who follow Him to be the visible
manifestation of His love and His truth.
What would a Jesus Revolution look
like today? All we know is that it
would be scary, exhilarating, messy,
passionate, and surprising. We should
not pray for revival unless we are
ready to be turned upside down, our
heads and our pockets and our lives
shaken out. During times of revival,
the transcendent power of God is
unleashed in human beings. . . and
when the divine is poured into the
human, we can expect human beings
to act in unusual ways.
A new revival might well start, as
did the Jesus Movement, among the
least likely people. But whatever God
chooses to do, we do know a few things
about what happens when revival
comes, regardless of its time period or
cultural context.
Greg Talks About “The Jesus Movement”
First, God comes down. The weight of
His presence is unmistakable. Revival
is no human endeavor. It is an electric
encounter with the Other—the Eternal
One who lives from everlasting to
everlasting, the God who is beyond
our dimensions—that brings about the
34 • Solutions
conviction of sin. Just as at Pentecost,
when the apostle Peter preached and
his hearers were “cut to the heart,” they
responded by asking what they could
do to get rid of their guilt. “Repent,
then,” said Peter, “and turn to God, so
that your sins may be wiped out, that
times of refreshing may come from
the Lord.” There is no refreshment
without the conviction, confession,
and forgiveness of sin. God’s Word
pierces human hearts. The teaching
and proclamation of the Bible itself is
central, for revival is a divine synthesis
of mind and heart, more than just
emotional experience and more than
just cognitive assertions.
Lives change. In true revival, there is a
wholesale renunciation of sin and its
patterns. People live differently than
they did before, to say the least. When
all these things happen, there is an
unmistakable flood of love that fills the
local community of Christians, both
new and old. For example, Jonathan
Edwards wrote that his colonial “town
seemed to be full of the presence of
God; it never was so full of love, nor
of joy... as it was then.There were
remarkable tokens of God’s presence
in almost every house.”
There was an extravagant outpouring
of care, outreach, and generosity that
characterized the early New Testament
church. The revival flood also brings
love’s sister, joy.
What might it look like for Jesus to
revive us again today? It needn’t have a
label, like a movement among a certain