Reflections

What is Revival?

Throughout time there have always been those who have cried to God for a spiritual awakening. In the midst of appalling moral darkness and spiritual declension they have, like the Prophet Isaiah, cried 'Oh that thou woulddest rend the Heavens and come down' (Is.64:1).

In coming to grips with the great need of Revival it is time to define clearly what we mean by the term. Revival means to wake up and live. In the Old Testament the word comes from a root meaning to live. The basic idea is the return of something to its true nature and purpose. Charles Finney defines Revival as '...nothing else than a new beginning of obedience to God'. G.J. Morgan puts it this way, it is the reanimation of the life of the believer (not the unregenerate, as they are dead in sin). There can only be Revival where there can only be life to revive. Another describes it as the inrush of divine life into a body threatening to become a corpse.

The definition I like most is from the famous Welsh preacher Christmas Evans 'Revival is God bending down to the dying embers of a fire just about to go out, and breathing into it, until it bursts again into flame'. Whichever way we look at it Revival is life at its best, life in its fullness, life overflowing with the love and power of God. Revival in a definition like this is like David in Saul's armour,- it just doesn't fit. But one thing is clear. In Revival men and women come alive to the life of God.

Reflections

We must begin Right

The deeper we go into the subject of discipleship the more we can see that no school was ever so strictly guarded, and yet there is no one so easy of access. No bar of race, colour, caste, or age stands across the entrance-all may come providing they submit to the entrance conditions.

This raises the point:Why does Christ insist on such complete and utter  self-surrender when first approaches our hearts? Would it not be better if He approached the more gently, then having got us in tempered  His challenge to our rate of progress? The answer is simple. If He is to keep us free from evil, then He must have the whole territory of our lives fully surrendered into His hands. Temptation seeks to find a foothold in our lives on which it can fasten, then when this accomplished, it goes on to establish a bridgehead over which it sends its sappers to fortify the position and take over control. Christ makes it clear from the beginning that He cannot consent to be excluded from territory from which the enemy would use to undermine His authority and weaken His control. Many of the troubles which some Christians have stem simply from the fact that they came into the Kingdom of God too easily. They never learned how important it is in those early stages to deal a death blow to self- centredness and they limp along the Christian life, with no real understanding of what it is all about. The stern words of Christ in Matt. 16:24 which He utters to all those about to submit to Him, are not to frighten us but to fortify us.