When you think of “revival,” do you picture a large church outreach? A gathering of healing and prophesying? A history lesson?
InterVarsity Christian Fellowship evangelist York Moore says these are all misconceptions about what revival truly is. That’s a problem when, Moore believes, the United States could be on the brink of real revival.
Understanding revival takes some study. Moore says, “Throughout church history, there are these unique events that are just punctuated works of intense spiritual activity where God supernaturally infuses the church with a new sense of direction, and power, and energy, and that spills over into society.”
Moore says revival is more than just mass amounts of people coming to faith, although that’s often a result. “Revival, if it’s of God,” he says, “will move out into culture to revitalize and renew the institutions of society.”
This appears to be in the works in university life.
Students are not only at the forefront for potential of what Moore calls the seven major institutions of society—law, commerce, sports and entertainment, government, medicine, family, and academia—but this generation in particular seems ready for change.
Staff and students from within and outside of InterVarsity have begun praying for revival—a preliminary hallmark to nationwide revival in years past, Moore says: “When people begin to pray for revival, when they begin to seek revival, when they become dissatisfied with where they are, those are all hallmark indicators both of historic as well as biblical revivals.”
The interesting thing is: No one seems to be telling all these groups to pray for revival; they’re all just burning for change independently.
“When we begin to see women and men praying for a greater work of God, when we begin to see them desiring a greater work of God, when we begin to see them seeking a greater work of God, those are indicators that God is at work in a unique and powerful way,” explains Moore. “And what I’m seeing around the country are quite independent events that are mirroring each other.”
The generation of college students that InterVarsity works with now has one more vital piece to what’s been an historic piece to the revival puzzle: “a strong desire to change culture, to change society.”
This “Justice Generation” doesn’t just want to see lives changed—they want to change the world.
“They’re not merely interested in their own world, they want to change the world. They want to do good in the world, and they want to become the good that they long to see in the world. … Because of that, the motivation to change the world also makes them extremely ripe for God to use as kingdom vessels to move into culture and to begin to transform the world they’re in.”
With so many factors in place, coupled with the exponential growth that InterVarsity has seen in the number of committed relationships between students and Jesus Christ, Moore believes the U.S. could be in for a massive change. Start praying that God would radically shake up the church, and eventually society, with passionate college students leading the way.
Moore reminds us, “[Revival] is something that God longs to give us.”
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