Revival Isn’t Enough.

One day Mike and I were dialoguing with a group of Christian leaders at a conference we were attending on the subject of transformation when I asked, “How do we maintain the change that comes with revival?”

“How do we know that the societies we have seen transformed will still be living for God in a decade, let alone a hundred years from now?”

If you study the subject, you’ll find that some revivals have had dramatic, long-reaching consequences. Luther’s Reformation led to Protestantism, and Protestantism led to many social experiments, including the American experiment and opening of the door to new ways of thinking about government, science, economics, politics, education, the relation of church and state, and so on.

We’ve also had several significant revival periods in American history, including the First Great Awakening with Gilbert Tennet, Jonathan Edwards, and George Whitefield from 1740 to 1742; the Second Great Awakening beginning in the early 1800s with revivalist camp meetings; a national revival in 1831 spurred by Charles Finney’s preaching and revival in Rochester, New York; a Civil War revival among Southern army troops; a post-Civil War Third Great Awakening with Dwight L. Moody and John Mott, who was a long-time president of the YMCA and helped found the Student Volunteer Movement, which lasted all the way until World War I; and a Fourth Great Awakening that began near the turn of the twentieth century with the Azusa Street Revival, and that has led to four hundred million Pentecostal/Charismatics in the worldwide movement after a mere one hundred years. Since World War II, America has experienced several streams of awakening that included the latter rain/healing movement, the prophetic movement, Billy Graham evangelistic meetings, and the ministries of InterVarsity, Navigators, Campus Crusade, Campus Life, Young Life, and others. All of these movements have contributed to what our society is about. But all revivals include two dynamics: they bring about both spiritual awakening and spiritual opposition. The devil plays on human gullibility and weakness to subvert revivals even as they begin.

Most revivals have proven to last only a few years. The Welsh Revival, for instance, went from approximately 1904 to 1906, depending on which account one reads. It is said that around one hundred thousand were born again during that time. The fire of God swept the nation and revival brought radical transformation. Things changed so much, in fact, that the donkeys that worked the coal mines had to be retrained because they were so used to receiving curses as commands. When the workers didn’t curse anymore, the donkeys didn’t know what to do. Bars closed because people stopped having the “demon drink.” Prayer meetings were more popular than rugby matches—now that is amazing! It was a singing revival, as praises to God rang forth from the nation.

Yet even with most of the nation saved, Wales fell backward, influenced by anti-God philosophies such as Darwinism and an educational system aimed at making students employable rather than teaching them how to live. Some say it was a lack of maturity and of sound biblical teaching, as the leader of the movement, Evan Roberts, was only twenty-six and went into seclusion only months after the revival began.

I don’t think age matters, however. King Josiah was also twenty-six at the time he led national reform, and that reform stuck. Perhaps the failure of the revival to have staying power in Wales was the result of a lack of spiritual fathers mature enough to disciple the people into staying solid in their faith and teaching them how to make that faith the basis of their government and culture. Rees Howells, a prominent leader who emerged from the ranks of the coal miners during the Welsh Revival, emphasized the need for a prayer movement to sustain revival, and I concur. In fact, I dedicate a chapter in my book, Reformer’s Arise, to “legislating in the heavens,” which must be done in order to see a nation discipled.

What is the solution, then? I propose that a massive paradigm shift back to a biblical worldview is needed on every level. To reform, again, means “to amend what is corrupt; to return things to their God-ordained order and organization.” Many today are talking about the transformation of their nations, but transforming a nation is really only “changing the outward form or appearance.” Without a reformation, we will never see lasting transformation.

Our Need to Renew Our Minds

Ironically, most of us do not even know that our thinking and worldview have been polluted, or at least influenced, by secularism, naturalism, and humanistic rationalism through our educational system, media, and culture. We do not have a clue as to where to start in the process of reforming our nations. First, we don’t see things the way God sees them. Even when we come to Scripture, we too often interpret it through culture-tinted glasses rather than digging into God’s Word and letting it reform our hearts and renew our thinking. To be frank, Christianity today is simply lacking in Christ—God’s Living Word revealed to us by the Holy Spirit through Bible study and prayer.

It isn’t that the Bible is difficult to understand; it is that we don’t bring the right questions to it. We spend a lot of time studying about prayer, the fruit of the Spirit, end-time events, and Christian character, but how often do we study the Bible for answers about what a discipled nation’s government should look like? How our social services and welfare system should operate? How we should educate our children, run our banks, or make our laws?

Too many of us have fallen into the trap of accepting the separation of church and state as if it were a biblical concept. It seems like such a good idea after the corruption of the Dark Ages that brought on Luther’s Reformation and the problems we face because of nations based on religious law today in the Middle East. Yet instead of tossing the Bible out of the public arena, we need to look to the Scriptures again and let the Holy Spirit teach us how to do these things as God would do them in heaven. After all, His wisdom is still relevant.

Once we start to take a fresh look at Scripture, God is going to show us how, as a Holy Nation, to begin to affect our world on a reformational level that will produce lasting transformation. Because I am not a specialist on every aspect of society, rather than try to propose solutions that I am not equipped to give, I want to prime the pump on reformational thinking in a variety of important areas. To put it in a nutshell, “We need our minds renewed (reformed) so we can be transformed.” The process of becoming a Holy Nation first requires some major restructuring of our thinking.

This leads to a major point I want to make:

“Our minds need to be discipled before we can disciple a nation.”

Or, to put it biblically:

If you abide in My word, you are My disciples indeed. And you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free ( John 8:31-32).

And:

Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God (Romans 12:2).

How we see truth depends on our starting point. The war for our minds and the way we think has largely been won by the way we have all been taught to see the world. This is why I want to bring up the subject of worldview. Most of us, even strong believers, see the world through a lens polluted by humanistic thinking, and on a deeper level than we could ever imagine. Even those of us who truly believe God’s Word is the final authority have had our margins moved outside of scriptural bounds by the society in which we were educated. This education has not only been in the classroom but through media and supposedly neutral programs termed as “scientific.” The more I’ve delved into the subject of the biblical discipleship of nations, the more I’ve realized that my own worldview has been affected by secularistic thinking.

Let me give you an example: Once while on a trip to the state of Hawaii, we had stopped to visit with a local leader. At a meeting sometime before this, I had prophesied that Hawaii would be the first Christian state in America, and I was excited to see the level of engagement that various leaders were making with that prophecy. After our meeting, Mike and I were passing the state courthouse when I had one of those “stop here right now, there is a missing piece on your adventure to disciple nations” moments. Because we were on vacation, God had to give Mike a large measure of patience for those recurring moments.

We parked and went into the museum dedicated to the first territorial court system of Hawaii. As we read the signs, we were amazed! Hawaii’s legal system had been built upon the Ten Commandments. Literally, what was legal in heaven was legal on earth.

This meant that, among other things, adultery was just as illegal as killing and stealing were. I am ashamed to admit that this gave me pause to think. I said to Mike, “Can we legislate morality in that way today?” Mike replied in his usual logical manner, “Of course, honey, we do it all the time! Why do you think it’s illegal to steal?”

I stood on the spot, simply stunned. Somehow in my list of the Ten Commandments, I had allowed them to become merely moral directives, but not social laws. I was thinking of them just as secularists do, but not as God does. I had forgotten that at one time in Israel’s his- tory adultery was not only immoral but illegal. I had also subliminally accepted the notion that “whatever two people do in private is no one else’s business.” It hadn’t occurred to me that for the sake of preserving the sanctity of marriage it wasn’t God’s will for a society to allow adultery. I had fallen into the thinking of sociological justice—accepting what the society as a whole believes should be illegal—rather than adhering to biblical justice. Embarrassing, isn’t it? Essentially I had come to believe that certain laws of God could not be valid in our society today just because the society I lived in had decided against them.

It would be good to engage both your heart and mind to become willing to make a radical shift in your thinking. To do that, ask the Holy Spirit to expose to you any way that you have been affected by secularism or any other “ism” that is ungodly. Pray with me:

O Lord,

I need Your help! I submit my whole self to You. Please, by the power of the Holy Spirit, come as a divine surgeon into my thinking. Father, anywhere that I have been taught or come to believe what is false thinking—not thinking according to Your Word and will for my life—change me. Change the way I think. Renew my mind. I do not want to be conformed to the world but desire to see Your kingdom come and Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.

In Jesus’ name, Amen.