Lisa and I had no clue what God was doing. We just didn’t understand what was happening in our lives and in our church. When God called us to Pennsylvania in 1992, we had the strongest conviction possible we were…
I grew up in a family that took spiritual things for granted, so it shouldn’t be too much of a surprise that at a very early age I had a profound spiritual experience. When I was about 3 years old, I thought that Jesus had come to see me when I was sick. While I was having what I considered a personal time with Jesus I kept telling my mother, “Mommy, don’t come in the room!” When it was finally OK for her to come in, I told her, “Jesus came to see me, and he told me, ‘Eddie, I love you, and all the angels in heaven are singing a song just for you.’” Was that real? I guess you can decide that for yourself, but my mother was convinced it was real, I know that for sure. She was so convinced that when my dad came home she was crying, convinced that since I had such an experience with Jesus, I must have been close to dying!
If you have ever lived in an arid or semi-arid climate, you know how precious water is. Or maybe you don’t! What I mean by that remark is that in some of the drier regions of our country, fountains, water parks, and green golf courses seem to abound. But such use of a seeming abundance of water is, to a great degree, made possible by the preservation of the water they do have. When the rains come, a system of waterways and reservoirs retain water for future use.
Revival can be much like that rain. It doesn’t happen all the time. Revival is not a continuous state, as much as some people like to claim it is. Revival is a season of refreshing, an outpouring of God’s Spirit that has a fairly definite beginning and end. The results of revival don’t have to be temporary, though. The aftereffects of revival can actually be more powerful than the effects experienced in the revival itself! I’ll have to write more on that dynamic in a later post. The point I’m emphasizing, though, is that there must be some reservoir for the aftereffects to be available post revival. Fortunately, we don’t have to fret over what the reservoir might be, or try to come up with an elaborate scheme for revival benefit preservation.
God’s simple plan for preserving the benefits of revival is this:
“If my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and I will forgive their sin and will heal their land” (2 Chronicles 7:14).
I love 2 Chronicles 7:14. I believe it’s powerful in its promise. It gives me hope for the healing of an entire nation. But it’s not enough. Preachers have proclaimed 2 Chronicles 7:14 as a promise from God that if only the church in America would do what it says, then America would be healed. But that’s not true.
In the Spring of 1996, before revival hit the church I pastor, we began recruiting men to attend our first Promise Keepers event, to take place in Washington, D.C. We had about 25 guys sign up–a great size group for the size of our church at the time. Then, revival came to Victory Church, and not everybody was happy about it. We actually lost fifty of our one hundred official members (even as we gained more than that back in new members). It was the best of times; it was the worst of times. There was lots of excitement about what God was doing. Every morning I would wake up excited and ask, “God, what are you going to do today?” But it was also relationally painful to endure severed relationships. I blamed myself for a lot of the trouble, but God wanted me to see that it wasn’t all on my shoulders.
During the tumult, someone asked me: “How many men who signed up for Promise Keepers are not going because of the revival?” The Holy Spirit must have led that man to ask that, because the answer provided a shocking revelation to me: NOT A SINGLE MAN WHO HAD SIGNED UP FOR PROMISE KEEPERS WAS AMONG THE GROUP THAT LEFT BECAUSE OF REVIVAL. I know, I shouldn’t shout in print, but what are the chances of that? Miniscule!
I’m a middle-aged white man born in Mississippi, raised down South, and living in Greater Philadelphia (the one in Pennsylvania, not Mississippi) for twenty four years. Unfortunately, the racial tension I observe is higher now than at any time in my adult life. Fortunately, I have the amazing privilege of being the pastor of a very multi-ethnic church. Such a church gives me a perspective on race that I wouldn’t otherwise have. Only by the grace of God, I haven’t had the “liberty” for the last twenty years to develop my thinking in line with a monocultural view.
Recently our church had a Sunday devoted to “hot-button” issues. People in the congregation could text their questions anonymously and I would answer as many as I could get to. After the services, the most feedback I received by far was regarding my response to questions on Black Lives Matter. Here are my thoughts:
I remember as a kid watching a Bugs Bunny cartoon in which a dog catches a train. For some reason that image has stuck with me, and occasionally it comes to mind when I think about chasing after big goals and dreams. I can still see that dog, hanging on to the front of a train, exclaiming, “I caught a train.” Maybe the dog didn’t so much catch the train as the train caught or whacked the dog. A great spiritual revival can be a little bit like that.
We chase after a move of God and when it happens, it’s a lot like being hit by a train! It’s not something that we catch as much as the move of God catches us. And when it hits us, it can really give us a big wallop. We can’t carry or control a genuine revival. We can’t make it happen just like we want it to happen. And not every aspect of revival is going to be pleasant. It’s a lot of work and a lot of disruption to our lives. Some people who have led in previous revival movements know what I’m talking about. Some may even question whether they want to go through all that again, wondering if it’s really worth it. Well, it is worth it.
Every four years, it seems that a lot of American evangelicals get really serious about prayer. Many who don’t pay too much attention to prayer efforts in other years start paying attention during presidential election years. I would like to suggest that an urge to pray just during election cycles is not a result of faith in God. It’s really the opposite of faith in God.
The motive behind the newfound attention to prayer in an election cycle appears to be a desire to get the “right” politician into office. That is not an expression of real faith in God. It’s faith in a political leader! It’s almost as though we’re telling God, “Just help us get the right person in the White House and we’ll handle it on our own after that.”
Why on earth would I ever say that maybe we should stop praying for revival? Last night I heard a powerful message by Carl Lentz, pastor of Hillsong Church New York City. It was a moving biblical sermon on the…
Which came first, the chicken or the egg? I know that there are plenty of opinions on this question, and I don’t intend to weigh in on the topic myself. However, the question is intended to be representative of circumstances in which we can’t be totally sure of cause and effect. So in the case of revival, who starts it? God? Or do we? I have a strong opinion on that, and I’ll share my thoughts on it, but first I want to acknowledge why there would be some confusion.
