Behold Our God

You may have seen the recent news stories about revival at Asbury University. I hope and pray this is true revival and has lasting impact on all those involved. It reminded me of a similar event during my years at Bethel College (now University). We received word of revival experiences at other Christian colleges. A number of our students decided we would gather to pray for revival at Bethel. I won’t go into any details, but suffice it to say that the results were less than spectacular.

Here’s the thing—we can’t manufacture revival. We can hold “revival services,” we can pray for revival (and we should), we can play great worship music, but we can’t force God to do anything. There is a tendency among Christians to think that if we meet certain criteria, God is obligated to do what we want Him to do. For example, how many times has 2 Chronicles 7:14 been taken out of context:

“If My people who are called by My name humble themselves, and pray and seek My face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and heal their land.”

Certainly all churches should be pursuing humility, praying, seeking God, and repenting from sin. However, that doesn’t necessarily mean that we’ll see a visible movement of the Spirit in changing the multitudes, nor does it mean that He will somehow convert our nation into a God-fearing country. What we do know is that “If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness” (1 John 1:9).

There is a scene in the third episode of “AD: The Bible Continues” that really irked me, where the directors made it seem as though the arrival of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost was solely due to the disciples praying the Lord’s Prayer over and over, louder and louder. God doesn’t come on command.

Are we truly humble if we think we have power to coerce God? He might be saying to us as He did to Job, “Who is this that darkens counsel by words without knowledge?” (Job 38:2). We don’t know how and when God will choose to work in our lives and the lives of those we love. We are responsible to pray for others and to share the truth in love when opportunities arise, but we have to trust that God will fulfill His own purposes for them and for us in His own good time.

Whether God will bring about life-change in a gathering that we would call a revival is entirely up to Him. Although it’s difficult to find statistics, I think it is safe to say that the majority of Christians were not converted through recognized revivals and awakenings. Most people come to faith through the everyday experiences of life, through encounters with faithful friends and family members praying for them and sharing the Gospel with them. God works in individual hearts and minds every day. This should be of great encouragement to us.

We don’t have to organize big events or get the conditions “just right” for the Holy Spirit to show up. As we follow the normal routine of obedience to God’s Word and guidance, we can trust that He is in control, present with us, and always at work. This is the God we love and serve, not one who comes at our command and obeys our wishes. “This God—His way is perfect” (Psalm 18:30).

“It will be said on that day, ‘Behold, this is our God; we have waited for Him, that He might save us. This is the Lord; we have waited for Him; let us be glad and rejoice in His salvation” (Isaiah 25:9).

***

Check out this hymn from Sovereign Grace Music, “Behold Our God.”

 © 2023 Dawn Rutan. Unless otherwise indicated, all Scripture are ESV and all images copyright free from pixabay.com. The opinions stated do not necessarily reflect the views of my church or employer.

Daily Revival

I recall a time in college when another Christian college was experiencing a time of revival on their campus. Some of our students organized prayer meetings in hopes that something similar would happen for us. The results were less than stellar and actually created some disturbing scenes due to misguided beliefs and expectations.

Recently I’ve been reading the challenging little book The Calvary Road by Roy Hession. The introduction by Norman Grubb summarizes it well:

“I had regarded revival only from the angle of some longed for, but very rare, sudden outpouring of the Spirit on a company of people… I learned and saw that revival is first personal and immediate. It is the constant experience of any simplest Christian who ‘walks in the light,’ but I saw that walking in the light means an altogether new sensitiveness to sin, a calling things by their proper name of sin, such as pride, hardness, doubt, fear, self-pity, which are often passed over as merely human reaction.”

He also points out that revival is not really the conversion of non-believers, because one must already have the new life before that life can be revived in them. So events that we might be inclined to call revivals are more often crusades. Churches holding “revival” services need to be clear as to what their expectations really are.

In one way, it takes some of the pressure off of an event if we realize that revival is not often a “sudden outpouring” and major change in the lives of a group. But that pressure instead is found in a constant nudging of the Holy Spirit redirecting lives day after day. The weekly routine of preaching, teaching, Bible study, worship, and prayer is most often the method by which the Holy Spirit revives the people of God. Those are the tools through which sin is revealed and confessed. If a person gets to the point of needing a sudden outpouring of the Spirit to cause them to change, they have probably been ignoring the Spirit and allowing sin to build up for quite some time. Thankfully God can still work and change lives in any condition, but how much better would it be to cultivate this daily sensitivity to sin and responsiveness to the Spirit?

Hession makes a couple comments that are particularly convicting:

“Anything that springs from self, however small it may be, is sin. Self-energy or self-complacency in service is sin. Self-pity in trials or difficulties, self-seeking in business or Christian work, self-indulgence in one’s spare time, sensitiveness, touchiness, resentment and self-defence when we are hurt or injured by others, self-consciousness, reserve, worry, fear, all spring from self and all are sin and make our cups unclean.” (13)

“Such a walk in the light cannot but discover sin increasingly in our lives, and we shall see things to be sin which we never through to be such before.” (19)

Most church members probably don’t have a problem with the “big” sins like murder or adultery, but we all have issues with pride and self-seeking. I’ve become increasingly aware of the selfish motivations in my life and how that hinders me from truly loving others as I should. Hession presses the point a little further when he writes:

“That means we are not going to hide our inner selves from those with whom we ought to be in fellowship; we are not going to window dress and put on appearances; nor are we going to whitewash and excuse ourselves. We are going to be honest about ourselves with them. We are willing to give up our spiritual privacy, pocket our pride and risk our reputations for the sake of being open and transparent with our brethren in Christ.” (20)

Fear of vulnerability is probably the greatest hindrance to spiritual growth for a lot of Christians. By keeping ourselves at a safe distance we not only lose fellowship, we also refuse to let anyone speak into our lives with correction or encouragement, and we miss the opportunity to do the same for others. “There is no doubt that we need each other desperately. There are blind spots in all our lives that we shall never see, unless we are prepared for another to be God’s channel to us” (50).

I want to have this experience of daily revival—walking in “newness of life” as Paul said in Romans 6:4, being aware that His mercies are “new every morning” (Lamentation 3:22-23), and having fellowship with one another as with Jesus Christ (1 John 1:7). No one needs to wait for once a year revival services, or even once a week revivifying, because we have daily access to God, His Word, and one another.

“Seek the Lord and His strength; seek His presence continually!” –Psalm 105:4 ESV