Theology Thursday: Revival

Have you ever seen an invitation to a “revival” scheduled to arrive on a certain date at 7:00PM? That model comes directly from the Second Great Awakening in the 1800s where often special events were engineered to create emotional responses. (This is not to say that God wasn’t working in great ways during the Second Great Awakening or that modern “revival meetings” are not helpful.)

The First Great Awakening, however, was not planned. In fact, the leaders (e.g., Jonathan Edwards and George Whitfield) had this response to it: they were surprised.

In Ian Murray’s book on this topic, Revival and Revivalism, he says,

Thus what characterizes a revival is not the employment of unusual or special means but rather the extraordinary blessing attending the normal means of grace.

There were no unusual evangelistic meetings, no special arrangements, no announcements of pending revivals. Pastors were simply continuing in the services they had conducted for many years when the great change began. That’s why so many of them could say ‘the first appearance of the work was sudden and unexpected.’

God works when and how he pleases. We can never engineer feelings and changes of the heart, but we can use the normal, ordinary means of grace that God has given us, which is prayer, and attendance to the Word. We can’t make a revival happen; but we can pray for one.

Revival and Revialism is available in the church library.