Redefining Revival

The other night I had to re-ask the question, what is revival? In some ways, we are experiencing revival here in Austin. God has stirred up extravagant prayer, and we are encountering God together on a daily basis. The spiritual atmosphere on campus has shifted. People are open to receiving prayer when before they just thought it was weird. People have faith to be healed when we tell them Jesus can heal them. And those for whom we never thought it would be possible are seeking to learn about Jesus and to learn about the Bible. Artists and hippies and new-agers and tree-huggers and homosexuals are wanting to know about Jesus and read the Bible. All the churches, all the ministries are suddenly purely hungry for God and willing to do whatever it takes to have him. We have seen on a daily basis brothers and sisters laying down their theologies and religious barriers and being willing to receive the Holy Spirit and everything that comes with him, just because they want more of God. People are hearing about our prayer time and bringing their friends to come and receive the fire, the baptism, the blessing, the spirit of intercession, the healing, the encounter with Jesus. A Muslim guy is coming to our prayer time. And it’s not just our prayer time where things are blowing up- almost everyone I talk to has a similar story about their ministry or gathering. The body of Christ is uniting, and we have stopped caring what ministry we are a part of or what doctrine we follow. We have seriously stopped thinking in those terms and when I do think about those things it just seems weird, because those walls are falling down.

Everyone smells revival in the air and everyone is expecting something big to happen. People are even trying to rent out the Texas stadium in anticipation.

Now let me say I don’t have any problem with expecting something big to happen, and it’s like a dream come true to rent out the stadium for a revival meeting. I’m all for it! I say come on Jesus! I think huge outpourings of the Holy Spirit are biblical- Acts 2, Acts 3 style!

But the other night when we were talking about the move of God and sharing stories, I felt uneasy in my spirit. I felt like something was horribly wrong. I felt we were not aligned with Jesus, but were falling astray into something else… something that wasn’t Jesus. I spoke up, and two others agreed they were feeling the same thing. We had to refocus our eyes on the Lord.

What was it that happened in that moment? We were doing good things- sharing testimonies about what God was doing, sharing truths about gifts of the Holy Spirit, laughing together, dreaming together, getting excited together. And these are good things. I love these things! But we were doing these things under the influence of a spirit of idolatry.

That was when the Holy Spirit began to speak to us about love. And he spoke strong. His word was sharper than a two-edged sword.

He spoke through 1 John. How can you claim that you love God if you do not love your brother and sister? Sarah shared that loving God and loving others are not two different things. They are the same thing. They are equally important to Jesus. If we think we love God but we are not loving our brother and sister, it’s not because we just lack that part of love- the loving others thing- it’s because we lack love period. Love for God and love for people are married. They are one. They are the vertical and horizontal expression of Love. Having only one of these and claiming to have love is like having only one of the wooden boards for a cross and claiming to have a cross. It’s not a cross anymore. It’s just a wooden board. The definition of a cross is two boards intersecting. The definition of love is our relationship with God intersecting with our relationship with others.

He spoke through Philippians 2. We are supposed to be one in Christ- having one mind and one love. We are to have the mind of Christ Jesus who humbled himself, going from King of the universe to death on a cross.

So we began to pray for love for one another. And we realized it all comes down to love. It’s all about love, and it’s always been all about love. God is love, and it’s all about God.

That’s when I realized that our definition of revival is seriously flawed. Revival is not an event. It’s a lifestyle. Revival is not one big dynamite blast. It’s the flame of the Holy Spirit spreading from person to person. Revival is not about power encounters. It’s about love.

We, or at least I, have been taught this idea that there is ordinary church life, and it is good and fun and Jesus is in it, but it is life with Jesus on the mediocre level. And then….. only once every century….whenever the people of God pray really really hard…GOD SENDS REVIVAL! Boom! Dynamite blast! Yesterday we were trudging along the dirt of the earth, but today we have been blasted into outer space! Yesterday we were fruitless, burnt out Christians hanging our heads in despair, but today we are superheroes riding the winds of God’s manifest presence! And the word spreads across the states, and everyone hears about it and buys last minute plane tickets to go experience it, and they broadcast it on God-TV. And for weeks, sometimes for months it continues on, and everyone is talking about it: Is it real revival or is it fake? Will it last or will it fade? And where will the revival comet crash next?

Then eventually, everyone who is coming to the meeting realizes that they are about lose their jobs and flunk out of school and are forced to start living everyday life again. Either that or the star, the revival celebrity gets corrupted by all the attention, and when he falls, the revival falls, because he is the face of the revival. And we always have some deep interpretation for what went wrong, and how we broke the code of the revival formula. And because we broke God’s revival code, he got mad and he took the revival away. Then we all study revival more diligently so that when it happens again we will go by the code and make it last.

Last night I was thinking about the way we view revival, and then I started thinking about the Chinese church, and I just started to cry. Our brothers and sisters in China, our precious family connected to us by his blood, are not holding grand revival meetings. Yet they are experiencing the greatest revival in all of history. When a Chinese sister decides to gather with believers, she must wait until dark, and then walk many miles in the pitch black so as not to be seen. When she gets to the location, she will find the family of Jesus huddled together in a house, weeping, weeping, weeping. Weeping because they are feeding each other the body and the blood of Jesus. Weeping because they are being freed from their burdens through the power of the Holy Spirit. Weeping as they pray for their nation to be saved. Weeping as they cling to Jesus with everything they have, their only answer in the face of brutal persecution. When they leave for home the next morning, the floor is slippery because of the tears. Nobody knows who started this revival. Nobody knows who the leaders are. Nobody knows where this revival is located because it hidden away, and yet it is everywhere at once. Nobody travels to specific meetings to study the revival and figure out how it happened. Because it is obvious to everyone how it happens. There is no question. They just follow Jesus and it happens.

Seeing this shames me and silences me. I lay down all my philosophies and strategies and formulas about revival, and I realize deep inside that we just need Jesus and we need to experience his love together. We need to pray for one another and minister to one another, not to show off our spiritual gifts, but to give freely to the body whatever gifts we have been given freely by Jesus. We need to serve and honor one another as if each one was that great revival celebrity. And I imagine that one day we will wash each other’s feet with our tears. Life in the power of the Holy Spirit is not showy or grand. It is humble and simple. It is the way we interact one to another on an every moment basis.

There is really no such thing as revival. There is simply normal Christianity and perverted Christianity. What we call revival is actually normal Christianity. It is the body of Christ being what it is. We don’t want to admit this because the blame no longer falls on God for whether or not he sends revival. The blame falls on the body. A revival lifestyle will follow those who walk the way that Jesus walked. And that is what we are all called to do (1 John 1).

This should actually come as a relief. All that pressure to make revival happen, all the pressure to preserve it when it comes, all the pressure is released. All the burdens leave. We have only to be faithful with what we are called and to be obedient to the Lord. If he blows up a meeting on campus, if he brings the whole campus together to worship in the stadium, and if healings are broadcasted on the screen, hallelujah! That freaking pumps me up! But what happens the next day?

We see it in Acts 2. On one day thousands get saved, but that is not the end of the story. The following days, they are meeting in the temple to pray and receive teaching and break bread and love each other. And they are meeting in their homes to do church. They are having all things in common. The word is spreading from house to house. And the harvest is still coming in as people are added to their number day by day. And then a few days later everything blows up again when the crippled man gets healed. But one day is no different from another. Each day is the day of salvation, each day is another part of God’s will being done on earth, each day is a chance to praise the Lord and be a living sacrifice in his hands. Each day is a day of love.

As I realized these things last night, I felt deep sorrow because I knew that this supernatural love was not flowing among us, and I knew that it was so rare the times I had experienced that extent of love in my heart for others, that pure, genuine love that feels like Jesus manifesting on the inside…that makes you just want to do something… to lay down your life and die for the person….or something.

As I looked into why that love is not there inside of me, I realized that it was being blocked by the idol of individualism. And he showed me that we have embraced a half-truth in the church. There is a movement in the church that teaches people who would normally never think of themselves as being powerful ministers of God to realize their identity in Christ and to walk in it. I honor this movement because it revolutionized my thinking and helped me go so much deeper with Jesus. I realized that I was no longer defined by my sin or called a sinner, but as a new creation in Christ I am defined as holy, beloved, and righteous. I am seated with Christ in heaven. I am called to reign with him there. I am royalty and I have authority to unlock and loose the kingdom of heaven, to heal the sick, to cast out demons, to raise the dead, and to trample over snakes and scorpions. I am called to do works greater than the works that Jesus did. I am his representative, his temple, his ambassador, his light, through which his presence will touch people. Through the power of the cross, every spiritual blessing and heavenly treasure is available to me and he will give me whatever I ask for. I should go after spiritual gifts, and I should go after greater intimacy with him. All these things are true and transformational in my life. But that night I realized that they are only one half of the truth. Because they are all about the individual. They are all about getting my breakthrough, receiving my gifts, becoming my own great person of God.

Christ offers us these promises, but he offers them collectively to the church, with the intent that we would seek them collectively, attain them collectively, and use them to build one another up. Yes I am a personally a priest and a queen, but that verse in 1 Peter 2:9 actually says we are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession. This whole identity in Christ thing was never meant to be individualistic. Together we find our identity, not separately. Together we are a picture, we are a manifestation, we are a revelation of Jesus. And yes it does say in 1 Corinthians 14:1 that we should eagerly desire spiritual gifts, but Paul is talking to the body. We are so focused on getting all of our spiritual gifts, that we have forgotten 1 Corinthians 12, where it says that together as the body we have all the spiritual gifts. After listing the spiritual gifts, verse 11 says, “All these are empowered by one and the same Spirit, who apportions to each one individually as he wills.” It goes on to give a picture of the diversity of the body, the diversity of the gifts, and how they all come together for mutual building up. If one person had everything he would not need the other members of the body. But somehow we have come to think that nothing can get done for the kingdom unless there is some superstar who has everything. It is because we don’t know how to function as a body, so this is our only option.

From now on when I pray for revival, I don’t want to pray that God blasts a meeting (though I will pray for that as well of course); but to really pray for revival would be to pray that the body begins to be what it is, to function as it was made to, that God would redefine to us all what it means to follow Jesus, and that he would show us all what it means to live in harmony with one another. It all comes down to love. That is the most supernatural thing we will ever experience.