What Must We Do for Revival? - A Return to the Word of God

As I previously stated, prayer is how we speak to the Lord and seek His face, and the Scriptures are the primary means by which the Holy Spirit speaks back to us. If we neglect to read the Word, we are missing out on what the Lord wants to communicate to us. Paul told Timothy, “Study to shew thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth.” (2Timothy 2:15) And, “All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness.” (2 Timothy 3:16) Every revival we have seen throughout history has always been characterized by a renewal of a hunger for the Word of God. During the First and Second Great Awakenings, people would come from all over to hear men like George Whitefield, Francis Asbury, and Charles Finney preach the word of God. The same thing happened during the Jesus Movement and the beginning of Calvary Chapel. We can see examples of this in the Word as well: in times of revival in ancient Israel they returned to reading the Law (Nehemiah 8), and in the Church the Apostles devoted themselves to the Word of God and prayer (Acts 6:2-4). It is over time that people and denominations begin to question the accuracy and authority of the Scriptures, and liberal theology begins to take over. You can see this in our own country: Most of the liberal Churches today were once solid Bible preaching Churches who gave into the pressure to become culturally relevant. As they have done so, they have lost their witness, and have become just another social organization. We need to return to the literal interpretation of the Scriptures, and not cave into the pressure to be politically correct. We need to stop picking and choosing which passages we accept and which ones we do not, and take the whole counsel of God’s Word as valid for us today, regardless of what others are saying around us. This does not mean we will agree on every point of doctrine, but that we should agree on the fundamentals that are plainly taught in the Scriptures. If we want to see revival in our nation, we need to be men and women of the Word.