"Awakening the Soul: The Power and Promise of Revival"
Today UK Church membership has declined from 10.6 million in 1930 to 5.5 Million in 2010, or in other words a decline from 30% to 10%. If current trend continues, membership will fall to less than 8.4% of the population by 2025. Churches are at generational catastrophe with only 2% of young adults identifying as Christians, while seven out of 10 under-24s say they have no religion, research reveals.
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In November 1949, revival broke out in Island of Lewis with two sisters, Peggy, and Christine Smith, 84 and 82 years old. Peggy was completely blind, and Christine bent over with arthritis. They were burdened due to the depressed spiritual state in their Barvas village church. The church was dead, legalistic, and had a form of godliness but without any substance. Not a single young man or young woman went to the church, there so. But holding on the promise from Isaiah 44:3 “I will pour water on the thirsty land, and streams on the dry ground”, the sisters continued praying for several weeks at least 2-3 days from night 10 PM to morning 3 AM. Soon the minister of the church and some leaders joined and began interceding in a barn at the same time as the Smith’s sisters. One day around 3 AM while they were praying, a deacon after he read from Psalms 24 said “It seems to me to be so much humbug to be praying as we are praying, to be waiting as we are waiting, if we ourselves are not rightly related to God.” It brought everyone on their knees crying out “God, are my hands clean? Is my heart pure?”. It was not only they who felt it, but the entire village was gripped by the presence of God, men and women kneeling on the road and nobody was able to sleep. The revival had begun, people from different places were drawn to come, they were converted even before they came to Barvas. The minister by the name Duncan Campbell, was invited to preach for few days but he stayed for five weeks ministering. Hundreds for people came to church in the middle of the night; dance, music, and bars stopped and young men and women convicted of sin needed no invitation or persuasion, they went running to the church and the meetings at times extended till 4 AM. In this revival, many hymns were composed, hunger for the Word of God was intense, it spread to Carloway, Ness, Arnol, Leverburgh, Kinloch, Harris, and other locations. Some claim around 20,000 people were converted during the first five weeks and it continued for 3 years. Duncan Campbell’s book Revival in the Hebrides delves deeper in the into the revival that happened in Hebrides and underlines the principles of revival.
There are four main principles we learn from this revival, which is very relevant for us, first the people of God waiting for revival must have right relationship with God. Secondly, we should hold on to the promise of God, as the believers in Hebrides, that he will pour water on the thirsty and flood on the dry land. Thirdly, God is sovereign and acts according to his purpose and will, but he uses man as instruments to reveal his work. Fourthly, it is supernatural, divine manifestation of God working in power and reviving lives.
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Revival needs few faithful people responding to the burden for souls through the Holy Spirit. It is not about gathering big crowds in crusades through campaigns, advertisement, popular names, bands, and preachers. But God moving and the fear of God taking hold of people’s hearts, conviction of sin, and people turning to God who had nothing to with spiritual things.
Let us as individuals, churches, cities, and nations turn to God in prayer so that revival may sweep through the land, convict people, and raise a generation of Godly people. As mentioned in 2 Chron 7:14 let us call on the name of the Lord, humble ourselves, pray and seek his face, and turn from wicked ways so that God may hear from heaven, have mercy, and forgive us and heal our land.