Church in the Peak Podcast

17th February 2010 - Dave Holden - Revival!

Dave Holden was due to speak on Spirit lead meetings but, following the prompting of the Spirit, he felt called to speak on revival instead!

Dave noted that while revival was not a biblical word, the theme of revival can be seen throughout the bible. Dave explained that revival was not when meetings were more lively than normal and not simply when Christians became awakened.

Based on biblical and historic accounts, revivals have three key characteristics:

1. An overwhelming experience of the presence of God – God’s presence is tangible, you can feel it. Others in the community, not just the Christians, can feel it too.

2. A conviction of sin – both (i) within the Christian community – who feel compelled to get things right with God and (ii) amongst unbelievers who are swept into the Kingdom of God. It is quite possible for huge sections of communities and nations to become Christians.

3. A massive impact on the social climate of the country. This is more than just new laws but whole strata of society being effected.

Our country needs a revival! God is the only answer to the problems this country faces. Alpha is a great way of reaching out and telling people about Jesus and has had a massive impact but that is nothing compared to what will happen during a revival.

Positive points about revival:

1. It’s already happening in almost all other parts of the world, apart from Europe.

2. The UK has already had a number of revivals, whereas some nations in Europe have not had any. We have “revival seeds” all around us.

Problems with past revivals:

1. People have wanted to keep hold of past things and not look to the future. The Spirit is creative and won’t necessarily do the same things in the same way as He did them before. We mustn’t be caught looking the wrong way for revival and find that it’s happened somewhere else in a different way to the way we were expecting.

2. The church has often had a lack of vision and hasn’t been ready or prepared to deal with the new Christians. God has been getting us ready over the past few decades.

Isaiah 66:7-9 speaks of God not dangling the carrot of revival and then pulling it away at the last minute. That’s not the way He does things.

Isaiah 60:22 speaks of God transforming the least of us into thousands and doing it swiftly.

Isaiah 48:3 speaks of God acting on what he has foretold and acting suddenly.

Whether we are ready for revival or not, it will be sudden. God can and does act suddenly. Biblical accounts and revival history demonstrate this. The word “suddenly” appears in Acts more than any other book of the bible. We are still living in the same age of the Spirit, so we should still expect the “suddenly”’s.

Obviously, we can’t make a “suddenly” from God happen ourselves. However, we can work to remove any hindrances such as passivity, prayerlessness and disobedience.
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For information and resouces on past revivals, please see the link below to the Revival Library website.

Listen now! (0:50min / 17MB)