What to Do When Revival Comes
Keep watch on your heart and fan the flames of personal devotion to Christ. Abundantly use the ordinary means of grace. Instead of relying on the intensity of the revival, turn again and again to Bible reading, prayer, self-examination and confession, death to self-interest, a joyful focus on the cross, faithful evangelism, service, and eager anticipation of the glories yet to come.
Recently, I was speaking in a part of the country known for its antagonism to the gospel. Church planting there is hard work. The small number of confessionally strong churches are making headway, but slowly. I admire these pastors, evangelists, and church planters more than I can say; it’s a pleasure and a privilege to spend time with them.
In the course of a meal with several of them, one pastor said, “I know full well I may serve all my years working in the teeth of strenuous opposition that may get worse before it gets better. But suppose genuine revival breaks out, whether in one church or in a larger region. What should my priorities be?”
Great question—not least because this brother wasn’t awash in pessimism. While working faithfully in a day of small things, he retained confidence the Lord’s arm isn’t shortened such that he couldn’t save. The pastor has a pretty good idea of what godly ministry looks like when the opposition is intense, but he wondered how his priorities should change if the Lord in his mercy visited him with the blessings of reformation and revival.
I’ve been on the edge of such visitations a couple of times. In 1970–71, when the so-called Canadian Revival swept through parts of Western Canada—sparked by ministry led by the Sutera twins—I was serving as pastor of a church in British Columbia. I witnessed the unprecedented (for Quebec) multiplication of about 35 French-speaking churches to just under 500, in eight years (1972–80).
More importantly, I’ve tried to read some of the histories of revivals in various corners of the world, partly to think through what’s genuinely of God and what isn’t. Based on my experiences, reading, and understanding of Scripture, here’s my list of dos and don’ts when revival comes.
1. Read serious literature about real and fraudulent revival.
You can’t do better than to begin with A Faithful Narrative of the Surprising Work of God and A Treatise Concerning the Religious Affections, both, of course, by Jonathan Edwards. While Edwards is remarkably open to various displays, the real test is never the display but rather God-centered righteousness and gospel-fueled integrity.
About a century after Edwards, some “revivals” in Kentucky and elsewhere produced a disproportionate number of illegitimate births nine months later. One can guess why: emotional intensity often combines with human intimacy which, if not of God, is more likely to produce babies than produce righteousness. Knowledge of abuses easily breeds a supercilious cynicism, while infatuation with revival easily breeds naïveté. Don’t be cynical; don’t be gullible; be discerning.
2. Examine your own heart.
Keep watch on your heart and fan the flames of personal devotion to Christ. Abundantly use the ordinary means of grace. Instead of relying on the intensity of the revival, turn again and again to Bible reading, prayer, self-examination and confession, death to self-interest, a joyful focus on the cross, faithful evangelism, service, and eager anticipation of the glories yet to come.
If instead you rely for your sustenance on the sweeping movement of the revival, ignoring the ordinary means of grace, you’re likely to burn out in a frenzied pursuit of what’s instantly gratifying but not very nourishing.
3. Direct people’s energy toward Jesus.
When revival comes, large numbers of people display boundless energy for the things of God. In your role as a minister of the gospel, direct that overflowing energy toward Bible study and prayer, toward corporate worship that’s full of the Word—not toward revival experiences but toward Jesus himself. Times of revival are clarion calls for increased commitment to anointed expository preaching, not an excuse for informal chats studded with pious clichés.
One of the great things that happened in connection with the Quebec movement was the far-sighted establishment of SEMBEQ (Séminaire Baptiste Évangélique du Québec), which became a conduit for the theological and pastoral training of that generation and the next. It’s easy to think of genuine movements of God that petered out in silliness and warm nostalgia because the energy released was never directed toward training.
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5 Days Per Week Bible Reading Program for 2024
Written by O. Palmer Robertson |
Tuesday, January 2, 2024
Many people find that first thing in the morning is their best time for reading God’s Word. But that doesn’t work for everyone, or for every season of life. The more important thing is not when you read but that you read. Use lunchtime, break time or bedtime depending on what works best for you. In any case, develop a consistent habit of reading God’s holy, inspired, infallible and inerrant Word, so that it becomes part of the rhythm of your life, for the rest of your life.5 Days per week Bible Reading Program
Blessed is the man whose delight is in the law of the Lord, and on his law he meditates day and night. Psalm 1:2
Most Christians would agree that it would be a great blessing and very desirable to read the whole Bible through every year. But saying is easier than doing. How many of us have begun on January 1 full of good intentions, and by January 18 we have given up? There are many reasons why we fail, but we should not forget that we are all involved in high stakes spiritual warfare. Satan does not want believers to regularly be listening to, and being transformed by, the living word of the living God. The Bible reading plan that follows is offered to you as an encouragement not to give up, but to try again.5 days per week
Unlike many Bible-in-a-year reading plans, this one schedules only five days per week rather than seven. So, although each day’s readings are a little longer, it provides a way of catching up for those who fall behind in their readings. Or if you get ahead, you can take time out for a deeper study of some part of scripture without getting behind.
A Redemptive-historical approach.
Instead of reading the Old Testament from beginning to end in the order in which the books appear in our Bibles, these readings are arranged in such a way that the reader can follow the unfolding story of God’s redemption of his people.
Chronological order
The readings are arranged as much as possible in chronological order. For example, parallel readings in Kings and Chronicles are read alongside one another. The prophets are slotted into the reading of the historical books according to the time in history when the prophet was ministering (as far as we can determine). Some of the chapters in Jeremiah and Daniel are read out of biblical order so that they follow a more chronological order.
One Gospel each quarter
Instead of reading all four gospels one after the other, each quarter includes one of the gospels, in the order they were most likely written: Mark, Matthew, Luke and John.
New Testament phases of revelation
The New Testament readings are arranged in the following order:
Quarter 1: Mark and early apostolic witnesses: Acts 1-12, James, Hebrews, 1 Peter, Acts 13-28. These books record the actions and writings of the apostles as the early church was first being established, initially with Jewish converts and then increasingly with believers from all the other nations. In coordination with Acts 1-12, James appears to have been written early in the life of the church, while Hebrews seems to have been written while the temple in Jerusalem was still standing (i.e. before AD 70 when the temple was destroyed). According to tradition, 1 Peter was written from Rome before his martyrdom in the AD 60s. Acts 13-28 provides the background for Paul’s early letters.
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Humility and Wisdom
Discernment is not only the ability to choose right from wrong; it is the ability to choose right from almost right. Similarly, one of the closest companions to wisdom, a companion without which true wisdom cannot exist, is humility, the virtue whereby we recognize that we lack wisdom and must acquire it.
In our digitally dependent age, information comes at us constantly from every direction and, it often seems, with ever-increasing rapidity. Never before in history have we had such an abundance of information that we can so easily access, and yet never before in history has there been such a lack of wisdom.
In fact, it often seems that there are many who do not even see wisdom as something that they should aspire to possess. In many respects, Western culture has ignored the pursuit of wisdom for so long that even the word wisdom has almost completely disappeared from its vocabulary. We live in a culture that rebels against the wisdom of the aged and revels in the foolishness of the elementary.
Part of the problem is the idea that knowledge equals understanding and that understanding equals wisdom. Shortcuts such as a web search or echoing the perspective of social media gurus or celebrities provide superficial knowledge that often satisfies people today.
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The Grace of Remembering
Written by Nicholas T. Batzig |
Tuesday, October 25, 2022
We need to remind ourselves of those precious truths of the gospel—namely, that through our union with Christ in His death and resurrection, the power of sin has been broken, the guilt of our sin has been forgiven and dealt with, and the assurance of God’s presence secured to us.Today marks 21 years since the Lord brought me to saving faith and repentance. I always find it to be a good practice to meditate on the way in which the Lord draw me out of a pit of sin and misery and to Himself in Christ. Remembering what we once were when we were dead in sins and what God did to mercifully draw us to Himself through the saving work of Christ is vital if we are to make advancement in our spiritual growth in grace. The Christian life is often fueled most of all not by learning new things (although there are always more important truths for us to learn in God’s word) but by remembering those truths that God has already revealed to us.
There are at least three clear places in Scripture that encourage us to remember the truth of the gospel in order to make progress in growth in Christ-likeness. The first passage is Romans 6. There, the Apostle Paul explained that if we are united to Jesus we have died with Him, been buried with Him, and risen with Him. In light of this truth–and the accompanying truths about our having died to the power of sin since He died to it’s power–Paul charges believers with the following words: “Reckon yourselves to be dead indeed to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Rom. 6:11). Paul was charging believers to preach a specific aspect of the Gospel–what theologians call definitive sanctification–to ourselves. This charge comes on the heal of the question, “Shall we continue in sin that grace might abound?” Through our union with Christ crucified and risen, we have a powerful tool to encourage holiness in the lives of believers. If we are struggling with a particular sin or on the brink of giving into some sin, Paul charges us to preach to ourselves that aspect of the gospel in which there has been a definitive breach with sin’s power.
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