The News #4

I wonder how many of you are familiar with the theology of revival? During a revival (sometimes called a awakening) God pours out His Spirit in a special way. Christians are transformed and sinners are saved. You can see cycles of revival and times of special blessing as you read through the Old Testament. You can see the same thing throughout church history.

I know I’ll sound like a old fogy to some of you when I use this illustration, but I think a good way to think about revival is to think about an old fashioned, wind up watch. They didn’t always come with batteries, you know. You used to have to wind the up. What you were doing was adding tension to a spring inside the watch. The spring moved the parts inside the watch so that it could function properly. You had to wind your watch every day. The best you could hope to get was about 32 hours out of a good winding, so it was best to wind the thing up every morning before you put it on. If you failed to wind the watch the watch wouldn’t come to a sudden stop. It would slowly loose power. The time between the sound of the ticking would increase. The watch would no longer keep proper time. Eventually it would come to a stop.

You could also illustrate this principle with a balloon. Balloons only hold their air for a limited amount of time. You have to blow them back up again because all balloons have slow leaks. You can’t see or hear the leaks, but you know they’re there because the balloon goes flat over time.

Basically the church in North America is like a watch that hasn’t been wound up recently. It’s slowing down. It’s loosing life and power. It’s like a balloon that needs to be re-inflated. When God adds power to the church, when He winds up the watch or blows up the balloon, we call that a revival. Revival is our only hope.

There is no political solution. There never has been and never will be. I’m not saying that the politics don’t matter, they do. But the politics can’t work right unless enough of the people get right so that they know what to vote for. We could have another Ronald Regan in the White House and all it would do is slow down the pace of the decline. The decline will continue until we have a revival. Every Christian should be praying for revival. You should end every newscast with a prayer for revival.