How Desperate Are You for God?

Revival isn't a game of chance. There are specific conditions that must be met if you want to experience a visitation of the Holy Spirit.

By Tommy Tenney

Charles Dickens opened his famous book A Tale of Two Cities with the statement, "It was the best of times--it was the worst of times." He was referring to the period of history immediately preceding and including the French Revolution. But his statement is equally applicable to the current day. In many ways, it is both the "best of times" and the "worst of times" for the body of Christ. Why do I say this? Because some churches are experiencing tremendous growth and a tangible sense of God's presence, while others are experiencing a decline in attendance and an absence of awesomeness.

It is not always possible to determine why God brings revival in one place and not another. We can't definitively predict His movement any more than we can accurately predict the movement of the wind. But we can observe where the wind has blown hard and often before, and then plant ourselves in a likely place.

In doing so, we must be aware that God's logic is often in conflict with man's reasoning. That's because His perspective, unlike ours, is eternal.

To see what I mean, try this experiment: Compare God's assessment of the cities of Nazareth and Nineveh with your own. Because of their reputations, you probably think of Nazareth as a "good" city and Nineveh as a "bad" city. Yet God chose to bless Nineveh with citywide renewal and to allow Nazareth--hometown of the world's greatest preacher--to experience nothing!

What would motivate God to send great revival to Nineveh? After all, the city had a reluctant prophet spewed up by a fish for an evangelist. Nazareth, on the other hand, had Jesus. Looking more closely at these two cities may provide an indication of why one was ripe for a move of God and one wasn't--and why some of our churches today may be more likely to receive the fire of God than others.

A Tale of Two Cities

From an earthly perspective, Nazareth--the "Bible Belt" of the Holy Land in ancient times--had a lot going for it. Jesus grew up there; in fact, He spent more time in Nazareth--30 years--than in any other city on Earth.

Thirty years was certainly ample time for a great revival to occur. In many of the other towns where Jesus ministered, revival took place after only two or three days.

But instead of the setting for great revival, Nazareth was the scene of great rejection. The people Jesus grew up with drove Him out of town--and sought to kill Him. He had to miraculously walk through the crowd in order to keep from losing His life (see Luke 4:28-30).

What could Jesus have said to have provoked such a hostile response? Surely He must have insulted them, preached a harsh message--real fire-and-brimstone stuff. But that wasn't the case at all. Jesus simply read from the book of Isaiah.

He told the people, "The Spirit of the Lord is upon Me, for He has anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor, to heal, to open blind eyes, to set the captives free" (see Luke 4:18). He was telling them what He had come to do, what He wanted to do for them. They could have had it all, but their unbelief shut Him down cold.

The people of Nazareth were haughty and arrogant; they thought they knew Jesus. They thought they knew His family tree. "Isn't this the carpenter's son?" they asked themselves. "Are not His sisters and brothers here with us?"

The truth is, they knew the earthly facts about Jesus, but they didn't know Him. Their false familiarity birthed foolish assumptions. As a result, they did not believe He could do what He said, and they stopped God from moving in their midst.

The city of Nineveh, unlike Nazareth, did not have a lot going for it. It was involved in constant war with Israel and was famous for its atrocities. The people were cruel and heartless--and proud of it!

Often when they would conquer another city, they would capture the men, nail them to trees and disembowel them with a special curved sword. Then they would leave the mutilated bodies hanging there and threaten to kill anyone who would try to take the bodies down. Sometimes they would cut off the heads of their captives and stack them up as a sort of morbid monument.

The city was also large for its day: Its inner walls were eight miles long, and it had a population of more than 120,000 (see Jon. 4:11). Can you imagine Jonah's fear when God called him to go preach there?

The Lord said to Jonah, "'Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and cry out against it; for their wickedness has come up before Me'" (Jon. 1:2, NKJV). Basically, He was saying: "Here's what I want you to do. Go to that city that disembowels people and tell them: 'You city of sinners! You're in trouble with God. You'd better repent. You'd better quit doing what you're doing because God doesn't like it.'"

Is it surprising that when Jonah heard this command, he got on a ship and went the other way? Jonah was scared. But God knew something he didn't: The people of Nineveh had soft hearts hidden beneath their tough exteriors. If God could just send someone to them who had a greater fear of God than he did of man, revival would break out.

And that is exactly what happened. God interrupted Jonah's escape plan by sending a whale to swallow him and then burp him up on a beach. Jonah didn't want to be there. But after three days in the whale's belly, he was more concerned about the hand of God than he was about the people of Nineveh.

He walked into the city and, in obedience to God, began to cry out against them, warning them of God's impending judgment. History tells us that he walked through the city from one end to the other, and wherever he walked there was a wave of revival: Ahead of him the people were arrogant, butbehind him they were repenting.

His basic message was, "Repent, or God is going to destroy you." It wasn't the sort of sermon that would make you popular. And it wasn't one Jonah wanted to preach. He had no desire for Nineveh or its citizens to be saved--in fact, he was hoping God would kill them.

Nevertheless, he performed the task God had given him as quickly as possible and left. No extensive planning, no years of preparation leading to a pivotal moment. An unwilling messenger, a strong message and a tough city: not what we would call a proper equation for revival.

But when Jonah preached "repent or perish," they all fell on their faces. The king declared a fast--one that extended even to the animals--to see if God would have mercy on them. As a result, great revival fell on that city.

The Conditions for Revival

The examples of Nazareth and Nineveh are convincing proof that there are reasons God moves in certain places and doesn't move in other places. There are reasons He is either present or absent in our daily lives.

We can't just say, "Well, sometimes He visits, and sometimes He doesn't." We need to permanently relinquish the "gambler's concept" that revival is hit-or-miss--maybe we'll get it, maybe we won't. Revival is very predictable as long as the conditions are met.

The Bible has an equation for how to bring the presence of God daily into our ives, our churches and our homes. God promises, "If My people who are called by My name will humble themselves, and pray and seek My face, and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin and heal their land" (2 Chr. 7:14). Humility plus prayer plus repentance--which are all the result of faith and hunger for God--equals revival.

The reason revival seems unpredictable to us is that we don't see what God sees. We look at the things that seem significant to us and fail to see the things that are significant to God. Often, the places where we think God can move most easily are actually the places where He finds the greatest resistance.

Perhaps we can more adequately assess the potential for revival if we use these three principles as a determining factor:

1. God is more disposed to move on admitted emptiness (a sign of humility) than on presumed fullness. It is easier for Him to "break out" in a church that admits its emptiness than for Him to "break through" in a church that presumes its fullness. The former is aware of its need for Him; the latter is satisfied with what it has.

The people of Nazareth thought they had all they needed. They were so full of themselves, they left no room for a Messiah in their midst. We are sometimes
like this.

We can get so full of religious junk food we have no appetite for God, so full of ourselves we become a monument to longevity rather than energy. Proof that once fresh fire can fossilize! You could say we are saved, sanctified and petrified.

But people who are bad and know they're bad and are proud of the fact that they're bad, and who are confronted with the goodness of God, often respond with repentance and change. That's what happened in Nineveh. Their admitted emptiness cracked open the heavens for the rain of revival.

We become like the citizens of Nazareth when we choose to believe that we are pious and righteous enough, that we've got it all together. When we think our goodness is good enough for His righteousness, we leave no room for change.

We need to acknowledge that our righteousness stinks in God's nostrils! We'll never be good enough for God. That's a hard word for most of us; we don't like to hear about our faults, and we don't really want to admit to having any.

But when we acknowledge we've done wrong and openly admit it--that's when God
can move! That's when we can be like the citizens of Nineveh and have the kind of revival that Nineveh experienced.

Who can prevent God from moving? Not the drug dealers or the prostitutes or the criminals, but those of us who sit around in self-righteousness thinking we've got it all conquered and understand everything.

God is looking for humble people who will lay themselves on the altar and realize: "I am not good enough, but God has grace enough! Wherever, whenever, however, whomever--I'm ready to go." Jonah went somewhere he didn't want to go, to preach something he didn't want to preach, to people he didn't even like--and had the biggest revival history has ever recorded. That should give us hope!

2. Faith and hunger can hasten a move of God. The opposite is also true: Unbelief and complacency, or self- satisfaction, can hinder it.

The people of Nazareth had unbelief. They were presented with the truth by Jesus Himself but did not believe it because of their familiarity with Him. They thought they had Him figured out.

Like the inhabitants of Nazareth, we think we know God. We think we know what He wants to do, but we really have no idea. We know what it's like when God visits a church. We've seen that model on a limited scale.

But we've not yet seen what it's like when God visits a city. We don't know what it's like when the glory of God sweeps through a city and mows people down left and right, causing them to fall on their faces on the street corners, in the malls, in the hospitals, in the cafeterias, crying out for God. We don't have the faintest idea what that kind of move of God is all about, and as a result we limit what God can do through our unbelief.

We ask ourselves: Whom is God going to visit? Where will He show up? We need to see that it is sometimes easier for God to redeem a drug dealer, an alcoholic or a prostitute and use him rather than to recycle "Christians." It is often easier for Him to convert one of them and set him on fire and use him to change the world than to get one of us, who is sitting on the pews of the church, to do what He really wants.

Familiarity has bred contempt. "He's just Mary's boy." Sacred things have become common. We demand "Uzziah"-friendly services, so God has no choice but to leave us "arkless" (see 2 Chr. 26). There is an absence of awesomeness among us. Like Nazareth, we have no revival--false familiarity leads to unbelief and blinds us to the visitation.

If Nazareth had unbelief, Nineveh had misbelief--wrong belief. God can deal much more easily with misbelief. One encounter with Him can transform it into fiery faith in Him. If the New Age advocates ever have a Damascus Road encounter, they will burn up heaven's toll-free lines just as they've flooded the pay-per-call pseudo-psychic hot lines.

How many encounters does the church need to have before unbelief turns into faith and rekindles the dying embers of our first love?

3. Repentance ranks higher in heaven than reputation. In spite of the fact that Nazareth was the boyhood home of Jesus, God's divine Son and the Messiah, it was Nineveh that God called a "great city" (see Jon. 1:2). Obviously, He wasn't using the same measuring stick we do. Future potential is more important to Him than past history. Nazareth had a great history, but Nineveh had a great future.

The difference between Nineveh and Nazareth, and between revival and no revival, is repentance that comes from hunger and humility. Nineveh repented while Nazareth refused to relent. I don't know how to paint a more dramatic picture of the opportunity for revival--or a missed moment.

Jesus Himself preached revival in Nazareth's synagogues, but His message was a total flop. He could do no mighty work in Nazareth at all except "lay His hands on a few sick people and heal them" (Mark 6:5, NIV). That's not much considering what He was capable of doing. But the people did not see their need and were unwilling to repent.

Jonah, on the other hand, walked into one of the worst cities of the world and preached repentance, and a great revival broke out.

What does this tell us? Some churches would not have revival even if Jesus were the evangelist, while others could be set aflame by a few passing words from a reluctant prophet!

Revival in our churches and cities has nothing to do with who does the preaching or who sings. The fires of revival ignite when the spark of God lands in the dry tinderbox of hungry, open hearts marked by true repentance.

So which do you choose, Nazareth or Nineveh? As for me and my house, we're moving to Nineveh, home of the hungry!

Tommy Tenney is the founder of the God Chasers Network. He has spent 10 years pastoring and 17 years in full-time traveling ministry. He is also the author of The God Chasers (Destiny Image), God's Dream Team (Regal Books) and God's Favorite House (Destiny Image).
Strang Communications 1999, All Rights Reserved