Spiritual Revivalism

We have all heard about significant revivals throughout history. There are stories of how they begin and the impact they have. Even President Trump’s faith, himself, stems from the results of a revival in Scotland. He still treasures a precious Bible that was passed down from his family because of that event. But what is PERSONAL REVIVAL and how does it apply to you?

We are all familiar with the process of reviving someone who is dead by resuscitation or chest compressions to keep them alive until help arrives. But how did they almost die? What happened to cause this near death experience? And how does this relate to spiritual revival?

The first prerequisite of true revival is life itself. The critical point is that not everyone has spiritual life. But you say, if you’re alive, then you have spiritual life. Not so. You have physical life.

The Bible says that “the soul that sins shall die” (Ezekiel 18:20). This means. That when a person commits their first sin that they die spiritually. There are so many things that are considered sinful. The Bible states that “whatever is not of faith is sin.” In other words, if you know that it’s wrong and that God wouldn’t approve, then it is sinful (Romans 14:23). The Bible clarifies spiritual death by explaining that “all have sinned and fall short of the Glory of God.” This is called “SPIRITUAL” death.

Let’s ponder this a little more. Jesus Christ died on the cross to redeem all of creation from the curse of death. There really was no death anywhere until Adam sinned. At that moment, “death entered the world” and animals and plants began to die as well. Adam and Eve eventually died physically. All of us are on that same path to physical death because of the original sin of Adam. But spiritual death is something different for us today.

When babies enter the Earth, they are born beautifully created and wonderfully fashioned by God without sin. Some Bible passages seem to indicate that people are born sinful. That’s not the case. Babies are born innocent. They enter into a sinful world, but they themselves are spiritually clean. Think about that. The only way a baby could be born sinful would be if God places sin into the heart of a fetus. That would make God a sinner. That’s not possible!

Jesus gave His life as a substitutionary atonement to pay for our sins with his own body. The reason I couldn’t pay for your sins is because I have my own sins. But Jesus never sinned. He could pay for your sins, all of them, since He never sinned, He was punished for no reason of His own wrongdoing. Jesus was pure and holy. He was crucified. His blood flowed. What can wash away my sin? Nothing but the blood of Jesus (1 John 1:7).

Generally, there are three types of spiritual revival. There is the revival of a civilization, the revival of a religion, and the revival of an individual. It is therefore necessary for all believers to periodically evaluate themselves and make sure that our love hasn’t grown cold. It is this third aspect of spiritual revivalism that concerns us right now.

Once a person receives new life by the new birth and Jesus Christ through the indwelling Holy Spirit, that person becomes a child of God. Those who repent and turn to Jesus for forgiveness. We’ll receive the new birth found in John chapter 3. 

As a new Christian, we begin to grow. We have a hunger for the word of God like a newborn baby hungers for milk (1 Peter 2:2). We drink in the wisdom of God and cry out for mercy (Matthew 4:4). The moment a person becomes saved, the Holy Spirit cleanses them from all sin and they start with a brand new clean slate (Jeremiah 50:20). But that slate begins to become tarnished when we harbor unconfessed sin and we get set aside.

Non-Christians need regeneration but only true Christians may need revival. The Bible says that “as many as receive Him, to them, He gives the power to become children of God.” Shockingly, this means that we are not children of God until we actually become children of God through salvation and being born again. In other words, when children commit their first sin, they become lost and spiritually dead. If you have never received Jesus Christ as your personal Savior then you are simply not yet a true child of God. You are not saved from hell, the consequence of personal sin. You are still spiritually dead. 

The Bible clarifies this by saying that “he who HAS the Son HAS life and he who does NOT have the Son does NOT have life.” It’s very clear. EITHER you HAVE a testimony of how you REPENTED FROM your sin and TURNED to Jesus Christ to save you OR you are STILL LOST AND SPIRITUALLY DEAD. Which one are you? Are you saved or lost?

Only a true born again Child of God is alive in Christ. But our living faith can falter and we can stumble and fall in our walk with God. We make wrong choices and give in to temptation. We again become entangled in the affairs of this sinful world and find ourselves longing for spiritual restoration and personal revival.

According to linguistic dictionaries, the root meaning of the term “revive” originates from the Latin “to again come to life.” It’s based on “re-” meaning “again,” and “vivere,” “to live”. Of certainty, the Author of Life Himself needs no revival, save the Resurrection of Jesus’s physical body from the grave. But for humans, apart from physical resuscitation, spiritual revival means your spirit comes back to life from near death.

For a child of God who has truly been regenerated, spiritual life was imparted at conversion (Titus 3:5). This is when we “pass from death to life” (John 5:24) and when “old things pass away and all things are made new” (2  Corinthians 5:17). We become alive to God (Romans 6:11) spiritually at the moment of receiving Christ as our personal Savior. But then, we sin and lose the joy.

In Psalm 51:12, David asks God to “restore to me the joy of your salvation.” King David did not lose his salvation when he committed adultery with Bathsheba, he lost the peace of mind knowinghe was backslidden. He was miserable. 

Additionally, Paul warns the Ephesian Christians to “not grieve the Holy Spirit of God,” as grieving the Spirit can lead to a loss of joy and power. We grieve the Holy Spirit (Ephesians 4:30) when we live and walk in uncofessed sin. That means God is displeased when His children turn their backs on Him.

Hebrews 13:5 urges believers to avoid covetousness and be content with what they have. Although the Holy Spirit says He will never leave us (Hebrews 13:5), we can leave the power of His presence in our lives when we backslide. Galatians 5:16-18 says that if we “Walk in the Spirit, and ye shall not fulfil the lust of the flesh.” But we often fail to do that. Our love for Jesus, for all He has done for us, fades. We lose the peace and blessing of living in the center of God’s will. 

Verse 17 then clarifies this. “The flesh lusteth against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh: and these are contrary the one to the other: so that ye cannot do the things that ye would.” In essence, we have become a failure in our walk with God. We have become a detriment. Our spiritual fire has grown cold. Our life as Christians has become virtually ineffective and Satan has won the day. Our victorious Christian life has been defeated. We urgently need personal restoration. We need a personal revival!

This is what the apostle Paul calls in the book of Ephesians, “the loss of our first love” (Ephesians 2:4). We were “in the world” and when we first saw the light, and “not of the world” (John 17:14) when we were transformed into the spiritual Kingdom of God. It is like the scales have fallen away and we can now see things that we have never noticed before. Darkness turns to light.

As newborn Children of God, we feel free, empowered to live for Him. We are butterflies rising outbof our cocoones. We begin to fervently pray for our lost friends and relatives to come to know Jesus and we start to see real miracles as God answers our prayers. We allow Jesus to take charge of our life and sit on the throne of our heart. Our life becomes protected and guided by the Holy Spirit and we are filled with the joy of knowing that we are indeed a child of God and that we have been accepted by God into his Kingdom. Therefore, we know we have eternal life and we will spend forever with him and heaven.

But we are still in the flesh on this Earth. The cravings and desires that rule this before we became born again are still with us. We still carry the baggage of broken hearts and lost dreams. We come to Christ with a broken heart and often feel defeated in our faith. When we sin again, as a newborn Christian, we feel rejected of God. We are like Adam who sinned in the Garden of Eden and wanted to hide from the presence of God because of our guilt and shame. We have lost that first love for the Lord (Revelation 2:4). 

This is the miserable dejected backslidden life of a “carnal” Christian and the result of the life of a Christian who does not stay in the center of God’s will. Walking with God is like being under a force field of protection. When we step outside the umbrella of God’s will we find ourselves exposed to the torments of the world -without God’s protection and guidance. We feel lost. We may even feel like we are unsaved.

If you want to be sure you are saved, ask yourself if you remember repenting of your sinful life and asking Jesus to come into your life and wash you clean and save you. When that happened, the Holy Spirit moved in. If that didn’t result in a life change for the better, you may not be saved. You may have just prayed that prayer but not meant it. You may still be lost in your sins an on your way to hell. If, however, Jesus moved into your heart, it is likely impossible to keep on sinning without feeling miserable. If you realize that Christ paid for that sin, it should really be convicting that you still do it. If you feel no conviction of sin, you may not even be a real Christian! Since it is the job of the Holy Spirit to reveal our sin, if you don’t feel this, you may not have received Christ (John 16:8).

For the true born-again Christian, revival means a restoring of our faith and a restoration of our first love.  Our salvation is already secure because Christ already paid for all of our sins. We have “eternal security” in Christ because of His blood. But our fellowship with God may falter. There is no sin that God will not forgive. There is no power of darkness from which God cannot deliver. The enemy tries to trip us up, but we will not stay down. We will follow the footsteps of Jesus even through the valley of the shadow of death. 

If we walk with God, we will trust in the Lord with all our heart, not lean unto our own understanding, but we acknowledged Him in all our ways and become restored on our spiritual path (Proverbs 3:5-6). We will repent and turn from our wicked ways (2 Chronicles 7:14). We will look at our behavioral issues from God’s eyes and agree with Him about them. For the true child of God who has been born again, we need only to get on God’s side of the issue and confess our sins in agreement with His will. Then forgiveness is automatic (1 John 1:9) and revival is possible. 

All that was said to introduce the topic of spiritual revival for Christians. Why do Christians need revival? “We are not ashamed of the power of God and the Gospel of Jesus Christ” (Romans 1:16). Backslidden Christians need revival so that they can be restored to a life of faith, obedience, and spiritual success. Revival means the restoration of the Christian to the moment of salvation, when they were perfectly clean by the blood of Jesus. This spiritual restoration requires repentance. Repentance means to have a change of mind. It’s a change of heart regarding sin. It means to return to the foot of the cross and look up at His body on the tree. “If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive our sins and cleanses from all unrighteousness” (1 John 1:9). This is true spiritual revival for the Christian.

If you have you experienced the new birth and received Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior, then you already have all your sins paid. You are on your way to heaven if Christ lives in you. But are you living for Him? As a Christian, have you loved the world and allowed “worldliness” to squeeze you into its mold? Are you drifting away from the presence and power of God in your life? Then you need a spiritual revival!

Being revived to an effective walk with God starts with personal repentance and restoration. We need to take inventory daily and keep our list of sins short. When we sin, we should immediately pray and agree with God about our sinful thought or deed. God promises to forgive your sins and automatically forgive you if you agree with Him about your sin. The word “confess” means to say the same thing. Will you say the same thing about your sin as God? In order to restore fellowship with Him, start with a meaningful prayer right now.

Repent and be revived!