Revival is a divine intervention where God breathes new life into His people. It is the highest desire of every spirit-filled, blood-bought believer. This coming alive happens when God steps into a room, a church, or a region, transforming dry land into streams of water and dry bones into a formidable army. Revival is a historical testament to God awakening His people, reminding us there is more to the Christian life than what we’ve settled for.
There are three ingredients of revival which were highlighted to me during this class, these are:
1. The importance of hunger.
2. The importance of repentance.
3. The importance of prayer.
The Importance of Hunger
Everything begins with hunger. Spiritual hunger is a desire to break through the veil and touch the divine. It is a disaffection with the status quo and how things have always been. Historically, this hunger for more has been birthed during times of great darkness when it seemed the unlikeliest that God was near. This holy dissatisfaction becomes a zealousness that leads a person or group to knock on heaven’s door. Those consumed by this hunger will not take no for an answer.
The Importance of Repentance
Once hunger is birthed, a deep stirring of the heart and conviction of sin occurs. When we hunger to see God’s glory, we only need to see a sneak preview, and our hearts are rent. Beholding God’s holiness reveals our utter brokenness, iniquity, and inability. This leads to a place of heart-searching, total surrender, where the fear of the Lord draws us into deep reverence and where our heart dreads being apart from the Lover of our souls. The deeper we fall into His grace, the greater the craving for His presence; we must have Him in His fullness.
The Importance of Prayer
Out of the revelation of the holiness of God in repentance flows a mighty stream of prayer. True prayer moves the heart of God because it moves our hearts. Prayers that do not move us do not touch God’s heart. Time and again, we see through historical accounts of past revivals that darkness, crisis, and holy dissatisfaction are the match that lights the fire in the hearts of a faithful remnant to pray. When God’s people begin to cry out, God begins to move. Whether it is an individual, a church, a region, or a nation, when God’s people begin to cry out with pure hearts, God moves in power.
The Key to Experiencing the Reviving Power of God
How can we implement these truths into our 21st-century church culture? For me, it is simple: I must awaken this hunger in me. If I don’t have it, I can’t give it. If I don’t have it, I can’t preach it. I can’t lead people into it if I don’t have it. I must develop this hunger if there is hope that I will be a catalyst for revival in the lives of those I influence. Whether God uses me to revive His people or not, I must be a carrier; I must be filled with the life-giving Spirit of God.
Awakening Hunger
How do I awaken hunger? First, I must pray that God will light this fire within me, a fire I cannot contain and that the enemy cannot put out. I also ask God to give me a burden for souls, which is God’s burden. Secondly, I read God’s Word, take its promises of personal revival as mine, and meditate on these day and night. Yet another way is to surround myself with people, fellow believers, who have the same desire. Scripture warns us to be careful about the people we surround ourselves with because we become like those we allow to influence our lives. Lastly, I believe that one major way we can awaken hunger is by reading about the great works of God in past generations. Seeing how God moved in times of great darkness and used ordinary, everyday people to change history, shake nations, and stir movements that catalyzed the church into periods of awakening, whets our palate with desire and gives us hope for our current situation.
The Results of Awakening: Missions
As you read through the accounts of revival history, beginning with the Book of Acts and onwards, you see how these awakenings have long-lasting impacts beyond the time and place in which they occur. These impacts can be seen in no better areas than missions and evangelism. When the Holy Spirit visits His people, He empowers them to reach out and witness with power and boldness. We need an awakening of God’s Spirit in this hour to bring in the harvest!
The Mandate
What is our revival mandate? To be filled with God, become consecrated vessels He can use, and become catalysts of revival through prayer and Spirit-enabled evangelism. As a leader, I want to multiply disciples who carry this DNA, this mandate. Whether we see a revival on a mass scale or not, we should all answer God’s call to walk in personal revival. God desires that we be passionate, on-fire believers in an age of compromise, selfishness, and lack of devotion.
Revival history teaches us that God is the nearest when we feel the farthest from Him. It is at our darkest when the light is about to dawn. It is at our lowest when God is exalted. This is true on an individual or group scale. May the Lord baptize us with a desire for more of Him, not only because the world and the church need it desperately but because we, individually, need it. Let us take the lessons of saints of old and continue to carry the blood-stained banner of the Gospel to our generation. Let us together declare the old Moravian missionary motto, “May the Lamb that was slain receive the full reward of his sufferings!”
There are many things crumbling down, the “set ups” of men are falling like never before. For example, as the spies in Joshua chapter 2 went in by divine instruction and were housed by Rahab who actually knew more about God’s plan than they did. So is the Lord raising up men and women to spy out the inheritance that has been hidden.
HOLDING ON
Being in the midst of this transition there is great unrest in the Body of Christ, because of not being completely out of this transition. There are those that are welcoming the change, there are those that partly want the change but don’t recognize what comes with it and if they would even like it, and then those that are full on passionate for His promises to be released.
“Let us hold fast the profession of our faith without wavering; for he is faithful that promised” Hebrews 10:23
The Word of God continues saying, “And let us consider one another to provoke unto love and to good works: Not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together, as the manner of some is; but exhorting one another: and so much the more, as ye see the day approaching.” Hebrews 10:24-25
We have to stand like we have never stood before persevering as we see “the day approaching.” What day is that? Is the day of the fulfilling and pouring out of the promises of God. Essentially the Word is telling us here, stay the course. Because the stage is being set for real transformation, redemption, healing and a great harvest to come.
THE BLESSING – HIS PRESENCE
The presence of the Lord with all its grace and gifts will be given to the beloved in a way that we have never anticipated. That’s why in anticipation of this, a burden in the form of a heavenly vision has been poured out to the elect who are focused on the heavens.
“The burden which Habakkuk the prophet did see.” Habakkuk 1:1
We also saw earlier in Hebrews that we will only truly be able to see the day approaching as we love one another and provoke one another to love and good works. This is a missing ingredient in the church and it is why the Body is so busy looking at its circumstances and not at “the heavenly vision.”
When we truly begin to love and encourage our brothers and sisters the presence of the Lord will begin to flow like a mighty river. This means that in the coming days the Lord is saying that many will have to come out of their comfort zone and circle of people in order to be able to see “the heavenly vision.”
“To open their eyes, and to turn them from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan unto God, that they may receive forgiveness of sins, and inheritance among them which are sanctified by faith that is in me. Whereupon, O king Agrippa, I was not disobedient unto the heavenly vision: But shewed first unto them of Damascus, and at Jerusalem, and throughout all the coasts of Judea, and then to the Gentiles, that they should repent and turn to God, and do works meet for repentance.” Acts 26:18-20
First we see that the opening of the eyes happens, and then the inheritance is released. We must see inheritance released. This is the word that the Lord is speaking to His church today.
“For I reckon that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us. For the earnest expectation of the creature waiteth for the manifestation of the sons of God.” Romans 8:18-19
So what is this great move going to bring upon the earth?
“For thus saith the LORD of hosts; Yet once, it is a little while, and I will shake the heavens, and the earth, and the sea, and the dry land; And I will shake all nations, and the desire of all nations shall come: and I will fill this house with glory, saith the LORD of hosts.” Haggai 2:6-7
It’s going to bring shaking, signs and wonders. But also the true desire of people will come forth, whether they want the Lord or not. And surrender to him not only as Savior but Lord.
THE NEW WINE
The new wine comes from the clusters in the promise land but these clusters are found in the dangerous places where no one wants to tread or go. But still we have those Rahab’s (harvest field) crying out for it and creation groaning for the redemption to come. This new wine will be served not by the pompous but by kingdom servants who will use love as a tool to infuse others with this new wine. We are getting ready for resurrection power. Life from the dead! The water becoming wine!!
KINGDOM INFLUENCE RISING
I also see that Esthers and Josephs are being raised to save the people of God, people that are filled with heavenly vision and people that don’t allow personality conflicts in the way of what God has called them to do. The shifts we are ready to see are bigger than what we could ever imagine. Get your eyes on the Word, your mouth in prayer, your heart in heavenly places, your ears in His heart, your hands in the Kingdom, and your feet in your inheritance.
THE PAINS OF DEATH
Last week I fasted for six days, on the fifth day I was in very intense prayer and the Lord spoke to me and said, “Son the plan of the enemy is to abort the destiny that I want to bring through my people. But my people have the choice whether they will allow that”.
He said many other things to me in this visitation but the point is that the enemy is releasing demonic forces of defeat, hopelessness and depression, like never before against His bride telling her that “the day” is not approaching.
That is where the pains of death, the death of dreams and visions of God are being seen in the body but that is why we have to stand in our inheritance and walk in Resurrection power so that we can call “things which be not as though they were” -Romans 4:17 Let’s pass this test and not only witness this change but be the change that God wants to bring.
In Jesus
Sincerely,
Pastor Joshua Alvarez
P.S. May the Lord give you revelation and wisdom to understand what I have written here
