What is a revival? According to Ron Mcintosh, former chaplain of ORU, the term ‘revival’ means several things. For one, it is a divine attack on society. It is the marshaling of forces fatal to the kingdom of darkness. It is the enlisting, training, and empowering of believers as a prelude to evangelism. Revival is God’s military tactic which concentrates His resources for a vital blow at a crucial moment. It is a reinvigoration of God’s people with His truth and power.¹ As you can see, true revival covers a wide and diverse range. In the last two podcasts, Why Humility Is Part of An Excellent Life and Humility: Putting on God’s Suit we introduced and spoke on the fruit of the spirit called humility. Humility certainly finds it’s way into the spectrum of revival via verses like 2 Chronicles 7:14. We’ll take a look at this and some other matters as we start this new series with the subject ‘Why Revival Is Fatal to the Kingdom of Darkness’, all this and more on this week’s Light on Life.

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Accept the Challenge

Each week’s podcast contains a call to action. The Word of God will not produce in your life unless you put into operation.
This week’s call is:

Pray that the Spirit of God will start a revival in you. Ask Him to stir up the flames on the inside of you.

Join the Conversation

Each week’s podcast also contains a question designed to encourage testimony. Testimony is vital to a believer’s life. We overcome by it (Rev. 12:11).
This week’s question is:

Question: In what ways have you experienced personal revival? How did it flame up inside of you? Please share your story in the comments section below.

About Emery

Emery committed his life to the Lord Jesus Christ over 40 years ago and has served as both a full-time pastor and an itinerant minister. Both he and his wife Sharon of 35 years emphasize personal growth and development through the Word of God. The ministry of the Holy Spirit is both the focus and the hallmark of their mission. Read more about them here.

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Podcast Notes

Some Bible Verses Using the Word Revive

• The exact word ‘revival’ is not found in the Bible but the concept of the word is in the form of the words ‘revive’ and ‘quicken’.

Psalm 85:6 (ESV) — 6 Will you not revive us again, that your people may rejoice in you?

• No one can prove for certain what the background to this psalm is.
• Why did the Psalmist declare that he needed reviving?
• The most common view is that this is referring to Israel coming back from Babylonian captivity.
• Israel sinned themselves into captivity.
• They repeatedly turned away from God in disobedience.
• They paid mightily for their choices.

Psalm 137:1–4 (ESV) — 1 By the waters of Babylon, there we sat down and wept, when we remembered Zion. 2 On the willows there we hung up our lyres. 3 For there our captors required of us songs, and our tormentors, mirth, saying, “Sing us one of the songs of Zion!” 4 How shall we sing the LORD’s song in a foreign land?

• Now that the exiles are returning physically to their homeland they are also returning to the God they left behind.
• And they do it with these words, will you not revive us that we can rejoice in you again?
• The word ‘revive’ in Psalm 85:6 is a verb.
• It is from the Hebrew word ‘chayah’.
• It is an active moving of God on the behalf of His people.

Personal Revival

• When you experience His reviving personally then revival becomes an active moving of God on your behalf.
• Listen to this personal encounter with God here in the one-hundred thirty-eight psalm.

Psalm 138:7 (NKJV) — 7 Though I walk in the midst of trouble, You will revive me; You will stretch out Your hand Against the wrath of my enemies, And Your right hand will save me.

• Being lifted, being renewed, being restored, coming back to life again, being quickened are all ‘revival concepts.’

A More Technical Definition of Revival

• The more technical definition of the word ‘revive’ means to give new life or energy to.
  • It means “to bring back to life,” to “restore to consciousness,” or to “restore to a previous condition.²
• No matter where you are.
• Or how badly you have messed up, in the middle of your trouble, you can have God’s reviving and revitalizing mercy.

Habakkuk 3:2 (ESV) — 2 O LORD, I have heard the report of you, and your work, O LORD, do I fear. In the midst of the years revive it; in the midst of the years make it known; in wrath remember mercy.

Hosea 6:2 (ESV) — 2 After two days he will revive us; on the third day he will raise us up, that we may live before him.

The Classical Definition of Revival

• Now, let’s take a look at some classical definitions of revival.
• In its classic sense, revival is a season of unusual divine visitation resulting in deep repentance, supernatural renewal, and sweeping reformation in the Church, along with the radical conversion of sinners in the world, often producing moral, social, and even economic change in the local or national communities.³

Revival at a National Level: King Asa

• The Word of God is full of these kinds of moves.
• God’s power overshadowing and sweeping through a nation.
• Consider the move of God under King Asa.
• Asa was the third king of Judah.
• He was a good king doing what was right in the sight of the Lord.
• He reigned as King for forty-one years.

1 Kings 15:10–15 (ESV) — 10 and he reigned forty-one years in Jerusalem. His mother’s name was Maacah the daughter of Abishalom. 11 And Asa did what was right in the eyes of the LORD, as David his father had done. 12 He put away the male cult prostitutes out of the land and removed all the idols that his fathers had made. 13 He also removed Maacah his mother from being queen mother because she had made an abominable image for Asherah. And Asa cut down her image and burned it at the brook Kidron. 14 But the high places were not taken away. Nevertheless, the heart of Asa was wholly true to the LORD all his days. 15 And he brought into the house of the LORD the sacred gifts of his father and his own sacred gifts, silver, and gold, and vessels.

How Revival Came Via King Asa

• This account in First Kings tells us what Asa did but it doesn’t tell us why he did it.
• For that, you need to read the same account in First Chronicles.

2 Chronicles 15:1–10 (ESV) — 1 The Spirit of God came upon Azariah the son of Oded, 2 and he went out to meet Asa and said to him, “Hear me, Asa, and all Judah and Benjamin: The LORD is with you while you are with him. If you seek him, he will be found by you, but if you forsake him, he will forsake you. 3 For a long time Israel was without the true God, and without a teaching priest and without law, 4 but when in their distress they turned to the LORD, the God of Israel, and sought him, he was found by them. 5 In those times there was no peace to him who went out or to him who came in, for great disturbances afflicted all the inhabitants of the lands. 6 They were broken in pieces. Nation was crushed by nation and city by city, for God troubled them with every sort of distress. 7 But you, take courage! Do not let your hands be weak, for your work shall be rewarded.” 8 As soon as Asa heard these words, the prophecy of Azariah the son of Oded, he took courage and put away the detestable idols from all the land of Judah and Benjamin and from the cities that he had taken in the hill country of Ephraim, and he repaired the altar of the LORD that was in front of the vestibule of the house of the LORD. 9 And he gathered all Judah and Benjamin, and those from Ephraim, Manasseh, and Simeon who were residing with them, for great numbers had deserted to him from Israel when they saw that the LORD his God was with him. 10 They were gathered at Jerusalem in the third month of the fifteenth year of the reign of Asa.

• Did you hear these words?
• King Asa wasn’t responsible for the great reform in Israel.
• The Spirit of God was.
• He came upon the prophet Oded.
• The Holy Ghost moved him to speak.
• It was the anointing of God infiltrating the nation.
• As we said earlier, revival is a divine attack on society.
• The attack was initiated at the state level.
• When the King heard the anointed words of the prophet, the scripture says ‘he took courage.’
• The phrase, ‘he took courage’ means to strengthen.
• It means to make strong or stronger.

Why King Asa Needed Courage

• Before Asa heard these prophetic words, he wasn’t strong enough within himself, he wasn’t courageous enough within himself to do anything about the blatant disregard for God that Judah had fallen into under King Abijah, the previous King of Judah.

1 Kings 15:1–3 (ESV) — 1 Now in the eighteenth year of King Jeroboam the son of Nebat, Abijam began to reign over Judah. 2 He reigned for three years in Jerusalem. His mother’s name was Maacah the daughter of Abishalom. 3 And he walked in all the sins that his father did before him, and his heart was not wholly true to the LORD his God, as the heart of David his father.

• Abijah was like his daddy Rehoboam.
• That’s bad news.
• So, what you have here is three generations of family.
• Grandfather King Rehoboam was wicked.
• Father King Abijah was a sinful slop of a man.
• And you here you have the son, Asa.
• What chance do you have on your own, when you have that kind of heritage in front of you?
• Asa needed help.
• The King needed courage.
• The nation he was leading needed reviving.
• Enter the Spirit of the living God.
• And man did it change the whole course of things for the nation of Judah.
• If this move of God hadn’t occurred, Judah could have easily ended up like Israel, on a bag King epidemic, one evil king after another.
• That’s what happened with the other tribes of Israel.
• So, let’s say it again, the Spirit of God used this one prophetic utterance, the result of which was to give enough courage to the king to act to use his position and authority to crush the scrounge of idolatry that had swept the nation.
• And man did King Asa have courage.
• Asa removed his own mother from her position as queen.

1 Kings 15:11–13 (ESV) — 11 And Asa did what was right in the eyes of the LORD, as David his father had done. 12 He put away the male cult prostitutes out of the land and removed all the idols that his fathers had made. 13 He also removed Maacah his mother from being queen mother because she had made an abominable image for Asherah. And Asa cut down her image and burned it at the brook Kidron.

• Bet you that didn’t go over well in the Asa household.
• Do you think the family reunions took on a different flavor from then on?

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