31.07 | The Weight of Revival
Acts 4:32-5:16
‘Immediately she fell down at his feet and breathed her last. When the young men came in they found her dead, and they carried her out and buried her beside her husband. And great fear came upon the whole church and upon all who heard of these things.’
Acts 5:10-11
Revival.
Do we actually want it?
Revival is a loaded term. For some it has toxic connotations of triumphalism, manipulation, or hype. For others it has become a lifelong yearning for the visible increase of God’s manifest presence and power on the church.
At the most basic level, revival describes bringing to life that which is dead. When connected to a move of God, then, revival describes a season of an extraordinary outbreaking of the life of God, in and through His Church. This biblical idea of life is far-reaching and holistic—it is holiness and healing, purity and power, truth and love, fire and formation.
Acts is a revival book. And we can quickly notice all the beauty of it and find that we really want this:
One heart and soul. Great power. Great grace. Not a needy person among them. Many signs and wonders. Held in high esteem. More than ever believers were added to the Lord.
They carried the sick into the streets that as Peter came by at least his shadow might fall on them.
The sick and those afflicted with unclear spirits were all healed.
I yearn for church to look like this. In a world of extraordinary division and extraordinary pain, to see such unity and such community and such healing and liberty and life is beautiful. When I pray about revival, it is such images that I hold in my mind.
And yet, Acts also demands a more weighty consideration of the prayer. Because alongside these beautiful descriptions, we also see, in this revival culture of God, a measure of holiness that leads to the corrupt and false falling dead at the feet of Peter.
Revival is beautiful. It is extraordinary. It is joyful.
And it is weighty.
Such is the holy invasion of God.
Ananias and Sapphira check our hearts when we could become flippant about this revival culture. Their deaths, interruptive into all the surrounding stories of life, check our hearts to hold this with greater sincerity.
Look at what Peter asks them:
Why has satan filled your heart?
Tease this out.
Ananias and Sapphira didn’t have to sell the field. Ananias and Sapphira didn’t have to give the money. Ananias and Sapphira were completely free to keep the field and grow things in it and not give this away.
The problem here is not that they were required to give something and didn’t fully give it; it was that they came as pretenders—a religious show masking hearts full of hell.
There was death in their hearts before it came to their bodies.
The inbreaking life of God is stunning, beautiful, healing and utterly good. And yet, revival is neither for our comfort nor our entertainment. Is is holiness and glory. It is worthy of our deepest hunger and most reverent fear, for what we speak of in revival is the presence of God Himself. Deep repentance has so often been the marker of true revival, as duplicity is exposed and we are cut to the very heart in a yearning that our lives may look truly like the things of purity and truth.
Be assured, Ananias and Sapphira is not a regular testimony in church history. You’ll probably survive your next Sunday worship gathering! And yet, their story invites us not to the prayers of the flippant and comfortable.
Rather it invites us to the deeper prayer. It invites us to give God the deeper permission that, as He comes, He would truly, deeply—confronting and contesting all darkness, exposing and renewing our deepest places where we pretend and fake it and feel most trapped in shame—make us a people who are radically, freely, and beautifully alive.
Reflect:
Have you ever prayed for more of God?
Weigh this prayer. What might it ask of you? What might He confront in you?
Choose in your heart: are you willing to give Him such permission?
Pray:
Father,
You are so good.
You are my healer, my liberator, my comforter, my friend.
And when I pray for more of you,
There is a subtle danger that what I’m really praying for
Is more of you
On my terms.
But in this moment,
Good Father,
I recognise that your increase in my life
Also may confront me,
Convict me,
Challenge and change me—
That your endeavour of holiness is
Beauty and peace and rest
And it is
Fire and conviction and a call to utter surrender.
Teach my heart, then,
The way of the honest,
The simple,
And the real,
And revive me daily
In the paths of holy life.
In Jesus’ Name,
Amen
Old Testament:
For those also reading the Old Testament this year, your additional readings are here:
Jeremiah 27-28 | Psalm 92