Revival Now

Sam · #1 06-08-2011, 09:54 PM

I received this on June 8, 2011 from Charisma online and wanted to pass it on. We hear a lot about REVIVAL. People talk about REVIVAL and keep putting it off into the future. Many are looking for REVIVAL to happen some time in the future. I keep saying that REVIVAL is happening right now. It’s all around us. All we have to do is walk into it and open up to it.

Two examples that I can think of right now. I know a group of men who gather together every morning at 6:00 am to pray. Their hearts are being stirred. They are drawing closer to God. They are growing in consecration and holiness. in my opinion, THAT’S REVIVAL and it’s happening right now in Hamilton, Ohio. Another example happened earlier tonight at Church. I attend the Hamilton Dream Center in Hamilton. Tonight there were about 100 children there hearing the Gospel. Their lives are being changed. Also there were probably 50 teen agers in a youth meeting there worshiping and hearing the Word. Those teenagers are getting saved, getting baptized, and memorizing Scriptures. Tonight in our adult Bible Class there were 4 of us. This does not seem like many people attending a midweek Bible class but lots of the adults in that church are working with the youth and children and can’t come to Bible Class. One person was there for the first time. As the discussion progressed she said that she had been saved when she was around the age of 11 but she had backslidden since then. Tonight she recommitted her life to the Lord. We then got to share some foundational Scriptures with her and encourage her. We gave her a Bible in an easy to read modern version, encouraged her to return this weekend for Bible Class, breakfast, and morning service and prayed with her again. Now, in my opinion, THIS IS REVIVAL and it is happening now in Hamilton, Ohio.
Jim Ellis

A Growing Spiritual Hunger In Hungary
by J. Lee Grady, contributing editor of Charisma.

The passion for revival I saw in eastern Europe this week rivaled what I have seen in Africa or Asia.

Europe is often described as post-Christian, and some people have already given up on the continent. We’ve heard discouraging statistics about mosques replacing churches in England. We know about dismal numbers of churchgoers in Germany and France. Some people assume that the region that gave us the Protestant Reformation is now a spiritual wasteland.

But that’s not what I found in Hungary this past week. On Sunday I preached to a congregation that meets in what used to be a communist hall in the Budapest suburb of Szigetszentmiklos. The Free Christian Church, a lively Pentecostal group pastored by Josef and Lila Gere, was celebrating its 20th anniversary --and the mayor of the town showed up for the service along with the local minister of religious affairs.

The congregation was full of young people. The praise team led us in Hillsong choruses translated into Hungarian. A few people raised their hands when I invited those who were not Christians to invite Jesus into their hearts.

I saw encouraging signs of spiritual life everywhere I went in Hungary, from Budapest and Vác in the west to the cities of Miskolc and Debrecen in the east. After church on Sunday, I met a former communist leader who now pastors a church for Gypsies.

Tamas Soltesz was a former “comandante” in the Hungarian police force, and a teacher of atheist philosophy. But in 1990 he had a dramatic conversion --not unlike the apostle Paul’s --after a strange dream in which a Gypsy man approached him and said, “I want to receive Jesus.” Soltesz told the man he could not, but then he heard the voice of the Lord say, “If I open the door, no one can close it.”

“My father was called like the apostle Paul to preach to the Gypsies,” says Rita Nagy, Soltesz’s married daughter. “He had many influential friends in the police, and they all rejected him. They began calling him vajda, which means ‘Gypsy leader.’”

Today, Soltesz leads a Gypsy church in the village of Serényfalva, and he has reached many others among Hungary’s nomadic Gypsy communities. “Today we know Christians in every Gypsy village,” Nagy says.

On Sunday night I spoke at a small charismatic church that meets in a former lightbulb factory in the industrial city of Vác. The pastors, Balint and Eva Nagy, don’t take money from the congregation because most of their members live on small salaries. But that didn’t dampen the passion I saw in the worship --which was led by a 20-year-old college student named Máté who learned to play the guitar only a year ago.

When I gave an altar call for personal prayer in the small church, people lingered past 10:30 p.m. to receive ministry. The spiritual hunger in that place rivaled what I have felt in some Third World nations where revival is common. But this was Europe!

On Monday I visited the industrial city of Miskolc, located in what was once a heavily pro-communist region of Hungary. There I met Zsolt Budai, pastor of Olive Church, another growing charismatic congregation. Budai told me that his church has begun an outreach to Gypsies as well.

“Recently in one of our meetings a 16-year-old girl who has been blind from birth received her sight,” Budai told me. “And a Gypsy man who was preparing to kill someone with a samurai sword ended up running into the church and giving his life to Christ.” The miracles have stirred Budai’s congregation to seek the Lord for a strategy to reach the marginalized Gypsy community more effectively.

After visiting Miskolc I went to Debrecen, near the Romanian border. In the 1500s the city was a center for Calvinism. Then, in the 1970s, an unusual visitation of the Holy Spirit hit the tradition-bound Free Christian Church and turned it into a flagship of Pentecostal revival. Today the church is full of young Christians, and its pastor, Peter Lakatos, hosts an annual summer worship school that attracts more than 700 registrants for a week of training.

“Sometimes during the school we worship for three straight hours,” Lakatos said, noting that the evening services attract more than 2,000. “There is no air conditioning in the building, but that doesn’t stop the people from praising the Lord.”

Blind eyes opening … in Europe? Three-hour worship sessions … in Europe? Churches filled with teenagers and young adults … in Europe? It’s all happening in Hungary, a nation that borders seven other European countries --and could affect them all. I’m not writing off this region. What I saw this week in Hungary was enough to convince me that a new spiritual trend has begun.

Dagwood · #2 06-08-2011, 11:21 PM

Gotta say I love the post, Sam. I don't tell you enough, but your posts always get me to thinkin.

I, too, agree revival is right now. I've always heard revival is coming, revival is coming. But, if we really step back and think about it, it is all around us right now. We're so used to expecting them to come to us, when we stand a better chance of going to them, getting to know them, and letting God do the rest. Certainly not the first thing to say to a complete stranger "Hey, why don't you come to church with me?" I tell you, so many people are burned by church and hearing that come from someone. Certainly not discouraging it be mentioned at some point, but getting to know someone, first, one step at a time will have far reaching results, to me, than inviting them to a place of worship right off the bat. That is, unless they are point-blank and ask where you or I go to church. They'll know who and what we represent just by observation, which is something for all of us to keep in mind. Just my thoughts...