Revivalism

Today our church began our Spring Revival. Let me first begin by defining what “revival” means. A revival is a specific period of increased spiritual interest or renewal in the life of a church congregation or many churches, either regionally or globally. How do we have an increased spiritual interest of renewal in our walk with Christ? Not with stuff that’s for sure. I’m just saying a potluck and a Rick Warren telecast probably won’t start a new great awakening. This can only come about by a bathing of prayer. A revival does not happen because it is placed on the church calendar and an evangelist is brought in. A revival happens because for days, weeks, and months, God’s people are devoted to prayer over their lives and the people of their congregation.

My prayer is, like the Great Awakening, we would see revival begin out of prayer groups, and the powerful preaching of God’s word. The greatest revivals in our history weren’t planned and that gives us an important reminder that it has nothing to do with us and everything to do with God. I believe this is the first step to revival.

Let me pose this scenario. Tomorrow night as I pull into the parking lot for our revival service I notice that the side of our building is caving in. As I get inside I discover the lights and the sound system aren’t working. Added onto that, our speaker has gotten sick and just called to say that he can’t make it. Most of us would be thinking, how in the world our we going to have a revival service? It would feel like total chaos for just a little while as we figured out what to do. I mean if this really happened people would be seriously freaking out. Now what if we all showed up and I asked, “Who has prayed for our revival service tonight?”, and we all realize that we had neglected to pray for God’s spirit to move. Would people be freaking out and running around trying to figure out how we are going to hold revival? Probably not, but which is more important for God to begin a revival in our hearts and churches, a building, sound system, and a great speaker – or an outpouring of prayer?

The moment we let prayer slip away from our life or we turn our prayers into monotonous jargon the chance of revival dissapears. A great man once said “God does nothing, but in answer to prayer.” And surely this is true in every revival this world has ever seen. O God, let our revival begin, not on the calendar, but in our hearts and prayers.