Revive Us Again!

“Will you not revive us again, that your people may rejoice in you? Show us your steadfast love, O Lord, and grant us your salvation. -Psalm 85:6-7 (ESV). “You who seek God, let your hearts revive.” -Psalm 69:32b (ESV). “For thus says the One who is high and lifted up, who inhabits eternity, whose name is Holy: ‘I dwell in the high and holy place, and also with him who is of a contrite and lowly spirit, to revive the spirit of the lowly, and to revive the heart of the contrite.” -Isaiah 57:15 (ESV).

Probably many of you who read this can remember the times, especially in the summertime, when your church had a week (or more) of revival. In the mountains of north Georgia where I grew up, we sometimes called it not only “revival meeting” but “protracted” meeting. The latter term meant that the meeting was set for a certain week. Ours at Choestoe Baptist Church was beginning with the second Sunday in July and running through that week. If this week, which our native poet, Byron Herbert Reece in his poem “Choestoe” called “protracted meeting,” (“God’s high festival), was going well at the end of one week, with the Spirit of the Lord moving upon the hearts of the people, the meeting would be “protracted,” or continuing on for more days as the preaching and singing continued and the results were many people “getting right with the Lord,” confessing sins, and coming to faith in the Lord Jesus Christ.

I became a Christian in just such a week of revival meeting, on a Tuesday night, in the second week of July, 1939. I remember the occasion well, and how happy I was to confess the Lord as my Savior. A month later, on the second Sunday in August, after the converts had been taught by our pastor the responsibilities and doctrines of church membership, and were considered to be truly converted, the baptismal service was held on the second Sunday afternoon of August, 1939. Twenty-three new converts lined up to go into the cold waters of Nottely River to be baptized. “Upon your profession of faith,” our pastor said, “I baptize you my brother/sister (as he came to each individually), in the name of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. You are buried with Christ in baptism; raised to walk in newness of life with Him.”

Now revivals are not held as regularly and as often as they were in those good days in the country. We put major emphasis upon going to church, morning and night, all week. We “had the preachers” (or pastor and the visiting evangelist) in our home for a bountiful meal. The front porch after the meal at noon were places where we heard the preachers expound upon passages of Scripture and teach us in a more casual setting than at church. Indeed, I could go with our local poet’s evaluation of such a high and holy week: It was “God’s high festival—protracted meeting.” Crops were laid by. It was time to get hearts and lives aligned with God’s purposes. It was revival meeting time! Reread our focal scriptures for today. These were fulfilled in our midst in those precious weeks in summer. God did, indeed, “revive us again,” his people did “rejoice in Him,” and we sought God and our hearts were filled with joy.

Here are some famous quotations about revival from two renowned evangelists of the past. Charles H. Spurgeon (1832-1892) wrote: “A genuine revival without joy in the Lord is as impossible as spring without flowers or dawn without light.” He also wrote: “If we want revival, we must revive our reverence for the Word of God.” And again he wrote: “Revival begins by Christians getting right first and then it spills over into the world.” Dwight L. Moody, American evangelist, wrote: “Before we pray that God would fill us, I believe we ought to pray that He would empty us.” 

 

Prayer: “O Lord, will you not revive us again that your people might rejoice in You?” Amen! Now, can we not sing “Revive Us Again” with new and vigorous desire and prayer to have this spiritual renewal among us? - Ethelene Dyer Jones 07.03.2016