Written by Dawn Rutan
I recall a time in college when another Christian college was experiencing a time of revival on their campus. Some of our students organized prayer meetings in hopes that something similar would happen for us. The results were less than stellar and actually created some disturbing scenes due to misguided beliefs and expectations.
Recently I’ve been reading the challenging little book The Calvary Road by Roy Hession. The introduction by Norman Grubb summarizes it well:
“I had regarded revival only from the angle of some longed for, but very rare, sudden outpouring of the Spirit on a company of people… I learned and saw that revival is first personal and immediate. It is the constant experience of any simplest Christian who ‘walks in the light,’ but I saw that walking in the light means an altogether new sensitiveness to sin, a calling things by their proper name of sin, such as pride, hardness, doubt, fear, self-pity, which are often passed over as merely human reaction.”
He also points out that revival is not really the conversion of non-believers, because one must already have the new life before that life can be revived in them. So events that we might be inclined to call revivals are more often crusades. Churches holding “revival” services need to be clear as to what their expectations really are.
In one way, it takes some of the pressure off of an event if we realize that revival is not often a “sudden outpouring” and major change in the lives of a group. But that pressure instead is found in a constant nudging of the Holy Spirit redirecting lives day after day. The weekly routine of preaching, teaching, Bible study, worship, and prayer is most often the method by which the Holy Spirit revives the people of God. Those are the tools through which sin is revealed and confessed. If a person gets to the point of needing a sudden outpouring of the Spirit to cause them to change, they have probably been ignoring the Spirit and allowing sin to build up for quite some time. Thankfully God can still work and change lives in any condition, but how much better would it be to cultivate this daily sensitivity to sin and responsiveness to the Spirit?
Hession makes a couple comments that are particularly convicting:
“Anything that springs from self, however small it may be, is sin. Self-energy or self-complacency in service is sin. Self-pity in trials or difficulties, self-seeking in business or Christian work, self-indulgence in one’s spare time, sensitiveness, touchiness, resentment and self-defence when we are hurt or injured by others, self-consciousness, reserve, worry, fear, all spring from self and all are sin and make our cups unclean.” (13)
“Such a walk in the light cannot but discover sin increasingly in our lives, and we shall see things to be sin which we never through to be such before.” (19)
Most church members probably don’t have a problem with the “big” sins like murder or adultery, but we all have issues with pride and self-seeking. I’ve become increasingly aware of the selfish motivations in my life and how that hinders me from truly loving others as I should. Hession presses the point a little further when he writes:
“That means we are not going to hide our inner selves from those with whom we ought to be in fellowship; we are not going to window dress and put on appearances; nor are we going to whitewash and excuse ourselves. We are going to be honest about ourselves with them. We are willing to give up our spiritual privacy, pocket our pride and risk our reputations for the sake of being open and transparent with our brethren in Christ.” (20)
Fear of vulnerability is probably the greatest hindrance to spiritual growth for a lot of Christians. By keeping ourselves at a safe distance we not only lose fellowship, we also refuse to let anyone speak into our lives with correction or encouragement, and we miss the opportunity to do the same for others. “There is no doubt that we need each other desperately. There are blind spots in all our lives that we shall never see, unless we are prepared for another to be God’s channel to us” (50).
I want to have this experience of daily revival—walking in “newness of life” as Paul said in Romans 6:4, being aware that His mercies are “new every morning” (Lamentation 3:22-23), and having fellowship with one another as with Jesus Christ (1 John 1:7). No one needs to wait for once a year revival services, or even once a week revivifying, because we have daily access to God, His Word, and one another.
“Seek the Lord and His strength; seek His presence continually!” –Psalm 105:4 ESV
