I don’t know about you but when I hear the word REVIVAL, I tend to think of an unprecedented, epic and tangible, yet a very rare move of the Holy Spirit, which only very few of us Christians seem to be fortunate enough to ever experience in our lifetime.
And while this powerful and rare spiritual occurrence is indeed associated with REVIVAL, I believe God intended for it to be a reality for EVERY Christian, DAILY.
The Christian definition of the word REVIVAL is “the awakening or quickening”, in other words “the stimulating of God’s people to their true nature and purpose”. That for me paints perhaps a much less ‘epic’ or ‘dramatic’, yet a much more truthful and real picture of what REVIVAL looks like.
The Bible says in 2 Chronicles 7:14:
‘Then if my people who are called by my name will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, I will hear from heaven and will forgive their sins and restore their land.’
This powerful verse tells us that there is something about REPENTANCE that leads us to REVIVAL. And that’s because I personally believe that REPENTANCE is the ultimate catalyst for intimacy with God, restoring our relationship with God back to the original state God intended for it to be, and thus fulfilling the very purpose why He created us in the first place.
Intimacy with God has the unique ability to forge in us His character, in other words, it produces in us Godliness. And Godliness leads us to living and experiencing the fullness of Christ in and through our lives. It leads us into becoming ‘spiritually awakened’ or ‘spiritually quickened’ again, restoring us back into our true nature and purpose, to experiencing REVIVAL.
So why is it that so many of us Christians seem to be spiritually “dormant” or “asleep” and often struggle to ever experience the move of the Holy Spirit in and through our lives, let alone on a daily basis.
There are many different reasons for that, but the one I would like to highlight here is the fact that often we tend to confuse REPENTANCE with REMORSE, and remorse cannot lead us to intimacy with God, instead it leads us into a vicious and repetitive cycle that keeps us from desiring to be with God.
Remorse leads to regret and regret is rooted in our own efforts to change ourselves. Regret says, “I feel bad for the wrong I have done, so I will try to do better next time. I can change myself!”. It’s self-centred.
REPENTANCE on the other hand leads us back to God because REPENTANCE, according to 2 Chronicles 7:14, contains 3 components that are fundamental to igniting a desire in us for intimacy with Him:
1) Humility – not to think less of ourselves, but to think about ourselves less and more about God and more about others.
2) Surrender – Surrendering to God by seeking Him and through prayer
3) Faith – the action of turning from our own wicked ways and turning to God’s ways because we TRUST God to have a better way of life for us to live.
Humility, Surrender, and Faith say, “I feel bad for the wrong I have done, and I know I cannot change my ways instead I want to turn to God and His ways!”, it’s God-centred.
Perhaps for many of us Christians today it is still easier to believe that God has selected only a few “special” Christians who can “harness” His presence and His power, on a rare occasion. But I wholeheartedly believe that if we instead shift our thinking and our believing to devoting ourselves to the DAILY disciplines of Humility, Surrender and Faith we can all experience REVIVAL. Not only on rare or ‘special’ occasions, but as part of our daily walk with God, being daily awakened, daily quickened and daily stimulated to our true nature and purpose in Him through Christ Jesus our Lord, where we can all experience DAILY REVIVAL.