I continue to dream and pray about a revival of holiness in our day that moves forth in mission and creates authentic community in which each person can be unleashed through the empowerment of the Spirit to fulfill God’s creational intentions.
John Wesley
John Wesley dreamed of and prayed for a revival of holiness in his day . . . in the mid-1700s. Whether we’re in the eighteenth century, or the first century or the dog days of the twenty-first century, times are hard, and we all need Jesus to revive us.
Still, it’s hard to imagine a new Jesus Revolution sweeping America today. We live in a time of great cynicism in the media, crass polarizations in the national political debate, and the lack of civil discourse that once characterized the American experiment. Seventy percent of Americans believe that the country is as divided today as it was during the chaotic era of the Vietnam War. The same percentage says that the nation’s politics have reached a dangerous low point, and a majority of those believe the situation is a “new normal” rather than temporary.1
This cynicism is no help in a world of violence, terror, uncertainty, corruption, and fear. Reports of terrorism abroad or at home fill our news feeds every week. Sex trafficking and human slavery are the scourge not just of faraway brothels and labor camps but of suburban America. Drugs were not just a threat in the ’60s and ’70s; today’s crises of addiction, narcotics trafficking, and opioid and other epidemics are as grim as ever.
The much-vaunted sexual revolution of the ’60s seems quaint in a world where mainstream platforms like Facebook offer four or five dozen different gender options for you to choose from in order to identify yourself. Or you can custom design one if your preference is not on Facebook’s list. Redefinitions of marriage, sexuality, and gender itself are pushing for normalization across the board—soon available in preschools near you. Today’s celebration of diversity and tolerance tolerates anything except an exclusive truth claim. The Jesus Movement’s One Way hand sign—as in there’s but one way to Heaven, through faith in Christ—would be derided by some as offensive hate speech today, with Jesus People carted off to jail or to community service and sensitivity training workshops.
Still, let’s not get wigged out about culture wars or the increasing marginalization of biblical Christianity. This is a time, like all eras on our planet, of great opportunity. The upheaval actually combines an odd blend of cynicism and longing, ugliness and beauty, despair and hope. And one thing we know: Jesus looks upon our world and loves its people. His holy affection floods toward all, every tribe, nation, individual on this terrestrial ball . . . and He calls those who follow Him to be the visible manifestation of His love and His truth.
That’s a challenge we cannot meet without humility, personal and corporate repentance, and the fresh wind and power of His Holy Spirit.
What would a new Jesus Revolution look like today?
All we know is that it would be scary, exhilarating, messy, passionate, and surprising. We should not pray for revival unless we are ready to be turned upside down, our heads and our pockets and our lives shaken out. During times of revival, the transcendent power of God is unleashed in human beings . . . and when the divine is poured into the human, we can expect human beings to act in unusual ways.
A new revival might well start, as did the Jesus Movement, among the least likely people. But whatever God chooses to do, we do know a few things about what happens when revival comes, regardless of its time period or cultural context.2
First, God comes down. The weight of His presence is unmistakable. Revival is no human endeavor. It is an electric encounter with the Other—the Eternal One who lives from everlasting to everlasting, the God who is beyond our dimensions—that brings about the conviction of sin. Just as at Pentecost, when the apostle Peter preached and his hearers were “cut to the heart,” they responded by asking what they could do to get rid of their guilt. “Repent, then,” said Peter, “and turn to God, so that your sins may be wiped out, that times of refreshing may come from the Lord.”3 There is no refreshment without the conviction, confession, and forgiveness of sin.
God’s Word pierces human hearts. The teaching and proclamation of the Bible itself is central, for revival is a divine synthesis of mind and heart, more than just emotional experience and more than just cognitive assertions.
Lives change. In true revival, there is a wholesale renunciation of sin and its patterns. People live differently than they did before, to say the least.
When all these things happen, there is an unmistakable flood of love that fills the local community of Christians, both new and old. For example, Jonathan Edwards wrote that his colonial “town seemed to be full of the presence of God; it never was so full of love, nor of joy . . . as it was then. There were remarkable tokens of God’s presence in almost every house.”4 There was an extravagant outpouring of care, outreach, and generosity that characterized the early New Testament church.
The revival flood also brings love’s sister, joy. “Under first-century revival conditions,” writes J. I. Packer, “inexpressible joy in Christ was virtually a standard and universal experience among Christian believers.”5
When churches overflow with love, joy, and all of the rest of the characteristics we’ve mentioned, there is another organic consequence: unbelievers are drawn to the community of faith and are converted. A Jesus person shares her faith, and another comes to Christ. He gives the gospel to two more, who tell four, who tell eight . . . this “good infection,” as C. S. Lewis called it, was one of the hallmarks of the Jesus Movement.
One other note about revivals: Satan, the enemy of human souls, tries to corrupt and counterfeit them. Dr. Packer notes that in times of revival, Satan tries to use the false fire of fanaticism, the false zeal of errant teachers, and the false strategies of orthodox over-doers and divisive firebrands majoring in minors to discredit and demolish what God has been building up. Surely this was the case in the Jesus Movement. It spawned cults and prideful leaders who went off on their own paths. Critics nitpicked and missed blessings they might otherwise have enjoyed. Revivals are unorganized, messy, and fraught with risks for those who are not wearing the full armor of God.
Revivals also fade.
The spiritual awakening that rocked the “little country church” called Calvary Chapel is in the rearview mirror now. But the awakening was never about Calvary Chapel. Nor was it about Chuck Smith, or Lonnie Frisbee, or Greg Laurie, or any other person or church or denomination.
It was about Jesus moving by the power of His Holy Spirit in ordinary human lives.
We long for former days of revival not because we’re nostalgic, trying to get the same experience back that we once had in the past. If we do that, our affections are sadly misplaced. No, we long for the Holy Spirit to fall upon us, our communities, and our nation in a fresh way so that God Himself would be glorified through the fruit and love of changed human lives.
What might it look like for Jesus to revive us again today? It needn’t have a label, like a movement among a certain denomination or tradition, or among believers of a certain eschatological view. It needn’t be confined to Christians from megachurches or minichurches, or to those who speak in tongues or those who don’t. It needn’t be the experience of just the hipsters or the oldsters, or just those who dunk or those who sprinkle. It will be where and when and with whom God chooses. It will be a beautiful mess—and let’s just pray that it happens again. Soon.
It could be something we might call “mere revival.”
During World War II, C. S. Lewis gave a series of radio lectures that became the slim volume Mere Christianity. This classic book has been seminal in the conversions of countless people, and has been on bestseller lists ever since it was released in the late 1940s. In it, Lewis likened Christianity to a big house with many rooms. The idea is that when we come to faith in Jesus Christ, we enter the house; we’re in the grand, central hallway with other members of the body of Christ, or the church universal . . . all the human beings who will eventually all worship together in Heaven for eternity. It’s a gloriously big hall.
But in this life individual Christians become part of local fellowships. The church particular: the ekklesia, visible gatherings of people who communally worship and grow in Christ. To use Lewis’s analogy, once we’re in God’s house, we choose to go into one room or another. We find a particular group of believers to connect with, and we become an active and functioning part of a local church. We worship and grow with brothers and sisters who have commonly held traditions, liturgy, or doctrines.
But each human being in the house, under the same roof, comes in through the big hall and agrees to the essentials that followers of Jesus have held since He built His church in the first century. Lewis called these essentials—the hall—“mere” Christianity.
In the same sense, is this not a good time for believers in churches and fellowships all over America to pray earnestly for something big, something essential, something on which we all agree, something we might just call “mere revival”?
If He grants this yearning, extraordinary things will happen . . . but we do not pray for revival for its consequences, exciting as they are. We pray for revival today as a means for the extended glory of God, now and in eternity to come.
We pray that more and more people might come to know the One who made them, loves them, died to pay the just penalty for their sin, and rose from the dead so that those who believe in Him might one day also rise to give glory to Him around His throne, to revel in His love and enjoy Him forever.