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Revival is an awakening to God’s presence that

propels us to live different than before.

—Linda Kuhar, Igniting Revival Fire Every Day

In 2019 my life completely changed. My wife and I joined a missions trip to Brazil, where we experienced an outpouring of the Spirit in ways I had only imagined before. When I returned home, I felt God calling me to do something about it, and I explored producing resources about the Holy Spirit via a film series digging deep into revivals. About the same time, our editorial team was considering an issue on revival in the Middle Ages, and thus a three-part series was born. You are holding in your hand the last issue of the three. 

As we learned in CH #149 and #151, God has used revivals to awaken his people throughout history when they fervently seek him in prayer and repentance. We see in this final issue how the Second Great Awakening continued to spur missions worldwide, how meetings on Azusa Street led to the Pentecostal movement as we know it today, and how revivals are not limited to one region or people but occur globally. 

FROM BARREN TO BEARING FRUIT

We also interviewed George Otis (see p. 53), who has spent the last few decades traveling around the world documenting revivals. I found it fascinating to learn how, in some cases, God not only revived the people, but also revived the earth. Before George’s very eyes, God caused barren land to become fertile and empty waters to teem with fish. 

I love how Pastor Todd Smith described revival in his book Creating a Habitation for God’s Glory: 

Everyone wants revival until it gets messy. By that I mean it gets really uncomfortable when God goes into the areas of our lives that we didn’t even know God had an issue with. This is the side of revival not many people talk about, but it is the product

of revival.

God doesn’t put his finger on areas of our lives simply to condemn us; rather it’s to make us more like his Son Jesus. He wants us to deal with and remove those issues so we can be better conduits and hosts of his presence. 

That is what revival is all about . . . not the healings, good feelings, the emotional highs, or the physical manifestations, but being more like Jesus.

DESPERATE FOR MORE

When we began filming our miniseries on revival, we intended to produce an hour on the First Great Awakening, an hour on the Second Great Awakening, and an hour on revivals in the twentieth century. But in February 2023, an outpouring began at Asbury University in Kentucky, and our film team felt the call to capture what was happening live, leading to another documentary—Asbury Revival: Desperate for More. The Lord then led us to produce our recently released Desperate for More: North Georgia Revival, which tells the story of Pastor Todd Smith’s church in Dawsonville, Georgia, that has experienced years of revival and weekly baptisms. 

Our planned three-hour miniseries has grown to six hours and will likely continue to grow. It’s been quite an unexpected journey, but isn’t that fitting? The same God who continues to revive his people in unexpected places is moving through our ministry in ways beyond what we could ask or imagine. CH 

By Bill Curtis

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