Revival Begins with Your Unequivocal ‘Yes’
Revival is God revealing Himself to men in awesome holiness and irresistible power. —Arthur Wallis
When I said yes to Jesus, it was not partial or conditional.
I don’t care for the bumper sticker of the ’70s, “Try Jesus.” As Winkie Pratney, the great teacher and friend from New Zealand, would tell us, “Jesus is not on trial. We are.”
My yes was a complete abandonment of my goals, ambitions, possessions and rights. All just to follow Him. It wasn’t careless, nor was it casual. Now I can see that He gave me grace for that moment as His absolute yes for me became my absolute yes for Him.
It has been close to 50 years since I prayed the scary prayer, “God you can have everything.” While I was raised in church and grew up with an awareness of God and His love for me, what God was asking from me was different from what I was accustomed to. I knew this was it, never to be brought up for renegotiation.
This journey has been more fulfilling and rewarding than I thought possible. It has also been costly in ways that never crossed my mind. But my choice to give all and do all was made a long time ago for the One who gave it all for me.
It’s important to know that the price we pay is never greater than the blessings we receive. His Kingdom doesn’t work that way. It would be foolish to plant one kernel of corn expecting to harvest only one kernel in return. Not even nature allows for that kind of thinking. And so, I try to live aware that every loss is temporary and every blessing is eternal.
“The price we pay is never greater than the blessings we receive.”
What I Have Seen
I must admit I have seen more than I ever thought I would. None of it has been earned. And even when He responded to great faith on my part; faith was His gift to me. All is by grace. Yet in another sense, I’ve seen what is available in Christ, and it feels like I’m just getting started. I have been apprehended by God for a purpose: revival—the outlandish move of the Holy Spirit. And in response, I am apprehending that purpose through the faith that comes from surrender.
The Invitation to Speak
In December of 1995, I was invited to speak at Bethel Church, the place where Beni and I have been for the last 25 years. This is the church family that sent us out 17 years earlier to pastor the people of Mountain Chapel in Weaverville, California. Bethel was its mother church.
The leadership from Bethel visited Mountain Chapel and had seen the move of God we were experiencing. As their pastor had just left, they asked me to come back and take his place. I came to speak on that December Sunday morning so the people could see what they would be getting if I were brought in. During my message, I told them, “I was born for revival, and it’s not negotiable. Revivals are very messy. If you don’t want that, you don’t want me.” The overwhelming response was yes! They were hungry and hoped they would see a great move of God in this next season.
My comment on revival not being negotiable wasn’t as rude as it looks in print. But neither was it a hyped statement trying to persuade anyone that I was the one they wanted. We were experiencing an amazing move of God in Weaverville, and I felt honored to be where God was having His way. A move to a bigger church was not important to me, nor did I necessarily consider it a promotion. All I wanted was to be a part of something that no person could take credit for. My comment was both gut-level honesty and a warning of pending challenges if they said yes. I knew that God showing up in unexpected ways would be an expensive endeavor for all of us.
Revival is a continuous yielding to the Holy Spirit. This is the purpose for which I am alive. My life-long journey is to learn His ways and navigate the direction of my life in response.
“Revival is a continuous yielding to the Holy Spirit. This is the purpose for which I am alive.”
Yielding is essential for great faith. But great faith is anything but passive. Little gets done through passive anything. Mountains are moved through the aggressive actions that prove faith’s existence. No amount of effort can bring about the miracle of God. It is not the product of our efforts or personal strength. Faith comes through surrender, not striving. But it must be displayed through actions.
The absolute yes from this church family reveals that the cry for revival is deeply embedded in the hearts of God’s people. While I know our definitions vary in different parts of the body of Christ, we know instinctively revival is the will of God because in revival God has His way.
Groomed for Revival
Twenty-five years earlier, I was in the youth group at this same church. My dad was the pastor, and Chip Worthington was the youth pastor. My dad eventually led this church into a wonderful move of God. Both the Jesus People Movement and the Charismatic Renewal were important expressions of who we were as a church family. But in 1970 we had the beginning of the birth pangs. I love the birth pang analogy, as it reminds us of this reality: “Birth pangs don’t bring the baby. It’s the baby that brings the birth pangs.” The ache in our hearts was in measure the indication that God had something wonderful planned for us. Our ache was the sign that what God had promised was on the way. It was a seed planted in our hearts and watered by Mario Murillo and many other Charismatic leaders. But it would be a year or so before a major breakthrough came.
I was around 19 at this time, and became immersed in Mario’s teachings as well as those of Winkie Pratney and our youth pastor Chip Worthington. They spoke often of this thing called “revival,” telling us the stories from history when God showed up in unusual and powerful ways to change individuals, the Church, and ultimately the world. It became clear to me that I had never seen one before, and the thing I grew up hearing was revival actually wasn’t. There’s no such thing as a week of revival meetings. Wildfire can’t be corralled into a seven-day period of time. We can have special meetings during that time, even powerful meetings, but not revival. Ultimately, revival is all-consuming, whether it is with one person carrying the fire of His presence, a church, or an entire movement. Little else matters during these times.
I am forever indebted to Chip and his wife Linda for so much. Chip fed me with a constant flow of books, especially the classics on prayer, like those by Andrew Murry, Praying Hyde, Norman Grubb, R. A. Torrey, and many more. This non-reader became a reader. I found food for my soul that I had never encountered before. I was hooked. In the natural realm we get hungry by not eating. But in the Kingdom, we get hungry by eating. This was certainly the newfound reality for me.
Prayer Was Key
Early in my journey, in everything I heard and read, the one constant was that revival comes through prayer. A lot of it. For a young man who had never prayed much beyond the blessings for family and food, this was a whole new thing. I started to get up early and go to bed late, having extensive times of prayer. It was good, and it was a beginning. Yet, I have to admit that most of my prayers were about me. But they were still prayed with great sincerity.
Knowing that holiness was important to God was probably the main reason my prayers were focused so heavily on me. I was prone to make the focus all about my unworthiness and impurity. These are spiritually sneaky ways of staying self-focused. I even confessed sins that I never committed, just in case they had entered my mind. It seems silly now, but hungry people are known to do desperate things. It was time with God nonetheless, and He treasured it as it was honest and my real effort to live in surrender to Him even though I remained the primary focus. Besides, all two-year-olds think the world rotates around them. I’m pretty sure that was my spiritual age.
Chip would call random prayer meetings, always late at night, and always for a great move of God. I remember one night around 30 of us went about 10 miles out of town to a lake called Whiskeytown Lake. It was around midnight. We tried to find an isolated area that was both open and level enough for us to stand in a big circle to worship God and pray. We finally found the ideal place, in the dark, mind you. I remember it as though it was yesterday. We sang the song, “Oh, How I Love Jesus!” over and over again, with hands raised high. We thought we had that whole part of the lake to ourselves as there were no campfires or any other signs of life. What we didn’t know is that this area was party central, and there were people getting drunk all around us at the campsites hidden by the manzanita bushes and pine trees. Soon people began to leave their party and come and stand around us, a group of singing young people. One by one someone from our group would step back from the circle to talk and pray with anyone who came out of the bushes. I remember how a guy I talked with was so deeply moved that he took his can of beer and began to pour it out on the ground as I shared the love of God with him. Apparently, his appetite was changing for a drink of the water from which you will never thirst again. This was one of those moments when God gave His own altar call, and people came to see our love for God, hoping to find a similar place of peace for themselves. It was later that I read the statement by John Wesley, “Light yourself on fire with passion, and people will come from miles to watch you burn.” That’s exactly what happened—simple, unadulterated love for Jesus. Many lives were touched that night. It was beautiful.
Dick Eastman, a true prophet of prayer, called for an all-night prayer gathering at a Christian campground. It was my first time for an all-nighter, but certainly not my last. Dick was known as a man of prayer and a teacher of prayer, leading countless numbers of people into a place of strength in their intercessory call. This particular gathering of young people will always stand out to me, as this was the first time I heard the voice of God so clearly. And He spoke to me about my life. This happened when I went into a side room next to the corporate meeting room just so I could rest. When I lay down, He spoke. The manner in which He spoke was to set a standard that would long impact how He would deal with me in the years to come. It wasn’t audible, but it was that clear. It’s a great mystery to me how He can be so loud, yet make no sound. He said, “If you will stay out of my way, I will use you in no small way.” That was it. No more, no less. It stood out to me for so many reasons. But one was that I don’t even think with those kinds of words —no small way. If I had come up with such a statement, I would have said, in a big way. Secondly, it was my introduction to the sovereignty of God. I couldn’t bring about what God had planned, but I could interfere. Anyway, the encounter deeply impacted me. It was years before I told anyone about that moment. I’ve never written about it until now.
All night prayer meetings became more common. Sometimes they were organized by our leaders, and sometimes we did them on our own. We prayed, knowing that something good would happen as a result. Sometimes the good that happened was immediate, but it was often an investment into our future.
Another such prayer meeting happened even later at night. Again, it was probably another 30 people or so, and this time it took place around 2 am, at a small, 24-hour grocery store. We chose that place because their parking lot had become the main location in town to buy illegal drugs. Dealers would linger there for a sale, or the pay phone would be used, and the dealer would come with the goods. Their activities were rather brazen and in the open. This was during the hippie era, so there were long-haired, young people all over this establishment. As we gathered in the parking lot to pray, the manager came out and mocked us with laughter. It was too late for any crowds to be there. If ever I heard demonic laughter, it was then. Soon the police came. The officer asked Chip what we were doing. He said, “We’re praying for you.” The officer thanked him and asked him to keep it up and then left. We did. But something happened that night that I’ll never forget. The drug dealing stopped at that location from that night on. It completely stopped. I drove by the store the next night, and there was no crowd lingering, which was unheard of. This was also confirmed by a friend of mine who was a drug user at that time. After his conversion to Christ, we were talking about how he came to meet Jesus. He mentioned how he used to buy drugs at that same grocery store. But when he went there to buy his drugs on this particular Saturday night, as he had apparently done many times before, there was no one there. He could never figure how or why the drug dealers suddenly stopped using this location. There didn’t seem to be any logical explanation. We compared notes and found it was following our prayer meeting. Prayer matters. It makes a difference. But if prayers don’t move us, they won’t move Him.
Interestingly, this same man began to lead prayer teams in various locations around our city in the years that followed. They would sense God directing them to pray for a particular business known for sin and depravity. For what it’s worth, they were not prayers for judgment. We simply prayed for God to come and have His way. On most if not all occasions those businesses closed down quickly after such prayers. I have a big place in my heart for businesses. They are the bedrock of our communities. And I love supporting them. But a business whose livelihood depends on promoting evil is another matter altogether. It’s not my call. God knows. And it’s an amazing journey to see what has to leave when His manifest presence comes.
Miracles, Too
Although I believed in God’s power to heal, I had not seen much. During this time, the youth group had twin girls who had come to Christ. They both had very severe epilepsy. We prayed, and they were both healed. On their own they stopped all medication, which we found out later was quite dangerous because of their unusually high dosage. But there were no effects at all. Not only that, when the mother found out what they had done, she panicked and took them to the doctor. He verified what had happened and warned the mother that if they started that level of medication again, they could die.
Needless to say, I began to burn for revival. I became hungry. I prayed for it, declared my desire for it, and went anywhere I thought it might be possible to see it, all while not really knowing what it was. But I knew enough to know it was good, and it was God. That’s all I needed to know in order to pursue it. And so, I did, day and night.
Once in the middle of the night, God came in answer to my prayer for more of Him, yet not in a way I had expected. I went from a dead sleep to being wide-awake in a moment. Unexplainable power began to pulsate through my body, seemingly just shy of electrocution. It was as though I had been plugged into a wall socket with a thousand volts of electricity flowing through my body. My arms and legs shot out in silent explosions as if something was released through my hands and feet. The more I tried to stop it, the worse it got.
I soon discovered that this was not a wrestling match I was going to win. I heard no voice, nor did I have any visions. This was simply the most overwhelming experience of my life. It was raw power…it was God. He came in response to a prayer I had been praying for months—God, I must have more of you at any cost!
The evening before was glorious. We were having meetings with a good friend and prophet, Dick Joyce. The year was 1995. At the end of the meeting, I prayed for a friend who was having difficulty experiencing God’s presence. I told him that I felt God was going to surprise him with an encounter that could come in the middle of the day, or even at 3 a.m. When the power fell on me that night, I looked at the clock. It was 3 a.m., exactly. I knew I had been set up.
For months I had been asking God to give me more of Him. I wasn’t sure of the correct way to pray, nor did I understand the doctrine behind my request. All I knew was I was hungry for God. It had been my constant cry day and night.
This divine moment was glorious, but not pleasant. At first, I was embarrassed, even though I was the only one who knew I was in that condition. As I lay there, I had a mental picture of me standing before my congregation, preaching the Word as I loved to do. But I saw myself with my arms and legs flailing about as though I had serious physical problems. The scene changed—I was walking down the main street of our town, in front of my favorite restaurant, again arms and legs moving about without control.
I didn’t know of anyone who would believe that this was from God. I recalled Jacob and his encounter with the angel of the Lord. He limped for the rest of His life. And then there was Mary, the mother of Jesus. She had an experience with God that not even her fiancé believed, although a visit from an angel helped to change his mind. As a result, she bore the Christ-child…and then bore a stigma for the remainder of her days as the mother of the illegitimate child. It was becoming clear; the favor of God sometimes looks different from the perspective of earth than from heaven. My request for more of God carried a price.
Tears began to soak my pillowcase as I remembered the prayers of the previous months and contrasted them with the scenes that just passed through my mind. At the forefront was the realization that God wanted to make an exchange—His increased presence for my dignity. It’s difficult to explain how you know the purpose of such an encounter. All I can say is you just know. You know His purpose so clearly that every other reality fades into the shadows, as God puts His finger on the one thing that matters to Him.
In the midst of the tears came a point of no return. I gladly yielded, crying, More, God. More! I must have more of You at any cost! If I lose respectability and get You in the exchange, I’ll gladly make that trade. Just give me more of You!
The power surges didn’t stop. They continued throughout the night, with me weeping and praying, More Lord, more, please give me more of You. It all stopped at 6:38 a.m., at which time I got out of bed completely refreshed. This experience continued the following two nights, beginning moments after getting into bed.
He Came to Bethel in Power!
Beni and I accepted the invitation to be the new senior pastors of Bethel Church and began serving in that capacity in February of 1996. They were a wonderful group of believers, with an amazing pastoral team, which I inherited from the previous pastor. On one of the first Sunday nights, I invited the whole church up to the front of the sanctuary. I wanted us to pray together. The church was thankful that we had come to be their pastors, but they were also very tired. Their previous pastor, Ray Larson, was a wonderful man and personal friend. He had transitioned around eight months earlier. They had been searching for his replacement during this time and had become weary in doing so. As hundreds of people gathered around the front of the auditorium, Beni and I simply stood together on the platform and invited the Holy Spirit to come. You could argue the case that He was already there, which would be biblically accurate. We gathered in His name and He was present. But there are dimensions and levels of His presence that a doctrine won’t satisfy, any more than a marriage license can satisfy the longing we have for relationship with our spouse. In the same way that a marriage license makes a relationship possible, so the doctrine invites us to experience Him in a way that is transformative. He is to be encountered, known, and enjoyed. Plus, there is always more.
We shared a genuine ache in our hearts for the MORE of God to fill our lives and that place. As I lifted up my voice, He came. The power of God fell in the room that night. It was beautiful. But He came noticeably on only one person. I’m not saying this woman was the only one touched by God, as He moves in subtle ways as well as in the overtly powerful demonstrations. But in this case His obvious manifestation of power fell on one person only, out of the hundreds present. She fell to the ground under the weighty presence of God, trembling under His power. Beni and I looked at each other and said, “We’ve got it. It is now unstoppable!” Metaphorically speaking this was the “cloud the size of a man’s hand,” which was a moment given to Elijah when he was praying for rain. The small sign from God was all he needed to know that rain was at hand, and he ran for cover as a result. (See 1 Kings 18:44.) In the days that followed, we experienced the ever-increasing downpour we had only read about in history books on revival. And through those stories of old, this had become our dream. It should be normal for us to dream and explore what might be possible in our lifetimes.
I knew that what God was doing in the earth would now be unstoppable, as it was now in the church family, not just the leadership team. And as much as I try to get rid of that notion that only pastoral staff members are ministers, there’s a residue in people’s thinking. Anyway, once the power of the Holy Spirit fell upon this one woman, it was like the leaven that gets kneaded into dough. Once it’s in, it can’t be removed. We knew that the impact of this move of God would become measurable in time. And it was.
“It should be normal for us to dream and explore what might be possible in our lifetimes.”
As I consider that moment which became so formative in giving place to God’s activities among us, I remember the story of Evan Roberts in one of my favorite revivals of all time: The Welsh Revival of 1904 and 1905. In the first meeting, the pastor/vicar allowed Evan to speak to anyone who wanted to stay after the main meeting. In this after-glow gathering, Evan challenged those present to give their all to Jesus. The 16 adults present all responded. By the end of the week, he had the public confession of faith in Jesus from a total of 65 people. The next day he wrote to the editor of the newspaper saying, “We are on the eve of a great and grand Revival, the greatest Wales has ever seen. [1] The 65 surrendered believers were his “cloud, the size of a man’s hand.” It wasn’t the number of people that mattered. It was the quality of their yes. And much like the mustard seed that grows into a large plant or the loaves and fishes multiplied to feed a multitude, so it is with anything we give to Jesus in surrender. It is limitless in its inherent potential through the completeness of our yes.
Many people abort what God has given them because it didn’t come to them fully developed. I hear from so many who look at what God is doing and say, “This isn’t revival” as though they speak with utmost discernment and maturity. It saddens me, really. Nothing of significance grows when we verbally abuse or discredit any of the seemingly small gifts of God. The Scripture is clear about not despising small beginnings. Their criticisms become self-fulfilling prophecies in that those subtle touches of God seldom grow into all that God intended. And the critic lives with the false sense of being right through their discernment. It is usually not discernment. It is unbelief. Their words are destructive to the work of God. Perhaps this is why God silenced Zacharias for nine months while his son, John, was growing in the womb. His words and questions were of unbelief, not curiosity, and they were very destructive in nature.
We are heirs and stewards of life and death according to Paul in First Corinthians 3:22. This truth connects powerfully to what is revealed in the book of wisdom, Proverbs 18:21: “Death and life are in the power of the tongue.” That wasn’t made up by any group, or denomination. God said it. We must take heed and be careful for what comes out of our mouths regarding anything that God does or gives. I’ve grieved as I’ve watched fellow believers criticize what God gave them because it wasn’t what they expected or wanted. If I give two gifts to each of my children, one expensive and one inexpensive, I will not be happy with them if they celebrate the expensive gift and leave the other under their chair. And yet believers do that all the time. They’ll say something like, “I’m pursuing being used by God in prophecy. Tongues is a lesser gift; therefore, I’ll give my attention to what God values most.” That is an abuse of Scripture and ignores the fact that God only does wonderous things. Praying in tongues is a most special gift as it is the only one of the nine listed that is specifically to be used for our edification. Plus, it enables us to speak directly to God from our spiritual man, with no soulish interference. (See I Cor. 14:2) Our treatment of the gifts of the Holy Spirit runs an interesting parallel course to our readiness to live in the anointing for revival.
Most of the time our greatest prayers are answered in seed form to give us the chance to grow in our ability to steward the answer as it comes in fullness. This sets the stage for the larger answer. In other words, instead of God giving them an oak tree, He gives them an acorn. Faith sees there’s an oak tree in the acorn. And there’s an unlimited number of acorns in the oak tree. The point is we must see the potential in the answer He gives us, or we’ll not take care of the answer properly.
In the months that followed, I began to see things happen that I had hungered for, for as long as I could remember. I had always read about the God who healed and set free, but had never seen it on a large scale.
Thankful, But Not Satisfied
When you start to see things you’ve only heard about by reading of revivals in Church history stories, or from the stories found on the pages of Scripture, it’s almost too much to handle. Thankfulness erupts! But there is also a sobering awareness that this precious gift from God must not be mishandled, as it is the evidence that represents and reveals His heart the most. We are stewards. But as I mentioned earlier, one of the outcomes of eating in the Kingdom is greater hunger. It is no wonder that participating in the outpourings of the Holy Spirit actually creates an even greater hunger for the same—outpourings of the Holy Spirit. We are daily being introduced to a Kingdom without limits or end.
Notes
1. Phillips, Evan Roberts, 190. Letter from Evan Roberts to Elsie Phillips, November 5, 1904.
