This week I met an older man who has been a pastor for most of his life. He said that he has been involved in four legitimate “revivals” during his time in the ministry. He was not talking about a visiting evangelist who came to his local church to have some extended meetings for a week or so, but rather something so sovereign that only God, the Holy Spirit could get the credit and the glory for all of the supernatural things that happened. 

When God comes to visit a location, it does usually start with a local congregation but many others, sometimes from very long distances, hear about what God is doing and they come to receive a fresh encounter with the living God. He went to those locations where God was visiting to receive a fresh impartation for his own life.

I, too, have been a part of both the beginning of this kind of visitation, as well as a beneficiary of that which has blessed many thousands over an extended period of time (usually years from its beginning until it begins to wane at the initial location where it began). Each one of these visitations has unique characteristics about them but all of them without exception see many people come to salvation. If these individuals are properly discipled, they become a vital part of a local congregation and a blessing to their local community.

I am aware that there are a number of “hot spots” right now in the United States that are experiencing a fresh outpouring of the Holy Spirit. I have not been on location yet, but in reading the reports and seeing actually video footage of the meetings, I can tell they are very likely places where the Lord could come in a much stronger way than He already is. 

If there ever was a time when this country needed divine intervention, it would be now. Every fresh outpouring of the Holy Spirit has come at a time when things were very dark and wicked.

I have studied revivals of the past and there are usually just a few individuals who have been laboring in prayer and intercession for a divine intervention in the affairs of mankind. Many believers have been crying out for the church to awaken out of her slumber and apathy and I believe that those prayers are being answered.

It was two older, infirmed sisters (housebound, in their 90s) who are credited with the mighty outpouring in the Hebrides Islands in the early 1900s. Likewise, it was a handful of young people, led by Evan Roberts who prayed in the great outpouring of the Holy Spirit that literally affected all of Wales. A one-eyed Black man was so hungry for God that he and a few others began to meet in a small building in a community in California when the Holy Spirit came powerfully into their midst. 

People from all over the world met God in a fresh way and thousands (if not millions) were impacted by the outpouring of the Holy Spirit. I could name other locations and times where God came with such powerful manifestations, that whole communities and even regions were transformed.

If you have ever been a part of what I have described in the paragraphs above, you know in your heart, no matter what is happening right now, that you not only want to experience this again but you would pay whatever price was involved to see God move like that again. When I am with people, like this pastor, who began to describe some of the things he personally experienced in past visitations of the Lord, there is a kindred spirit that includes a “divine dissatisfaction” with things as they are currently that causes us to yearn for it to happen again.

We are at that threshold of desperation again. I meet with a number of different individuals both here in our community, as well as long-distance friends who are all feeling the same things. Our country as a whole has veered off the paths our Founding Fathers paid such a high price for. Most of them were believers who were willing to do whatever it took to help this young republic to maintain the freedoms that were paid for with their fortunes and many times their very lives. 

Our heroes of the faith were men and women who had been under the tyranny of England and were aware how fragile our new found freedoms were. Many people today are not aware of how close we are to losing these precious freedoms, including the freedom to worship our God. This past year, many communities willingly relinquished the freedom to meet together in the normal venues that we have just taken for granted. Persecution for certain beliefs and conservative thinking is becoming more costly. Censorship, job loss, unpopularity amongst peers and even family rifts seem to be at an all-time high in this country. Depression is on the rise, suicides are on the rise, violence is on the rise.

However, all of this I have just described makes me even more hopeful and even assured that we are on the brink of the next Great Awakening. It will not be in just one location, nor will it be limited to one country.

Just like the pandemic has affected most of the world, this Awakening will also begin to spread and be even more contagious than the virus that now haunts us. Those “hot spots” are beginning to multiply as the hunger for God increases. There will be no stopping of this Awakening, but rather it will become one of the main topics of conversation as lives are healed and delivered and freedom is realized by more and more people. I encourage you to prepare your own heart. 

No matter how “spiritual” you are, we were created by our God for even more than any of us have yet to experience. “Eye has not seen, ear has not heard, neither has it entered into the heart of man the things that God has prepared for those who love Him.”