Recently, while searching for a particular quote by J.I. Packer, I came across a very convicting, challenging, and encouraging article on revival by Sam Storms.

Here are a few excerpts:

Be forewarned: prayer for revival can be costly. It may cost you your comfort and convenience. Our tendency is to pray for revival, because we think that is the pious thing to do, only later to say, after revival has come: “Oh my! This isn’t at all what I had in mind!”

We say we want revival . . . but on our terms. Sadly, we pray:

“Come Holy Spirit . . . but only if you promise in advance to do things the way we have always done them in our church.”

“Come Holy Spirit . . . but only if I have some sort of prior guarantee that when you show up you won’t embarrass me.”

“Come Holy Spirit . . . but only if your work of revival is one that I can still control, one that preserves intact the traditions with which I am comfortable.”

“Come Holy Spirit . . . but only if your work of revival is neat and tidy and dignified and understandable and above all else socially acceptable.”

“Come Holy Spirit . . . but only if you plan to change others; only if you make them to be like me; only if you convict their hearts so they will live and dress and talk like I do.”

“Come Holy Spirit . . . but only if you let us preserve our distinctives and retain our differences from others whom we find offensive.“

We would do well to remember the wise words of J. I. Packer:

“Renewal in all its aspects is not a theme for dilettante debate, but for humble, penitent, prayerful, faith-full exploration before the Lord, with a willingness to change and be changed, and if necessary to be the first to be changed, if that is what the truth proves to require. To absorb ideas about renewal ordinarily costs nothing, but to enter into renewal could cost us everything we have, and we shall be very guilty if, having come to understand renewal, we then decline it. We need to be clear about that. John Calvin once declared that it would be better for a preacher to break his neck while mounting the pulpit if he did not himself intend to be the first to follow God.”

“The Holy Spirit is not a sentimentalist as too many of us are; he is a change agent, and he comes to change human structures as well as human hearts. Change for its own sake is mere fidgeting, but change that gets rid of obstacles to God’s fullest blessing is both a necessity and a mercy.”

For the rest of Storm’s “Reflections on Revival” go to Enjoying God Ministries.

Mike