It’s time to reopen the wells of revival

I find myself in a historic renewal church that experienced significant moves of God in the 1980s and 1990s, under leaders whose names you’d know. During these seasons of supernatural happenings, the church was known for sending out faith-sharing teams and receiving thousands of visitors who came to drink deeply from the wells of God’s presence.

Many who were there at the time are still in this church; some can trace back events to the 1960s, giving testimony of the Spirit stirring in unusual ways even then. To have been in this church for 30 years or more is the norm. So I, with just over three years of history there, am still a newcomer. Yet in this short time, God has been drawing me to the story of Isaac and his wells, found in Genesis 26.

Isaac had a problem. Having been wildly successful, the Philistines had banned him from drawing on their water supplies after he’d enjoyed the kind of bountiful harvest that makes one’s neighbours feel threatened. Doubtless, from King Abimelech’s perspective, it seemed wiser to cut Isaac off altogether – in the hope that he’d move on, finding somewhere else to set up home. After all, this was ground that had been trodden before: the previous generation had stopped up the wells of Abraham, Isaac’s father, for probably the same reason. That time, they’d put rubble down them, perhaps even decomposing matter, so that the overflow would be blocked and the water no longer pure.

Yet Isaac chose to stay in this drought-parched land. He stayed because God had told him to sojourn there (Genesis 26:1-3). And so he reopened Abraham’s wells, giving them the same names his father had (26:18). Then he dug new wells of his own (26:19-33).

Overflowing water is, in this Old Testament account, associated with life and God’s blessing. In the New Testament, it indicates eternal life and the Spirit Himself (John 4:13-14; 7:37-39). So also has this language become associated with contemporary prayer for renewal. And Isaac’s choices regarding his wells have caught my attention. 

Old wells and new

I’m interested that he unblocked his father’s wells alongside digging his own. When it might have been easier and cleaner to start again, Isaac painstakingly cleared the previous generation’s rubble and decomposing matter, a difficult and unpleasant task. He did so, presumably, because these wells were tried and tested. Having produced water once, they would, if properly cleared, do so again.

I’m fascinated, too, by Isaac’s decision to call these old wells by the same names Abraham had given them. At one level, Isaac was reiterating his claim upon them. Using the old family names reminded everyone that these were his inheritance and the water was his to steward. Yet perhaps it was deeper than this. Jewish names carry stories (26:19-22). What if, in using the old names for his father’s wells, Isaac was retelling their stories of harvests and blessings?

Retelling the stories

My church is now some 30 years on from our last experience of spiritual renewal. It would be easy to forget what happened across those many decades, instead focussing only on our younger people and the new wells that, in God’s grace, they might see opened. But Isaac is teaching me a different way. In his story, old wells and new flowed together. And so I ask: what if retelling the stories were part of reopening our old wells?

What if retelling the stories were part of reopening our old wells?

I have begun to imagine a church in which our Abraham generation – those who saw and experienced the unusual activity of the Spirit in seasons now past – would retell their stories to those of the Isaac generation, who were not there and did not see. It’s led me to ask parishioners to share what they experienced. I’ve heard stories of tongue-speaking that turned out to be perfect communication in a prayer recipient’s first language, testimonies of supernatural provision and healings. 

As this Abraham generation are retelling their God stories, it is giving the Isaac generation a language and expectation for God’s inbreaking again, this time among us. For the Abraham generation, too, it is beginning to stir up hunger, reminding them what they once knew and had perhaps forgotten. Retelling the stories is reopening us to divine possibility. 

Clearing the rubble

It would be easy to stay with the glory stories. Stories of fruitfulness are easier than stories of sin’s rubble. But rubble is there: indeed, in God’s kindness, my church is having to face that right now. Just as wheat and tares grow together, so sin was not absent from our historic renewal seasons. There were times when God was treated as irrelevant and people made in His image were made only a means to someone else’s end. These stories, too, must be retold so we can lament and repent. 

How this is done must be carefully considered. For the flesh easily delights in shame – especially the shame of others. For us, the ‘how’ has been predetermined. But pastoral and ethical care is needed in deciding which stories are told, who tells them and to whom. However this happens, hearing such stories will always be hard. Our first response must be humility coupled with grief for, and confession of, our corporate failures to God and others. But perhaps it will ultimately reopen us to the revival that comes only to the “contrite and lowly” (Isaiah 57:15).

What if, right across the UK Church, retelling the stories – of glory and rubble alike – could be part of reopening our many wells? Perhaps then, in God’s grace, old wells and new will flow together.