Revival?

Revival

“Jesus answered him, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God.””

‭‭John‬ ‭3:3‬

Nobody plans to die. So why should we plan to be revived?  In order to plan a revival we must plan to die. Of course, this is related to the physical, bodily presence.  And for the record, if I do die, I would like all attempts to be made to revive me. 

Revival in the spiritual sense is sorta the same.  When we speak to spiritual revival, something must of died. 

I’ve seen churches have two to three, even more, way more - planned revivals. You only revive something that is dead or dying.  Look it up, a revival means an attempt at bringing something back to life. And in order to bring something back to life, it has to be dead first. 

Revivals should not to be planned.  I haven’t even found the word revival in any translation of the Bible that I’ve searched for it in. I’m pretty sure that Jesus didn’t consider that the Gospel message that He was preaching and teaching would need reviving. In fact it wouldn’t be very confidence-building if He went about preaching His message only to say, “in a few months you’ll need to try and revive this message of mine.”

A revival should be an awakening by the Holy Spirit that comes at the new birth of the believer and the renewing of the mind. It should be seen as the fruit being bore. It should be an ongoing act of sanctification (separation and growth) and not occurring over and over again. We should be in an active state of spiritual growth, not death, decay, rinse and repeat. 

Revivals however have taken on a different meaning. They’ve become diluted and polluted. They’ve become regular events held by organized religion in order to jump start complacency.  We’ve resorted to depending on an event to light our inner spiritual fire. 

I get it, revivals feel good. Preachers, pastors and missionaries with cool stories and vibrant methods, yelling and shouting. Great talkers and motivational sermons make you feel good or encourage you to do better in your every day life. And they build hype in the hope that attendance will increase. Or at least for the short time the revival is held.  And then four months later there is the need for another one. 

Driving around our small rural town this week, I saw signs placed in yards and on the side of the road everywhere. The sign said “Easter” and then “come join us” and then the name of the church and location. I saw no less than twenty of these, push-in-the-ground-type advertisements.  I started thinking - shouldn’t organized religion want people at their buildings every week?  I guess Easter is just part of the Chriseaster attendance box people like to check. 

Jesus, the Apostles and His disciples preached the message of salvation through faith in Him by grace from God. There was nothing said about needing to be revived. Once we place our faith in Him, we are born again and our minds are renewed. We are filled with the Holy Spirit, who, through sanctification and growth will bear great fruits. We shouldn’t expect to die and be born over and over again. There is no need to be revived, except maybe once when we die to our sins and become a new creature in Christ Jesus. 

I’ve always sat and asked myself during these revivals - what needs to be revived?  Our salvation?  Our faith?  Attendance? Membership? Faithful giving?

Sure there will be periods in our spiritual life where we are not abundant in the production of spiritual fruit.  But this doesn’t mean we are dead. And sure there will be times when we slip into sin, only to confess and repent. But again, this doesn’t mean we have died and need to be born again.  And when we are born again we are said to die to sin - do we really want to be revived from sin only to be born back into sin? I don’t. 

We aren’t perfect, I am far, far from it. Anyone who knows me personally knows my story.  But I’d like to think of my life as a new life. I’d like to think that I don’t have to turn my life to Christ every other week to be saved again or that my faith in Him needs to be revived. 

Maybe there is another term that organized religion should use, other than the one they use that is associated with death. Or just call it what it really is - a membership drive. 

“For the death he died he died to sin, once for all, but the life he lives he lives to God. So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus. Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body, to make you obey its passions. Do not present your members to sin as instruments for unrighteousness, but present yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life, and your members to God as instruments for righteousness.”

‭‭Romans‬ ‭6:10-13‬