Revival Won’t Come the Way You Expect

0:00:00 – (Steve Gray): Three ways revival comes and it will come. And I want to make sure everybody understands that any place, anywhere, any church, any country, anything you can name can have revival.

0:00:12 – (Steve Gray): You were made for more than the status quo. I’m Pastor Steve Gray, and this is the More Faith More Life podcast. This podcast is for Christians with an ambitious heart who want to be more for their family, do more with their career, and see more of God’s promises in their life. I’ve spent many years as a worship artist, minister, nonprofit leader, bold truth speaker, and most importantly, father and spouse. When I was in my early 40s, I was craving more.

0:00:39 – (Steve Gray): More from God and more from life. I’d done everything I was supposed to do. My life was good, but it wasn’t good enough. So I spent the following years diving into the word of God and searching for the biblical principles that would bring me closer to God and help my purpose and life flourish. That’s what I want to share with you. In every episode, you’ll get practical tools based on real life experiences that you can put into action to redefine your faith and ultimately your life.

0:01:11 – (Steve Gray): So if you’re ready to do more, subscribe to More Faith, More Life, and hear an unfiltered biblical truth every week. Time to be and experience more.

0:01:23 – (Steve Gray): I am your host, Steve Gray, and I’m so glad you’re with us to run for revival. We need revival. America needs revival. America and the churches need to be revived and have the glory of God restored to us. And so God’s right now looking for leaders. He’s raising up leaders to be the leaders in the next great move of God. That could be you. I hope that’s you. And that’s why we’re here, to talk about everything revival.

0:01:51 – (Steve Gray): And so today we’re going to talk about the three ways that revival comes. And you know, revival is not a formula, but there are some things to know about it and you could miss it if you think, well, it comes this way or that way or this way. So we’re going to look at three ways. And I actually can go ahead and mention that I got this teaching from my own book, when the Kingdom Lesson from the Smith and Outpouring.

0:02:13 – (Steve Gray): And I remembered that I’d written a chapter on this. I haven’t talked about it for a while and it’s a great time to share with you three ways revival comes and it will come. And I want to make sure everybody understands that any place, anywhere, any church, any country, anything you can name can have revival. An outbreak of God’s Glory, an outbreak of God’s power. And of course, revival is to revive, bring back to life those that are half dead. Don’t confuse it with a great awakening to where those that are dead in their sins and trespasses need to be saved. They need to be born again. They need to wake up to the things of God.

0:02:53 – (Steve Gray): But there’s millions of people that have already done that. But they get into religion and they fall for some of the tricks of the devil. And all of a sudden, we realize we have drifted, we have lowered the standard, we’ve gotten worldly, we’ve cooled off, we’ve lost our fire, whatever it is. And now we’re starting to see the symptoms of it in our lives. We see the symptoms in our country of a people that have cooled off towards God. And we want to ignite the fire again.

0:03:20 – (Steve Gray): So we want to be revived. We want to experience the pres. And the glory and the power of God again. So, anyway, three ways that revival comes. And I really like this. This is pretty exciting to talk about. So I’m getting my lesson all from the Book of Second Kings. Like I said in my book when the Kingdom Comes, I studied the Book of Second Kings and picked out three passages that help us understand how revival can come. So the first one is when Elijah is about moving about, and he comes to a town, and it says.

0:03:54 – (Steve Gray): In one version, it says, the water is bitter. In some of the more modern translation, it just says, the water is bad. So you know how important it would be if you didn’t have any water. And so Elisha’s there, and they want him to do something about it, and he wants to do something. So he says, bring me a bowl. So they bring it to him, and he puts some salt in it. You know, now this is just a God thing. We know that, but.

0:04:17 – (Steve Gray): But still, he put some salt in it, and they did that. So then he goes out to the spring, and he took the salt and he threw it into the water and salted it. And he said, this is what the Lord says. I have healed this water. And so he did it, and the water became good. And now they have pure water. Okay, so that in itself is a great thing, right? Cause you have to have water. But how does that tie into revival? Well, this is the most traditional thinking in people’s minds about revival.

0:04:49 – (Steve Gray): In this case, somebody comes from someplace else and changes the water and makes it good again, makes it fresh, right? Takes the bitterness out, takes the bad. And so you get a guest or someone from a faraway place. And this is the favor, in my opinion. This is the favorite of churches. They like that the best is they’re there and somebody from far away, an evangelist, special speaker, you know, a pastor, they come and.

0:05:17 – (Steve Gray): And they salt your water. Maybe you haven’t had much going on in the church, and they fire it up and they salt your water and the water’s good again and God starts moving again. And that’s kind of our tradition too, right? If you’ve been in traditional churches where they do have what they call revival, they used to have the spring revival, and then they’d have the fall revival, and the guest would come and you’d have.

0:05:43 – (Steve Gray): That meant you’d have multiple services that week. You maybe do Sunday morning, Sunday night, Monday night, Tuesday night, and close out on Wednesday or something like that. And so that’s the traditional way. And then you have it in the fall, same thing. And a guest would come, everybody’d fire up. But the problem with it is, as you know, if you’ve been around, that is in after the guest leaves, a lot of times the church goes back down and settles to what they were before.

0:06:09 – (Steve Gray): But it didn’t have to be that way. It doesn’t have to be that way. So three ways revival come. What’s the first way? The first way is someone from somewhere else comes to your church, or it doesn’t have to be church. It could be you personally. Someone from someplace else comes and salts your water or throws it into the water, and the water then becomes good again and refreshed again. And so that’s the first way. And I found out that’s the most favorite way. A guest evangelist, a guest preacher.

0:06:41 – (Steve Gray): When? Now, it didn’t quite happen that way with us in the Smith and Outpouring Nora in the Kansas City Revival. And in both instances, when I would go and they’d interview me on TV and say, what’s happening? What’s going on? And one of the questions I always got asked was, who’s the guest? Who’s the guest evangelist? And I try to explain, well, it’s a little different. There’s no guest. It’s just our church.

0:07:02 – (Steve Gray): Just our church. And, you know, I’m the pastor. I’ve been preaching these years, and now I’m the revival preacher. Multiple, multiple services. And it’s just us. It’s our congregation. God struck a church, okay. But they always want to know who came from the outside. It’s a little hard for them, if they were in traditional thinking, to figure that out. So the first one Is someone comes from someplace else. All right, now the other way. This is from second kings, kings 3:17 is where they. They. They’re in a. They. They need water again.

0:07:35 – (Steve Gray): And the valley has dried up. Well, that’s a good phrase for revival. Need of revival. Right? It is. We’re dried up. Our religion is dried up. Our music is dried up. That preaching is pretty dried up. And we need something, you know, and so probably the traditional way of an outside person coming is the most popular way. But this might be the most favorite way. And that is. So God saw that the valley needed water and that it was all dried up.

0:08:07 – (Steve Gray): And so God just decides to do it. God does it. He just comes. He says, you will see neither wind nor rain, yet this valley will be filled with water. So not even the natural way, you won’t see the wind or the rain. It won’t be a big old storm. But all of a sudden, God’s going to do it. And he said, and you and your cattle and everybody, you’re going to be able to drink from it. So this is just supernatural. Where God just comes down and the water of God flows, you know, and the river flows.

0:08:36 – (Steve Gray): And you just say, you know what? God just did it. God did it. Now, that’s closer to what happened with us. I. I went someplace else, I thought, but. And I was exploring and looking and searching. But when it finally happened, in that particular time, then I came into the church that I’ve been pastoring all those years, and bang, God just did. Something struck me like lightning. It wasn’t like this water, but it was like lightning electrocuted me with the power of God. And I became a different person. I was changed on the spot.

0:09:10 – (Steve Gray): And so this is the way probably a lot of people would like to have revival come. And it doesn’t always work that way. Sometimes you need somebody to come from someplace else. Right? But the favorite way. And I’ve been to so many churches around the world that say they want a move of God. They want to have revival. They want to restore the glory of God to the church. All the great things that we say we want.

0:09:35 – (Steve Gray): And then they stand there with their hands in the air and just say, oh, God. Oh, God. Oh, God. Come down, Lord. Send revival. Lord, we need revival. And then, you know, well, that’s good. Pray for it. Go for it. But, you know, if you do it, let’s say, you know, after a year of with your hands in the air, looking up in the sky, and. And nothing’s got any better, maybe there’s another way, maybe that’s not the way it’s going to come.

0:10:00 – (Steve Gray): So the first way we saw is someone else comes. So you might hear of somebody that’s got a certain anointing or abilities. And the only thing you need to do is make sure when that person leaves that you want to hang on to what God did and maintain it. You don’t want to wait for another guest in the fall or in the spring. You want to maintain it. So the hearts have to be really, really hungry for God to make a long lasting change of the spirit of God. But anyway, way one, somebody comes way to God just comes.

0:10:35 – (Steve Gray): Maybe that’s our favorite way. It’s so much easier. Like we don’t know what happened, I don’t know what happened. But God came down and did something, you know. And so all of a sudden God came down in that valley and he just filled it with water. And there you had it. Revival, the power of God and, and all the things that they want now they can drink. Cause God came down and we like that, don’t we? Now there’s a third way. And let’s talk about it.

0:11:02 – (Steve Gray): This is the most unpopular way and this is why a lot of people don’t get a real move of God because they don’t want to do this. And so this is my favorite story, of course, out of the three. And it’s also from 2 Kings, chapter 5. And there’s a fellow named Naaman, you’ve heard of him. He’s a commander of the army of the king of Aram. And he’s a great powerful man, you know, in the army and everybody regards him and he’s popular and powerful, all these kind of things.

0:11:34 – (Steve Gray): And guess what? All of a sudden he gets leprosy. He gets sick and he gets leprosy and you know, he who wants to be sick and they. And some of his people hear about it and even this girl hears about it and she begins to talk about, well, you know, there’s a prophet and we just talked about Elijah, where he threw the salt in, into their water. Well, there’s a prophet named Elijah and he does great signs and wonders and miracles.

0:12:05 – (Steve Gray): You ought to go see him and maybe he’ll do something great for you. So Naaman, you know, he thinks, well, I’ll do that. And so that he goes to see him. Well, he thinks he’s going to see him and he gets his horses and he gets his chariot, you know, he’s a powerful guy. And it’s a big parade there and when he gets there, he thinks, well, I’m going to see this prophet Elijah. He’s going to come out. And he even says this later.

0:12:31 – (Steve Gray): He says this later. See, he had a preconceived idea how God was going to do it. He said, I thought the prophet was going to come out. And I think he said, like, he’s going to wave his hand over me and then, you know, I’m going to be healed or revival will come or whatever you’re believing for. Well, he goes with the idea with this big. All his chariots and everything, horses and chariots, and he’s going to, you know, he’s going to see the prophet Elisha. But when he gets there, Elisha doesn’t come, he doesn’t come out. He sent a messenger, he didn’t even do it himself.

0:13:04 – (Steve Gray): Now, you know, Naaman’s pretty powerful guy. He’s used to being respected. And so this was a little disrespectful to him. And so he’s kind of offended. He’s offended because he thought the way he ought to be healed was his way ought to be healed. And listen, you want to be healed, you want revival, you want God to do something, you just let God be God. But anyway, he’s kind of offended. And he said, you know, I thought he’d come out and wave his hand, he’d lay hands on me or he’d say a prayer, whatever, you know, we think today that, that the way it ought to be done.

0:13:39 – (Steve Gray): So anyway, Elisha sends out his messenger. And guess what his messenger says? It’s the last thing he wanted to hear. He says, go wash yourself seven times in the river Jordan, and your flesh will be restored and you will be cleansed. All right? So the messenger comes and says, go wash yourself in the river Jordan. Now here’s the problem. That’s not their river, See, Naaman’s river. They had their own rivers. They had their own buildings, they had their own property.

0:14:09 – (Steve Gray): And the river Jordan, now that’s Israel’s river. And all of a sudden God tells him, go wash yourself in somebody else’s river. And Naaman’s offended already that Elijah didn’t come out. And now I have to go to somebody else’s river. And you know, the first thought that came to him, and I think it comes to a lot of people today, he thought to himself, he said, you know what? Our rivers are better. Our rivers are better than their river.

0:14:32 – (Steve Gray): Our rivers are in land. We’re better than they are. Why should I have to go to their less, you know, less good looking river, not as good as our rivers. Why should I have to go there? And that happens to people today. God wants them to go somewhere where the fires of revival are starting to burn and where people know about revival, have experienced it or have some experience in it. And he wants them to be touched and put in the atmosphere of another church.

0:15:01 – (Steve Gray): Well, it’s like God telling you to go to somebody else’s river and then you think, well I’m not going to go to their church. First of all, look who I am. It’s a little humbling to go to somebody else’s church. And then you think my church is better anyway in that church. I’ve seen that church. I can’t imagine what people thought when it was out in that country town of a. It was a church built in 1859.

0:15:24 – (Steve Gray): You know, one of those looks like it’s on a postcard type churches. It’s white and got the steeple and little, you know. And they go out there and say this is it. In fact there’s some well-known people in our country that came and you had to go by. They ended up calling it the Cornfield Revival because you pass by so many cornfields and they go where are we going?

0:15:48 – (Steve Gray): And they’d see it and they couldn’t hardly believe it when they’d see it. This is it. Why our church is a lot better. And they were right. Our church is a lot better than this. Why we got better buildings, we got youth centers, we got children’s centers, we got a huge bus ministry. You know how many buses we own and I don’t even see one bus at this, this place. So it was challenging. But you know what, sometimes that’s the way God works.

0:16:14 – (Steve Gray): And so the third way that revival comes is you have to go somewhere else and dip yourself in somebody else’s river. And Naaman didn’t want to do it. So can you see if that’s the way God wants to do it, we’re going to come up short on revival, aren’t we? Because in the move of God, because people don’t want to go to another church and get it from another ministry. They are okay, way one, remember? Okay, so a special guy comes or gal comes to our church and does it in our church or God just breaks open the sky and comes down to our church and suddenly the water is flowing. But now wait a minute, you want me to go to another church, another ministry, another pastor, whatever and get what they got and people don’t do It. And Naaman didn’t want to do it either. He says, I don’t.

0:17:07 – (Steve Gray): Our rivers are so much better looking than their rivers. Why would I go do that? So he doesn’t do it. He doesn’t do it. And you know, right now he’s going to have to live with leprosy if he doesn’t follow what the prophet’s saying to do. And so then the servant comes, and this is where it gets to the matters of the heart. The servant comes to Naaman and says, look here, if God asks you, if the prophet asks you to do something hard, you’re a great warrior, you know, if the prophet or God asks you to do something hard, difficult, you’d go and do it.

0:17:40 – (Steve Gray): But you’re not willing to do something easy. And isn’t that kind of how we are? We’re kind of always expecting God to say, go climb that mountain. Get on a plane and go over into a jungle somewhere, and I’m going to do something great there. So you’re waiting for these great moments. And a lot of times God’s just asking you to do something easy. Not that hard, you know, just learn to worship, start praying, you know. But anyway, God told him, do something easy. Or the prophet did, and he said, go, just go dip.

0:18:14 – (Steve Gray): How hard is it to go down into the river seven times? And the prophet said, you’ll be healed and you’ll be cleansed. So he argued about it, he didn’t like it, and yet it was such an easy, easy thing. So finally he does and gets it. And of course he gets his healing. So the lesson is the third way that revival comes is you or your church folks or a group of you, whatever, have to go get something from somebody else’s river.

0:18:43 – (Steve Gray): Something’s either has happened or is happening somewhere else. And you just have to humble yourself and say, look, let’s go and get it. And in fact, my experience, the first one was sort of a combination of both. Cause I’d heard that revival was happening someplace. And so I just said, I’m going to go down and see this thing now. I didn’t go down to get revival for the church. I maybe went to get revived myself.

0:19:10 – (Steve Gray): I needed something from God. I needed my life back. I was in bad shape. But I went and I watched and watched and I’d pray to myself. But I never went down and got prayer like everybody else did. And everybody’s chasing around, lay hands on me, I want revival. And I thought, I, I don’t know if I want revival. I just want to get My life, I just want to live again. But then. So I did visit another river, but I didn’t dip in it.

0:19:37 – (Steve Gray): I just watched the water, got it in my soul. Then when I went back to my own church, then walked into the door and it was like the second one, God just came down with water or with the power of God. And it changed me completely. So there you have the three ways that revival comes. The first way is pretty popular. You look for somebody to come to your church. The only problem with that is sometimes the churches aren’t prepared to really go for God. So it needs a lot of preparation to say, to set your priority. That’s what we want. Then you can bring a guest in, and a lot of times it’ll work then. And that’s the way God wants to do it, or the way everybody wants it to happen.

0:20:18 – (Steve Gray): Stand with your hands in the air, and one day God just falls out of the sky and opens up the heavens. And God comes down and a revival breaks out. And you can say, we don’t know what happened. God just came down. Which is similar kind of what happened to me. But then the third way kind of happened to me too. And that’s where God says, I’m sorry, you’re going to have to go somewhere else. You’re going to have to go visit that other church.

0:20:41 – (Steve Gray): You’re going to have to at least look at them online. You’re going to have to contact that pastor and find out, what did you do? What’s going on? Pray for me, Pastor. You know, you might be a pastor or just a person that wants to see the move of God. And you got to go to them and say, pray for me. I want what you got. I want to have the spirit of revival. I want to have. Understand whatever it is. And you got to go dip yourself maybe more than one time into the river of somebody else. So that may not be the favorite way, but that’s how they come.

0:21:11 – (Steve Gray): Somebody comes to you, God just comes out of the sky, or you have to go to someplace else. And that’s the three ways that I’ve been teaching how revival comes. I hope that’s been a help to you, Lord Jesus. Just let the folks today get this. And if you want to do it this way or that way or a combination of several ways, let us be humble enough just to listen to the Lord. Cause we need the power of God. We need revival in America. We need revival in our homes. We need revival most of all in our churches so that they’re on fire for God.

0:21:45 – (Steve Gray): And we can put new converts, People born again, people just coming to Jesus. We can let them go to a church that’s on fire for Jesus Christ. So that’s my story today. Three ways that revival comes. I hope that meant something to you and you got something out of it. And you’ll join with me and just believe with me. Oh, that God would rend the heavens and come down in glory and power and might and revive us once again. Because America needs revival. The church needs revival.

0:22:14 – (Steve Gray): I need revival. You need revival. We need revival. So let us run together for revival.

Until next time. Bye-bye.