Have you ever felt tempted to ask God, “Are you still in control?” “And, if you are in charge, Lord, why does evil always appear to triumph?” These were the thoughts that occupied Habakkuk. If you’ve ever posed such questions, you’ll understand Habakkuk’s heated discussion with God. He needed to understand how a just God could disregard “justice” and employ “evil” to achieve His goal. How God would chastise Israel by using an enemy nation whose transgression was worse than theirs and how God even addressed the enemy nation as His “servant.“
Habakkuk tried to grasp how God worked but in the end, he was convinced that he could trust God no matter how gloomy and perplexing the situation. Even if there is no triumph, even if there is hunger in the land, he vowed, “I will rejoice in the Lord, my God, and I will trust in the Lord.”
He prayed to God to repeat the works He did for their forefathers. – “O Lord, I have heard thy speech, and was afraid: O Lord, revive thy work in the midst of the years… in wrath remember mercy… His glory covered the heavens, and the earth was full of his praise” [Habakkuk 3:2]. He needed God to revive, in his day, the works He did with the early disciples, who evangelized the world and had a lasting impact despite their small number. In John 9: 4, Jesus admitted accomplishing His father’s job when He declared, “I must work the work of Him that sent me while it is day…” There are only two types of work in the universe: God’s work and the devil’s work. We are either performing God’s work or doing the devil’s work. “The Son of God appeared for this purpose, to destroy the works of the devil” [1 John 3: 8b AMP ].
A work may be successful and it may even bear the name of Jesus but it may not be God’s work. Remember the Damsel who prophesied in the book of Acts 13? She said of Paul, “These are the men of God. They have come to show us the way to salvation.” That was, in fact, a real prophecy but the Bible referred to her as a damsel with an evil spirit! According to the Bible, she followed Paul for many days until God opened Paul’s eyes to see that the spirit in her was not of God. That is why we must pray for God to open our eyes in these final days.
Thus, our topic, “Do It Again,” is about revival. So, what exactly is revival? The dictionary defines revival as the return, recall, or recovery to life from death or apparent death. Revival therefore brings something back to life that is either dead or seems to be dying. Revival is not for something that has never lived at all. If we examine our lives thoroughly, some of us will see that we may have abandoned what we used to do when we first devoted our lives to Christ. When was the last time we attended to our Bible study on Tuesdays and prayer sessions on Thursdays? What happened to our enthusiasm? Have we forgotten about our “first love” phase?
Another definition of revival, is the reawakening of religious faith, spiritual life and activity. I recall that when I first devoted my life to Christ, we were instructed thus: “No Bible, no breakfast.” Unfortunately, today, some of us are too preoccupied, spending hours on our phones. The church would not be what it is today if we had spent those hours studying the Bible. In his book, “In the Day of Thy Power,” Arthur Wallis, an itinerant Bible teacher and author, defined revival as the divine intervention in the normal course of spiritual things. It is God revealing Himself to man in awesome holiness and irresistible power. He further defined revival as man returning to the background because God has taken the field. It is the Lord working in extraordinary power on sins and sinners.
A.W. Tozer, an American Christian preacher, author and spiritual mentor, defined revival as that which changes the moral climate of a community. If the community we live in is morally bankrupt and we claim to have a revival, we are joking. This implies that our Christianity has no impact on the community in which we live. It is not revival when the church claims there is revival because new churches are popping up by the day, while the crime rate is on the rise, corruption is accepted as the norm and immorality is no longer frowned at.
How Does Revival Come?
There are two schools of thought about how revival occurs. The first school of thought is that of Christmas Evans, a Welsh nonconformist minister who was said to be “The greatest preacher that the Baptists have ever had in Great Britain.” He stated that revival is a sovereign act of God and there is absolutely nothing a man has to do with it. God sends revival when He wills and does not consult or confirm with any of His creation. The second school of thought promoted by Charles Finney, an American Presbyterian minister and a central figure in the religious revival movement of the early 19th century says, revival can happen anytime the church wants it, provided the church is willing to pay the price.
The question now is are we willing to pay the price? Sadly, we have left praying for the church solely in the hands of the watchmen. We can never have revival without prayer. When we are willing to sow the seed of prayer according to God’s will, then, as sure as night follows day, we will have a revival. When certain Christian fathers were asked what the secret of their revival was, they replied: “There is no secret; ask and you shall receive.” According to John Wesley, the founder of the Methodist Church, “God does nothing redemptively in the world except through prayer.”
Revival, it is said comes from God but it comes in answer to prayer and every revival in the history of the Christian church, from the day of Pentecost to the present, has been borne and cradled in prayer. Pentecost came after ten days of fervent prayer. Prayer appears to be an unalterable divine law that opens the windows of heaven and sends forth a gracious outpouring of the Holy Spirit.
What Effect Does Revival Have On Our Lives?
Since the beginning of time, God has been working through revival. So, what is the point of revival?
God is not only the source of revival, but also the end point. Psalm 85: 86 says, “Will you not revive us again?” Revival comes from God and lives for God so that He may be all in all and man may realize that he is nothing in and of himself. This is the transcending effect of all revivals and the fulfillment of God’s highest goal [Isaiah 2: 27; 2: 17]. If we have a jealous desire for God’s glory, we should take the matter of revival very seriously. Galatians 4: 19 says, “Oh, my children, how you are hurting me! I am once again suffering for you the pains of a mother waiting for her child to be born—longing for the time when you will finally be filled with Christ” (TLB).
