Today we have a simple and a straightforward question, and it comes into us from a listener who writes this. Pastor John, how can I understand revival according to the Bible, and what would we expect to see if it broke out again today? What would you say, Pastor John? The idea of revival originates in the reality that on the one hand, God is the decisive giver of all spiritual life, and on the other hand, humans, even those who are born again and part of God's covenant family, from time to time drift into a kind of lifelessness and lethargy and backsliding and indifference and weakness.

And when you put those two together, God as the giver of life and man as ever drifting towards lifelessness, what you get is the need for the hope of reviving, coming back to life, a fresh outpouring of God's life-giving Spirit on his people. That's what revival is. So for example, we read in Psalm 85 verse 6, "Will not you revive us again, O God, that your people may rejoice in you?" Or Habakkuk chapter 3 verse 2, "O Lord, I have heard the report of you and your work, O Lord, do I fear.

In the midst of the years, revive it. In the midst of the years, make it known. In wrath, remember mercy." Or Psalm 80 verse 18, "Give us life that we may call upon your name." Or Isaiah 57 15, "Thus says the one who is high and lifted up, who inhabits eternity, whose name is holy, I dwell in a high and holy place and also with him who is of a contrite and lowly spirit, to revive the spirit of the lowly, to revive the heart of the contrite." And alongside those passages about reviving, you read the history of Israel, and it's just one up and down after the other.

One king is wicked, and God withholds his blessing or sends judgment. Another king recovers godliness, and there's a reviving and an awakening of true worship for a season, and up and down it goes. And when you turn to the New Testament, even though the period of time is really short between Jesus' resurrection and the close of the New Testament, maybe 40 years or so, we do get glimpses already of churches that were in need of reviving.

I think the book of Hebrews was written to a church like that. You hear it in Hebrews 5 12, "Though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you again the basic principles and oracles of God," or chapter 12 verse 12, "Lift your drooping hands and strengthen your weak knees and make straight the paths of your feet, so that what is lame may not be put out of joint." So this is a church that's already drooping, it's already dragging, it's gotten tired already and needs reviving.

And then when you read the prayers of Paul, this is where I feel it, when you read the prayers of Paul and his letters, they read just like prayers that would be made for churches that are drifting into lifelessness. There are few prayers in the Bible that have had a reviving, challenging, awakening, renewing effect on me like Ephesians 3 14 to 19, where Paul prays like this, "I pray that according to the riches of your glory, you may grant us to be strengthened with power through your spirit in the inner being, so that Christ might dwell in our hearts through faith, that we being rooted and grounded in love may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the height and depth and length and breadth, and to know the love of Christ that passes knowledge and be filled with all the fullness of God." I mean, over the years in my pastoral ministry, that prayer to have power to comprehend the height and depth and length and breadth and to be filled with all the fullness of God was a heart cry because of how short I knew I fell of being filled with all the fullness of God.

In the history of the church, the term "revival" in its most biblical sense has meant a sovereign work of God in which the whole region, a whole region of many churches, many Christians has been lifted out of spiritual indifference and worldliness into conviction of sin, earnest desires for the world of Christ and his Word, boldness in witness, purity of life, lots of conversions, joyful worship, renewed commitment to missions.

You feel God has moved here, and basically revival then is God doing among many Christians at the same time or in the same region usually what he's doing all the time in individual Christians' lives as people get saved and individually renewed around the world. And I'll just say if anybody wants to go further, Martin Lloyd-Jones' book called "Revival" would be a great read.

Or you can go to Desiring God and just type, like I did earlier today, type into the search engine at our website, just type in "what is revival?" and there's a whole list of things that come up there. Yeah, great resources. Again, come and visit us online at DesiringGod.org, and you can find articles on revival and a host of other issues.

We publish new content every single day, seven days a week, 365 days a year, and it's all served up fresh every day for you. And we thank you for the question. Our questions come from you, the listeners, and if you have a question that you just can't quite figure out or some issue that seems confusing to you, email your questions to us.

AskPastorJohn@DesiringGod.org is the email address, and of course you can find our audio feeds and our episode archive through our online home as well at DesiringGod.org/AskPastorJohn. On Monday, we're going to return, we're going to talk about why the Bible sometimes cites non-biblical sources. In this case, we're going to talk about citations in the book of Jude and how they got there.

I'm your host Tony Ranke. Thanks for listening to the podcast, and we hope you have a wonderful weekend. We'll see you back here on Monday.