Kevin DeYoung hosts a great discussion here with Bryan Chapell and Richard Phillips about what real revival means and how it happens. They emphasize that real revival is only a work of the Spirit, and not something that churches can manufacture through special tactics or jacked-up emotionalism.
Praying for revival is exactly the right thing for churches to do, because it puts us in a position of dependence on God’s power and timing to send revival.
As I wrote recently at 9Marks, and as I emphasized in my book on the Great Awakening, the prayers of the churches subtly switched emphases in the lead-up to those revivals.
Over the half-century before the Great Awakening of the 1730s and ‘40s, the prayers of New Englanders seem to have undergone an important shift. Prayers for healing and other everyday cares no doubt continued. But other pastoral prayers shifted from a focus on moral reform to revival.
In the early 1700s, there was a growing sense that efforts to change the society’s declining morality had failed. Puritan pastors long lamented New England’s decline from its founding generation’s spiritual mission. But scolding and trying harder did not effect change.
In the 1720s and ‘30s, pastors began to emphasize that reform was hopeless without revival—and revival depended not on more human effort, but on an outpouring of God the Holy Spirit. God did not need the church to pray in order to send revival, but fervent prayer for God’s rescuing power was often the first sign of revival. These early evangelical pastors often prayed in accord with Isaiah 44:3, “I will pour water upon him that is thirsty, and floods upon the dry ground: I will pour my spirit upon thy seed, and my blessing upon thine offspring.” This shift toward prayer for the outpouring of the Spirit was a critical development that prepared the way for the Great Awakening.
So yes, let’s pray for revival, and pray too as those colonial American churches once did, “Lord, will you pour out your spirit and blessing upon the rising generation, in our church and in our city?” Then, let’s be content to wait on the Lord’s timing and means of sending awakening.
