When all this had ended, the Israelites who were there went out to the towns of Judah, smashed the sacred stones and cut down the Asherah poles. They destroyed the high places and the altars throughout Judah and Benjamin and in Ephraim and Manasseh. After they had destroyed all of them, the Israelites returned to their own towns and to their own property. – 2 Chronicles 31:1

Today's Scripture Reading (March 9, 2020): 2 Chronicles 31

Revival has always been a force within the Christian movement. The truth of life is that we often become used to what we do. We justify our actions and see no need to change. And then, revival comes. Revival is essentially a thin space between God and us. For the reason that only God knows, his presence becomes more real at the site of the revival. We sometimes try to hold revival meetings, but the reality is that we cannot produce a revival with our actions. When revival strikes, it is a God thing. Often it is preceded by the urgent prayers of the people that God needs to do something, that we, his people, need a fresh touch of his spirit. And, sometimes, God answers our prayers. And when revival comes, all we can do is repeat the refrain from William Mackay's old hymn.

          Hallelujah! Thine the glory.

          Hallelujah! Amen.

          Hallelujah! Thine the glory.

          Revive us again.

I remember a doctor telling me about the Saskatoon Revival in Canada in the early 1970s. He had been convicted about his "theft" of a couple of thermometers from a hospital early in his career. And no matter how hard he tried, he could not get that sin out of his mind until he went back to make restitution. It was a small thing. I think the hospital probably felt that he was out of his mind, I mean, it was something that most doctors had accidentally done during their careers. But this event, decades in the past, shaped him and came crashing back as God created a thin space between the two of them, and what was normal was simply not acceptable.

We need a revival; I need a revival. I need to understand that what is normal is not acceptable. God has taken a lower and lower role, not just in the church, but in our lives, and something drastic needs to change so that we realize that serving God is a higher, and more pressing, calling than we seem to understand.

Revival is the best term to describe what happened at that first Passover since the cleansing of the Temple during the reign of Hezekiah. We can probably date this event to somewhere around 714 B.C.E. Hezekiah had called Judah and the remnant that was left in Israel after the Assyrian Captivity, especially those from the tribes of Ephraim and Manasseh, to come to the Temple to celebrate Passover. And there, God had created a thin space. He spoke directly to the hearts of the people. And as the people worshipped God in Jerusalem, they realized that what had become normal was not acceptable. They wept and repented of their sins, and, when they returned home, they carried the change of Jerusalem with them, and they destroyed things in their lives that were opposed to the God who had met them in Jerusalem. The thin space in Jerusalem had changed their lives; it had marked them in a way that no worship experience had ever marked them before. And a national revival was the result.

Lord, we need your revival once more. Revive us again.

Tomorrow's Scripture Reading: 2 Kings 20