What is Revival?

Series: God’s Heart Cry for RevivalJoel 2:28-32

End Time Revival

The Revival described in Joel 2:28 onwards is a prophetic foretelling of the last great move of God before the coming of the Lord.

Today we are not going to delve too far into the Eschatology of the End Time prophetic description of the last move of God on earth.

But it is important for us to know what God is planning to do on earth in the days ahead.

I believe that we are on the threshold of the greatest awakening in the history of the planet.

I believe that God has positioned His people in this church and many other churches around Australia and the world, to play an integral part in this end time harvest as described in Joel 2:28 onwards.

The point to this sermon today is to help us to recognise what a revival is and what would be happening in us to indicate that we are in a revival.

What is Revival?

Duncan Campbell describes revival as, “a moving of God in a community and suddenly the community becoming God conscious, before a word is said by any man representing any special effort. A gracious awareness of God.”

Revivals are a sovereign move of God in response to the heart cry of His saint’s. A revival is God’s manifest presence descending upon mankind producing a mass conviction of sin.

Charles Finney defined a revival as a, “… renewed conviction of sin and repentance, followed by an intense desire to live in obedience to God. It is giving up one’s will to God in deep humility.”

God’s Heart cries for Revival, for God is in the business of revival, that is what He does, but we His people have always been His problem.

We have lived in a way that God cannot honor with a revival.

God cannot pour out His Spirit on an un-repentant Church without having disastrous consequences.

We Need a Revival

The current universal Church of Christianity is floundering, mainly because we have not succeeded in getting God’s presence into the Church and into the communities round about us.

If we are going to restore power to the Church and bring the holy fear of God to the world, we have to lay hold of the presence of God.

World wide Christianity needs a revival, it needs Joel 2:28-29.

Charles Finney, the 19th Century Apostle of Revival said, “Without a revival, sinners will grow harder despite preaching. Your children and your friends will remain unsaved if there are no revivals to convert them.”

Before Revival

Before any revival in history has begun, God always placed burdens for revival upon certain members of His Church.

This burden normally consists of:

1) intense sorrow for the wretched state of their communities,

2) deep levels of repentance for personal sin and the communities sin,

3) a radical call to holiness and righteousness,

4) progressively deeper level of prayer and Biblical devotion,

5) a deep desire for the things of the Spirit,

6) an intense belief in the reality of our Holy God,

7) and faith for the miraculous.

A Cry for Revival

In the book of Isaiah we get a picture of the burden and the cry of the heart of a man burdened for God to send revival.

Isaiah 64:1-9 in the Amplified says:

1OH, THAT You would rend the heavens and that You would come down, that the mountains might quake and flow down at Your presence--2As when fire kindles the brushwood and the fire causes the waters to boil--to make Your name known to Your adversaries, that the nations may tremble at Your presence! 3When You did terrible things which we did not expect, You came down; the mountains quaked at Your presence. 4For from of old no one has heard nor perceived by the ear, nor has the eye seen a God besides You, Who works and shows Himself active on behalf of him who [earnestly] waits for Him.

A Cry for Revival

    5You meet and spare him who joyfully works righteousness (uprightness and justice), [earnestly] remembering You in Your ways. Behold, You were angry, for we sinned; we have long continued in our sins [prolonging Your anger]. And shall we be saved? 6For we have all become like one who is unclean [ceremonially, like a leper], and all our righteousness (our best deeds of rightness and justice) is like filthy rags or a polluted garment; we all fade like a leaf, and our iniquities, like the wind, take us away [far from God's favor, hurrying us toward destruction]. 7And no one calls on Your name and awakens and bestirs himself to take and keep hold of You; for You have hidden Your face from us and have delivered us into the [consuming] power of our iniquities. 8Yet, O Lord, You are our Father; we are the clay, and You our Potter, and we all are the work of Your hand. 9Do not be exceedingly angry, O Lord, or [seriously] remember iniquity forever. Behold, consider, we beseech You, we are all Your people.

God in the House

When the Church begins to repent and confess their sins and a burden comes upon them to travail for the unsaved and for an outpouring of the Spirit, then we can logically expect God to come to Church.

Lewis Drummond said, “An awakening is ready to burst on the dismal scene when Christians have a deep, profound Spirit of prayer for an awakening.”

When the unrepentant Church begins to pray, we have little power with God and nothing happens of great significance, but when the repentant Church begins to pray and fast, then there’s power with God and a subsequent revival.

House of Prayer

God said through Isaiah, “My house will be called a house of prayer, for all nations.” (Isaiah 56:7b)

The Bible refers to the believer as being God’s house.

“But Christ is faithful as a Son over God’s house. And we are His house, If we hold on to our courage and the hope of which we boast.” (Hebrews 3:6)

We are that house of prayer. Every corporate, united believer is a house of prayer.

Prayer is supposed to radiate out from us on a continuos basis, as we are meant to house the prayers of God for all nations.

This then means that before anything else that we do for Christ, prayer is supposed to be our passion, and flow in and out of us like breathing.

Every Knee Will Bow

Let us stand on Philippians 2:9-11 which says, “Wherefore God has highly exalted Him, and given Him a name which is above every name: That at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of things in Heaven, and things in earth, and things under the earth; And that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.”

This Scripture both refers to Judgment day when the entire creation of God will bow before Christ, but I believe it is also prophetic of the great harvest at the end of the age.

I believe that if the Church is obedient, we will see every knee bow and every tongue confessing that Jesus Christ is Lord.

The Church has a large job ahead, and prayer and intercession are the largest part of it.

I believe that through prayer we can move God to give us the revival that He prophesied that He would send in these days.

Prophetic Word

Barry Butters of Melton Christian

Fellowship7th June 2011