“In the last days, God says, I will pour out my Spirit on all people. Your sons and daughters will prophesy, your young men will see visions, your old men will dream dreams.” (Acts 2:17)
When I hear the word, revival, it conjures up a childhood image of going to church on nights other than Wednesday or Sunday to hear a visiting preacher. But the revival about which we hear so much today is altogether different. Instead of boring sermons with lonely invitations, today’s revival connotes a highly charged atmosphere in which hundreds, even thousands, come to know the Lord.
Revival is not some discrete event held at the neighborhood church. It is a season of powerful visitation from God. In fact, churches across the country are reporting the presence of God’s Spirit in ways they have never experienced.
The Brownsville Assembly of God in Pensacola has been experiencing revival since June of 1995. Church services are held five nights a week and people stand in line for hours just to get a seat. Millions have now worshipped at this church over the last five years and hundreds of thousands have left those services calling themselves Christians for the first time. Their altars are crowded when the invitation is given.
But revival doesn’t belong to the Pentecostals. Baptist churches are also experiencing the same manifestations of God’s Spirit.
David White, a Southern Baptist pastor from Columbia, Mississippi found that his church was not prepared for revival. White reports that after he received a “revival anointing” at another church, God suddenly invaded the scene at his church. A three-night evangelistic drama held in his church’s 800-seat sanctuary continued for three weeks. Eight thousand people attended the play and 1,200 made salvation decisions. “Columbia, Mississippi had never seen anything like this,” recounts White, noting that the drama caused traffic jams in the town of 7,000 that local police will not forget for years.
These revivals may come as a surprise to you, but the Prophet Joel predicted that revivals like these would come. They are real and a visible sign that there is a deep spiritual hunger in our country. As one Methodist puts it, “Dry wood makes a great fire”.
My first instinct to the notion of revival was that all of this hoopla is more of a response to emotion than a response from God. But the writer of Hebrews cautions us to give revival a careful look. “Land that drinks in the rain often falling on it and that produces a crop useful to those for whom it is farmed receives the blessing of God. But land that produces thorns and thistles is worthless and is in danger of being cursed. In the end it will be burned.” (Hebrews 6:7-8)
Those verses ring loud when you think about the two responses that you can make to revival. But perhaps the greatest advice about whether the revival that you see is real came from Jesus himself who said, “By their fruit you will recognize them. Do people pick grapes from thornbushes, or figs from thistles?” (Matthew 7:16)
True revival will always bear fruit, usually shown through a deeper yearning for evangelism and missions, and always highlighted by changed lives. I know because I’ve watched it in my own church. Since 1993, thousands have come to know the Lord and missions’ giving has increased ten-fold to more than $800,000.
So don’t lose heart. Revival can happen anywhere. Ask God to send revival your way and when he does, enjoy the rain.
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