MUSIC BLOG
May 26, 2022
Revival Begins with You
The topic of revival stirs many emotions to many people. Some of us recall a time when churches regularly scheduled revival services, for most Southern Baptist Churches it was two revivals a year, Spring and Fall and at least one of those we brought in an evangelist from outside the church. For others revival is biblical referring to the acts of the Holy Spirit in the Bible as after Pentecost when Peter preached and 5,000 were added to the church. It can also have historic meaning such as, the great Awakening in America or the Great Welsh Revival. No matter what it means or how you describe it revival has an expectation of movement and change.
I have been a part of many, many, many revival services but I have only experienced a great movement of the Holy Spirit a few times in my life. The first and most poignant for me was in my home church, Swope Park Baptist Church. In the summer of 1970, my church sent a group of students to Corpus Christi TX on a Choir Tour. The plan was to sing on the way down, stay in homes, sing several times in churches in Corpus and come home through San Antonio and go to Six Flags and then return to Kansas City, MO. We had a good number of youth going and adequate chaperones. My parents were there to cook for the kids when they were staying at a church for the week. The group had just gotten settled in Corpus, sang a concert maybe two and received a weather report that a very minor hurricane was coming directly toward our little choir and the city of Corpus Christi. It was called “a baby” to the group. Calls were made to Kansas City and the consensus of parents and staff was to ride out the storm and continue with the trip.
Long story short, it was not a baby storm. It turned out that on very rare occasions a hurricane can actually increase in intensity a lot as it comes on shore. Such was the case for Celia on August the 3rd 1970. It went from an almost a hurricane to a significant Category 3 with sustained winds of 125 mph. God protected out youth and my dad got some great stories of cars being blown around and trees falling around the church. After the storm passed our youth group became instrumental in the clean up and even received a commendation from the mayor and governor of Texas.
The group was changed in a moment, but the great change came when they returned to Kansas City and reported on what God did. The church was packed. You could sense the excitement of the youth and of the congregation. At the end of the service there was an altar call. Of the 900 or so people present, there were very few people left in the pews. The altar was filled with people praying and rededicating their lives. Our church experienced a revival that lasted for many years.
I learned that Revival was not something to schedule, and it was not something for man’s purposes. It is a movement of the Holy Spirit for the Holy Spirit to empower the people of God for the work of the Holy Spirit. It was brought with much prayer and tears. If we are going to experience that kind of Holy Spirit Revival we must let God have His way in us again.
I’ve reprinted a devotion by Greg Laurie from 2018 that I hope will bless you all.
Greg Laurie Daily Devotion - May 14, 2018
Then we will not turn back from You; revive us, and we will call upon Your name. (Psalm 80:18 NKJV)
Charles Finney, who was known to be a part of a great revival, said, “The experience of revival is nothing more than a new beginning of obedience to God.”
Any genuine revival that has ever happened in human history has brought about repentance in the lives of the people, a change in the community, and evangelism en masse.
We need a real revival today—not just an emotional experience and not just a tingle down the backbone. We need to see God work, because our nation needs it as never before. We don’t need some new thing. We don’t even need a “fresh word from the Lord.” Rather, we need to get back to the old things, to the very standards that God gave us, and we need to practice those.
I like what Jeremiah said: “Thus says the Lord: ‘Stand in the ways and see, and ask for the old paths, where the good way is, and walk in it; then you will find rest for your souls’” (Jeremiah 6:16 NKJV).
The early church, the one that Jesus started, turned their world upside down. They set the world on fire. But the church of today is much larger than the early church and has considerable resources, with incredible technology to utilize. Yet it seems as though the world is turning us upside down. Why aren’t we setting our world on fire? Because we need a revival. We need an awakening.
We talk about the need for revival in our country and about the need for change in the church. But we must each ask ourselves these questions: Am I personally revived? Am I living as a committed, on-fire follower of Jesus Christ?
If you are not, then you are part of the problem, not part of the solution.
He kind of hits home, at least he did for me.
Blessings,
Marty
