Christian Viewpoint: Dramatic revival can have lasting change on people
Register for free to read more of the latest local news. It's easy and will only take a moment.
‘The mix of hope and joy and peace is indescribably strong,’ wrote Dr Thomas McCall. He was visiting the Hughes Auditorium at Asbury University in Kentucky, USA.
At the end of the daily chapel service one Wednesday in February some of the students had a powerful sense of God’s presence. They remained in the chapel, thanking God, praying for themselves and for the world, ‘expressing, repentance and contrition for sin.’ Soon they were joined by more students, from their own campus, and other universities. This ‘revival’, which lasted non-stop for almost a fortnight, has prompted interest around the world.
Was this genuinely spontaneous? According to McCall, There was ‘no pressure or hype. There was no manipulation. There was no high-pitched emotional fervour.’ The sense of God’s Holy Spirit at work was ‘indescribably powerful, but also so gentle.’
RELATED: Read more from John Dempster's Christian Viewpoint series
A ’revival’ can be defined as ‘a going of God among his people and an awareness of God laying hold of the community.’ There have been several major revivals in the USA in the last three centuries, including the Jesus Revolution of the 1970 (birthed at Asbury) which have had massive social impact.
In the UK too, including Scotland, there have been significant revivals – in Lewis and Harris in the mid-20th century, for example, in Inverness in 1874 and 1905.
I have often heard Christians praying for revival. They seek not power to wield, but come in simple longing to encounter something of the wildness and loveliness of the Spirit, to acknowledge the personal sense of sinfulness which inevitably seizes someone who glimpses God’s perfection, to experience ‘inexpressible joy’ and the love which dissolves all barriers.
Knowing my personality, I suspect that were I in the centre of a revival I would feel unmoved, on the edge. I was therefore encouraged to read the story of Anna Lowe who spent hours in the Hughes auditorium longing to connect with Jesus in the same ‘earth-shattering way it seems everyone else has.’
Eventually, something happened. A ‘moment of absolute peace shifted my reality’ and ‘a resentment that had followed me for months was lifted by the grace of God alone.’
Christians believe that God may self-reveal in revival in any nation, any town – in Inverness, for example. Dramatic revival is significant – where genuine, it results in lasting change in communities.
But more important are the highly significant, though lower-profile signs of God when Christians day by day invite God to revive their hearts, and choose to live for God and for others, when in the busyness of life we are sustained by something of God’s hope, joy and peace, some hint of the power of this God who is, ah, ‘so gentle.’
