“Only be on your guard and diligently watch yourselves, so that you don’t forget the things your eyes have seen and so that they don’t slip from your mind as long as you live. Teach them to your children and your grandchildren.” Deuteronomy 4:9 (HCSB)
Stories are vital. They are the seeds of dreams. They show us what is possible and expand our horizons. They tell us about people who endured and conquered, making us believe that we can too.
History is the story of how our sovereign God has worked with and through humans.
Recently, I read a book filled with good stories. In fact, its title is A God-Sized Vision, Revival Stories that Stretch and Stir.[1] Its authors are Collin Hansen, the editorial director for the Gospel Coalition, and John Woodbridge, research professor of Church History and History of Christian Thought at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School.
In the book’s preface, they conclude that most modern Christians have become so satisfied “with small things that they have lost their taste for big things.” Their accusation is that “few of us today are tempted to dream too big. Rather, our vision shirks to the size of our limited experience.”[2]
Like the Israelites of old, we quickly forget what God has done…But our problem today may be worse than mere forgetfulness; we have never even heard the stories of many of the revivals that have shaken nations and changed history.
“We need to recover these testimonies of God’s faithfulness. Already, too many generations have been cut off from their legacy. ”[3]
From 1938 until 1968, Martyn Lloyd-Jones was the pastor of London’s Westminster Chapel. He had a heart that hungered for revival, but he never saw it. Instead, during his years of anointed ministry, he watched the British churches surrounding his realize too late the mess they had created. They had relied too long on their ancestors’ legacy and could not feel the foundation crumbling beneath them. He never persuaded the bulk of his country’s evangelicals to pursue the God who can do in a moment what incremental organization can hardly accomplish in a lifetime. He must have been often discouraged, but Lloyd-Jones called the reading of church history “the greatest tonic to a drooping spirit.”[4]
Jonathan Edwards, who was powerfully used during our country’s first Great Awakening, believed that the stories of God in action in the lives of His people contributed to every outpouring of the Holy Spirit in revival. He wrote, “It has been found by experience that the tidings of remarkable effects of the power and grace of God in any place, tend greatly to awaken and engage the minds of persons in other places.”[5]
Habakkuk was stirred by the stories of God’s mighty works in the redemptive history of his people, and he was moved to pray, “Lord, I have heard the report about You; Lord, I stand in awe of Your deeds. Revive ⌊Your work⌋ in these years; make ⌊it⌋ known in these years. In ⌊Your⌋ wrath remember mercy!” (Habakkuk 3:2, HCSB)
In 1863, Scottish doctor William Mackay felt drawn to this text and wrote the hymn “Revive Us Again.”
In 1875, D. L. Moody’s music associate, Ira Sankey, included it in his compilation of Gospel Hymns and Sacred Songs. As he and Moody reflected on the great prayer revivals of 1857-1859, it expressed their heart cry for God to do it again.[6]
Where is our heart cry? Do we even know that there is something more for which we should long?
An important reminder regarding revival: God sends revival not merely for our sake, but for the glory of his own name.
“God of our salvation, help us — for the glory of Your name. Deliver us and atone for our sins, because of Your name.” (Psalm 79:9, HCSB)
No need will ever surpass our need for God Himself. God-centered revivals withstand the temptation to treasure the blessings of revival over the One who blesses.[7]
There is no New Testament exhortation to pray for revival. You do not pray for God to send revival when you are living in one. However, there is much that we can learn from First Century Christianity about the nature of a revived church:[8]
- There was the equipping of the Holy Spirit for the powerful proclamation of the gospel.
- Large numbers of people were drawn to Christ.
- Followers of Jesus could not keep away from each other; their community was marked by love.
- The world took notice of the Church.
- Christians were living in the experience of what happens when there is repentance: “Therefore repent and turn back, that your sins may be wiped out so that seasons of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord…” (Acts 3:10, HCSB)
- When revival comes, God answers Paul’s prayer for the church at Ephesus: “⌊I pray⌋ that He may grant you, according to the riches s of His glory, to be strengthened with power through His Spirit in the inner man, and that the Messiah may dwell in your hearts through faith. ⌊I pray that⌋ you, being rooted and firmly established in love, may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and width, height and depth, and to know the Messiah’s love that surpasses knowledge, so you may be filled with all the fullness of God.” (Ephesians 3:16-19, HCSB)
- When revival comes, for an extended period of time, the Church knows and demonstrates the power of the Holy Spirit: “For our gospel did not come to you in word only, but also in power, in the Holy Spirit, and with much assurance. You know what kind of men we were among you for your benefit, and you became imitators of us and of the Lord when, in spite of severe persecution, you welcomed the message with the joy from the Holy Spirit.” (1 Thessalonians 1:5-6, HCSB)
During revival, the church worships, prays, preaches and evangelizes with intensified force. The church militant catches a glimpse of its future as the church triumphant.
When you think about the history of revival in North America, two men come quickly to mind in marked contrast, Jonathan Edwards and Charles Finney.[9]
Many historians regard Edwards as the greatest revival theologian. He came from his studies at Yale to succeed his grandfather as the pastor of the Congregational church in Northampton, Connecticut, in 1729. During the next 21 years, God visited that community with two major revivals. Edwards believed that God employs certain means, such as preaching the Word of God, in order to spur revival. But he did not teach that any series of events could guarantee an outpouring of the Holy Spirit. Only god himself could bestow such a blessing on his people in his own sovereign timing. He described the sudden and spontaneous outburst of religious fervor in Northampton in 1741 as a “surprising work of God.”
Charles Finney was the most prominent American revivalist in the 19th Century. He taught that only our reluctance hinders revival. He said, “You see why you have not a revival. It is only because you do not want one.”
Finney said, “Revival is nothing more than a new beginning of obedience to God.”
He employed what he called “new measures” that would yield the fruit of revival, much like a wise farmer practices when hoping for an abundant harvest.
However, he believed that no one obeys divine commands unless God intervenes in response to prayer.
Ironically, while Finney is often accused of making religion a human work and of having a theology that leads to manipulation, his evangelistic ministry is one of the greatest illustrations of the sovereignty of God.
He was converted in October, 1821. He was used to reach over 100,000 people for Christ between 1830 and 1831 in Rochester, New York. In 1821, there were not that many people living in Rochester. However, the year after Finney’s ordination, in 1825 the Erie Canal was opened. Thousands of people flooded into the Western Frontier, and one of the times when people are most reachable is during a time of transition.
Men such as Edwards and Finney are reminders that God has been pleased to use individuals as His instruments during times of revival. Others of note have been George Whitefiled, John Wesley, Timothy Dwight, Jeremiah Lanphier and D. L. Moody.
I believe that America was uniquely touched by revival during and immediately after World War ll. In the late 1940s the Youth Led Revival Movement broke out on the campus of Baylor University in Texas, and then a second wave of that movement began within the Cadet Corps at Texas A&M University in the early 1950s.
In 1944, Torrey Johnson started Chicagoland Youth for Christ. At the first rally, Evangelist Merv Rosell preached, and a young radio disc jockey on Moody Bible Institute’s radio station sang. His name was George Beverly Shea. Soon, a recent graduate of Wheaton College would be preaching at YFC rallies across the country. His name was Billy Graham.[10]
From 1950 to 1958, church membership grew from 57% of America’s population to 63.7%. In just five years, between 1947 and 1952, Bible sales doubled.[11]
During those days of spiritual awaking among American young people, an almost blind lady, Henrietta Mears, became the director of religious education at First Presbyterian Church of Hollywood, California. In just three years, under her leadership, Sunday School enrollment increased from 450 to 4,500.[12]
In 1944, a young Oklahoma cowboy from Coweta, a range management graduate of Oklahoma State University, moved to California and came under the influence of Henrietta Mears. She led him and, eventually, his Oklahoma fiancée to Christ. She not only discipled Bill and Vonette Bright, she invited them to live with her. Challenged by her call to be “expendable for Christ,” Bill and Vonette began aggressively reaching out to students at USC and UCLA. When they were ready to launch an official college ministry, Dr. Wilbur Smith, Bill’s favorite professor at Fuller Theological Seminary, suggested the name Campus Crusade for Christ.[13]
As I read A God- Sized Vision, I was struck again with how often revival fires are ignited in the hearts of young people on college and university campuses; Yale during Timothy Dwight’s tenure as president at Yale, the awakenings at Ashbury College and Seminary in Wilmore, Kentucky, the Youth-Led Revival Movement and many more. Out of these revivals God has called and sent young men and women who have written new chapters in the history of missions and evangelism.
As the Prayer Revival that began in New York in 1857 spread across the country, revival broke out on the campuses of the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, Amherst, the University of California at Berkeley, Dartmouth, Davidson, Oberlin, the University of Pennsylvania, the University of Wisconsin and Wake Forest. As many as ninety college revivals swept through American campuses.[14]
At this season, the fruit of one of these campus revivals should be of special interest to us as Southern Baptists. In 1859, John A. Broadus became a founding professor of New Testament and preaching at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. Before that, he was the pastor of Charlottesville Baptist Church and then chaplain for the University of Virginia. In 1852, revival broke out in Charlottesville, but when Broadus became the university chaplain in 1855, he found that the UVA students showed few signs of revival. He could only identify 95 Christians in the student body.
He had to wait until 1858, at the tail end of national awakening, to see revival again in Charlottesville. That year, working with the YMCA, churches, university and parachurch groups worked together in a common cause. Over 200 students participated in weekly prayer meetings. The YMCA president spent Sunday afternoons teaching slaves about Christianity.
In December of 1858, Broadus convened evangelistic meetings for the male and female students in town. The Albemarle women prayed especially for the salvation of one student; the one student they were sure would never attend one of their meetings. To their shock, Lottie Moon did attend. On December 21, 1858, she publically professed her faith in Christ. She had gone to that first meeting to scoff, but returned to pray all night.
Broadus followed his evangelistic meetings with a call for students to consider spending their lives as missionaries or pastors. He probably did not expect that a woman would be the most famous student to respond.
When she was 33, Lottie Moon went to China, where her sister was already a missionary. She led hundreds of people to Christ; instilled a passion for missions in the hearts of Baptist women back at home, extended herself for the Chinese people during war and disease, withered away, and weighing only 57 pounds, died on Christmas Eve in 1912. What started during a campus revival in Charlottesville had reached the world and transformed a whole denomination. [15]
[1] Zondervan, A God-Sized Vision, ©2010 by Collin Hansen and John Woodbridge
[2] Ibid, p. 12
[3] Ibid p. 14
[4] Ibid, p. 16
[5] Ibid, p. 16
[6] Ibid, p. 19
[7] Ibid, p. 25
[8] Ibid, pp. 25-29
[9] Ibid, p. 32
[10] Ibid, p. 159
[11] Ibid, p. 168
[12] Ibid, 160
[13] Ibid, pp. 170-173
[14] Ibid, p. 89
[15] Ibid, pp. 89-92
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