Lately we have seen more posts from people who are hoping that we will see revival in our lifetime. The problem is … a major renewal has been taking place for at least 30 years now, and much of the Church doesn’t even know about it! What’s even more distressing, some have been told about it and failed to grasp what was being shared, and still others have heard about it and gone on the offensive against it!
I recently came across an article written by a well-meaning Christian who is trying to encourage people to begin doing “revival things” with the hope that the passion will catch on and we will have a revival. But revival is not about creating fervor or rededicating ourselves to reading the Bible more often. And the idea that we can generate revival by becoming more involved in the kinds of things that come out of revival is like putting the cart ahead of the horse.
What is so tragic here is that so much of the church is unaware that God has been doing a new work among Christians now for at least 30 years. It is taking a different form than those Awakenings of the past, with a lot of it showing up as personal transformation. People are getting set free from old wounds and learninng to build an authentic relationship with God that changes almost everything else about their spiritual life.
The leading edge of this renewal is made up of three major movements, which I will name here but cover in detail elsewhere.
- Christian Spiritual Formation
- Inner Healing Prayer Ministries
- Teaching true grace (God at work in us) and exposing legalism
If more churches would pay attention to these movements and retrain their ministers in these areas, we might actually get to see a Great Awakening.