What is revival?

"This is an extract from the book 'Ask for the Rain' by Lou Engel available from Amazon"

Revival is not locked up in the heavens, waiting for enough desperate cries and persistent prayers to pull it down. This sounds spiritual, but is theologically and fundamentally incorrect.

Revival is not merely an event, church service, conference or special gathering. Revival is not simply a season of heightened spiritual activity.

Revival is not even a time of visitation—and then back to “business as usual.”

Revival is meant to redefine business as usual.

Revival, at its very core, is the dynamic demonstration of New Testament Christianity. Without hype. Without pollution. Without compromise. Jesus Christ being unveiled and revealed in His people, through the power of the Holy Spirit.

Revival involves a divine visitation of God’s manifest Presence that produces a sustained habitation of His glory, both within and upon His people.

Revival challenges business as usual.

Revival confronts old wineskins, obsolete traditions, and outdated methods. Revival calls the community of God to be otherworldly.

Revival compels you to be hungrier than your history.

Revival is a continuous river of Holy Spirit outpouring that has been flowing since the Day of Pentecost.

Revival is normal, supernatural Christianity in action and demonstration. Revival is every Christ-follower walking in the fullness of the Holy Spirit’s power.

Revival involves entire households, cities and regions being shaken by an overwhelming awareness of the manifest Presence of God. In fact, revival—for all intensive purposes—is not God’s perfect will for His people; it’s the divine remedy to bring His people back to Heaven’s perfect will.

Revival summons backsliders out of their spiritual wildernesses and ushers them into the very encounter their hearts were desperately longing for.

Revival sounds every siren throughout the hallways of hell, serving notice to a defeated satan that an activated, empowered and anointed body of Christ is returning to God’s original blueprint—a Kingdom people who operate in purity and power.

Revival opens eyes to the supreme, limitless reality of “Your Kingdom come…on earth as it is in Heaven,” and that Jesus did not build comfortable perimeters or restrictive boundaries around The Lord’s Prayer.

Revival reminds Christ-followers of the keys of Kingdom authority that they already carry—to bind what has been already bound in Heaven and release what has already been released in Heaven. Truth be told, the community of God is not waiting for revival; revival is waiting for whosoever will.

Revival waits for an intercessory voice who says “Amen” to every promise that Heaven has already said yes to.

Revival waits for the one who stops praying, “Lord, rend the Heavens,” and instead, starts praying and living as though Heaven has been open for business since the Day of Pentecost.

Revival waits for the individual or community whose hunger trumps their history: Regardless of where they have come from, what they have been taught or what their spiritual context had informed them, they are desperate enough to press beyond the past and move toward the fullness of what Scripture promises and the Spirit makes available, even at the risk of discomfort and rejection.

Revival waits for the eyes that are seeing what has been clear all along—it’s raining. We are living in the time of outpouring. It’s not reserved for one day, someday, nor was it exclusive to the past. The “Great Last Days Revival” began on the Day of Pentecost… and has been continuing ever since. The Heavens opened two thousand years ago…and the River of God has been flowing ever since that historic outpouring. We are not waiting for the rain of Heaven. We are living in the time of rain. Why aren’t we seeing this revival rain in a greater demonstration or outpouring? Simple answer. We’re asking God to send what He has already sent. We’re begging God to do what He has already done. I repeat, it’s raining. Why aren’t we seeing rain released? Because the very ones who carry the rain within them are gazing Heavenward, praying for Heaven to send down what has already been released and deposited. We’re praying, begging, and contending for what we have already been granted sacred stewardship of and unlimited access to.

We’re asking God to send down what He wants to send out.

Yes, we should still persistently ask God to send His rain of revival. Only now, it’s not prayer emerging from a place of lack; it’s a cry of hunger coming from a place of fullness… that desires increase. It’s not an empty people speaking to the Father, praying like deprived orphans when they are really sons and daughters with a full inheritance. It’s not about asking God to send down more of the Holy Spirit; we’re asking God to help us live our lives in such a way that the Spirit is granted permission to be released through us in a greater demonstration. It’s not about more of God coming down from Heaven; it’s about more of God coming out of His people and being visibly manifested in the earth. We begin our journey by awakening to this essential truth: The rain of revival has already been poured out to us so that we can cry out for an even greater demonstration of God’s power and Presence to be poured out through us. It all begins and ends with hunger.

Ask for the Rain (pp. 13-17). Destiny Image, Inc.. Kindle Edition.

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