Last week was Vision Sunday, where we look at what we want to focus on for the coming year. For 2020 we want to get serious about revival.
We heard that revivals historically grow out of a crisis, such as serious sin infecting the church, apathy among Christians, a social crisis (e.g. the great depression), decaying numbers, persecution or false teaching. Yet the crisis currently plaguing the western church is ‘Dead Orthodoxy’. While we KNOW we are justified by grace alone (Orthodoxy), it does us no good (dead), as we often function as though our current spiritual performance affects our standing before God. We were encouraged to see this as an opportunity for revival.
Revivals occur when a small number of Christians allow their ‘holy discontent’ to push them to pray. Holy discontent is not nit-picking the things we don’t like about our church. That’s complaining. Nor is it being unhappy with our inability to be more godly. That’s just another symptom of functioning through justification by works.
Holy discontent is looking at the current state of the church, and our own heart, and realising all we CAN do is rely on God. It is crying out ‘Lord, we don’t want to be mediocre Christians, who see Bible reading as a duty, think outreach too difficult, miss church regularly, fail to serve others, and lack a heart for the poor’. Holy discontent is saying ‘Lord, we want to be stand-out Christians, who delight in your word, evangelise with urgency, delight in church, serve with vigour, and be passionate about social justice!’ It is imagining a church full of THOSE Christians, and deciding to pray for God’s Spirit to make it happen.
Only God can bring a revival. Yet he usually brings them to those who are crying out for a special anointing of his presence, where he transforms his people into stand-out Christians. So, do you have a holy discontent about the church? If so, what are you going to do about it?
