Revival!

It has been a prayer of mine for many years to see a revival in my lifetime like the revivals in the past. I read stories of the Great Awakenings, the Welsh Revival, the Layman's Revival, Azusa Street, and the rest and my prayer is, "God, do that here!"

I attempted to sit and write about the ingredients of revival, but as I began to read the promises of Scripture and the stories of revivals past I found it impossible to try to clinically lay out a series of sure-fire steps to revival.

I read of the young man in the Hebrides at a prayer service called by two elderly ladies who were concerned about the lack of young people in the churches. The young man said, "It seems to me to be so much humbug to be praying as we are praying, to be waiting as we are waiting, if we ourselves are not rightly related to God." And then lifted his hands asking,"God, are my hands clean? Is my heart pure?" At that moment the power of God fell on that place and a revival began that completely transformed an entire community.

No preacher delivered a convicting sermon that all heard, no great evangelist organized a crusade. The Spirit of God swept, with no human help, through the towns and villages. Farmers in their field came under conviction of sin in an instant and fell to their knees to repent. Drunks in the pub were struck with the weight of their sin and got on their faces to cry for the mercy of God.

No, my friends, I cannot spell out any ingredient of revival beyond what God promised in the oft-quoted verse in Chronicles, "If My people who are called by My name will humble themselves and pray and seek My face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, forgive their sins and heal their land."

It seems the important thing - the only important thing - is for you and I to have the same heart as that young Scotch man. "God, are my hands clean? Is my heart pure?" For when you and I are revived, we become conduits of revival. When we, the people of God, consecrate ourselves to holiness and are convicted of our  sins, we open the heavens over our communities for God to convicted of sin. But until you and I are revived, no amount of studying, of organizing, of waiting, of wanting will pave the way for revival in our generation. Until we, Christ's church, are holy our culture will remain unrepentant. That is the simple way of it.

If I want revival, I must be revived. So God, bring a revival...and start it in me.