Discern the Season of Revival We’re in Right Now

God is going to restore to us in a greater capacity His healing power, His delivering presence, His transcendent glory, His conspicuous presence, and His mighty miracles.

Will you not revive us again, that your people may rejoice in you? (Psalm 85:6)

Recently, after I had preached at a worship service of a large institution, I was invited to eat with a group of young people from the congregation. I agreed, and as we sat down to the meal, a greater hunger quickly manifested itself.

“We’ve heard you speak on other occasions about the miracles of Smith Wigglesworth, Kathryn Kuhlman, and John G. Lake,” the group said, “but we are hungry to see a full move of God in our day.”

Suddenly I thought of my previous congregation at Oral Roberts University and began to realize that the entire constituency for whom I served as pastor was a people born between the moves of God in America. Very few of them had seen the revival Spirit of God. They are what I call a “Judges 2:10 generation.”

“The people served the Lord throughout the lifetime of Joshua and of the elders who outlived him and who had seen all the great things the Lord had done for Israel....

After that whole generation had been gathered to their fathers, another generation grew up, who knew neither the Lord nor what he had done for Israel. Then the Israelites did evil in the eyes of the Lord....” (Judges 2:7,10,11).

It is evident from this passage of Scripture that true faith in God cannot be transmitted from one generation to another, unless there are new manifestations of God’s power. Also, those manifestations will never transpire until the hunger the young men spoke to me about in the restaurant that day is con- verted to a faith that can believe it will happen again. That is why I began with the question from Psalm 85:6, “Will you not revive us again...?”

Revival is a rediscovery of an eternal truth that has been converted to new terms, interpretations, and methods for a new generation. The key to transition from possibility to reality is for a new generation “to be what they hunger to see.”

The generation that followed Joshua still had all the hierarchy intact. They still had priests and leaders, but they knew nothing of the power of God. The Judges 2:10 generation had been reduced to ineptness and impotence, because each of them had been reduced to doing “...that which was right in his own eyes” (Judges 17:6 KJV).

It is easier to say that the days of miracles are past, or at least that miracles have been restricted, than to pay the price to resurrect them. That was the issue Gideon would have to face a few chapters later in the Book of Judges:

When the angel of the Lord appeared to Gideon, he said, “The Lord is with you, mighty warrior.”

“But sir,” Gideon replied, “if the Lord is with us, why has all this happened to us? Where are all his wonders that our fathers told us about...?” (Judges 6:12,13).

Gideon wanted to know, “If God is for us, where are the miracles we have heard about all our lives, and why have all these bad things happened to us?”

As we continue into the next decade, we could ask the same questions. If God is with us, where are all the miracles we have heard so much about, and why have we experienced some of the things that have befallen us during the end of the last decade and the beginning of this one? Why have some of our leaders fallen? Where is God’s provision? Why are so few miracles performed in our midst? Where is the zeal of God that is missing in so many of our Spirit-filled churches?

Notice that the angel of the Lord did not come to Gideon and say, “Of course, there are questions. That is because the days of miracle are past!”

Quite the contrary. He responded to Gideon’s hunger by showing him a touch of the miraculous. (Judges 6:19-22,36-40.)

It is also God’s intent in this hour for those who can discern the times and seasons to experience a similar touch. (1 Chron. 12:32; Eccl. 8:5.) The difficulty in such discernment comes in the period of transition, that time which comes at the closing of one era of God’s move and just before the beginning of the next move.

During this period, there is a changing of the guard and new leadership is emerging upon the scene. It is also the time that the Church and the general public often see the shortcomings of powerlessness and even the sins of individual ministries. Transition periods are times of confusion and wondering what is really going on. They are “Judges 2:10 times.”

When I think of those times, I am reminded of an experience my wife, Judy, and I had that seems to exemplify this principle. Before our first son was born, we took Lamaze courses to help with the delivery. We learned all the breathing techniques for the difficult times of labor. We learned techniques like what I called the “hee-hee-ho’s.”

We would practice simulating labor pains and I would say, “Breathe, Darling,” and she would say, “Hee-hee-ho,” and everything was wonderful.

Finally the fateful day arrived and we went to the hospital. As the coach, I did everything I was supposed to do. I wiped her brow, fed her ice chips, and every time she had a contraction I would say, “Breathe, Darling,” and she would respond, “Hee hee ho.”

Everything went great — until we hit transition. Only a woman who has had a baby can comprehend the difference in travail that comes at that moment.

I would say, “Breathe, Darling,” and she would reply, “You breathe!”

Breathing was out the window. Why? The pain in “transition” had changed her perspective. Her perception of everything altered. All the surroundings were the same, but her perception of them was totally different.

It is the same way in the Church with the transitions of the Spirit. The “Judges 2:10 generation” did not have a fresh experience with God and so they grew confused and lethargic. During transition periods, people are confused, not totally cognizant of everything around them, and their perspectives change. Many times people lose hope for revival.

The Church slumbers into a survival mode.

Survival will always be the thief of revival.

As long as we are trying to survive, we will lose our perspective to revive.

Revival Is Not for Sinners

It is these periods of transition, however, that validate revival to the discerning heart. Revival is for the Church, not for sinners. Literally, it is a restoration or a revitalization. It is impossible to restore something that has not been lost or has never existed. In the modern Church, we have confused revival with four-day evangelistic meetings.

In reality, the Church is revived in order to reach out to the world. Revival presupposes outreach. They are part and parcel of the same thing.

In many places I go to minister, I ask the people, “How many of you want to see a revival?”

Virtually every hand in the auditorium will go up in an affirmative response.

However, on many of those occasions I might also ask those in attendance, “How would you know a revival if you had one?”

Most church members are confused about revival. Literally, to revive means:

• To recover from loss or death.

• To recall from a state of apathy or lethargy.

• To recall to obedience forgotten validations of God’s heart.

• To reinvigorate or revitalize.

• To restore to an awareness of God’s truth and power. When this takes place, then the world is affected by the revelation of a revitalized Church.

Charles Finney once said, “The fact is, Christians are more to be blamed for not being revived than sinners are for not being converted.”

The Church has a responsibility to recognize the times and the seasons of God to properly receive the flow of His Spirit. Revival by its nature takes place in a time of moral darkness and national discouragement. Revival occurs when a generation recognizes its impotence, sin, and apathy, and realizes that it is God’s time to do something about it.

The sons of Issachar discerned the times and seasons and knew what Israel should do. (1 Chron. 12:32.) Jacob realized his sin and repented (Gen. 35:1-5), and as a result the tribe was restored. In 2 Chronicles 15, we see this principle in the life of King Asa as he responded to the words of the prophet:

“...Listen to me, Asa and all Judah and Benjamin. The Lord is with you when you are with him. If you seek him, he will be found by you, but if you forsake him, he will forsake you. For a long time Israel was without the true God, without a priest to teach and with- out the law. But in their distress they turned to the Lord, the God of Israel, and sought him, and he was found by them” (2 Chronicles 15:2-4).

Notice, God’s people had been for a long time without the Lord, but the prophet said “The Lord is with you, when you are with Him.”

Asa and the people repented. They destroyed the idolatry of their day. They repaired the altar of the Lord, and in verse 9 we read that when they saw that the Lord was with Asa, the people followed him. God restored His favor to His people. The people had suddenly realized that God’s glorious presence was gone from their midst and so they responded by flowing into God’s new season through repentance.

Similar resurgence is found for God’s people in the life of Jehoiada (2 Chron. 23,24), Hezekiah (2 Kings 18:1-7), Josiah (2 Kings 22,23), Zerubbabel (Ezra 5,6), Ezra (Ezra 10:1), Daniel (Dan. 9,10), and John the Baptist (Luke 3).

The key today is to discern the seasons of God, as these men did. What season is God leading us into? Jesus wept over the city of Jerusalem because its citizens did not recognize the season of the Lord, “the day (or time) of their visitation.” (Luke 19:44 KJV.) It is entirely possible to be in the middle of God’s move, the very move that we hunger for, and still miss it.

I once heard Bob Deweese, a former associate evangelist to Oral Roberts, say, “The people who most longed for the move of the Spirit in 1947 were among those who rejected it when it came.”

Hosea was speaking as the mouthpiece of the Lord when he said:

“Come, let us return to the Lord. He has torn us to pieces but he will heal us; he has injured us but he will bind up our wounds.

After two days he will revive us; on the third day he will restore us, that we may live in his presence.

...he will come to us like the winter [KJV, “former”] rains, like the spring [KJV, “latter”] rains that water the earth” (Hosea 6:1-3).

In these verses, Hosea speaks of three days. In the first “day,” God’s people are humbled. Following that, Hosea speaks of a revival that will revitalize the people. Finally, in the third “day,” God’s people are restored to live in His abiding presence. Hosea reveals a spiritual principle governing God’s dealing with His people. I believe, in our time, we are in a process of transition out of the first “day” into a revival in preparation for true restoration.

Above and beyond the meaning for the people of his day, Hosea prophesied of a revival that would be what the King James Version refers to as the “former” and “latter” rains combined. The former rain was an outpouring after the autumn harvest that prepared the ground for plowing and planting. The latter rain came in spring and summer to cause the crops to ripen and mature.

Hosea was saying that there is a move of God that both prepares the way and brings the harvest to full maturity. That is the move we want to see in our time.

The latter rain is said to be seven times greater than the early or former rain. If indeed, we experience the former rain with the latter rain, it will be a revival to touch the nations.