and renewal in the church in West Central Texas?  God used it to change my Walk with Him radically and, in turn, the trajectory of my life. I know dozens, if not hundreds, of people who faithfully follow Christ and make Him known today who would say the same. My last post gives details about the Walk itself. Let me tell you about what I saw, not what I heard God do in those years.  I was baptized at 8, raised in the church, rebelled against God, became an agnostic, and spent at least 10 years increasing my alcohol intake to deal with the resentment and chaos in my heart and mind. I tried to stop drinking but could not until September 1, 1990, when I sobered up through AA. A year after that, I believed in Christ. 6 months after that, at my mother's and wife's insistence, I went on a Walk to Emmaus. Before the Walk, I was a believer but was scared to read the Bible (because ...

I've been trying to write this article for about two weeks. It's taken so long because I wanted to explain the Walk To Emmaus, what it was all about, and how it was uniquely conservative, evangelical, and spirit-filled in the days God used it in my life. One reason is that some will dismiss it since its roots are in the United Methodist Church. They will have a "can anything good come out of Nazareth" opinion. Another is that I have sponsored people on a couple of other Walks in the last few years in this area and found them to be more liberal and less impactful. Well, I'm not going to worry about any of that. I'm still going to do this thing in two parts. The first is the facts about this thing in those days. The second is what I experienced, the lives I saw that were changed. I'm going to do what I said I was going to do with these articles. I'm going to tell about a several-year move of God that was an ongoing revival experience for me. God didn...

"When God intends great mercy for his people, he, first of all, sets them praying." ~ Matthew Henry "There has never been a spiritual awakening in any country or locality that did not begin in united prayer." ~ A. T. Pierson If there is revival, there is prayer, but what kind of prayer? God is always at work in the lives of His people, sanctifying, teaching, encouraging, and transforming them into the image of Christ. Jonathon Edwards and others have distinguished between the ordinary and the extraordinary work of God. Revival is an extraordinary work. It is extraordinary in the number of people affected and the work's speed and depth.   The Bible makes a distinction between ordinary and extraordinary prayer. Jesus had an ordinary pattern of prayer. He prayed with others, but He tended to pray by himself, away from others, late at night or early in the morning (Mk. 1:35; Lk. 5:16; 6:12). On the night He was betrayed, He did what He ordinarily did. He went to a p...

Following are quotes from various Christians in their attempts to define revival, or to define the happening we often call revival. "In the history of the church, the term revival in its most biblical sense has meant a sovereign work of God in which the whole region of many churches, many Christians has been lifted out of spiritual indifference and worldliness into conviction of sin, earnest desires for more of Christ and his word, boldness in witness, purity of life, lots of conversions, joyful worship, renewed commitment to missions. You feel God has moved here. And basically revival, then, is God doing among many Christians at the same time or in the same region, usually, what he is doing all the time in individual Christian lives as people get saved and individually renewed around the world."   John Piper "Revival is a community saturated with God. In writing of the movement, I would like first to state what I mean by revival as witnessed in the Hebrides. I do not me...

In the midst of all the discussion of what is and what is not "revival," I decided to record what I remember about the revivals I have been privileged to be part of. The Haskell-Knox Revival of 1980 was a tent revival sponsored by a group of area churches. After "cottage prayer meetings" that were attended for weeks by people from many different churches, a large tent was erected on the grounds of the school in O'Brien, Texas. A baptist pastor turned evangelist, Jack Taylor, was the preacher. There were only about 300 in that town and less than 10,000 in the rural area surrounding the location, but hundreds came. Most of what I tell about this revival is from reports to me from others since I was not an active participant until the fourth night. I was a spiritually and physically strung-out 18-year-old when it started. My mother begged me to go each night. I refused and finally yelled at her. She cried, I felt guilty, and I went to the revival on Thursday.  What...