Revival In Our Time? ... Yes!

Revival In Our Time? … Yes!!


John R. Petrilli

Imagine your telephone ringing and finding that the person on the other side of the call is the President of the United States! Or how about Billy Graham, or the Pope, or Mother Theresa? What an honor it would be to have a personal audience with any of these distinguished persons! Now take that scenario and notch it up about a million times to find yourself in the court of the King of the Universe… God!

That’s where Isaiah the prophet found himself. And this is where God found Isaiah. And where Isaiah found himself stripped spiritually naked before a thrice-holy God. In the first nine verses of the sixth chapter of the book bearing his name, we watch Isaiah become transformed from impure vessel to pristine preacher. As we unpack this loaded passage we discover four principles of genuine revival.


REVIVAL FIRES ARE KINDLED WHEN WE COME FACE TO FACE WITH THE HOLINESS OF GOD! 1-4

A royal administrator had just passed off the scene in Judah. A king by the name of Uzziah had died. Who would succeed him and lead the nation now? God powerfully reminds His anxious prophet that He, the King of Kings, was still on the Throne. As always, He would preside over Judah’s national affairs as well as the affairs of the international community. But what kind of character did God possess that qualified Him to govern the world? A holy character. In fact, the three-times-over kind of holiness. Holiness through and through. Once the angelic guard surrounding heaven’s throne declared that perfect holiness, the entire temple shook, rattled and rolled. Its very doorposts moved out of their sockets, and the entire scene was inundated with smoke kindled by the burning fire of God’s holiness.

French philosopher Alexander DeToqueville visited America in the 1830’s, and made these keen observations: “I sought for the greatness and genius of America in her commodious harbors and her ample rivers, and it was not there. In the fertile fields and boundless prairies, and it was not there. In her rich mines and her vast world commerce, and it was not there. Not until I went into the churches of America and heard her pulpits, aflame with righteousness, did I understand the secret of her genius and power. America is great because she is good, and if America ever ceases to be good, America will cease to be great.”

Mark this down as my humble, heartfelt call to pulpits across Central New York pulpits all across America … “Get a hold of the holiness of God and preach it until the pews get it down pat!” We serve a HOLY God, Whose laws are not to be trifled with, Whose grace is never to be received in vain, and Whose love is never to be taken for granted!! “But just as he Who called you is holy”, Peter reminds, “be holy in all you do, for it is written, ‘Be holy, for I am holy’ “ (1 Peter 1:15-16).



REVIVAL FIRES BREAK OUT WHEN THE HOLINESS OF GOD EXPOSES THE UNHOLINESS OF HIS PEOPLE! 5

Mirrors are a humble yet helpful commodity. They reveal nothing of themselves but simply, quietly and clearly reflect the exact image of the object facing them. Like a giant cosmic mirror, a single glimpse of God’s absolute holiness showed up the impurities in Isaiah’s life. Indeed, the princely prophet confesses, “I am completely RUINED!” One look at the God of glory sent the heretofore seemingly righteous man to his knees in utter abasement, conviction and contrition. Before his fellow men he felt just fine, but pure holiness instantly revealed his problem with unwholesome speech, and he was down for the count. Isaiah quickly recognized he wasn’t alone either. The entire culture of Judah was guilty of verbal impurity. Whether it was lying, swearing, gossip, profanity, or other, the Holy Spirit of the Holy God pointed out this glaring sin in his life and the life of the nation.

What would be the Holy Spirit’s commentary on our culture’s vocabulary and conversation? Probably the same, perhaps an even worse indictment. Our Television and movie screens, internet, radio waves, music and literature are filled with the unclean, the unholy and the profane. A fresh glimpse of God’s holiness would cause our mouths to stop on the dime in guilty silence. And that’s just what will happen later if not sooner (see Romans 3:19-20). We claim to love God, follow Jesus, and obey the Holy Spirit. But if that were truly so, we’d have a zero rate of divorce, immorality and duplicity in the church. We need to get such a grip on God’s holiness that, like Isaiah, we come to the end of ourselves and our sins, both individual and as a nation.


REVIVAL FIRES BURN HOTLY WHEN GOD’S PEOPLE COME CLEAN! 6-7

Picture a world without washing machines. We’d eventually run through our entire wardrobe and begin wearing dirty, smelly, wrinkled and unwashed clothes. Everything needs a periodic cleaning, and our lives are no different. Having seen face to face the kind of holy God he was serving, and having come to grips with His unclean status, Isaiah was now ready for a spiritual housecleaning. An angel swoops down from God’s altar to the place where Isaiah knelt. The angel applies hot coals taken from God’s altar to the very place of Isaiah’s besetting sin … his big mouth. The coals burned away Isaiah’s oral impurity as well as his internal heart impurity. Once he had been cleansed and made heart-right with God, his words would then reflect that internal renewal (Matthew 6:45).

The believer today has the blood of Christ as the all-purpose cleansing agent. When we allow our hearts to be cleansed by the Word of God and the blood of Christ, we’ll speak a whole new language of love instead of hate, truth instead of misrepresentation, and grace instead of criticism. (1 John 1:9 ; Eph. 4:29-5:4 ; Eph. 5:26).


REVIVAL FIRES SPREAD WILDLY ONCE GOD’S PEOPLE ARE SET FREE TO SERVE! 8-9

What do you do when you finish laundering your garments? If you locked them up and never used them again, you’d not only be unpresentable to civilized society, you’d also be declared legally insane. When God cleanses His people He always does so with a unique mission in mind for them to fulfill. Yours may be teaching, or singing, or serving, or managing a ministry, or giving, or doing cross-cultural evangelism. Whatever the call, we need to first be spiritually prepared for that work, and personally predisposed to the same. It is God Who works in us to change our attitudes and become willing to serve Him in the exact place He wants us in (Phil. 2:13). Imagine the ministry impact and spiritual revolution that would erupt if EVERY Christian got their spiritual house in order, and then locked into God’s special spot for them in their church’s ministry program? Well, that would be REVIVAL! And it would be phenomenal!

If you’re thinking this could never happen, think again. Recall how God’s Spirit spilled over from the pulpit into the pew and out to the people outside the temple in Ezekiel’s vision (Ezek. 9:1-11)? In great mercy the Lord set apart the godly who had grieved over Judah’s sinful state of affairs, sparing them from His fury that took out everyone guilty of the grossest idolatry. Judgment began at the house of God, and will repeat itself there as the Church responds to Christ’s call to repent of its waywardness and carnality (see 1 Pet. 4:17-18 ; Rev. 2:5 ; 2:16 ; 2:21-22 ; 3:3 ; 3:19).

The first group of Christian believers also experienced the cleansing fire and powerful anointing of the Holy Spirit as they waited on God in prayer in obedience to Jesus’ pre-ascension command. As believers we’re all vessels. The question is, are we clean enough for the Master to use (2 Timothy 2:21-22)? Only we know what besetting sins are short-circuiting the Holy Spirit’s ability to use us to our maximum capacity. And only we can rid ourselves of the spiritual dirt and grime that soils our hearts and lives. And only then will we experience the power of God igniting our life and witness with new found freedom and effectiveness.

So, can God send revival to what some have called “post-Christian America”? There’s no doubt about it. God favored the completely pagan and godless society of ancient Nineveh with a heaven-sent revival that shook the core of that entire culture from top to bottom (see Jonah 3:1-10). God even used a very reluctant Jewish preacher to sound the alarm that warned the Ninevites of impending judgment in no less than forty short days. Jonah’s revival sermon was short and sweet, and that’s all God needed to spark a cataclysmic revival that flowed throughout that ancient and opulent land.

Let’s follow Isaiah’s lead. Let’s come face to face before God’s Throne, allowing Him to expose our spiritual deficits, receive the cleansing that come through real repentance and Christ’s blood, and then enjoy the thrill ride that awaits us when we’re set free to serve the living God with everything we’ve got!