"Revaluing the Currency" - Revival Quotes from Leonard Ravenhill (READ AT YOUR OWN RISK)

Yesterday, at a local Christian university, one of the campus pastors gave a message about revival. In her message, she shared a number of quotes from revivalists, many from the late Leonard Ravenhill. It had been years since I'd read anything from Ravenhill and yet, I was convicted yesterday as I heard some of his most notable quotes once again. 

Years ago, I had read such Ravenhill classics as, Why Revival Tarries, Meat for Men and Sodom had No Bible. About as radical of stuff as you will ever read! Let's just say that there are many who didn't like the man. (and still don't!)  You are about to see why. 

As I read Ravenhill, and as I consider the great moves of God throughout history (and I am a student of revival history), I don't want us to be guilty of "cheapening the currency". The term revival continues to be used by many in reference to things that are simply not revival - not in a historical sense. My camp, the charismatic one, is the guiltiest of all. I have been guilty of the same thing. I have called things "revival" that weren't. I've exaggerated - claiming more happened than actually did, that more were healed than really were, etc., etc. (something the Bible calls lying!)

I thought it would be good to share some of his 'gems' here today - may God use Ravenhill today in our lives "revalue the currency" of revival! And to hit us with the conviction that maybe we need a new deep touch of God in our own lives.

• "You never have to advertise a fire. Everyone comes running when there's a fire. Likewise, if your church is on fire, you will not have to advertise it. The community will already know it."

• "The only reason we don't have revival is because we are willing to live without it!"

• "In revival, God is not concerned about filling empty churches, He is concerned about filling empty hearts."

• "Revival is when God gets so sick and tired of being misrepresented that He shows Himself."

• "When God-given, heaven-sent revival does come, it will undo in weeks the damage that blasphemous Modernism has taken years to build."

• "As long as we are content to live without revival, we will."

• "Revival is the Spirit's passion within the believer to know and to obey the total will of God."

• "I read of the revivals of the past, great sweeping revivals where thousands of men were swept into the Kingdom of God. I read about Charles G. Finney winning his thousands and his hundreds of thousands of souls to Christ. Then I picked up a book and read the messages of Charles G. Finney and the message of Jonathan Edwards on 'Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God,' and I said, 'No wonder men trembled; no wonder they fell in the altars and cried out in repentance and sobbed their way to the throne of grace!'"

• "At God's counter, there are no sale days, for the price of revival is ever the same: travail!"

• "God pity us that after years of writing, using mountains of paper and rivers of ink, exhausting flashy terminology about the biggest revival meetings in history, we are still faced with gross corruption in every nation, as well as with the most prayerless church age since Pentecost."

• "Any true revival can be proven by the fact that it changed the moral climate of an area or nation."

• "Maybe you are the key to revival in your church."

When I read Ravenhill, I am convicted of my lukewarmness, my apathy, my 'easy believism' Christianity, and in short, my chronic unbelief. This man did not know what the word "compromise" meant. I sure do. I have a Ph.D. in it!

May we and our modern-day revivalists heed these messages of Leonard Ravenhill - assuming of course that they represent the heart and mind of God for His Church. 

Revival is NOT cheap. It is NOT hype. It is about God and His Glory. It won't happen simply because we have rock star-level worship and eloquent, powerful preaching. It won't tolerate worldliness. There are certain things that true revival will always include - deep repentance, the conversion of multitudes of the lost, and ultimately the transformation of society and culture. 

May we all work to "revalue the currency" when it comes to what genuine revival is and what it will produce. May we stop calling things revival that are not. (Or at least are 'not yet' revival.)

For such a time as this.