Leonard Ravenhill an evangelist and author who’s focused preaching consisted of two main focuses said "Revival......another definition would be to recover, repair or restore. Hosea 10:12 says: "Sow to yourself in righteousness, reap in mercy; break up your fallow ground; for it is time to seek the Lord till He come and reign righteousness upon you."What is fallow ground? Fallow ground is ground that has been fruitful, and then it has been plowed over, and no seed has been sown in it, and therefore it has become unproductive. Notice, there is a human emphasis here -- it says that we are to break up -- you break up your fallow ground. Now take another aspect of it here in Psalm 85:6 "Would Thou not revive us again: that Thy people may rejoice in Thee." So, there is an absence of joy, of vitality -- there is an absence of ecstasy. The very word "revive" presupposes life. You can only revive what has already had vitality -- life that has become sick, weak, or apathetic. I think the nearest analogy I can give you is a recent case of a man who apparently drowned. He had been under the water for an incredible amount of time. Then somebody pulled him out and worked and worked on him, and eventually life came again. This is actually what it means to revive, it means to revitalize. It means to restore lost power. It means to recover lost energy. In the Acts of the Apostles 3:19 we read, "Repent ye therefore, and be converted, that your sins may be blotted out, when the times of refreshing shall come from the presence of the Lord." Whatever else we say about revival we have to recognize this, that revival is an act of mercy in the sovereignty of God. There is a vast difference between revival and evangelism. When we speak of revival in America we think of church advertising, "Our revival will begin next Sunday night at a certain time and it is going to finish the next Sunday night at a certain time." Obviously this is something purely mechanical; it is something which men have engineered. I think that one of the offenses of revival, in the historic sense, is that it cannot be organized. As Doctor Tozer said, "When revival comes it changes the moral climate of a community." You can have revival that covers a church -- Spurgeon had that. You can have a revival that covers a city. You can have a revival that covers the whole nation --"
We live in an hour where the shifting sands of the political and economic arenas have left many with fears, anxiety, and doubts about their future and their destiny. Are we allowing ourselves to be swallowed in this landslide or will we be a pillar in society? The church was never meant to be led by the business and political world, we were given authority over them and called to lead them into the destiny God has for them; nations, regions, cities, families, and individuals. But if we do not stand for justice and simply allow government and politicians to take our place in the realm of influence the church will become obsolete in more ways than we already have. WE HAVE A VOICE! Why have we become so afraid to use it? Revival is about the church knowing the voice they have and using it. Using it in healing, salvation, deliverance, declaration, preaching, prophesy, whatever God has you do with it in that moment and we are in a divine moment. I believe what happens in the next 5 months will define the next 40 years. Not just what happens with elections and amendments but what the church gives its attention to in the next several months will define the function the form and the authority of the church in the years to come. Will the church give itself to the ministry of the word (not just preaching), prayer, and fasting?
The marriage amendment also known as Proposition 8 is more than a simple statement about sexual identity and the definition of marriage in our state, it is a call to protect covenant and the seed. The devil has been after the seed from the beginning and it has manifested in this generation in two ways; Humanistic Abortion, killing a generation before they have a voice and the Homosexual Agenda, never allowing there to be a seed. This is not about sin, we all do that with the reality that some sins have greater natural consequence even if God does not have a scale for them. It is about the seed, it’s about a generation that may never have a chance to fulfill their destiny because they were never given a chance to live, children are God’s inheritance and they are arrows in our hands to be shot at the heart of the enemy. What did God say about the serpent in the garden? He said that the seed would crush his head and ever since then he has tried to crush the seed before it can crush him. He did it in every season of dynamic spiritual shifts throughout history; in Moses’ day, in Jesus’ day, and today.
The road to revival is before us. We have an opportunity to shape history, now. What will the next generation be left with? Will they have beautiful buildings and dynamic programs with no conscious? Will we leave them with a blurry line where the secular world determines how I will build Kingdom? Or will we stand in this hour for the things that are on God’s heart and build an inheritance for our children that arms them with authority and endues them with power from on high? John Wesley put it this way, "What one generation tolerates, the next generation will embrace."
The choice is ours.
