‘We’ve never seen spiritual hunger like this before!’ Revival is here. Here are 4 ways you can steward it

Just as flowers emerge from the soil every spring and thunder announces the arrival of an oncoming storm, we believe we’re seeing signs of a new season at hand across Europe and around the world. 

• Researchers are tracking sharp increases in those who profess to follow Jesus, especially among younger generations. 
• Arenas typically reserved for sporting events or rock concerts are being transformed into sacred spaces of worship and prayer. 
• University campuses often filled with secularism are now overflowing with stories of mass public baptism. 

Earlier this month, at a conference called the Awakening Project organisers took a risk and planned an all-night prayer vigil as the culminating experience of the conference — an audacious hope to somehow fill a venue 1,300-capacity venue. To their surprise, more than 2,000 people showed up and spent all night in worship and prayer to God! 

Reports like these testify to the “new thing” God is doing in our midst. They stir our faith to believe that God is on the move in our day. Stories like these also provoke curiosity – inviting us to consider questions like “What now?” and “How can we steward what God seems to be doing so that these moments of breakthrough become a movement of revival?” 

Those were the kinds of questions Kodi Moore was asking as he left the Revive Europe staff retreat. The team had gathered in Hernhutt, Germany – the site of a historic revival and the birthplace of the Moravian missions movement – and as they worshipped, prayed, and studied the scriptures, he felt overwhelmed with the love of God. Their retreat was a moment of encounter, but what would it take for it to become a movement of revival? 

As he boarded his train back to Berlin, Kodi couldn’t help but look around at the faces of his fellow passengers and see men and women who were dearly loved by God. Throughout his day of travel he felt compelled to join God in his love for the people he came in contact with. 

On one train he met a young Christian woman from Portugal traveling with her teenage brother. He offered to pray for them and shared a word of blessing that instantly resonated with their hearts, causing tears to stream down their faces. 

Later, as he was changing trains, he saw a teenage woman kneeling down and weeping on the platform. She had been stung by a wasp and was having a panic attack. He offered to pray for her and saw peace come over her face as she quickly stood to her feet in stunned silence. 

On another train platform, he met a young man gripping his arm after being hit by the mirror of a passing car. Kodi prayed for his arm and then felt led to pray for his heart. He learned that this young man had grown up around church but hadn’t been in ages, so Kodi shared the story of the prodigal son and said that God longed to welcome him home. The young man was overwhelmed with the presence of God as he prayed to start a relationship with Jesus. 

On his last train ride, Kodi sat across from two university students from England. As they talked, their conversation went deeper into questions about life and God. Kodi suggested they could pray and ask God to come close right then. They agreed, and as they arrived in Berlin, one student shared through tears, “When I woke up this morning, I had no idea that I was about to have a spiritual awakening!” 

A new spiritual season 

Our conviction is that reports like those we’re hearing from around the world and countless untold stories like Kodi’s are not outliers in an otherwise stale spiritual landscape. Rather, we believe they are signs that point to a new spiritual season at hand – a new normal in the church’s everyday experience of God. 

There’s a word for this kind of season: Revival. 

Revival has been defined as “a season of breakthroughs in word, deed, and power that ushers in a new normal of kingdom experience and fruitfulness.” So, the big question for us as followers of Jesus in this season is “How should we live in light of this new normal?” Basically, “what now?” 

Anytime God pours out the new wine of revival, he also provides new wineskins to steward what he’s doing, and we believe that God is inviting us as his people into four E’s – Encounter, Explore, Empower, and Establish – that can help us steward the new thing he is doing and awaken to the everyday movement of God all around us. 

1. Encounter: Lingering in his presence 

All around the world, we’re hearing a refrain that seems to capture the spirit of this new season– “we’ve never seen spiritual hunger like this before!” 

People are genuinely hungry to encounter the presence of God. Though it is always true, there seems to be a way that God is uniquely present and accessible in this season. As such, if we want to embrace this new normal, the most fundamental practice for stewarding spiritual awakening is to encounter God. 

One of the key practices that gave rise to what ultimately became the Asbury outpouring was the practice of lingering in prayer. In describing the Asbury outpouring, some of the movement’s stewards said: “In the outpouring, what began as a trickle of lingering in God’s presence grew to become a Niagara of his love as men and women, particularly the young, encountered Jesus.”

If we long for more of God’s presence, it’s essential for us to create spaces to linger in prayer and wait for God. In our own rhythms of daily prayer, in silence and listening for God to speak. It could mean reading scripture in a posture of prayer, taking time to be still and allowing God’s Word to take deeper root in our hearts. 

But encounter with God is not just a personal discipline, it’s something we practice together. In this season of awakening, it’s powerful to see every gathering with other Christians as an opportunity to encounter God together.

If you lead a small group, you could set an evening aside to name the things that you long for God to do in your city, your families and your own lives and then bring those longings to God in prayer.

2. Explore: He’s already moving

If God is profoundly present and moving in wherever we go, then we can live our lives with joyful expectation and infectious curiosity as we explore what he’s already doing around us. We’re relieved of wondering if God is moving, and free instead to wonder how — and that question changes everything.

This is the question at the center of Jesus’ ministry. He said that “the Son can do nothing of his own accord, but only what he sees the Father doing. For whatever the Father does, that the Son does likewise. For the Father loves the Son and shows him all that he himself is doing.” (John 5:19-20) 

Think of the implications of this truth. Jesus could do nothing by himself. Every healing, every miracle, every act of compassion, every prophetic word — all were acts of seeing and joining in with what he saw the Father doing. Jesus lived his life with a posture of curiosity, expecting to see his Father actively at work in every interaction. And in the new normal of this season, we can do likewise. Like Kodi on the train from Hernhutt to Berlin, we can explore for how God is moving around us and be ready to take a risk and join in. 

Another young leader who embodies this posture is Shawn, a Haitian American college student in Florida. Shawn and his friends felt a fresh awareness of God moving on their campus. They had simple but winsome conversations with their friends that went something like this: “The Bible says that we can ‘seek the Lord while he may be found’ and ‘call upon him while he is near’ (Isaiah 55:6). We believe he may be found right here and that he’s near right now. Do you want to seek the Lord with us? Can we pray with you right now?” 

Time and again, the nearness of God was made evident as God came close to their friends with his loving presence — tears, healing, relationship with Jesus forged there and then.

Shawn and his friends didn’t need to wait for the next conference or mountain top gathering to facilitate an encounter with God. They recognised that God was present and moving right there in the places and people of their everyday lives. Everyday moments became opportunities to find God at work in the lives of their friends and to joyfully join in. 

3. Empower: working across the generations

Another refrain of this season is that of intergenerational empowerment. Looking forward to the ultimate day of revival, the prophet Malachi prophesied that God “will turn the hearts of fathers to their children and the hearts of children to their fathers.” Affection and blessing across generational lines is a major marker of revival.

This season of awakening has been marked by the older generation of Jesus followers interceding for a move of God among young people and making space for Gen Z to lead in this cultural moment. 

This kind of cross-generational empowerment is essential if we want to see moments of encounter grow into movements of power. Like Timothy, the young leader of the first century church community in Ephesus, this generation needs an inheritance of spiritual gifts and the empowerment of the Holy Spirit modeled and passed on through people!

As the apostle Paul wrote to Timothy: “I am reminded of your sincere faith, a faith that dwelt first in your grandmother Lois and your mother Eunice and now, I am sure, dwells in you as well. For this reason I remind you to fan into flame the gift of God, which is in you through the laying on of my hands.” (2 Timothy 1:5–6, ESV)

If you’ve been faithfully following Jesus for decades, this generation needs you! Who can you model a life of faith for? Who could you mentor and pray with? How could you pass on an impartation of the Holy Spirit’s power to younger followers of Jesus? 

If you are a younger follower of Jesus, who are you looking to as a model of faithfully following Jesus? Who do you know who has followed Jesus and lived a life of intimacy with God even in the face of suffering? Get around mentors like that and learn from them! 

4. Establish: Building communities to carry revival

It’s been said that awakening moves at the pace of friendship. For all the headline-making moves of God we might hear about, it’s the everyday rhythms of relationship that form the channels through which awakening moves and spreads. 

So, what rhythms of community can we establish to best steward the new normal of this season? I want to highlight two: confession and testimony. 

You would be hard pressed to find an example of revival in history that didn’t involve people becoming deeply aware of their own sin and brokenness and experiencing the life-giving love of God in spite of it.

The Hebrides revival of 1949 broke out when, after months of communal prayer, a young church deacon interrupted the prayer meeting with words of utter brokenness: “It seems to me so much humbug to be waiting as we are waiting, to be praying as we are praying, when we ourselves are not rightly related to God.”

Then, cut to the heart, he lifted his hands towards heaven and prayed in desperation, “O God, are my hands clean? Is my heart pure?” 

When we take a posture of humility and vulnerability in a loving community, we can experience freedom to see ourselves and one another accurately. We can open ourselves up to one another, confessing the idols and addictions that have held us in bondage. We can pray one another through to freedom and then go beyond confession to testimony of the God who saves and delivers! 

In his book Continuous Revival, Norman Grubb described how habits of testimony enlivened the churches of Rwanda in the 1930s and led to the decades-long spread of the East African Revival: “Joy and praise leaps from one heart to another when we hear what the Lord has done for another. The more direct, open, and exact the testimony, the more we rejoice.”

The everyday revival

In an echo of his promise in Isaiah 43:19, God is doing a new thing in our day. As God’s people, we are called to embrace the new normal that is stirring all around us. Our conviction is that embodying these four E’s – Encounter, Explore, Empower, and Establish – can help us awaken to the everyday movement of God and steward all that God wants to do in and through us in these remarkable days! 

• Where do you see signs of a new season in your context? 
• As you consider the ideas highlighted above, which of them feel like a helpful next step on your journey? 
• Who in your world might be encouraged by this article and how might you journey together in this season? 

To go deeper, see the book Reviving Mission: Awakening to the Everyday Movement of God (IVP)