English
Korean
Spanish
As Southern Baptists lament their denomination’s declining baptism numbers and lackluster spiritual growth, many leaders want to know what causes revival.
According to two experts, the answer involves both prayer by Christians and a sovereign work by God.
“The obvious cause [of spiritual awakenings] is God’s people beginning to pray,” said Roy Fish, retired professor of evangelism at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. “I don’t believe that there is a major awakening in history, or maybe no awakening at all, that ultimately didn’t begin somewhere in prayer.”
When awakening comes, that prayer blossoms into deep conviction of sin in a church and fresh joy in the members’ relationships with Jesus, he said.
Yet Fish added that awakening?a term he uses synonymously with revival?is not merely the result of believers meeting certain conditions in a formula. In fact, two churches could seek God identically but only one congregation experience revival, he said.
GOD’S SOVEREIGN DECISION
The ultimate key to a major outpouring of God’s blessing is his sovereign decision, Fish said.
“You just cannot take away this aspect of sovereignty,” he said. “It is vital in the study of the history of awakenings.”
Any time a preacher or teacher promises an outpouring of God’s Spirit if only humans will fulfill a formula, Christians should listen with a critical ear, Fish warned. He noted 19th-century revivalist Charles G. Finney as someone whom Baptists should read with “a lot of caution.”
Finney taught that revival is the work of man and compared it to farming. Just as a farmer is destined to grow a crop if he meets certain conditions, a church is destined to have a revival if it completes certain spiritual activities, Finney said.
“Nobody today that I know of really goes along with Finney at that point,” said Fish, adding that some of Finney’s other teachings are very helpful.
But Christians who desire revival are not left without recourse. Those who want a fresh work of God in their congregation should pray as a group, search their hearts and repent of their sins, Fish said.
“The thing we’re desperately lacking today,” he said, “is brokenness and coming to a place where I say, ‘Yes, there are some things wrong in my life, and I want revival. And I’m willing to get rid of the things that dishonor God and put into my life more things that please God.'”
Gregory Frizzell, prayer and spiritual awakening specialist with the Baptist General Convention of Oklahoma, said revival is the result of both human and divine causes. It happens when God draws Christians closer to himself, convicts of sin and grants his people a desire for greater spiritual depth. From a human perspective though, prayer accompanied by deep conviction is the catalyst, he said.
“The type of prayer that brings revival is what I call a God-seeking kind of prayer,” Frizzell said. “It’s not just, ‘O God, we want you to bless us. O God, we want you to fix our problems,’ or ‘God, we want you to do something for us.’ It’s really, ‘God, we want you to change us and we want you to glorify yourself.'”
Unlike Fish, Frizzell draws a distinction between revival and awakening. Revival occurs within the church, he said, while awakening is a community phenomenon that results in lost people being saved. Fish argues that revival chroniclers of the past used the terms synonymously and that the Bible calls believers to awake as well as revive. Yet both agree that terminology is not the most important aspect of any discussion on spiritual renewal.
<SPAN style="FONT-FAMILY: 'Trebuche
