We need revival:
-when we do not love Him as we once did.
-when earthly interests and occupations are more important to us than eternal ones.
-when we would rather watch TV and read secular books and magazines than read the Bible and pray.
-when church dinners are better attended than prayer meetings.
-when concerts draw bigger crowds than prayer meetings.
-when we have little or no desire for prayer.
-when we would rather make money than give money.
-when we put people into leadership positions in our churches who do not meet scriptural qualifications.
-when our Christianity is joyless and passionless.
-when we know truth in our heads that we are not practicing in our lives.
-when we make little effort to witness to the lost.
-when we have time for sports, recreation, and entertainment, but not for Bible study and prayer.
-when we do not tremble at the Word of God.
-when preaching lacks conviction, confrontation, and divine fire and anointing.
-when we seldom think thoughts of eternity.
-when God’s people are more concerned about their jobs and their careers, than about the Kingdom of Christ and the salvation of the lost.
-when God’s people get together with other believers and the conversation is primarily about the news, weather, and sports, rather than the Lord.
-when church services are predictable and “business as usual.”
-when believers can be at odds with each other and not feel compelled to pursue reconciliation.
-when Christian husbands and wives are not praying together.
-when our marriages are co-existing rather than full of the love of Christ.
-when our children are growing up to adopt worldly values, secular philosophies, and ungodly lifestyles.
-when we are more concerned about our children’s education and their athletic activities than about the condition of their souls.
-when sin in the church is pushed under the carpet.
-when known sin is not dealt with through the biblical process of discipline and restoration.
-when we tolerate “little” sins of gossip, a critical spirit, and lack of love.
-when we will watch things on television and movies that are not holy.
-when our singing is half-hearted and our worship lifeless.
-when our prayers are empty words designed to impress others.
-when our prayers lack fervency.
-when our hearts are cold and our eyes are dry.
-when we aren’t seeing regular evidence of the supernatural power of God.
-when we have ceased to weep and mourn and grieve over our own sin and the sin of others.
-when we are content to live with explainable, ordinary Christianity and church services.
-when we are bored with worship.
-when people have to be entertained to be drawn to church.
-when our music and dress become patterned after the world.
-when we start fitting into and adapting to the world, rather than calling the world to adapt to God’s standards of holiness.
-when we don’t long for the company and fellowship of God’s people.
-when people have to be begged to give and to serve in the church.
-when our giving is measured and calculated, rather than extravagant and sacrificial.
-when we aren’t seeing lost people drawn to Jesus on a regular basis.
-when we aren’t exercising faith and believing God for the impossible.
-when we are more concerned about what others think about us than what God thinks about us.
-when we are unmoved by the fact that 2.5 billion people in this world have never heard the name of Jesus.
-when we are unmoved by the thought of neighbors, business associates, and acquaintances who are lost and without Christ.
-when the lost world around us doesn’t know or care that we exist.
-when we are making little or no difference in the secular world around us.
-when the fire has gone out in our hearts, our marriages, and the church.
-when we are blind to the extent of our need and don’t think we need revival.
We should not want a revival of experience alone without true reformation. And so the term revival is not adequate for our day unless we add the qualifiers “reformational” or “word-driven.” It is not wrong to desire revival if we mean a revival that is a resurgence of correct believing along with the enlivening of our experience with God which comes out of (not apart from) that sound doctrine.
Reformation or Revival? Christian Communicators Worldwide, www.CCWtoday.org. Used by Permission.
Quite simply, it is a fact of history that the church of Christ has not experienced any major nationwide revival under the conditions of advanced modernity. On the other hand, modernity undercuts true dependence on God’s sovereign awakening by fostering the notion that we can effect revival by human means. On the other hand, modernity makes many people satisfied with privatized, individualistic, and subjective experiences that are pale counterfeits of true revival.
Dining with the Devil, Baker, 1993, p. 20.
When the vision of Christ’s glory, demonstrated in the salvation of souls, becomes an intense desire in our hearts, that is especially the time when we must pray with fervor for the outpouring of the Holy Spirit in revival.
A Call to Extraordinary Prayer for Revival, Revival Commentary, v. 2, n. 1, p. 4.
Does it grieve you my friends, that the name of God is being taken in vain and desecrated? Does it grieve you that we are living in a godless age…But, we are living in such an age and the main reason we should be praying about revival is that we are anxious to see God’s name vindicated and His glory manifested. We should be anxious to see something happening that will arrest the nations, all the peoples, and cause them to stop and to think again.
The only people who are ever interested in revival are evangelicals, and a good way of testing the quality of a man’s evangelicalism is his interest in revival. The institutional people do not often talk about revival. They try sometimes to pay lip-service to it but they do not believe in it… The true evangelical, on the other hand, is always longing for an outpouring of the Spirit, and the great evangelical reawakenings have always been a result of an effusion of the Holy Spirit. The evangelical by nature is tremendously interested in revival.
What is an Evangelical? The Banner of Truth Trust, 1992, p. 59.
Despite its foundational Christian heritage, America is rapidly degenerating into a godless society. The church in America, although highly visible and active, appears powerless to redirect the rushing secular currents. Mired in a moral and spiritual crisis, America’s only hope is a national revival, like God has graciously bestowed in the past.
America’s Spiritual Crisis, Revival Commentary, v. 1, n. 2, p. 12.
When there are few conversions under the ministrations of the church, and souls are perishing around her, unpitied and unhelped; when there is an evident suspension or withdrawal of those spiritual influences that are alone efficient to convince or to comfort; when there is a visible defection from acknowledged principle, or from attained piety, and a lukewarm formality usurping the place of a generous, devoted, living Christianity we say a revival is required.
The Necessity of the Revival of Religion, Revival Commentary, v. 1, n. 2, p. 8.
There is need of a great revival of spiritual life, of truly fervent devotion to our Lord Jesus, of entire consecration to His service. It is only in a church in which this spirit of revival has at least begun, that there is any hope of radical change in the relation of the majority of our Christian people to mission work.
[Revival] only come when He sends it. He only sends it when His people need it. Surely we His people need it now.
Revival Terminology in History, Revival Commentary, v. 1, n. 1.
