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.