A Call for Authentic, Deep, Lasting, Culture-Changing Renewal
The Backstory
I recently received a text from a family telling me that they were moving (downsizing) and asking if I would be interested in the husband’s father’s library. Before his passing, he had been a renewalist preacher in Texas and avid book collector. As an avid reader, I was thrilled to be the recipient of this collection. As I took the boxes and boxes of books into my office and opened the first case, I was drawn to a small volume entitled Revival: The Need and Possibilities, and started to read. [1]
At this point, let me insert that I suppose I’ve spent the last 15 years going back and forth on “revival.” On one hand, I have a deep longing for spiritual renewal and have experienced during different seasons of ministry what I would call “glimpses” of renewal. But there have also been seasons when I have tended to shy away, due to seeing some of the abuses and excesses of those who might classify themselves as “revivalists.” [2] And so I have been torn. But lately the longing has deepened and have found myself increasingly thinking about and praying for a deep and authentic awakening and renewal.
I think some of our hesitancy to seek revival is that we’re not sure what we’re seeking. Because if we’re only seeking an emotional high (which, I think, is what some tend to think of when we say ‘revival’), then we don’t want that. [3] We long for something deeper and more authentic. But as I began to read this treatise on revival by British clergyman Cyril C.B. Bardsley, the words began to resonate. Although the words were penned 99 years ago in the U.K., it is though they were written last week in the U.S. I’m not saying I stumbled across the Qumran scrolls or the Holy Grail, but I do believe the Lord in his sovereignty led me to this book and I do believe that its pages contain powerful truths for us today. [4]
So I want to do two things: First, I will summarize some of the important parts of the first chapter and second, I will include a PDF of the first chapter for you to download and read for yourself. [5] For ease of the flow of thought, I have broken Bardsley's thoughts into headings. The headings are mine, but I have included Bardsley’s words underneath verbatim. I will begin with the foreword written by the Bishop of Liverpool which describes the state of the nation and then proceed to Bardsley’s treatise.
The State of Our Nation and Need for Renewal
Throughout the world there is distress of nations with perplexity. Men’s hearts are failing them for fear, and for looking after those things which are coming on the earth. All the foundations of human society seem out of course.
… [The church] is filled with divine dissatisfaction. They are looking for, longing for, and praying for a revival of true religion. Everywhere the prayer is going up, “Come from the four winds, O breath, and breathe upon these slain that they may live.”
The history of Christianity from its earliest days until now unfolds the conditions of a great spiritual awakening.
When the dissatisfaction which possesses us has found a voice in more fervent and united prayer and has led us to a deeper penitence and renewed trust in God; when self-surrender takes the place of self-will; and prejudice, and suspicion, and jealousy, are lost in love; when we are ready, like Saul of Tarsus, to ask, with heartfelt submission, “What shall I do, Lord?” then the long looked-for revival will come. God will send a gracious rain upon his inheritance and refresh it when it is weary. There will be “showers of blessing,” and a revived Church will awaken the world. [6]
F.J. Liverpool Bishop of Liverpool March 1916
True, Authentic, Deep, Lasting, Spiritual Renewal
1. Renewal Needs to be Properly Defined
In its general sense, the word “revival” means that some particular activity has entered a new phase of development; it implies that something previously existing has become revitalised. In the religious sense also revival connotes new life, it means that spiritual life has become deeper, truer, fuller, that there has been a fresh inflow of the life of God. [7]
2. Renewal is Our Story— Both Our Biblical Story and the Church’s Story
The idea is not new. From the earliest times down to the history of our own day there have been times when man has entered more fully into the heritage of the divine life. …Again and again the Old Testament we read of such times. The revival in the days of Josiah and Ezra. …The psalmist praying, “Wilt thou not quicken us again, that thy people may rejoice in thee”; Ezekiel crying, “Come from the four winds, O breath, and breathe upon these slain, that they may live”; the prophet looking forward with longing to the day when God will pour out His Spirit upon all flesh; …Peter on the day of Pentecost.
It has been said that the story of the Christian Church is very largely the story of its times of revival, when after a gradual weakening of the hold on spiritual realities, Christians have seemed to get a new grip on things spiritual and the Church has received fresh impetus and new energy for her task. [8]
3. Renewal is a Turning from Sin and Turning Back to God
Revival is a return to God. Only when men are in close touch with God can they be partakers of His life. …When men leave God they forfeit His guidance, His upholding power, His peace. Sooner or later they are in the evil plight and they learn the penalty of sin.
This was the truth which burnt itself upon the consciousness of the prophets of the Old Testament. With intense clearness of insight they saw that the life of their nation depended upon a turning away from sin and a coming back into true relationship with God. [9]
4. Renewal is a Renewed Understanding of God’s Love
[The prophets] told of a God who was reluctant to punish and quick to restore. [10]
5. Renewal is a Time of Refreshing for God’s People
Again and again the coming of the Lord to His people is described as the coming of showers of water to a thirsty land. …All that the showers meant to the Eastern [shepherds], that revival means to the people of God—new life that suddenly springs to birth, new growth and fruitfulness, new beauty and joy. All through the Church’s story the coming of the Lord has meant the refreshing of his people. The Church has drooped and withered, it has been as a plant whose leaf fadeth, as a garden that hath no water, and at the coming of the Spirit, the Life Giver, its branches have once more shot forth and borne fruit. [11]
6. Renewal is a Reclaiming of Our Rightful Inheritance
It is a return to those powers which are ours by right, to that which Christ came to make the possession of every one who would receive him. …Revival is the realisation of our spiritual assets, the recovery of long disused powers and privileges. [12]
7. Renewal Means that the Truths of God’s Word Become Alive to Us in a Greater Way
Well-known facts are seen transfigured with a new light; doctrines which have been mechanically professed for years suddenly appear as intimate realities and are invested with a new and wonderful wealth of meaning; worship becomes communion; prayer and praise, from being formal utterances of the lips, become the expressions of the overflowing desire and adoration of the heart. …Revival in the Church is a vitalising of familiar truths, the discovery of possibilities already possessed, a readjustment of well-known factors, until the whole structure of Church life becomes transformed and glowing—instinct with the presence of God. [13]
8. Renewal Leads to Discovery
Awakening leads to discovery, and revival is discovery—the discovery of Christ, first by individuals who can say, “we have seen the Lord.” Then, as with freshness of conviction and intensity of faith, witness is given, the veil that hides Him from others is taken away. Such discovery transforms men’s conceptions of Christ, and their relationship with Him. [14]
9. Renewal Leads to Missional Living
The discovery of Christ involves the discovery of the greatness of His cause. …To the man who has seen Christ, “Thy Kingdom come” ceases to be a mere phrase and becomes a glorious challenge to all that is best and noblest in him. [15]
10. Renewal Leads to Healed Relationships, Both Personally and in the Community
It is impossible for any class of men and women to have new conceptions of life without interpreting them in their relations with their fellow men. Revival must affect the relation between employer and employed, between landlord and tenant, between class and class, nation and nation. [16]
11. Renewal Leads to Adventure
When great forces are at work there is always the possibility of the unprecedented happening. …Let us frankly admit it, there is somewhat of a revolutionary tendency in revival. When the existing order of things has become lifeless and hardened the new life may break out in a desire for reform, in efforts to make current Christianity into something more worthy of the name it bears. [17]
12. Renewal is a Combination of the Work of God and the Work of Man
The human and divine factors in revival are inseparably connected, but none the less one cannot take place without the other. [18]
13. Renewal Needs the Contributions of Every Type of Mind
A spiritual movement needs the contributions of every type of mind, for it is as many-sided as life itself. The thinker, the scholar, the theologian, the reformer, the social worker, as well as the evangelist and the mystic, have all their part to take in it, and all must take it if revival is not to be unequal or unbalanced, or worse still, fleeting, evanescent, and without lasting result. [19]
Closing Declaration
The present time is one of deep solemnity; there is a widespread consciousness that the heart of the nation is not right with God, and that only a revival of true religion will really save the country. There is a new stretching out of the hands of many towards God. History shows that in such an hour in a nation’s story some of the most remarkable spiritual awakenings have taken place. We are near so much, and we may miss so much. Vast spiritual possibilities [can] be realised. [20]
Amen. Even so, come Lord Jesus.
Download Chapter One of Bardsley's Treatise
Notes
[1] Cyril C.B. Bardsey, Revival: The Need and the Possibilities, (London: Longmans, Green, and Co.), 1916.
[2] And I suppose if I fully transparent, also due to a hesitancy to pray for renewal due to fears and believing lies of the enemy.
[3] Although Bardsley uses the word “revival,” I have chosen to use “renewal” due in part to the potential modern baggage that may be associated with the term “revival.” Furthermore, I would say that the term “renewal” may more accurately portray in our modern vernacular the concepts which Bardsley sets forth.
[4] I Googled the book and searched for it on Amazon. I’m sure there are others, but the only two that I could find was one for sale on Amazon for $50.01 and one in a library at St. Paul’s University.
[5] Because the book was published before 1923, it is classified as “public domain.” Regulations on materials classified as “public domain” https://copyright.cornell.edu/resources/publicdomain.cfm, accessed 17 August, 2015.
[6] pp. 7-9.
[7] p. 15.
[8] pp. 16-17.
[9] pp. 17-18.
[10] p. 19.
[11] p. 19-20.
[12] pp. 20-21.
[13] pp. 21-22.
[14] p. 22.
[15] p. 24.
[16] p. 26
[17] p. 27
[18] p. 30.
[19] p. 33.
[20] p. 30.