The prophet Hosea wrote; “Sow with a view to righteousness, Reap in accordance with kindness; Break up your fallow ground, For it is time to seek the Lord Until He comes to rain righteousness on you” (Hosea 10:12).
By now you will have read about or heard about the ‘revival’ at Asbury University in Kentucky. No one doubts that there are many young people who are rediscovering their first love for God and that others are encountering Messiah Jesus for the first time in their lives and are turning to God in repentance and faith. Much is being viewed on the internet and there are those who are for it and those who oppose it, but also those who are not sure if it is a revival or an awakening by God’s Spirit.
After watching a series of lectures on historic revivals by the late Dr Edwin Orr, and having read the entire journals of John Wesley personally, I must admit at present I have reservations as to whether what is happening at Asbury can be called a revival as we see it clearly in scripture, and as we have seen it down through history in the great revivals under men like Wesley, Whitfield, Edwards, Moody, Finney, Evans, Booth and many others whom God used to bring about a revival, that not only brought about a radical change in churches everywhere, but dramatically changed every level of society and all of it recorded in historical records.
Of course you had the Jesus movement in the late 60’s and early 70’s which was a genuine move of God’s Spirit among the hippies and those who were marginalised by ‘respectable’ society, not only in the secular world, but also in the denominational churches by and large.
Now a revival is not masses of people being saved as this is the result of revival. A spiritual revival has to do with re-discovering something that was lost spiritually in the past and seeing it restored once again. In the Book of Acts we see a series of revivals which all had certain things in common. You had prayer, preaching of God’s Word, conviction of sin, repentance, water baptism, the baptism with the Holy Spirit, spiritual discernment, souls being added daily to the assemblies, the healing of the sick, the driving out of demons, believers devoting themselves to the apostle’s doctrine (the Word of God), fellowship and celebrating the Passover meal every time they met together.
You see them all eating together with gladness and singleness of heart, sharing everything they had, praising God and having favour with many outsiders and devoted to prayer. Genuine miracles signs and wonders were present but not the focus of the revivals neither was the Holy Spirit or His gifts the centre of the revivals, but these revivals centred in the preaching of God’s Word in Messiah Jesus and His life, death and His resurrection (Romans 1:16-17; 5:1; 4:5).
As a result, the religious, the domestic and the business world were shaken and daily the Lord added to the assemblies of believers those who were being saved! See (Acts 2:38-42). It is interesting to observe in the Book of Acts that believers were baptised with the Holy Spirit in groups, not primarily as individuals as such. There was an exception we see in the experience of the apostle Paul when hands were laid upon him and he was filled with the Spirit (Acts 9:17-19).
Much can be gleaned from God’s Word in both Testaments that teach us what a real Biblical revival is like. It was not all praise and worship and hours upon hours of singing choruses and prophecies of one sort or another, but a time of brevity and brokenness before the Lord and a sense of awe concerning God. Only after this came the praise and worship in the Holy Spirit.
Spiritual discernment and the exposing and eradicating of falsehood and spiritual deception was also a feature of the assemblies as we see in the case of Ananias and Sapphira and Simon and Elymas the occultists who had huge followings.
On this website there is a verse by verse commentary on the whole Book of Acts which shows clearly how the Spirit of God moved in the first Century Body of Messiah. The Book of Acts was written as a blueprint for the Body of Messiah down through history and is more than ever applicable today as we see spiritual deception running rampant in Christendom. (See the header and link below)
We see an infestation of false prophets and teachers with their counterfeit miracles, signs, wonders, manifestations, and a misuse of God’s Word to line their own pockets while promoting their Unbiblical theology and feeding their own greedy appetites of covetousness. “An accursed brood!” Much more could be said about these matters Biblically.
In the prophet Hosea we see what God required of Israel to experience a revival. Let’s very briefly look at our text in Hosea 10:12.
“Sow with a view to righteousness, Reap in accordance with kindness; Break up your fallow ground.”
The main goal of any revival is to see righteousness prevail and wickedness rendered powerless. The Lord Jesus Himself said “blessed are those who hunger and thirst after righteousness because they shall be filled (with it)” and that from God! Many today hunger and thirst after miracles, signs, wonders, visions, dreams, prophecies, a ‘touch’ and manifestations of one sort or another, but very few hunger and thirst after righteousness which will manifest itself in the confession and renunciation of sin, and a surrender of the will completely to the Lord, not primarily the emotions or the intellect, the will must must also be laid down.
The way that opens the door for God to send a revival is the sowing of the seed of God’s Word into the heart soil of our lives which will produce the righteousness God requires through repentance and faith in Messiah Jesus to save us, and that is bestowed upon us by God when we do enthrone Messiah Jesus as the Saviour and Lord of our life (Romans 3:21-31) (Romans 10:9-10).
We also place ourselves in the position to reap a revival when we respond to the kindness of God which leads to repentance (Romans 2:4). God is always willing to give a revival but are we willing to receive it on God’s terms and the conditions He requires for it?
Consider the farmer. He knows that the rain will come in its appointed season. He has no control over this. He goes out into the field and ploughs up the hard packed soil and sows the seed in expectancy of a harvest, so that when the rain comes there will be fruitfulness and eventually a crop. No farmer will just sit on the porch waiting for the rain to come and expecting that somehow the crop will magically spring up, no there must be a sewing before there is a reaping (Psalm 126:5-6). We see this spiritual principle illstrated in the parable of the sower (Matthew 13: 1–9, 18–23).
Sewing the seed of God’s Word regularly into the soil of our hearts will create the conditions that will see a revival when God ordains it according to His sovereign purposes. No one can bring down a revival. It is not the work of man but a work of God! If we meet the Biblical conditions then we can expect a revival in God’s time and in God’s way. We cannot manipulate a genuine Biblical revival!
And then we read…
“For it is time to seek the Lord Until He comes to rain righteousness on you”
If we would see a Biblical revival in our lives and in the corporate life of the Body of Messiah where we worship and serve the Lord, then we must seek Him with all of our heart, holding nothing back in our lives that we know is hindering the sanctifying work of God’s Spirit. This will be accomplished through regular prayer and fellowship with the Lord and with our fellow brothers and sisters in Messiah.
Whenever the blessed Holy Spirit points to something in our life that does not please God then He will convict us of it, and lead us to repent of it, and then apply the blood of Messiah to the doorposts of our heart to cleanse us from all of it (1 John 1:7-9).
We must continue regularly to sow into the soil of our hearts the seed of God’s Word for it is written; “Man shall not live on bread alone but on every word that proceeds from the mouth of God” (Matthew 4:4). It is also written; “Watch over your heart with all diligence, For out of it flow the issues of life” (Proverbs 4:22).
Messiah Jesus will cleanse us through His Word because He is the Word of God and the whole Bible is all about Him from cover to cover! (John 15:3) (John 6:63). The blood of Messiah Jesus cleanses us personally from all sin and His Word washes us corporately as the Body of Messiah through being exposed to the regular ministry of the Word of God (Ephesians 5:26).
Seeking the Lord for a personal revival or together with other believers will always be the conditions for God to send a genuine revival. This has always been the pattern down through the history of genuine Biblical revivals.
Asbury is still in its early days and time will tell if this apparent spiritual awakening will become a full on revival, not conjured up by man, but by the sovereign purposes of God who is more willing to give a revival than we are to receive it. He wants not only to bless us but through us redeem society from its wicked and evil ways (Romans 10:13-15).
In every genuine revival society will be radically changed, casinos and pubs will close, places of entertainment and nightclubs will be emptied, and dishonest businesses will close down, corrupt politicians will be either removed or saved! Immorality and abortion and sexual perversion will greatly decrease, internet addiction will be corralled, alcoholics and drug addicts set free, and society at every level spiritually transformed by the power of God operating through His servants.
Revival then is the work of God and not man! However, if the soil of the heart has been ploughed up to receive and to obey the seed of God’s Word, then, when the rain of God’s Spirit falls in its appointed season, there will be a magnificent spiritual harvest both within the Body of Messiah and one that will spread into society with redeeming power!
This is God’s will in sending a revival, not to make us a “bless me and you happy clappy club,” but to make us valiant soldiers and servants of Messiah to life’s end, filled with His power, saturated in His Word, and those who seek through the love of God to see sinners saved and saints sanctified. May the Triune God whom we worship grant us the will personally and corporately as the local Body of Messiah, to seek the Lord until He comes and rains righteousness upon us!
