Lookahead: With the force of a hurricane the Spirit of God swept into the building and the floodgates of heaven opened. The church resembled a battlefield. On one side many were prostrated over the seats weeping and sighing; on the other side some were affected by throwing their arms in the air in a rigid posture. God had come…

Still on the topic of the Kingdom Opp. lost by the Wilderness Israelites…I don’t know what your experiences are, but when I have ordered from the traditional/old-school mail order websites, I have been besieged with (oh joy) catalogs overflowing my mailbox to the displeasure of my mailman. And when the mail order company sells its mailing list to somebody else, catalogs from new outfits start arriving. Out of the ~500 catalogs a year, I might only be interested in about two of them. 🙂 However, I received a mystery catalog this past December that really caught my eye. The company slogan was “Don’t Gift Boring.”® It made me think of how things are never boring with God! He has given us absolutely incredible gifts that could never be boring in a million years. Nevertheless, these gifts seem to wear out or lose their luster for some people. Such was the case for the majority of the first wilderness gen. And they were not alone…

Jesus Himself defined and captured the phenomenon when, in Revelation, He said the Laodicean Church had lost its first love. So I’m wondering what the mechanism is. Does someone just wake up in the morning one day, and say, “I’m not really impressed anymore.” Is it a matter of wanting a newer, more impressive “toy” that someone is advertising? Has a callous developed, possibly as a result of exposure to disappointment/pain? Is it just a defense mechanism against deserved judgment because people have forgotten that the mercies of Jesus are new every morning? (Lam 3:23) It is certain that it’s not due to the fact that God is boring; we could spend every waking second of every hour of every day learning absolutely amazing new things about Him, for the rest of our lives. Maybe we should question why we get bored in the natural. I Googled, “why do we get bored of something?” and got many hits:

“Variety is the spice of life. Human beings have an insatiable curiosity. Whenever we lack a new problem, or at least a different perspective of the same problem, we get bored. Our minds drift to find the next new thing. The basis of ADHD. (Attention Deficit Hyper-Activity Disorder)…Maturity and self-awareness should, over time, tame this roller-coaster ride of craving the next new thing by realizing that all new things share an equality, and our passions are subdued by the qualities of having a good thing in favor of unknown next things.”¹

“In a psychology lecture, this was referred to as ‘habituation’. In other (simplistic) words, when a stimulus is presented to an individual repeatedly, the way the neurons in the brain respond to it changes over time to retain the original, more balanced emotional state that was independent of the stimulus that caused an aroused (positive or negative) emotional state.”²

So new things elicit an emotional response—and many people might actually be seeking the response v. the new thing? When I think in spiritual terms about people seeking an emotional response, revival seekers come to mind, i.e., people who are constantly seeking a “move of God” and His Glory. There have been waves of revivals going on since the Holy Spirit visited the Upper Room. During these revivals, God draws near and manifests. As a result, many hundreds of people get saved. Here’s an example of one revival that happened in the Hebrides Islands, off the coast of Scotland, in 1949:

“Duncan stopped preaching. Just then he noticed this boy, visibly moved, under deep burden for souls. He thought: ‘That boy is in touch with God and living nearer to the Savior than I am.’ So leaning over the pulpit he said: ‘Donald, will you lead us in prayer?’ The lad rose to his feet and in his prayer made reference to the 4th chapter of Revelation, which he had been reading that morning: ‘Oh God, I seem to be gazing through the open door. I see the Lamb in the midst of the Throne, with the keys of death and of hell at His girdle’ He began to sob; then lifting his eyes toward heaven, cried: ‘O God, there is power there, let it loose!’ With the force of a hurricane the Spirit of God swept into the building and the floodgates of heaven opened. The church resembled a battlefield. On one side many were prostrated over the seats weeping and sighing; on the other side some were affected by throwing their arms in the air in a rigid posture. God had come!’”³ Typically these revivals stir up cities and geographical regions for months, sometimes years, but eventually burn out. The flame goes out for various reasons:

√ Jeshurun you have grown fat (Deut 32:15)….The people are sated and lose their hunger for God. “In a Keswick meeting preached in the year 1912, Jonathan Goforth rebuked a complacent British congregation about their loss of desire for genuine revival…’(In 1904) God was there; you could not mistake it. They have hindered God in Wales since then. It was not God’s will to let things go down in Wales. God never got weary in well doing…God is the same as ever.’”⁴

√ Pride…”When the historical accounts are reviewed, it seems time and time again that one of the biggest reasons for revival to leave is pride. When God pours His Spirit and power onto a life, or even a church, the tendency is very great that they begin to take some of the credit to themselves.”⁵

Side Note: I was immersed in a prolonged revival in the late nineties. I later became a member of the church where I previously had attended many of the revival meetings. What I saw was that the most yielded vessels of the Holy Spirit during the revival now almost had celebrity status in that church. For years afterward, the church was highly cliquish and self-worship was a major tactic that the enemy used to stifle growth.

√ The evangelists burn out and the pastors take over…here’s an example of that type of thinking: ”Revival is a means, not an end…(it) comes to usher in the Kingdom of God—the Church. Remember that Pentecost, as recorded in the second chapter of Acts, was not the birth of seminars, conventions, or even men’s support groups. Pentecost was the birth of the Church—with everything that Jesus meant her to be…Discipleship and intensive counseling are simply the expected norm during revivals…However, if a called-out assembly of believers—a church—does not rise up and continue with that same accountability and discipleship, then the revival never accomplishes what it was sent to do in the first place…”⁶ It’s interesting that this commentator equates the Church to the Kingdom of God (Please see my Kingdom Post #5 that explains what I think the difference might be). When you see leaders prevail who take the view that God brought the revival to increase the size of their Church, revival dwindles. My view is that God brings revival as an opportunity to save people. 😊 And sending in altar counselors with a mandate of, “Don’t let them escape without getting their Instagram handles” might still be pride talking. God is doing the compelling job just fine, and we don’t need to come in and repel them after the fact.

But it’s quite possible that God brings revival for a limited time, and then when His goals are met, the Glory lifts. The Hebrides Revival continues to be an interesting case study. Perhaps because of the isolated island aspect, the impact was highly comprehensive. It’s possible that revival ended because it accomplished what it was meant to do:

“(In 2016, the Outer Hebrides are) now considered one of the best places to live as well, thanks to happiness levels of its residents…there is a connection here, not only to family and the house you grew up in, but to the very island itself…In the Hebrides, most of us know the names of our neighbours, who can be called upon in various emergencies, both big and small…the region’s crime rate is one of the lowest in the UK – this is a place where it’s only in recent years that people have started locking their doors when they leave the house, and where one of the most popular eating options in Harris operates using an honesty box at the side of the road…The safety of the islands is just one aspect of what makes this a wonderful – and happy – place for children to grow up.”⁷

This tells me that there are probably a lot of KO’s (Kingdom Occupiers) in the Hebrides. KO’s aren’t people who are seeking an emotional experience. They are seeking the King. The wilderness Israelites wandered around spiritually, in addition to naturally, and never got to know God. Per Moses, the supporters of the 10 rebellious spies made this tragic remark after their bro’s returned: You grumbled in your tents and said, “The LORD hates us;☹ so he brought us out of Egypt to deliver us into the hands of the Amorites to destroy us.” Deut 1:26-27 What a total tragedy that they never sought the King and found His LOVE! Matt 6:33

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¹quora website: /Why-do-we-get-tired-or-bored-of-things-even-if-it-was-something-or-someone-we-badly-wanted

²reddit website: /r/askscience/comments/27etan/why_do_people_get_tired_of_doing_something_that/

³steemit website: /christianity/@buddy67/donald-trump-s-connection-to-the-hebrides-revival

⁴ephrathaministries.org website: /remnant-2009-1Q-why-revival-leaves.a5w

⁵Ibid.

⁶Ibid.

⁷storiesmysuitcasecouldtell website: /2016/02/05/why-the-outer-hebrides-is-the-happiest-place-in-the-uk/