40 Great Quotes on Revival

These quotes on revival should greatly encourage you:

With various movements of God being reported around the world, now is a great time to share some inspiring and powerful quotes on the subject of revival. This is only a small sample of hundreds of quotes I have collected over the years, but it is a good start.

Heaven-sent revival should be the desire and prayer of all believers. These quotes should certainly encourage us greatly in this regard. Here then are 40 moving quotes by 24 writers. I simply present them by alphabetical order of the author.

“When revival sweeps over a people, the first evidence is a profound awareness of sin and sorrow for it. This was true of the great Welsh revivals of the last century and of the revivals under the Wesleys the century before that. It was true of the Reformation and of the first revival in recorded history, the revival in Nineveh in response to the preaching of the prophet Jonah.” James Montgomery Boice

“Revivals begin with God’s own people; the Holy Spirit touches their heart anew, and gives them new fervour and compassion, and zeal, new light and life, and when He has thus come to you, He next goes forth to the valley of dry bones…Oh, what responsibility this lays on the Church of God! If you grieve Him away from yourselves, or hinder His visit, then the poor perishing world suffers sorely!” Andrew A. Bonar

“Revival simply moves God’s people to become fully New Testament in theory and practice. The old cliché has it correct: Many of our churches are so scripturally subnormal that when they experience the biblically normal, they think it is abnormal and call it ‘revival’.” Lewis Drummond

“We often have a tinted view of revival as a time of glory and joy and swelling numbers queuing to enter the churches. That is only part of the story. Before the glory and joy, there is conviction; and that begins with the people of God. There are tears of godly sorrow. There are wrongs to put right, secret things…to be thrown out, and bad relationships, hidden for years, to be repaired openly. If we are not prepared for this, we had better not pray for revival.” Brian Edwards

“The assembly were in tears while the Word was preached; some weeping sorrows and distress, others with joy and love, others with concern for the souls of their neighbors.” Jonathan Edwards

“Almost the whole town seemed to be in great and continual commotion, day and night, and there was indeed a very great revival of religion.” Jonathan Edwards

“The weakness of human nature has always appeared in times of great revivals of religion, by a disposition to run into extremes, especially in these three things: enthusiasm, superstition, and intemperate zeal.” Jonathan Edwards

“A revival of religion presupposes a declension.” Charles Finney

“Two profound characteristics marked the Welsh revival. First, waves of conviction drew people to repentance. Often sinners wandered into the meetings and immediately knelt at the altars. Second, Christians felt an urgency to share Christ with everyone around them because of the reality of hell and God’s judgment. They seemed almost possessed by the love of God for the unconverted.” J. Lee Grady

“The story of Christian reformation, revival, and renaissance underscores that the darkest hour is often just before the dawn, so we should always be people of hope and prayer, not gloom and defeatism. God the Holy Spirit can turn the situation around in five minutes.” Os Guinness

“Revival is not something that God does first among the unconverted, but among His people. Revival simply means New Life, and that implies that there is already Life there, but that the Life has ebbed. The unconverted do not need Revival for there is not any Life there to revive. It is the Christians who need Revival.” Roy Hession

“My own view is that many are wishing for a revival but do not want it deeply enough to pay the price in fervent believing intercession and prayer. And generally speaking we are far too easily intoxicated by our successes and thus less dependent on the Holy Spirit than we ought to be. The key word for the life of the church nowadays seems to be ‘organize,’ rather than ‘agonize’.” Selwyn Hughes

“Every revival in the Old Testament rested solidly on a new and powerful proclamation of the Word of God.” Walter Kaiser

“There is a group of people that always talk about revival and only about revival. They are only interested in the exceptional and unusual, and they tend to ‘despise the days of small things’, the regular work of the church and the regular work of the Spirit in the church. The other group so emphasize the ordinary, regular work of the church and of the Spirit in the church, that they distrust the whole notion of the unusual and exceptional. The answer is, of course, that both are wrong.” Martyn Lloyd-Jones

“Nothing is more profitable than the reading of the history of revivals. You will find that sometimes revival has come after a group of people, perhaps a mere handful, who were almost breaking their hearts because of the state of religion in their church, and because of the deadness and lifelessness of their church, met together to pray God to intervene.” Martyn Lloyd-Jones

“Revival, above anything else, is a glorification of the Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God. It is the restoration of him to the centre of the life of the Church.” Martyn Lloyd-Jones

“The church always looks like the church in the New Testament when she is in the midst of revival.” Martyn Lloyd-Jones

“I do not understand Christian people who are not thrilled by the whole idea of revival. . . . If you want a perfect exposition of 1 Corinthians 1:25-31, read books on revival.” Martyn Lloyd-Jones

“Revival cannot be organized, but we can set our sails to catch the wind from heaven when God chooses to blow upon His people once again.” G. Campbell Morgan

“Revival is that strange and sovereign work of God in which He visits His own people–restoring, reanimating, and releasing them into the fullness of His blessing.” Stephen Olford

“It is my conviction that we are never going to have a revival until God has brought the church of Jesus Christ to the point of desperation.” Stephen Olford

“There have been instances in the history of the Church when the telling and retelling of the wonderful works of God have been used to rekindle the expectations of the faithful intercessors and prepare the way for another Awakening.” J. Edwin Orr

“[Revival] is God’s quickening visitation of his people, touching their hearts and deepening his work of grace in their lives.” J. I. Packer

“Revival is the visitation of God which brings to life Christians who have been sleeping and restores a deep sense of God’s near presence and holiness. Thence springs a vivid sense of sin and a profound exercise of heart in repentance, praise, and love, with an evangelistic outflow.” J. I. Packer

“Will you not revive us again, that your people may rejoice in you?” Psalm 85:6

“The only reason we don’t have revival is because we are willing to live without it!” Leonard Ravenhill

“You never find anybody asking for money in a true revival.” Leonard Ravenhill

“Revival is when God gets so sick and tired of being misrepresented that He shows Himself.” Leonard Ravenhill

“There is no hope of immediate revival until the lostness of men grips us believers like a fever and moves us to personal and Church housecleaning.” Leonard Ravenhill

“If you want revival, let me remind you that God only plants the seed of His life in soil which has been broken up by repentance.” Alan Redpath

“Study the history of revival. God has always sent revival in the darkest days. Oh, for a mighty, sweeping revival today!” Adrian Rogers

“There never has been a spiritual revival which did not begin with an acute sense of sin. We are never prepared for a spiritual advance until we see the necessity of getting rid of that which has been hindering it, and that, in the sight of God, is sin.” W. Graham Scroggie

“The word revive . . . may be interpreted thus—to live again, to receive again a life which has almost expired; to rekindle into a flame the vital spark which was nearly extinguished.” C. H. Spurgeon

“If we want revivals, we must revive our reverence for the Word of God. If we want conversions, we must put more of God’s Word into our sermons.” C. H. Spurgeon

“Oh! men and brethren, what would this heart feel if I could but believe that there were some among you who would go home and pray for a revival – men whose faith is large enough, and their love fiery enough to lead them from this moment to exercise unceasing intercessions that God would appear among us and do wondrous things here, as in the times of former generations.” C. H. Spurgeon

“A revival does two things. First, it returns the Church from her backsliding and second, it causes the conversion of men and women; and it always includes the conviction of sin on the part of the Church.” Billy Sunday

“I contend that whatever does not raise the moral standard of the church or community has not been a revival from God.” A. W. Tozer

“Revival will come to us and within us when we really want it, when we pay the price.” A. W. Tozer

“Have you noticed how much praying for revival has been going on of late – and how little revival has resulted? I believe the problem is that we have been trying to substitute praying for obeying, and it simply will not work. To pray for revival while ignoring the plain precept laid down in Scripture is to waste a lot of words and get nothing for our trouble. Prayer will become effective when we stop using it as a substitute for obedience.” A. W. Tozer

“It is useless for large companies of believers to spend long hours begging God to send revival. Unless we intend to reform we may as well not pray. Unless praying men have the insight and faith to amend their whole way of life to conform to the New Testament pattern there can be no true revival.” A. W. Tozer

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