What's Wrong With Praying For Revival?

In recent times, I have grown progressively weary of hearing Christians praying for revival, looking for some fresh new move of the Holy Spirit, calling for the Holy Spirit to be poured out, for God to send some special new anointing, for "fire to rain down" on people, etc. etc. Hopefully I've got you wondering why.

For much of my Christian life, I have often found myself in church or prayer gatherings where there has been fervent prayer for God to send revival to our nation/world. While this is extremely common in pentecostal/charismatic churches, it is fairly common to run into in some fashion in other churches as well. The reason why certainly isn't that hard to figure out. We know that this is a broken world and that there is a lot of darkness and evil and as Christians we of course want to see that change. We also can look through church history and see times where there clearly were larger number of people getting saved. Starting with Pentecost where 3,000 were saved in one sitting up to more modern times of the Great Awakenings in England & America, Azusa Street, Jesus People movement of the 1970's, and so forth - there have been times of strong spiritual movement where more people were coming into relationship with Jesus.

The mistake though that way too many church people have made is assuming that the reason for that spiritual movement was either because God in His sovereignty just decided to do some special work by His Holy Spirit, or that as a result of prayer He decided to do some new special work in pouring out His spirit on people. Like in the late 1960's to 1970's, God just decided to pour out His spirit in a fresh way to bring hippies to Jesus. Because this is the way many have perceived it, many church people today keep praying for God to send another new revival and looking for a new fresh move of the Spirit like they've seen and heard about before.

There are several flaws in that line of thinking. Namely that it contradicts the Bible, and more specifically the New Testament...

Stick with me for a bit here because this runs into other issues that many modern Christians have such as still looking to how God moved under the Old Covenant and inappropriately applying that to the New Covenant, misunderstanding the sovereignty of God, not understanding the fullness of what really happened at the cross, not understanding the authority that has been given to us, not understanding that the Holy Spirit does not come and go but is rather always with us to empower us, not correctly understanding the baptism of the Holy Spirit, etc. I can't adequately address these in one article, so will have to just lightly touch on a few things.

The New Testament Gospel Good News message is that Jesus died for us and rose again so that we can have restored relationship with God, be a new creation born of His everlasting/eternal life, become transferred to the Kingdom of Light, walk in relationship with God where He dwells within us through the Holy Spirit. Yes, our sins were forgiven (praise God!). Yes, we get to live in Heaven. But it's really about the restored forever relationship with God.

God wants this for every human on the planet. He loves all and wants all in fellowship with Him. 2 Peter 3:9 says, "The Lord is not slow to fulfill his promise as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance." (ESV)

God's desire is for all to repent and turn to Him and be saved. Right?

Now hold that thought while we consider something else.

While Jesus was walking this earth, He was limited in that He was just one person ministering and demonstrating the Kingdom of God. But He spoke of how it was better when He left because the Holy Spirit was going to empower Jesus' disciples to do the same. John 14:12 says, "Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever believes in me will also do the works that I do; and greater works than these will he do, because I am going to the Father.

Some in the charismatic camps have interpreted this as that believers would do "greater in quality" works in relation to Jesus, but I really believe in the context it's clearly talking "greater in quantity". I don't know how you really get better quality works than what Jesus was doing in raising the dead, etc. But precisely because Jesus is going to the Father and intends to give His followers authority and empower them through the coming Holy Spirit, there can be greater in quantity works.

John 14 to 16 talk a lot about the Holy Spirit. John 17 tells us about us being One in Jesus - Jesus in us and us in Him - that there's a union. 1 Corinthians 6:17 tells us, "But he who is joined to the Lord becomes one spirit with him."

We now are the Body of Christ, which means we actually ARE and INTENDED TO BE, literally Christ on the earth. We are His Body. He is the head of this body (Colossians 1:18). Jesus is NOW on the earth not just as one man, but in lots and lots of men and women - living inside of us. And He is the head. We are His Church, the Body of Christ.

And what did Jesus tell us to do? What are our marching orders?

"And Jesus came and said to them, 'All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.'” (Matthew 28:18-20)

I know you probably know all this...stay with me. :)

That's how the Gospel of Matthew ends.
Here's how the Gospel of Mark ends:

"And he said to them, 'Go into all the world and proclaim the gospel to the whole creation. Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved, but whoever does not believe will be condemned. And these signs will accompany those who believe: in my name they will cast out demons; they will speak in new tongues; they will pick up serpents with their hands; and if they drink any deadly poison, it will not hurt them; they will lay their hands on the sick, and they will recover.' So then the Lord Jesus, after he had spoken to them, was taken up into heaven and sat down at the right hand of God. And they went out and preached everywhere, while the Lord worked with them and confirmed the message by accompanying signs.” (Mark 16:15-20).

Keep sticking with me. I'm going somewhere here...

Here's the very last words recorded that Jesus spoke to His disciples.

"'But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth.' And when he had said these things, as they were looking on, he was lifted up, and a cloud took him out of their sight. And while they were gazing into heaven as he went, behold, two men stood by them in white robes, and said, “Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking into heaven? This Jesus, who was taken up from you into heaven, will come in the same way as you saw him go into heaven.” (Acts 1:8-11)

We are still in this same period of time today as those early disciples that saw Jesus being taken up into heaven because we are still waiting for his second coming.

Which means this is all still our mandate as the Church. We know that shortly after this at Pentecost, the Holy Spirit that Jesus talked about was indeed given, and that Peter boldly proclaimed a message where 3,000 people were saved, and thus they were off and running, and the Church has been spreading ever since. As you go along in Acts you find other people turning to Jesus, getting water baptized, and receiving the same Holy Spirit baptism as they did at Pentecost (for example see Acts 10:44-46 and Acts 19:1-6).

The Apostle Paul, after telling us that in Christ we become new creations, said "All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation; that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation. Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, God making his appeal through us." (2 Cor. 4:18-20a).

So, we've established so far that it is God's desire for all people to be saved and be in relationship with Him, and that God's mechanism for doing that is through Jesus's Body - the Church - on the earth. That we as the Church have been given marching orders, that Jesus has ALL authority and that because of His authority and our union with Jesus, we GO in and use that authority. That we have the empowering of the Holy Spirit and go forth in boldness to the ends of the earth doing the same works Jesus did - preaching, teaching, and demonstrating the reality of the Kingdom in signs and wonders. That we are Jesus' ambassadors helping people to be reconciled to God.

This is our mandate and our call.

RIGHT?

So this is why I get a bit frustrated when I sit in church services where sometimes people go on for half an hour or even hours in their most super-spiritual "wailing" voices crying out to God: "OH God, PLEASE send revival!" "Oh God, send your fire!", "Oh God, we're sunk unless you come and move by your Spirit!". That may sound spiritual, but it's wrong wrong wrong!

The Church for far too long has been waiting on God to send revival, when really God has been waiting on US as Jesus' Church - His hands and feet here - to BE the revival! We were given a commission 2,000+ years ago by Jesus and we are still supposed to be operating in that commission today. We have not needed God to do some new work (or some "new fresh fire"). What we've needed is to be reminded of WHO we ARE, the AUTHORITY we HAVE, and WHAT our mandate is and actually DO IT!

Some believers talk of there needing to be revival in the Church or looking to God for new special anointings or "fresh fire". The Church isn't supposed to need reviving! We're supposed to know who we are and be walking in our mission. We've ALREADY been anointed. We've ALREADY got the Spirit dwelling in us and we already have access to all the power we need through the Holy Spirit (assuming a believer is wanting and expecting that) in the name of Jesus, who we are joined to and with.

In Ephesians 2:6, we are even told that we right now are seated with Jesus in heavenly places - that we are seated with Jesus at the Father's right hand. We are literally in Jesus and Him in us - seated at God's right hand with His power and authority at our disposal. That's the spiritual reality. Now whether we walk in it is another thing. But most Christians are still trying to BEG God to do things He has already done and already mandated us as the Church to walk in and do on this earth.

We can use our emotional wailing voice and beg God to do what we already have and have been told to do, and we can sound super-spiritual to the immature. But it's time we grow up. We don't need one thing more than we already have and we need to start dispensing with all this spiritual hogwash that's become so prevalent today.

One thing I've been doing for a few years now is going out with some other believers at a set time to evangelize and minister to people for an hour or two out on the streets. On numerous such occasions there was a church service beforehand. Do you know that there have now been several times where I have sat in the service where we spent half-an-hour or an hour or more basically trying to get the Holy Spirit to show up in our gatherings (a number of popular "worship" songs these days have this theme) as though He wasn't already there, and then wailing and praying for revival - even doing prophetic acts like speaking to the North, South, East, and West and declaring people to be saved and for God's power to fall. And it all sounded real nice and spiritual. But then 10 minutes later when service was over, I had to cancel our street ministry evangelism ministry that night because nobody was going. After all, everybody just did their duty in the Church service by pleading with God to send revival... Such a dichotomy, and I've seen similar in various forms most of my Christian life. We're much more comfortable trying to put everything all over on God than actually DOING what we are supposed to...

Another ministry I have been involved with for years is orphan/foster care putting on week-long camps and providing mentoring for kids in the foster care system. Do you know that in an area with thousands of churches and probably many hundreds of thousands to a million or more of professing believers, we struggle every year to get even a few hundred volunteers to give up a week of their summer to show God's love to these oft-forgotten about hurting kids that live in their area? I'm not saying everybody's called to that, but it's absolutely shameful when you consider how many professing believers there are right in the local area. But we'll happily throw a spiritual sounding prayer their way or throw some money at such a cause (although I can sadly report that both of those are fairly rare too). But actually doing something? Nah, let's just put that on God to do something or raise up "someone else" to do the job...

So back to church history for a minute. If you really look at the "revivals" and "awakenings" and so forth that people want to "ooh and ah" over and think was just some special move of God's Spirit, you know what you'll find? A believer, or believers, that actually started "doing what we're supposed to do" and guess what? "Revival" or "awakening" or "renewal" or whatever term you want to use was the result. Almost like God always intended there to be positive spiritual results from His Church actually doing what we've been called to.

You know how to get national revival? If the Church actually operates in the power we've been given, in union with Jesus, doing the stuff, loving on people the way Jesus loves on people, representing Jesus correctly as His ambassadors, and backing that up in demonstration, that's how you get revival. People tend to flock to the genuine. What they hate is spiritual fakery and hype, of which there has been far too much going on.

What the Church needs isn't for God to do some new fresh work. What the Church needs is to have our minds renewed to what we already HAVE and who we already ARE, and then operate in that. A lot of the Church lives weak, powerless, ineffective lives because we've had this mindset of "us low little worms" down here but "Big God up there". That's NOT the New Covenant reality. In the New Covenant, us "low little sinful worms" have been MADE RIGHTEOUS by Jesus, joined to Him, and seated with Him at the Father's right hand. It's not "poor little us" anymore. It's a powerful partnership now of us and Jesus together going forth in His power and might. The more we understand the depth of God's love for us and what we have been given, the more we walk boldly in representing Him to our world.

Currently as I write this, Charlie Kirk has recently been martyred for his beliefs, and many people are feeling a sense of revival in America or that we are on the cusp of one. But too many are still not connecting the dots! Charlie Kirk didn't just sit around and pray for 13 years for God to send revival. At 18, he started actually BEING the revival and continued to operate in that more and more as he grew, and God worked with him and through him and backed him up. Charlie wasn't perfect in his beliefs, spiritual or otherwise, but you know what? He saw a need to help point young people in the right direction and instead of going to countless prayer meetings to pray for God to get young people on track, he just decided to DO something about it. He operated as an ambassador of sorts on behalf of Jesus. And in a very short period of time that one man grew a movement that literally changed the world. Imagine what could happen if the rest of us believers actually got off our duff, dispensed with our excuses, and did similar in the way God wants to use us?

For sure, how Charlie impacted people wasn't just Charlie. I am not at all discounting that God played or plays a role. What I am saying is God works through us and that is the plan He established and is His intention - for His people to be doing His stuff through His power. Yes, the Holy Spirit backs that up. But it's a partnership. God never intended us to try and put all this stuff on Him.

I do believe as I write this that there is indeed a shift in the "spiritual atmosphere". But that's not because God just decided now was the time to send more of His Spirit or something, or that enough people prayed to make God move and wake people up, or that the church finally got "holy enough". And it certainly wasn't that God planned the whole Charlie Kirk being martyred thing as a part of His plan to awaken people. That's absolute nonsense rooted in people's complete misunderstanding of God's sovereignty!

There's a shift because what Charlie's life represented and how he conducted himself and the impact he made has resonated in such a way with people that it has inspired people and brought to the forefront some spiritual realities. It has made people more aware and the impact of that combined with things like his wife Erika publicly demonstrating God's love and forgiveness towards the one who took her husband's life, is a loud testimony to the world, and is simultaneously a wake-up call to the Church and is inspiring the Church to be more action-oriented.

So back to the title of this article, "What's wrong with praying for revival?". What's wrong with it is it's not really what the Bible calls us to do. And honestly there's just been an awful lot of expended energy and breath for naught. I can't count the number of services and prayer meetings I've been in over the last 30 years that seemed all spiritual where we were praying for some great move of God, and we never saw it, but boy we'd just keep on praying over and over again, year in and year out. We were largely just wasting our breath...

As New Covenant believers in Jesus, joined with Him and living as His Body on this earth, we are supposed to bring the revival, not pray the revival. We are the light of the world (Matthew 5:14) - because the Light of the World (John 8:12/John 1:4) lives in us! As a believer, everywhere you go, there goes the Kingdom! Everywhere you go, there goes the Presence of God! You are a carrier of the Presence! And you have the ability to release that Presence everywhere you go. You get to release words of life, you get to release light to darkness, you get to release health, you get to release peace, you get to release joy. You get to shine your bright Jesus light, and love with the Agape love of Jesus, and be a part of reconciling this world to God.

The more we realize this and what our role is, the more we will be primed to make a difference in society. When the Church steps up and operates in the power of the Spirit and does what we are supposed to do, we will see revival. That's what happened in past revivals and is still the case today. It was never God just out-of-the-blue or because people prayed hard enough or worshiped enough or acted holy enough or fasted enough that God just sovereignly moved on people by His Spirit and caused them to come to Him. That's not how it works. That's never been how it works. That's a demonic-inspired romanticized notion to get the Church constantly trying to pray down revival instead of doing what we've been told to do.

Part of the problem is that a lot of the Body of Christ has this notion that the Holy Spirit keeps coming and going on believers and that in essence we constantly need to have a Pentecost experience over and over again to have any "move of God." Which is where the constant praying for the Holy Spirit to "come and be with us" in our church service/prayer meeting stuff comes from. That's flat wrong theology, but it keeps being parroted and so the wrong theology cycle keeps going. The truth is once you've received the power of the Spirit, you have the power of the Spirit. You might not be operating in it, but you have it. And anywhere you go as a believer in Jesus, you bring the Holy Spirit with you - you don't need to sing 3 "worship songs" asking the Holy Spirit to come and be with you first...

As born-again believers in Jesus, we don't need Heaven to come down - Heaven ALREADY came down and His name was Jesus - and through our faith in Him, we carry His presence and the Heavenly Kingdom of God within us through the Holy Spirit in us and we ourselves are dwellers in Heaven right now (even as we also physically are still here on the earth). What we need to do is tap into that reality and live out of that instead of looking for something off in the distance or Heaven to come down and move on us or touch our church service etc. When we understand what we have in us, then it becomes clear that WE are the carriers of Heaven and God's presence and power and God moves through US! Which was always God's plan and design for His Church - His Body here on earth doing His works.

So if praying for revival isn't the best prayer, what would be a good way to pray? How 'bout that we pray that God help us as His people to realize all that we have been given. To realize that we have been made righteous (2 Cor 5:21). To help us live first from our spiritual sense where we dwell in the Kingdom instead of just living by our fleshly senses - to truly perceive the spiritual reality of us seated in Jesus in Heaven. To realize that we are complete in Christ, filled with Him who is all in all (Col 2:10/Eph 1:23). To help us love others with the same Agape love with which we have been loved (John 13:34). To operate in boldness because of Jesus (Heb 4:16). To stand in faith to move mountains and heal the sick, cleanse the lepers, cast out demons. (Mark 11:22-23/Matthew 10:8). To really truly come to intimately know and believe the Agape love that God has for us and to allow that perfect love to cast out all fear. (1 John 4:16-21). Or as the Apostle Paul prayed in Ephesians 3, that we would be strengthened in our inner man, rooted and grounded in love, and that we would comprehend the breadth, length, depth, and height and truly know intimately the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge so that we will be filled (in context in our soul, not spirit) with the fullness of God. How bout some prayers like those?

How 'bout we worship God and renew our minds to the truth of who we are and all we have in Jesus, and then GO THEREFORE out the doors of the church and go BE the revival.

Sound like a plan?

Good! Cause it's God's. :)

Blessings friends!

-----------------
This article is Copyright by Christopher Long 2025. All rights reserved. You may quote/reprint this article for any non-commercial purpose without obtaining permission as long as you use the entire text and that all text, including this and all following notices, is not modified or removed in any fashion. For any other usage, you must obtain written permission from the author.

Unless otherwise indicated, all Scripture quotations are from the ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

This is version 1.0 of this document (October 9, 2025).
Previous versions: N/A
This document is provided as a ministry outreach of BodEquip Ministries. http://www.bodequip.org