Revival may mean different things to different people. To some, it may be a nightly meeting with wonderful praise and worship. To others, it may be a breakthrough in their finances, and yet to another, it may be an influx of visitors to their church. But what is true biblical revival and why do we need it?

John Pipper describes revival this way:

The idea of revival originates in the reality that, on the one hand, God is the decisive giver of all spiritual life and, on the other hand, humans, even those who are born again and part of God’s covenant family, from time to time drift into a kind of lifelessness and lethargy and backsliding and indifference and weakness. And when you put those two together — God as the giver of life and man as ever drifting towards lifelessness — what you get is the need for the hope of reviving, coming back to life — a fresh outpouring of God’s life-giving Spirit on his people. That is what revival is.

He continues to say…

In the history of the church, the term revival in its most biblical sense has meant a sovereign work of God in which the whole region of many churches, many Christians has been lifted out of spiritual indifference and worldliness into the conviction of sin, earnest desires for more of Christ and his word, boldness in witness, purity of life, lots of conversions, joyful worship, a renewed commitment to missions. You feel God has moved here. And basically revival, then, is God doing among many Christians at the same time or in the same region, usually, what he is doing all the time in individual Christian’s lives as people get saved and individually renewed around the world.

For you and I to embrace revival we must come to the place of acceptance that though we may look ok, we are dying. The life of God in us is sipping away, we are just going through the motions but on the inside, we have no life, we have no joy, we have no peace and our connection with God is not what it was before. In the words of Jesus in Revelation, we have lost our first love.

It is only dead people that are revived and brought back to life but as long as you think you are ok, then you have no need and hunger for God to come and revive you.