Revival and Discipleship
Discipleship is the fuel of revival. Without it, any movement of God will fail.
The blue and yellow colors of the book cover are what first caught my attention in the thrift store. Then the title had the word “revival” in it. It was an author I had never heard of, but his name was spelled out boldly across the spine. RAVENHILL. I soon found out the author was Leonard Ravenhill, and it was his classic book called "Why Revival Tarries “
I quickly devoured the book, and it shook me to my core. I had never heard things like this. He was quoting a bunch of other people that I had never heard of. Samuel Chadwick. Praying Hyde. Evan Roberts. Christmas Evans. He was using words I wasn't familiar with, like unction, and talking about revivals I’d never heard of, in places like Shantung and Hebrides.
The premise of the book was pretty simple: we don't have revival because we don't want it. Instead of a longing for revival and a new awakening of God we have hard hearts, cold churches, lazy pastors, and empty prayer meetings. It made a lot of sense, and I began to look for other books by Ravenhill, and to read books and listen to sermons by people like him. My life was filled with people who spoke and taught passionately about a great movement of God, like David Wilkerson, Bertha Smith, Watchman Nee, and Keith Green. It seemed like revival was just around the corner, if we would only devote ourselves to it.
About that same time, at the age of 19, I started serving in ministry. I did whatever I could find to do: fill-in preacher, leading music, Sunday school teacher, kids worker. It wasn’t long before I had my first "official" staff position, it had a title and everything: Youth Intern/Janitor. I wasn’t very good at either of those things, but I put my whole heart into it. I continued to read and study about revival, my world expanding with new names like Havner, Tozer, Moody, Spurgeon, and Finney. I believed that revival was right around the corner, if I only prayed for it enough; surely God would answer my heartfelt prayers. Lots of good ministry happened with that church, but I left without seeing revival.
I took my next position, this time as a full-fledged youth pastor. God did lots of good work through that ministry, and I gained friendships I still have decades later. But I never saw a revival happen there either, though I continued to pray. After getting married my wife and I moved to a little town of 600 people where I served as the youth pastor. They didn't have an office for me, so they stuck me in a closet. I didn't have a computer or much of anything in that “office,”, so I spent most of my time praying for God to move on our students at camp that summer. I even prayed for a sign, that if God was to move then it would rain every day that week.
It rained every day that week, and I've never experienced a move of God like that before. While I was leading one student to Christ, another interrupted me to say that he wanted to be saved too, right now! These were rough kids from rough backgrounds, and God moved in their hearts in a special way.
It pains me to say I wasn't able to stay at that church very long, and I'm not sure what happened to most of those kids after I left. But I had prayed for revival and seen it, or at least a small glimpse. As I moved onto different ministries at different churches, I continued to pray for God to move in that way I had seen before. My wife and I followed God and did some hard ministry in some difficult places, and we see God continue to work. But I didn't see him move the way I wanted to, the way he did that summer at camp. I wanted to see that again, but this time I wanted more, something large and miraculous, spectacular and unexplainable. So I kept praying for revival, without seeing it happen. That’s not to say God didn’t work in our churches, but I didn’t see the big movement of God I longed for.
Over time I began to see the weakness in some of the ways I approached ministry, and I began to turn to the more pragmatic side. I read all the right books and went to the right conferences and started installing programs, classes, and methods that I thought would bring about the church growth and change I wanted to see. Some of them were a success, but I still wasn't seeing God move like I wanted. Feeling guilty, I repented of my pragmatism and dove back into praying for revival and seeking a fresh movement of God. My prayer life and ministry focus seesawed back and forth, trying to find the perfect amount of prayer and work to see God move.
I still believe God can move in revival in a community of believers. I've seen it happen myself, and I've read countless stories of what happening across time and history. But I’ve come to see that those fires that God sparked often burned out quickly without fuel to keep them going. I wanted to see the world on fire for God, but I wasn’t putting in the work to keep the fire going. What's not mentioned often in those accounts, if mentioned at all, is the role that discipleship plays in revival. But I've come to believe that without discipleship any movement of God ultimately falters out. Discipleship is the fuel of revival.
Discipleship is not glamorous, and it doesn't happen on large scales like revival. I love the old stories about crowded meetings, dramatic conversions, and fiery sermons. But discipleship happens best around small tables, in quiet moments, and with simple conversations and readings of the word.
It's not wrong to pray for God to move like he has in moments of revival. It is wrong to spend all your time doing that at the expense of making disciples. I've been guilty of that, praying for God to move in a large way on a group of people, and ignoring the small ways in which he moves on individuals. Most church programming is set up for the same effect. We plan big events where we hope lots of people will come, and in turn lots of people will get saved. Those are noble goals, and those events can be effective. But the fire that those big events start can only be sustained through the fuel of discipleship.
It's easy to pray passionate and heartfelt prayers for God to move in a miraculous way. I believe our nation still needs a great revival, and I will keep praying for it. I'm also going to pray for discipleship, for the power of God to help me and my church steadily make disciples in the small moments that aren't reported on social media or written about later in books.
Discipleship is essentially a form of daily revival. Each day a person decides to get up and devote themselves to God's word for a few moments, they are renewing their heart towards God. Every time a couple of men meet to share their burdens and lift each other up in prayer, God is reviving and renewing their hearts. Each time women sit and talk about what they learned from Bible reading, as their children play on the floor, God is renewing and reviving their hearts. God is just as much in those small groups as he was in the big moments of Shantung or Hebrides. Discipleship is daily revival, and is as much an act of God as the Great Awakening. Seeing a bunch of people saved at a large event is a wonderful thing, and I long for it to happen. But I also long for my church to be a place where disciples make disciples, where God honors the hard work of daily revival by continuing to renew the hearts of men and women.
I still read Ravenhill whenever I get the chance, and I still believe he's right about why revival does not come. I'm still going to pray for that to happen like it has in the past. But I'm also going to devote myself and my church to the small acts of daily renewal and revival. Revival tarries not just because we don't pray for enough in our meetings, but also because we are satisfied with making converts and attenders, not disciples. I'm praying for a discipleship movement to break out in my church and community. One where hearts are broken over God's word shared between a few people, where marriages are restored because of a heart made new through prayer and God's word, and where spiritual disciplines are practiced daily in a myriad of small ways and quiet moments. Lord, bring us revival each day as we grow disciples!