I Prayed for Revival

I read a testimony the other day from a pastor I’ve kept in touch with for more than 20 years. His ministry has been active and useful in the cause of Jesus Christ. His sons all serve the Lord. He has every reason to rejoice. 

His testimony read something like this; “I have prayed for revival for decades now. This week I saw it happen.” He was referring to an event sanctioned by the Southern Baptist Convention. He saw what he claimed was a revival in an event held by a camp of believers who have compromised the faith on several fronts. He saw what he claimed was a revival in an event organized by a group our independent Baptist forefathers had the insight to come out of. Now their children and grandchildren are working their way back in. I promise the SBC has not gotten better. It’s that current independent Baptists are less discerning. 

Why would a man whose ministry has been so blessed return to where his forefathers left? I believe it can be found in his own testimony that he had been praying for revival for years. He has been looking for what he believed God had not granted him. He could not see the blessings of God in his own ministry. (I am sure he would acknowledge being blessed, but not that he has seen revival.) In some respect, he would have had to view what has been accomplished in his ministry as being less than supernatural, less than revival. 

We have got to get past this. We have got to get over calling HUGE results the work of God and the results of our own ministries as just routine. 

•    Every Sunday service

•    Every sermon

•    Every altar call

is the result of the work of God; supernatural, miraculous - a revival. 

Unless it is not. 

And preacher, only you know if your ministry has been of the flesh and not the Holy Spirit.

Marvin McKenzie

In the fields

Are We Asking for the Wrong Thing?

As long as I have been a Christian the churches I have attended have held revival meetings. The evangelists have all prayed for God to send heaven sent revival and the pastors have longed for that type of revival in their churches. I confess to having spent years

• Praying for that sort of revival
• Reading about many of the great revivals of the past and
• Preaching to the church I pastored about revival

I still hear many pastors looking for a revival like those of old days, I think often motivated by the desire to have a large church congregation. (I wonder if the men who pastor large churches feel as compelled for revival as those who pastor struggling churches?)

But as the years have moved on and I have studied the Bible and church history  more, I have noticed:
That those revivals of the past were drastically not Baptist.

The Baptists of that era even opposed them. For the longest time I assumed it was because there was something wrong with those Baptists. But that couldn't have been completely true because, although the Baptist's would not take part in the revival meetings themselves, their own churches grew as a result of those who were genuinely converted searching Scriptures and ending up in Baptist churches because they were the ones preaching the Bible. I am beginning to believe, there was more wrong with the revivalists than the Baptists and perhaps the reason modern Baptist pastors now so quickly side with the revivalists is because we are hungry for the large crowds we envision accompany revival.

That revival is not the norm of the Bible but the exception
God did grant "a little reviving" here and there through Israel's history. But with the exception of the book of Acts the New Testament is devoid of revival type language; and you have to make some assumptions to call Acts a revival era. It is more of a beginning than a reviving.

This all leads me to question whether we are asking God for the wrong thing. Maybe we dream of something that has never been the priority of God. Maybe that statement I have so often heard that “God is more interested in revival than we are” is not, in fact, true. I am coming to believe that the work that brings glory to the Lord is that

• Long term
• Consistent
• Stick by the stuff
• Day in and day out

growth in Christian graces as we look for the blessed hope kind of Christianity. Any other seems to tend toward compromise or the work of the flesh in order to get large groups.

Maybe we should stop asking for revival so that our church can grow bigger and start asking for a Christians to grow in faith and doctrine. Can any seriously deny that the average Christian in America is a hobby Christian at best? What we really need are some pastors who will roll up there sleeves and dig in to the hard work of building believers in the most holy faith instead of building their churches. 

Perceptions Concerning the Power of God

Brother Greg Perkins is the pastor of Liberty Baptist Church in Republic, WA. We are privileged to host him in our church this week for what we are calling revival meetings. This pastor is as genuine as any one I have known. I asked him for revival type preaching and he came prepared to bring just that.

Last night was the first service. The preacher's theme was the potential power of God in us - especially through the church. Basing his message from Matthew 28:19, "All power" Bro. Perkins asked repeatedly whether we think we are experiencing the full potential of God's power. We of course answered, "No."

Here is the potential trouble I see: while each of us in the service last night wants to see God's power in our church and in our lives, each of us, including the preacher and including this preacher, has a different opinion of what that power would look like. Each of us perceives God's blessing and fullness of His power in different ways.
• Some of us have been in churches where a thousand or more assembled together weekly.
• We see that as the power of God
• Some of us see God's power as baptisms every Sunday, or professions of faith.
• Some of us would view the power of God as some perhaps intangible dynamic happening in church

Or getting a raise at work
Or getting our way in our marriage
Or having an enemy vanquished in some way

What if God's power displayed didn't mean any of that?
• What if it meant the power to die without denying Christ?
• What if it meant the power to stay in a situation that hurt every moment?
• What if the power of God meant something spiritual, internal and completely invisible to the fleshly eye?

Perhaps the greatest battle we fight with the flesh is the battle to let God speak through His Word without inserting in it the meaning we choose for it.


Marvin McKenzie
In the fields

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