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How To Experience Revival
Revival:
- restoration to life, consciousness, vigor, strength, etc.
- an awakening, in a church, of interest in and care for matters relating to personal religion.
- An evangelistic service or a series of services for the purpose of affecting a religious awakening.
Revival is always for the church not for sinners. The sinners have never been made alive; therefore they can’t be restored to life because they never possessed it. Sinners need to be born again by the Holy Spirit, not revived. The question is why did so many sinners get saved during the Wales and Azusa Street revival? It is because, when the saints get on fire it spills out of the church and they start witnessing about what God is doing. When the church is excited about God the community will hear about it. A lukewarm and cold church will never affect the community.
When the church needs a revival:
1. When the members have become conformed to the world.
2. Lack of zeal for the Lord.
3. Lack of personal prayer & Bible reading
4. Members are involved in sin (i.e. adultery, pornography, gossiping, jealousy, lying, pride, selfishness, etc.).
5. When Christians show up to church to socialize, not to worship God and to hear what the Spirit is saying to the church.
6. When the pastor is quoting more jokes than the Word of God.
7. When there is no burden to see the lost saved.
8. When the church has become stagnant.
9. When the gifts of the Holy Spirit are not manifesting.
10. No miracles, signs, and wonders.
Revelation 2:4-5
"4 Nevertheless I have this against you, that you have left your first love.
5 Remember therefore from where you have fallen; repent and do the first works, or else I will come to you quickly and remove your lampstand from its place--unless you repent."
Revelation 3:15-18
"15 I know your deeds, that you are neither cold nor hot. I wish you were either one or the other!
16 So, because you are lukewarm--neither hot nor cold--I am about to spit you out of my mouth.
17 You say, 'I am rich; I have acquired wealth and do not need a thing.' But you do not realize that you are wretched, pitiful, poor, blind and naked.
18 I counsel you to buy from me gold refined in the fire, so you can become rich; and white clothes to wear, so you can cover your shameful nakedness; and salve to put on your eyes, so you can see."
How to start a revival:
Call a consecrated fast.
Joel 1:14
"14 Declare a holy fast; call a sacred assembly. Summon the elders and all who live in the land to the house of the LORD your God, and cry out to the LORD."
Joel 2:15-17
"15 Blow the trumpet in Zion, declare a holy fast, call a sacred assembly.
16 Gather the people, consecrate the assembly; bring together the elders, gather the children, those nursing at the breast. Let the bridegroom leave his room and the bride her chamber.
17 Let the priests, who minister before the LORD, weep between the temple porch and the altar. Let them say, 'Spare your people, O LORD. Do not make your inheritance an object of scorn, a byword among the nations. Why should they say among the peoples, 'Where is their God?'"
Joel 2:12
"12 'Even now,' declares the LORD, 'return to me with all your heart, with fasting and weeping and mourning.'"
Purpose of the fast:
1 .To humble ourselves before the Lord.
Psalms 35:13
"13 But as for me, when they were sick, My clothing was sackcloth; I humbled myself with fasting; And my prayer would return to my own heart."
1 Peter 5:6-7
"6 Therefore humble yourselves under the mighty hand of God, that He may exalt you in due time,
7 casting all your care upon Him, for He cares for you."
2. To break demonic strongholds.
Matthew 17:21
"However, this kind does not go out except by prayer and fasting."
Isaiah 58:6
"6 Is this not the fast that I have chosen: To loose the bonds of wickedness, To undo the heavy burdens, To let the oppressed go free, And that you break every yoke?"
3. To Worship the Lord and get filled with his Spirit.
4. To hear the voice of the Holy Spirit.
Acts 13:2-3
"2 While they were worshiping the Lord and fasting, the Holy Spirit said, "Set apart for me Barnabas and Saul for the work to which I have called them."
3 So after they had fasted and prayed, they placed their hands on them and sent them off."
Practical Advice
- The Pastor should begin to prepare the people by preaching the importance of a lifestyle of repentance, fasting and the need for a revival.
- The Pastor should call a one day fast for the whole church. and this should be a time of worship, repentance, and prayer, not a time to preach.
- The Pastor should bring the church eventually to a 3 day fast, at least quarterly. To keep the fire of the Holy Spirit burning and a passion to see the lost saved.
- The most committed members should pray and fast every Sunday until after the service. This would create an incredible atmosphere of the presence of God.
Additional Comments
- Many Pastors invite an evangelist to have a revival and the church gets excited and on fire. Then when the evangelist leaves the church returns back to normal.
- Many ministers have taught the church how to experience the power of God occasionally, but not how to maintain the power of God constantly.
- I believe that the church can maintain the revival by praying and fasting frequently.
- Fasting does not change God, but it changes us.
- The Church of Galatia experienced miracles constantly. It was part of their meetings.
Galatians 3:5
"5 Therefore He who supplies the Spirit to you and works miracles among you, does He do it by the works of the law, or by the hearing of faith?"
- The early church did not have internet, television, radio, phones, seminary degrees, but they had the power of prayer and fasting and by 313 A.D most of the Roman Empire was converted.
- We need to go back to the method God has given us in his word, because the modern methods obviously don’t work.
Why did these Believers do great things for the Lord?
Esther
Esther 4:16
"16 Go, gather together all the Jews who are in Susa, and fast for me. Do not eat or drink for three days, night or day. I and my maids will fast as you do. When this is done, I will go to the king, even though it is against the law. And if I perish, I perish."
Anna
Luke 2:37
"37 and then was a widow until she was eighty-four. She never left the temple but worshiped night and day, fasting and praying."
Cornelius
Acts 10:30-31
"30 So Cornelius said, "Four days ago I was fasting until this hour; and at the ninth hour I prayed in my house, and behold, a man stood before me in bright clothing,
31 and said, 'Cornelius, your prayer has been heard, and your alms are remembered in the sight of God."
Apostle Paul
2 Corinthians 6:4-5
"4 But in all things we commend ourselves as ministers of God: in much patience, in tribulations, in needs, in distresses,
5 in stripes, in imprisonments, in tumults, in labors, in sleeplessness, in fastings;"
2 Corinthians 11:27
"27 in weariness and toil, in sleeplessness often, in hunger and thirst, in fastings often, in cold and nakedness"
Polycarp
In 110 A.D, he urged the believers to fast so that they can overcome temptations.
Tertullian
Defended fasting in 210 A.D, as a great aid to religion.
Martin Luther Reformer
When he labor over the ancient manuscripts to translate the scriptures into German language, he combined his work with prayer and much fasting.
Charles Finney
Wrote in his biography that he had frequent days of private fasting. He said whenever he found the battery charge of the Spirit going down, when he felt the anointing of the Spirit weakening, he would go immediately into 3 day fast, and that he would always end those fasts feeling recharged.
John Wesley
Believed in fasting, and he personally fasted every Wednesday and Friday.
He was so convinced that fasting should be a mandatory part of a minister’s lifestyle that he told all his ministerial candidates that they would have to commit themselves to pray and fast every Wednesday and Friday if they wanted to minister with him, evangelize, or pastor a church founded through that movement.
Evangelist Peter Carrion
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