One question that is always asked, or at least lingers in the mind of many, is why revivals do not last? Even sometimes it seems that revivals fade after just a few weeks.
Some have been suggesting that reformation is what makes revival last, but then nobody had explained how reformation is to be attained, or performed, or what is to be reformed: The doctrines, the styles, the meeting place?
It is quite easy to throw words or phrases into the arena, but at the end of the day, they are not the answer; or the opposite is also true: many answers are given, which more often than not become clichés, but they do not offer a path to real solutions.
THE KILLER
One important point to consider is that organizing a revival into something that is not, is a sure way to kill it. In other words, it could be like this: The Holy Spirit starts moving, there are salvations, healings, and other supernatural events, so we start itching about how do we organize this, so that it does not go out of control? In short, that is almost paramount to taking advantage of a move of God to boost my plan or ministry or church.
MEDIATORS OF GOD’S PRESENCE
Another -even more important- point to consider is in this question: How available are we for God to move through us? The presence of God is not an intangible energy that is floating around somewhere, and revival happens when that cloud comes to visit us. Rather, we are meant to be mediators of God’s presence into this world.
Peter moved around and his shadow was healing people. Or was it? Was it his own shadow? I believe that “shadow” of Peter was the presence of God surrounding him as he walked. Almost as the Shekinah glory of God resting on the Ark.
AVAILABILITY
One of the longest lasting revivals in our time has been the Argentine revival that started in 1982. When Rev. Scataglini -at whose church the first wave of revival started- was asked what did you do to have this revival? He simply answered “We made ourselves available to God”.
Could it be that revivals die when there are no more available vessels to carry it on?
What if we start looking at revivals as a cycle of harvest life?
It is quite significant that right on the same day when the Holy Spirit fell on the disciples in the Upper Room, Peter preached his first sermon and thousands were saved, and there where supernatural manifestations all around them, in what we would today call a revival, -the first revival in the church- and right then, Peter said “Repent that Revival Might come”.
Wait a minute Peter, what are you talking about? This IS revival, we do not need another one. Of course, some would point out that Peter actually called for times of refreshing, not revival. Really? Do you know that the word translated refreshing is actually “recovery of breath?”. If you are not breathing you are dead, if you recover breathing, you are revived, ergo, revival it is!
SOWING WHAT?
We talk a lot about, tilling, sowing, watering and the harvest. Sowing the word, sowing Jesus, sowing miracles, sowing…
What if there is something missing in our sowing? What if we have forgotten to sow ourselves into revival? If revival is to grow there must be something that has been sown -or rather, someone.
We need to be honest and realize that we can go about “ministry”, speaking organizing, managing, and not really having sown ourselves into it. We can sow our efforts, our plans, our strategies, yet we need to sow ourselves: Make ourselves available to God.
SOWN PEOPLE
When I look at the history of revivals, past and present, I see a pattern: someone or several, somewhere sowed themselves into such a close intimate relationship with the HS that everything else became secondary, and what followed is what we can only define as revival.
Think of a seed, you could use a seed for many purposes, food, fill bags, make jewelry even, but the moment you plant it you cannot used it for anything else, it now belongs in the process of life. And it will fructify into revival.
Let us sow ourselves into the ground of the Holy Spirit, and we will see revival sprouting just everywhere.
Conrad Lampan eMail: connect@conradlampan.com Facebook: Conrad Lampan Instagram: conradlampan TikTok: @conradlampan YouTube: @revivalhighway