What is revival?

Question 09037.

Talk of genuine revival stirs something in most believers, and it also makes many of us wary, because the word has been attached to so much that turned out to be froth. A conference gets called a revival. A well attended series of meetings gets called a revival. Something emotional happens and within a week it is being described as an outpouring.

So it is worth asking what the word actually means, what Scripture and history show, and how we would recognise the real thing if God sent it. I want to do that without either cynicism or credulity, both of which are easy and neither of which helps.

What the Word Actually Means

To revive is to bring back to life something that is alive but failing. The Hebrew chayah carries that sense of restoring life or reviving, and it lies behind the plea of Psalm 85:6: will you not revive us again, that your people may rejoice in you?

Notice who is being revived. Revival in the biblical sense happens to the people of God. It is not primarily an evangelistic campaign directed at outsiders, though large numbers of conversions almost always follow. Genuine revival begins with believers waking up, and the effect on the surrounding community is the overflow rather than the target.

That distinction also explains why the word is so often misapplied. A mission to the unconverted is evangelism, and it is a good thing. Revival is what happens when the church itself is brought back to life, and the two should not be confused simply because both involve meetings.

Old Testament Patterns

The historical books show the pattern repeatedly. Under Hezekiah in 2 Chronicles 29 to 31, the temple is cleansed, the worship restored, the Passover kept for the first time in generations. Under Josiah in 2 Kings 22 and 23, the neglected book of the Law is found, read aloud, and the king tears his clothes at what he hears. Under Ezra and Nehemiah, the Law is read for hours and the people weep and then rejoice.

Three features recur in every case. The Word of God is recovered and read. Sin is confessed specifically rather than generally. And obedience follows in concrete, costly ways: idols destroyed, marriages addressed, worship reordered. Any account of genuine revival that lacks these three is describing something else.

The New Testament and the Spirit

Pentecost is not a revival in the strict sense, since it is the beginning of the church rather than the renewal of it. But Acts 2:41 to 47 shows the shape of what follows: devotion to the apostles’ teaching, fellowship, breaking of bread and prayer, awe, remarkable generosity, and daily additions to their number. Acts 4:31 records a further filling after prayer, with boldness as the result.

The New Testament also gives us the commands that make renewal possible. Ephesians 5:18 tells us to be continually filled with the Spirit, a present tense imperative rather than a single crisis. Revelation 2:5 tells the Ephesian church to remember, repent and do the works you did at first. That is a summons to revival addressed to a congregation that had lost its love while keeping its orthodoxy.

What Genuine Revival Looks Like

Historically the marks are consistent enough to be described. An unusual sense of God’s presence and holiness. Deep conviction of sin, often over things people had defended for years. Restitution and reconciliation, with old quarrels settled and stolen things returned. A hunger for Scripture and for prayer that needs no organising. Large numbers converted in a short period. And measurable social effects, since the eighteenth century awakening in this country left behind hospitals, schools, prison reform and the abolition campaign.

What strikes me about the credible accounts is how ordinary the means were and how extraordinary the results. Men preached the same doctrines they had always preached, and suddenly the congregations could not bear it. Genuine revival is not a new message; it is the old message landing with unusual weight.

What It Is Not

It is not a scheduled event. Advertising a week of revival meetings in advance says something about our assumptions that we might want to examine. It is not emotional intensity, which can be produced by music, crowd dynamics and skilled handling without any work of God at all. It is not physical phenomena, which have accompanied some genuine works and a good many counterfeit ones, and which prove nothing either way.

Nor is it numerical growth by itself. A church can fill rapidly through transfer, novelty or an attractive personality while nothing whatever changes in the moral and spiritual life of its people. The test of genuine revival is not who arrives but what they become, and that test takes years rather than weeks to apply.

Historical Lessons

The Evangelical Awakening under Whitefield and the Wesleys, the 1859 revival that swept Ulster and parts of Wales and Scotland, and the Welsh revival of 1904 all left substantial records. What they show is that God works through preaching, through prayer, and frequently through very young or very unlikely people. They also show that revival is sovereignly given rather than manufactured, arriving where nobody expected it and bypassing places that had prepared carefully.

They show something less comfortable too. Every genuine revival attracted excess at its edges, and in some cases the excess did lasting damage to the reputation of the work. Wise leadership at the time made an enormous difference. Where leaders taught, tested and channelled what was happening, the fruit lasted. Where they let anything happen because it might be God, the movement burned out and left cynicism behind it.

One more lesson from the records is worth naming. In almost every case, the awakening came to people who were already doing ordinary faithful work rather than to those waiting for something better. The preachers God used in the eighteenth century were preaching before anything happened, frequently to small and unresponsive congregations, and they kept preaching afterwards when the intensity had passed.

Testing What Is Claimed

Apply 1 John 4:1 and test the spirits. What is being said about Jesus? Is Scripture central or decorative? Is there conviction of sin, or only excitement? Are the leaders accountable, or are questions treated as opposition? Is money being handled openly? Does the fruit last twelve months later, in marriages, workplaces and reconciled friendships?

Those questions are not scepticism; they are obedience. Paul told the Thessalonians not to despise prophecies and in the same breath to test everything and hold fast what is good. I have written more on holding those two instincts together in honouring the Spirit while avoiding charismatic excess, and on the warning marks in signs of an unhealthy church.

Praying for Genuine Revival

We cannot produce it and we are not therefore passive. Every recorded awakening was preceded by people praying, often a handful of them, often for years, usually without any sense that anything was happening. That is not a technique for obtaining revival; it is what God has generally been pleased to use.

Habakkuk 3:2 is the prayer I keep coming back to: in the midst of the years revive it, in wrath remember mercy. Notice the honesty in it. The prophet knows what his nation deserves and asks for mercy anyway. Praying for genuine revival in Britain means praying with that same clear eyed realism about where we are. My article on why churches are declining in the West sets out the situation, and the NET Bible notes on Habakkuk 3 are worth reading alongside it.

Meanwhile, the Ordinary Means

While we wait, we do what we are told. Preach the Word. Pray. Evangelise. Plant churches, which I have written about in what is church planting. Live holy lives. These are not a substitute for revival; they are the channels through which it has always come, and they are commanded whether or not it comes in our lifetime.

There is a danger in longing for revival that I have felt myself. It can become a reason to be dissatisfied with the slow, unglamorous work God has actually given us. The faithful minister in a small congregation who preaches well for thirty years has not failed because no awakening arrived on his watch.

So, now what?

Begin with yourself rather than with the nation. Revival in the biblical sense starts with the people of God returning to Him, and that includes you. Is there anything you have been defending for years that you know is wrong? Genuine revival always begins where somebody stops defending.

Then find two or three others and pray. Not a programme, not a campaign, just believers meeting to ask God to come to His church. That is how nearly every awakening in this country began, and it is available to anyone reading this. Who would you ask, and what is stopping you asking them this week?

O LORD, I have heard the report of you, and your work, O LORD, do I fear. In the midst of the years revive it; in the midst of the years make it known; in wrath remember mercy.

Habakkuk 3:2 (ESV)