A recent conversation with a family member and a pastor sparked the writing of this blog post. My family member asked me a really good question about revival. They wondered whether revival had sometimes produced abuses, excesses and misunderstandings of Scripture. Around the same time, a pastor told me, “I’m reading all about revival right now.” Those two conversations got me thinking. What exactly are we longing for when we say we want revival? And perhaps more importantly, what should revival actually produce?

What Is Revival?

Revival is a renewed awakening to the presence, holiness, and power of God that brings people back to a wholehearted love for Jesus.

The word revival means to bring back to life, restore, or renew something that has become weak or dormant. Spiritually, revival awakens believers to deeper repentance, prayer, worship, obedience and love for God, while drawing others to faith in Jesus. Revival isn’t simply an exciting church service, emotional experience or unusual spiritual manifestation. At its heart, revival is God awakening His people to Himself.

Psalm 85:6 asks:

“Will you not revive us again, so that your people may rejoice in you?”

Revival involves hunger for God, humility, prayer and repentance. In 2 Chronicles 7:14, God says:

“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, and I will forgive their sin and will heal their land.”

True revival also produces fruit – transformed lives, restored relationships, greater love for others, renewed passion for God’s Word and mission, and people coming to faith in Christ.

Revival isn’t simply about what happens in a church service. It’s about what happens in us and what God then does through us.

Revival in the 90’s

If you were around in the 90’s it was a time of revival for many. The Airport Blessing and Brownsville Revival were two well known moves of God during that time. My husband and I experienced our own personal awakening in the 1990s (unrelated to those movements). Then our church, over time and with a lot of prayer (3 years of praying as a church), went through what we would describe as a move of God. There was a fresh hunger for God, prayer, worship and the work of the Holy Spirit. People were greatly impacted. Lives were changed, and we were changed. It was exciting, beautiful and, in many ways, unforgettable. Five to fifteen people decided to follow Jesus every Sunday and the church grew numerically, the worship service was alive and passionate, and faith grew deeper.

During this season we found ourselves asking some questions about what were experiencing and what we had seen happen around us and, more importantly, what was next.

Studying Revival

We decided to study revivals throughout history. We wanted to understand what had happened in other moves of God and whether there were patterns from which we could learn. What we discovered was fascinating. Many revivals began with genuine spiritual hunger, repentance, prayer, salvation and a renewed passion for Jesus. But some also took unusual turns. As the movement developed, the manifestations sometimes became more important than the message. The experience became the thing people pursued. What had begun with a hunger for God could become a hunger for the next experience. Sometimes things just went wacky.

I think this is something we need to be honest about. We can become addicted to the “high” of church. We love the exciting worship service, the powerful preaching, the atmosphere, the prophetic words, the emotional response and the sense that something extraordinary is happening. There’s nothing wrong with any of those things. I love a powerful church service! I love encountering God. I love seeing people respond to the Holy Spirit. But there’s a danger if we become more addicted to the experience than committed to transformation and impacting our towns and cities.

We can spend Sunday morning crying in the presence of God and, on Monday morning, still be exactly the same person we were on Saturday. We can attend conference after conference, revival meeting after revival meeting and worship night after worship night, yet never actually change the way we live. We can chase the next spiritual experience while our neighbourhood remains untouched by the presence of Jesus in our lives.

At some point, we have to ask, “What is this producing in me?”

Revival Junkies

That question became particularly relevant for us when our church began to become more involved in community ministry. We weren’t content to simply have great services inside the church. We wanted to take what God was doing in us and allow it to affect the community around us. We became increasingly involved in practical ministry, caring for people and meeting needs in our city.

Interestingly, during that season, people actually asked us if we wanted the revival to continue. I remember being shocked that anyone would even ask that and we replied, “Of course we do!” But perhaps we had a different understanding of what continuing revival looked like. Some people enthusiastically signed up to serve in the community. Others weren’t nearly as interested. A few people didn’t necessarily want to leave the atmosphere of the church and get involved in the messy realities of people’s lives.

And perhaps that’s where we discover whether revival has really taken root.

Revival that only changes what happens in our church services hasn’t gone far enough. Revival should change what happens on Monday morning. It should change how we treat our families, our neighbours, our colleagues and the people who have nothing to offer us in return. It should change how we see the poor, the lonely, the immigrant, the struggling teenager, the single mom, the person caught in addiction and the person society would rather ignore.

We visited a well known revival in the USA during the 90’s and were surprised at a couple of things.

1. The world was there, but their own city was not.

2. The church was located in a lower income, diverse neighbourhood. The local people were not visible in the church.

3. So much was happening every night in their meetings, they told us they hadn’t thought through the next steps.

I don’t doubt that God changed many people’s lives, and the church had an impact on their community but also there are lessons to be learned from this. Some of the difficult post revival reports? The church was left with massive debt, staff reductions, key leaders left and attendance dropped from the 1000’s to 100’s.

The Book of Acts

When I think about revival, I often think about the book of Acts. The early church certainly experienced the supernatural. There were miracles, healings, signs and wonders. People were filled with the Holy Spirit. Thousands came to faith. There was powerful preaching and extraordinary demonstrations of God’s power.

But that’s not the only thing we see.

We also see people caring for one another. We see generosity. We see prayer. We see the church being together. We see people sharing what they had. We see believers opening their homes and their lives to others. Acts 2 tells us that the believers devoted themselves to teaching, fellowship, breaking bread and prayer. They weren’t simply attending powerful meetings. They were becoming a radically different kind of community.

Then Acts 4 gives us a beautiful picture of the result. It says, “There were no needy people among them.” Think about that for a moment. The evidence of the Spirit’s work wasn’t simply that people had powerful encounters with God. It was that people began to care so deeply for one another that needs were being met.

That’s revival.

The Holy Spirit didn’t simply make their church services more exciting. He changed the way they lived.

Their encounter with God affected their possessions, their relationships, their priorities and their communities. The fire that fell in the upper room didn’t stay in the upper room. It moved into the streets.

Throughout history, some of the great revival movements have also resulted in significant social change. Spiritual awakening has often produced increased compassion, missionary movements, care for the poor, education, social reform and a renewed concern for people who were overlooked by society. When people genuinely encounter the holiness and love of God, it should affect the way they see other people.

Of course, we also have to acknowledge that not everything that happens under the banner of revival is necessarily from God. Human beings are involved, and wherever human beings are involved, there can be pride, manipulation, excess, flesh, misunderstanding and even abuse. That’s why Scripture has to remain our measuring stick. We don’t measure spiritual health simply by how unusual something is, how emotional a meeting becomes or how many people are drawn to it. We measure it by the fruit it produces.

Paul reminds us in Galatians 5 that the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. That’s a pretty good test for any spiritual movement.

So, do I want revival? Yes, if by revival you mean that believers love Jesus with all their heart and then go and love their neighbours and city.

But I don’t want revival simply because I want exciting church services. I don’t want it because I just want to see unusual manifestations or experience something that makes me feel spiritually alive for a few hours. I don’t want revival so I can tell stories about what happened in a meeting.

I want revival because I want Jesus.

I want people to fall deeply in love with Him. I want people to repent, be restored and become passionate followers of Christ. I want marriages healed and families restored. I want churches to become places where the lonely find community and the broken find hope. I want the church to notice the people outside its walls and ask, “How can we serve them?”

I want revival that makes us more generous, more compassionate, more courageous and more willing to get our hands dirty serving people.

I want the kind of revival where our communities notice that something has changed, not because we tell them we’re experiencing revival, but because they experience the love of Jesus through us.

If our encounters with God are making us more like Jesus, more committed to Scripture, more devoted to prayer, more loving toward people and more willing to serve, then perhaps we’re seeing something beautiful.

The fire of God is never meant to leave us sitting around admiring the flames.

It’s meant to send us somewhere.

The fire in Acts didn’t stay in the upper room. It moved into the streets, into homes, into communities and eventually around the world.

And that’s the kind of revival we should be longing for.