This is the
season for gardening, watching azaleas bloom, wishing you could die instead of
going through any more pollen explosions, and counting the days until
professional football starts. For many churches it is also the season for
scheduling their semi-annual series of worship services called spring revivals.
Churches
schedule a set of evening services for their members and community generally
with a guest preacher, sometimes guest musicians, and lasting from one day to
two weeks or longer. In preparation the calendar is cleared of all other
activities, publicity is spread throughout the congregation, and members are
encouraged to invite everyone they know. Members are also asked to spend time
praying for desired outcomes either alone or in groups.
Among us
Baptists that is where we have our challenge, deciding what are our desired
outcomes. We want to see new energy in the congregation. We want to see a
renewed vision for ministry. We want to see people who are out of relationship
with Christ develop one that offers new life. Unfortunately too often the
results can be boiled down to one question in everyone’s mind. Did we get
revived?
Perhaps a
better question would be do we want to be revived. We say we want spiritual energy
to come into our family of faith. We want a restoration of faith in the
miraculous power of God. We want to see the pattern of lives change into spiritually
healthy and growing individuals fully devoted to God. We want to see marriages
strengthened. We want to see children begin the journey of Christian faith. We
want to see priorities focus upon glorifying God through a renewed emphasis
upon serving others in the name of Christ.
Do we also
want to be revived to a life that brings the responsibilities of service and
sacrifice? Revival services that fill a slot in the calendar and allow us to
feel that we have tried is not revival but another church program maintained to
sooth our spiritually shallow commitment to Christ and the Christian life. As
the last song ends and the last church supper remains are cleaned up, members
head home weary but relieved they have satisfied the requirements for being
faithful, religious children of God. Being revived through transformation is
not a priority for their lives.
Revival,
being instilled with a renewed life to be given over to God, means change. We
can easily say we want to be revived, we want to live a life that reveals more
of Christ in us and honors our heavenly Father. Saying that is not the same
thing as being willing to accept the changes that go along with being revived.
We may not be so quick to pray for revival when we realize the sacrificial
service that is required to live out the revived life.
To be
transformed through spiritual revival would lead to loving God with all our
heart, soul, mind, and spirit and loving our neighbor as ourselves (Mark
12:28-31). To experience spiritual revival would involve a rejection of
temptation to conform to this world and choosing rather to be transformed by a
renewing of the mind (Romans 12:2). To experience spiritual revival would be to
consider others more important than ourselves (Romans 12:3, 10, 16) A life
impacted by spiritual revival would seek to serve rather than lead (Mark 10:43-45),
seek to give rather than receive (Acts 20:35), seek to be redemptive rather
than judgmental (Matthew 6:14-15). A life that has been touched by spiritual
revival will operate on a different standard from the world, returning good for
evil (Romans 12:17, 21).
If we reap
the fruit of true revival, we will be different from the world. We will stand
out from the world. We will live by a different standard, respond in different
ways, and represent a spiritual ethic that will not just be different from that
of society, but will stand in judgment upon society without us uttering a
single condemnatory word. To put it bluntly, if we live lives that have been
transformed by spirit-deep revival, the world won’t like us very much. Are we
ready to accept that?
