Desire to experience the extraordinary times known as Revivals features highly in evangelical prayer.
Students of history will tell you these times which feature great manifestations of spiritual awakening are followed by periods of spiritual decline, showing the fruit of the lack of attention to biblical doctrine, local church fellowship and faithful worship.
Places where revivals flourished become spiritual scorched earth.
Reformation, by contrast, is marked by a desire for true teaching, accountability within churches and worship that is focussed on God.
There is a certain attraction to the excitement of a revival, but perhaps we should be more desirous of the more enduring fruit of reformation.
These thoughts have been provoked by Bill Smith, who blogs at The Christian Curmudgeon.
Some of his thoughts:
Why did the Apostles, facing as they did in certain congregations (e.g. Corinth), not include in their letters exhortations to seek and pray for revival?
Why don’t we long for and pray for reformation with the fervency and frequency we do for revival? Did not the Reformation have longer and more far reaching effects than the Revivals?
…
Revivals, like all things that emphasize and rely on experiences, are not sustainable. Experiences are about feelings, godly or otherwise. Feelings by nature and necessity fade and fluctuate. When one relies on experiences he is setting himself up for disappointment and disillusionment. Experiences are like romantic love. You can’t build a lifetime marriage relationship on romantic love, nor can you build a lifetime relationship with God on even the sweetest frame.
Perhaps I can suggest a more excellent way. Have confidence in ordinary worship and the ordinary means of grace, the read and preached Word, the sacraments of baptism and the Lord’s Supper, and the public prayers. Encourage the ordinary Christian life lived by ordinary observant Christians.
Read the whole post here.
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