This all changed for me tonight during the college Bible study when one of our pastors, Charles Leiter, was sharing on the Lord's model prayer given to us in Matt. 6 and Luke 11. In this model prayer, one of the things that our Lord has told us to explicitly pray for is the advancement of God's kingdom in this world. This advancement of the kingdom includes the salvation of souls and the growth of God's people in holiness.
Now, what is revival, but an extraordinary advancement of God's kingdom taking place in a condensed period of time? Usually God's kingdom is seen to be advancing in a somewhat slow manner; a few people are saved here and there over, perhaps, quite a long period of time. But when the Holy Spirit is poured out, thousands may be saved in a short period of time, and Christians might be set free in a moment from things they have been struggling with for years. So in reality, revival (i.e., an outpouring of the Holy Spirit) is simply one of the ways in which God advances His kingdom, albeit it in an extraordinary way.
Why is this important? Three brief reasons:
- It shows us that revival is not something “wholly other” from God's everyday workings, but is an extraordinary manifestation of what He is doing all of the time, i.e., advancing His kingdom in this world.
- It gives us a Biblical justification for praying for revival. No longer do we have to appeal to example or theological deduction alone, or texts that have been ripped from their context (2 Chronicles 7:13-15 is notorious in this regard). All we have to do is go to the model prayer that the Lord Jesus Christ himself has given us, since revival is something that is included in the petition of “May Your kingdom come.”
- This shows us that praying for revival is not just a good idea, but is something commanded by Scripture. Christians are commanded to pray and, according to Christ's model, ought to pray for the advancement of God's kingdom as part of their prayers. Furthermore, this isn't something that the Christian only prays for every once in a while, but is something that he should be daily petitioning the Lord for, just as he prays daily for his food and for his sins to be forgiven. The Christian's daily desire is for God's kingdom to be advancing and, as I said above, granting an outpouring of the Holy Spirit is one of the ways in which God answers this prayer.
