IS REVIVAL A GOOD THING?
With all the attention given to revival over the past months, it seemed like a good time to study revival. We often hear people talking about a great “end time revival”. If we believe that we are living in the end times then we need to know what that is and what it means. Doing so led me to the question: Is revival a good thing?
What is “revival”? According to the dictionary “revival” is “an act or instance of reviving”. Well, that’s certainly not helpful! But, the dictionary gives examples of revival such as:
a renewed attention to or interest in something
a new presentation of something old
a period of renewed religious interest
Those things certainly sound good.
Who is revival for? Is it for the world or is it for the church? I recently heard it said, “Revival is for the church. You can’t “revive” something that hasn’t been “vived”.” At first this sounded like a simple humorous statement, but then God began to unfold the meaning hidden in it.
The word “re” is used alone as an abbreviated form of the word “regarding”. It is often used in memoranda to describe what the memo is about; such as,
Re: The meeting this week
telling us that the memo is “about” a meeting this week.
The word “re” when used as a prefix to another word denotes the concept of doing something again, as in: retell, rededicate, regain.
The word “vive” in Spanish is from the infinitive “vivir” which means “to live”.
SO, the word “revive” is “about – living – again”.
That certainly sounds good.
If revival is about living again, then that must mean that something has died. Consider these uses of the word “revived” in the Bible.
I Kings 17: 20-22 “And he cried unto the Lord, and said, O Lord my God hast thou also brought evil upon the widow with whom I sojourn, by slaying her son? And he stretched himself upon the child three times, and cried unto the Lord, and said, O Lord my God, I pray thee, let this child’s soul come into him again. And the Lord heard the voice of Elijah; and the soul of the child came into him again, and he revived.”
2 Kings 13: 21 “And it came to pass, as they were burying a man, that, behold, they spied a band of men; and they cast the man into the sepulchre of Elisha: and when the man wast let down, and touched the bones of Elisha, he revived, and stood upon his feet.”
Romans 7: 9 “For I was alive without the law once: but when the commandment came, sin revived, and I died.”
Romans 14: 9 “For to this end Christ both died, and rose, and revived, that he might be Lord both of the dead and the living.”
So, to be revived means that something must have died.
That doesn’t sound good.
I recently heard the following: “The church is sitting on earth waiting for the Lord to send revival. The Lord is sitting in heaven waiting for the church to rise up.”
At first I didn’t know what I thought about that statement, but then I was reminded of the song, Wake Up Sleeper. The refrain is:
Wake up sleeper
Open your eyes
Oh sinner, arise
Leave your past at the door
Wake up sleeper
Come to the light
Christ is alive
Death don’t live here anymore
Rise up and come out of that grave
Rise up in that amazing grace
Oh sleeper won’t you come awake
Come awake
Then I found the following quote:
“I wrote ‘Wake Up Sleeper’ about one of my favorite stories in the Bible – found in Luke – when Jesus interrupts a funeral. A little boy had died, and his widowed mother and a group of people were carrying his body to be buried outside of the town when they encountered Jesus.
Now Jesus – as a religious leader – should have turned the other way because touching something dead would make Him unclean. But that didn’t stop Jesus. He walked up to the coffin and told the little boy to wake up. In that moment, Jesus took what everyone considered done, over, and dead and brought a little boy back to life.
That’s just what Jesus does today. I pray this song reminds us all that we were dead in our sins, only Jesus can wake us up. That’s the gospel, and it’s our job to tell the world about a Savior who wakes up sleepers even still today.”
–Austin French
So, Wake Up Sleeper is about revival and the need for us to “rise up”.
Going back to the search for understanding of the word “revival” and following the thread in the definition above, look now at the definition of the word “reviving”. The dictionary gives three meanings:
to restore to consciousness or life
to restore from a depressed, inactive, or unused state
to renew in the mind or memory
Given these, then, if we are in need of revival it means that:
We have been unconscious
We have been dead
We have been depressed
We have been inactive
We have been unuseful
We have forgotten who we are
Doesn’t sound so good now, does it?
This reminds me of the words of God to the church at Laodecia:
Revelation 3: 14-16 “ And unto the angel of the church of the Laodecians write; These things saith the Amen, the faithful and true witness, the beginning of the creation of God; I know thy works, that thou art neither cold nor hot: I would thou wert cold or hot. So then because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spue thee out of my mouth.”
So, while revival is beneficial, it is NOT a good thing to be in need of revival. Revival is God’s goodness and mercy bringing a dead church back to life.
My prayer is this:
Lord, let Jubilee as a church, as a family, and as a people be so full of the fire of the Holy Spirit that we are not in need of revival. Let us be conscious, alive, joyful, active, useful, always remembering who we are in Christ. Let us rather desire the last days outpouring of the Holy Spirit.
Acts 2: 17 “And it shall come to pass in the last days, saith God, I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh: and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams.”