Today we have a simple and a straightforward question, and it comes into us from a listener

who writes this, Pastor John, how can I understand revival according to the Bible and what

would we expect to see if it broke out again today?

What would you say, Pastor John?

The idea of revival originates in the reality that on the one hand, God is the decisive

giver of all spiritual life, and on the other hand, humans, even those who are born

again, and part of God's covenant family, from time to time, drift into a kind of lifelessness

and lethargy and backsliding and indifference and weakness.

And when you put those two together, God as the giver of life and man as ever drifting

towards a lifelessness, what you get is the need for the hope of reviving, coming back

to life, a fresh outpouring of God's life giving spirit on his people.

That's what revival is.

So for example, we read in Psalm 85 verse 6, will not you revive us again, oh God, that

your people may rejoice in you, or Habakkuk chapter 3 verse 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, or Psalm 80 verse 18, give

us life that we may call upon your name, or Isaiah 57, 15, thus says the one who is high

and lifted up, who inhabits the eternity, whose name is holy, I dwell in the hide, holy

place, and also with him, who is of a contrite and lowly spirit to revive the spirit of the

lowly, to revive the heart of the contrite, and alongside those passages about reviving,

you read the history of Israel and it's just one up and down after the other.

One king is wicked and God withholds his blessing or sends judgment, another king recovers

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