Warning: Culture of Positivity May Be Roadblock to Revival

Revival in America?

OK, of course there’s hope for revival in America. So, what’s the problem? The church is mostly sitting back on a casual, costless idea that revival can come without investing into the clear, non-negotiable process. Thus, our pursuit of revival has become little more than a mystical wish upon a star.

I want to make this as simple as I can. Until the church gathers together continually, prays fervently and repents in tears, revival is little more than a pipe dream.

Consecrate a fast; call a solemn assembly. Gather the elders and all the inhabitants of the land to the house of the LORD your God, and cry out to the LORD. Alas for the day! For the day of the LORD is near, and as destruction from the Almighty it comes. ~Joel 1:14-15

How can we presume revival is near when people are not interested in doing now what they will be doing when revival breaks out? It’s insanity.

Some people are terribly alarmed at all direct efforts to promote a revival, and they cry out, “You are trying to get up a revival in your own strength. Take care, you are interfering with the sovereignty of God. Better keep along in the usual course, and let God give a revival when He thinks it is best. God is a sovereign, and it is very wrong for you to attempt to get up a revival, just because you think a revival is needed.” This is just such preaching as the devil wants. And men cannot do the devil’s work more effectually than by preaching up the sovereignty of God, as a reason why we should not put forth efforts to produce a revival. ~Charles Finney

Revival isn’t a mystical, ethereal experience that appears out of nowhere. There is cause and effect.

“There has long been an idea prevalent that promoting religion has something very peculiar in it, not to be judged of by the ordinary rules of cause and effect; in short, that there is no connection of the means with the result, and no tendency in the means to produce the effect. No doctrine is more dangerous than this to the prosperity of the church, and nothing is more absurd,” Charles Finney said.

“Suppose a man were to go and preach this doctrine among farmers, about their sowing grain. Let him tell them that God is a sovereign, and will give them a crop only when it pleases him, and that for them to plow and plant and labor as if they expected to raise a crop is very wrong, and taking the work out of the hands of God, that it interferes with his sovereignty, and is going on in their own strength: and that there is no connection between the means and the result on which they can depend. And now, suppose the farmers should believe such doctrine. Why, they would starve the world to death.

“Just such results will follow from the church’s being persuaded that promoting religion is somehow so mysteriously a subject of Divine sovereignty, that there is no natural connection between the means and the end.

When we do certain things, revival comes. When we don’t, it doesn’t.

“Revival is not a miracle, or dependent on a miracle, in any sense,” Finney noted. “It is a purely philosophical result of the right use of the constituted means—as much so as any other effect produced by the application of means. The revivals in the apostles’ days were connected with miracles, but they were not miracles.

Evan Roberts modeled the cause and effect reality of revival brilliantly. It is simple: “Congregate the people who are willing to make a total surrender. Pray and wait. Believe God’s promises. Hold daily meetings.”

Why is revival not breaking out in any of the 19,000 cities in America? It’s not hard to understand.

• Congregate the people—Prayer meetings and solemn assemblies are becoming emptier and emptier.
• Who are willing to make a total surrender—Cares of life, busyness and other personal endeavors have displaced the call to die daily.
• Pray—It’s rare today to find a Christian who pays the price of fervent intercession.
• Wait—In our ADD society, endurance has been offered at the altar of instant gratification, even if that gratification isn’t God.
• Believe God’s promises—Do we really believe the Bible? Do we stand immovably on the truths of Scripture? Not so much.
• Hold daily meetings—This one is laughable. We just don’t have the time, energy or desire.

As a nation, we are zero for six in response to Evan Roberts’ prescription for revival.

Keep in mind, Evan was responding to a message from Frank Bartleman who was curious as to how to initiate revival in his region. Frank listened to Evan, and the Azusa Street Revival changed the world.

We aren’t waiting on God. He’s waiting on us. Revival is up to us.

“Many people have supposed God’s sovereignty to be some thing very different from what it is,” Finney said. “They have supposed it to be such an arbitrary disposal of events, and particularly of the gift of His Spirit, as precluded a rational employment of means for promoting a revival of religion. But there is no evidence from the Bible that God exercises any such sovereignty as that. There are no facts to prove it. But every thing goes to show that God has connected means with the end through all the departments of his government.”

In this nation I have found it nearly impossible to pull off the strategy that Evan Roberts prescribed, though in Haiti it was easy!

Every night I was there, people walked up to two hours through very difficult terrain to come to church and pray with passion! Nobody drove, everybody walked, and everybody engaged. Nobody milled around, left to go to the bathroom or was disinterested. Two thousand people a night were in position, in prayer and ready for instructions! Then, they walked home two hours in the dark and usually in torrential downpours to their homes.

I felt the spirit of revival in Haiti—the first time I’ve felt it in years.

That statement may cause trouble for those who embrace positivity. The thought is that any acknowledgement of a negative reality puts hope at risk. That is absolutely absurd.

Would anybody run a business this way? Would board meetings include only positive, happy thoughts in the hopes that they in themselves would turn the business around? Of course not.

Any successful business is an honest business. They analyze trends. They aren’t afraid to admit where they are failing. The don’t put their heads in the sand. They don’t presume a plastic smile is the answer.

Just as in business, revival will come as we honestly admit there is darkness in the land and trouble in the church.