Karen: A work in progress. That’s what I would call my husband’s interest in the topic of religious revivals and it doesn’t end ever since I first met him some 60 years ago. He has wrestled mentally with this subject. I mean several years back he wrote an entire study Bible for Zondervan Publishing House on the topic.

It’s called the Bible for Personal Revival and now this man in his middle 80s, he’s writing another book on the topic. Well, I love him anyway. And guess what I plan to question him about this podcast.

Intro: Welcome to the Before We Go Podcast featuring Dr. David Mains and his wife, noted author Karen Mains. Here’s David and Karen Mains.

Karen: What approach to the subject of revival is it that you’re working in right now?

David: It’s one I’ve struggled with for a long time. It’s trying to get my mind around the normal process of revival. I know you can’t put God in a box and say, “If we follow this sequence we will for sure see God work in an unusual way.” It isn’t that easy to confine God like that. He can bust out in ways that we never thought but it is possible to say, “Is there a pattern that it’s helpful to at least recognize?” I believe there is.

Karen: Maybe before you tell us what you’re thinking on that. For some folk who are listening they may not know what you mean by revival. You want to give a quick definition of what it’s about.

David: It’s an easy word to understand. “Re” means again so and “al” is that which pertains to and “viv” those are all life words vivid, vivacious you know and so on. So, it’s that which pertains to life coming back again. It’s the life that God wants his people to experience and when they experience that in an abundant way that’s characteristically called a time of spiritual awakening or revival.

Karen: And so there have been movements through history probably in the scripture as well. There were times that could be called revivals there, right?

David: I have no question in terms of scripture and in American history you know the great awakening you’re going back into the 1700s the early 1800s the second great awakening. You can track these times and Karen it usually is such that if a person is fortunate they’ll experience one of these major movements of the Holy Spirit once in a lifetime. And part of where I am in my life is my sand is running out.

Karen: The sand in your hourglass?

David: And I haven’t been a part of one in a national movement. I would really long to have that as part of my experience while I was here on earth.

Karen: So, the what I’m thinking back to in our lifetime would have been what we call the charismatic renewal.

David: That would have been a time of new life in the church, no question about it. It didn’t match the huge awakenings that have taken place so that the whole world kind of takes no less.

Karen: But it was a renewal spiritually that went on with a large group of people.

David: Yes.

Karen: And then I’m also thinking of a youth revival of sorts that took place started on the west coast. Was that the same thing?

David: I think they’re movements they are times of blessing but it hasn’t been characterized as a massive revival time. How do you classify them? I don’t know.

Karen: Generally, when I think about it, and of course I lived with you all these years, it’s a time of spiritual quickening that happens.

David: Sure, it could happen in a church. It could happen in an individual’s life.

Karen: We think of them more as movement something that’s more corporate that sort of sweeps across the geographic area so kind of religious system and ordination.

David: Yeah, although it could be you know there were revivals in western Canada during my lifetime.

Karen: It’s not our homeland. It was the Toronto revival I remember there was something centered up there that just went on you when a couple times I think there were healings and you know it was really a manifestation of something unusual with great blessing that accompanied it.

David: I’m personally believing that God longs to pour out his spirit on this land. In fact, I would say that America at present is wrestling with God or God is trying to bring America to a place where it returns to him. If you go back into the Old Testament scriptures God says, “Israel is backsliding so I’m going to put a little pain in your life that will bring you back to me.” And he does that through it could be locusts.

He withholds rain and he says, “You know the crops you normally have, you’re going to find that they’re far less this year because I’m lovingly trying to draw you back to me.”

Karen: To get your attention.

David: It seems like when people are blessed of the Lord it’s not very long before they tend not to think about the Lord.

Karen: Take it for granted.

David: Even God says and this is the prophets in the Old Testament, “I’m going to destroy your cities I’m going to bring an invader from the north who will destroy your lifestyle, who’ll take you into captivity. You’re going to know pain because it’s the only way I can bring you back from your disobedience.” I think that if I say this I sound almost like a cook but I think God is a part and I know it all can be explained naturally it can be. “I’ll bring fires to vast parts of your country I will bring floods I will bring time when you’re going to go through some real pain because pain tends to bring you back to me.”

Karen: And that’s not divine capriciousness. One question I ask of folk I’m mentoring spiritually is how much time do you spend in the word vis-à-vis how much time you watch television? That little simple answer to that question often reveals where our time allotment is. And I ask this of myself as well are you frittering away precious hours that have been given to you to learn more about God or to do his work or to be concerned at other people. In front of the screens now it’s not just the television screens it’s going online and one thing leads to another and you spend an hour in front of your computer just sort of wool gathering in a way, you know, from oh this is interesting click this button. So, I think that these times of national pain are often God trying to get our attention. Not that he is capricious or gruesome in his love but it is to call us to be the best that we can be to follow him with our whole hearts. Now what does that say that is a fireplace where most of us live out our Christian life.

David: Well this is very busy culture. People have all kinds of things asking for their attention when you speak in terms of revival some people think of it individually. You’ve actually brought that up some people think of it in terms of what’s going on in their church. I tend to think nationally partly because we had a broadcast that was all across the country so I thought in those terms much more so than say a pastor who’s involved in his individual setting.

Karen: One specific locality like the Chicago areas where we’re located.

David: It would be wonderful if the Chicago area would know revival. I would like to see it I’d like to see it also be Detroit I’d like to see Philadelphia I’d like to see the rural areas

Karen: Well you’ve sort of alluded to the natural disasters that have been forecast because of our international climate change condition. But we’re facing COVID-19 which is that pandemic really not quite like any. We had one in 1920; I think it was around that year. But nothing like we’ve experienced in our lifetime.

David: Have you heard anybody ever say that COVID is something that maybe the Lord is involved in and he’s trying to draw his people back to himself. you very seldom hear something like tha.

Karen: I’m wondering if a lot of us aren’t wondering if that’s not what’s going on here. I mean the isolation. As much as we hate it because we haven’t been able to meet our friends or really be even with our families, is a time of quieting for many many folks, of silencing the normal repartee and conversation that goes on in every day life. It’s taking us away from our business I mean one of the great sins of our contemporary lives is exactly what you mentioned, It’s a toxic kind of busyness a frantic kind of doing and I think that though many of us have found projects that have been neglected at our own homes a lot of cleaning out of chores and sorting and purging, it’s still very very different than the kind of lives we have been used to living before.

David: It’s a hyperactivity. The country. Where is our country? Those that you’ve mentioned are there. But I would say, the country, it’s sad in many ways. I think the country is marked by greed.

Karen: Money rules.

David: Yes. Money is a huge god in this land. I think that it’s becoming more and more a nation of liars, of profanity, of lust, of power.

Karen: It used to be that there were moral standards that maybe were not adhered to particularly by individuals. but there was moral meaning that we all agreed.

David: It had a basis in Christianity.

Karen: That had a basis in the Judeo-Christian inheritance that we had all received and we adhered to that moral meaning. You understood that you were not supposed to lie. You understood that you were not supposed to steal from other people. You understood that you were supposed to give yourselves to acts of charity or goodness. But that common base that common moral understanding I think is being very diminished. And I do believe it’s part of the spiritual poverty that we as Christians are living in without sometimes knowing that it’s happening.

David: If you say where does it all begin it doesn’t usually begin with society it begins with the church.

Karen: What is revival. Okay go ahead tell us about it.

David: Tthen the question is where is the church say in terms of this land. I think there’s a lot of beauty in the church but I also think that it lacks this overwhelming sense of the presence of the Lord. There’s also the awareness in the church that the church is more like the culture than you want the culture to be like the church. I have this awareness that there are many many people who call themselves Christians and probably are, but they have very little to do with the church it’s like I can live this on my own .

Karen: I choose to live in however I want. Yeah.

David: I think there’s a naivete on the part of most of the ministers of the land that between times of coming together on Sunday, that people sinned. I think that ministers tend to think the people are all right.

Karen: Well I’ve read some commentary that the word sin has kind of gone out. You don’t hear a lot about it. Preachers looking at it maybe in reaction to an over address.

David: An overstatement. I think that ministers are not prone to say, “This might have been a hard week for a lot of you and maybe some of you did things that you shouldn’t have done and if you’d like just in the quiet, to come to the front and kneel and ask God to forgive you for that. This might be a time to do that.” It’s just not conceivable that a man would say that because it would bust up the pattern I know there are churches that every week say the confessional but it can become quite rote. And you don’t really have this awareness that God is holy that we have come into His presence. In fact I would say, Karen, that as the average person including us comes to church, it isn’t we’re coming into the presence of God. it’s almost…

Karen: A social gathering with our friends. Yeah. And I’ve lived with you long enough to hear these extraordinary stories of times of revival or times where there was an unusual visitation of the spirit of the Lord on a people or a congregation or a geography. You had one story you were sharing with me the other night about the presence of the Lord. There was a man standing outside of a church. Do you remember that story?

David: There are a lot of those.

Karen: Well tell us some of those.

David: That was in Wales during the early 1900s. The Welsh revival. The miner had come from his shift. It’s dark in the mines but it was even dark when he came out of the mines. He walked by the church and the lights of the church were open. He walked up to the door because there were revival meetings going on in an unusual way. The presence of the Lord was there. He stood at the door and he couldn’t go in and he couldn’t leave. And his words were, “God is here.”

Karen: God is in this place.

David: Yeah. God is in this place. Revival is not necessarily the same as evangelism but always during revival times you have large numbers of people coming to the Lord. They’re unusual stories. I just read one the other day which is kind of typical where the shopkeeper, an individual comes in and says, “I need to give you some money because I stole from you some time back and I can’t get it off my conscience.” And he put money on the counter, not that much money but enough money to relieve the conscience. And the shopkeeper kind of, “That was fine. Didn’t think about.” But the second person came in and said the same and then the third person came in. The shopkeeper says, “What is going on?” And the person says, “There is a movement of God. The church.” So the shopkeeper wants to find out what’s going on and he goes to the church. He experiences the presence of the Lord and totally turns his life. Those are the wonderful stories that come out of these times.

You hear them over and over again. And the question, Karen, in my mind, is there a pattern to all of this? The movements of God begin with the church, so that I would say that one of the early signs, and this is kind of a strange thing, but there is a sense of extreme dissatisfaction, that the church is not what it’s supposed to be. And I want there to be more. It’s a holy dissatisfaction. Without that, revival usually doesn’t come. It doesn’t come because somebody says, “Wouldn’t it be a good idea if we could put pieces together and have a revival meeting?”

Karen: And that does happen culturally in our churches across the country.

David: Culturally, churches do this.

Karen: But you’re talking about something that goes beyond just, “This is time we need to slot this into our schedule.” It’s a movement of God. But David, talk about that holy dissatisfaction a little bit more.

David: It’s a tricky one. I’ve experienced it in my life. It’s a deep-seated sense of discontent, and it can turn into sourness, and it can turn very quickly into a critical spirit. And that’s an unfortunate thing. And it can turn into even a holier-than-thou attitude. But if it’s correctly handled, that sense of “Why aren’t we knowing better days than these? Why is the culture seemingly going downhill?” That turns to a burden for prayer that is unusual, and it’s too heavy to carry on your own. You say, “You put it on my back, and it’s too much.”

Karen: It’ll crush me.

David: Yeah, it’s too much. So there’s almost a need to reach out and have other people and say, “Help me with this.” And then you find those similar people, and that deep-seated sense of dissatisfaction moves into what I would call prolonged periods of prayer, a corporate prayer. It’s not individual prayer. It’s together we’ll share this burden, and we will see through our prayers God move into various situations. And without that prayer base, there isn’t that presence of the Lord.

Karen: It has to sort of be initiated before a prayer base forms with this feeling of discontent. It’s a visitation, isn’t it? Or something that is given to us by the Spirit of God rather than something we stir up in ourselves again. And so very often I find myself praying, “Help me to have a hunger for you I cannot engender on my own. Give me a hunger for yourself and the things of the Lord that I’m not naturally inclined to stir up in myself.” So I know a little bit about that, although not to the extent that you’re talking about where you have a group that begins to gather. And I think that the old term of a “cried out to the Lord” is perhaps the most descriptive phrase that captures this visitation of discontentness and then a response of obedience to pray, to get down on our knees to pray. They went on their faces. You see that in scripture? You think, what in the world? We’ve not watched that.

David: You never have strong movement of awakening without a prayer base.

Karen: It is all over the country or the God will activate them or that will begin to know where they are.

David: A lot of times, Karen, it will begin with the older people, partly because they have the time, partly because they have lived long enough and they’ve seen enough of the way of the world to say, “How do we stem this?” And because their whole understanding of the church is different than the understanding of the…

Karen: Well, they have a long-range view. You know, that’s one of the great gifts of aging, if it’s used right. I have a question. Sorry, I didn’t mean to interrupt your thought there, but living with you and observing you, would you say you are presently, you are presently experiencing revival in your own life? How would you articulate where you are spiritually right now?

David: I would say that the answer to that is yes. If that means I’m perfect, the answer is quickly no. But I am living in a very close relationship with the Lord. I would say the same is true of our marriage. Is the marriage better than it’s ever been? I would say yes. I would say that we live together in harmony and the Lord is pleased by our relationship with one another. And I would take that to the next level and say, “Does this home manifest the presence of the Lord?” And I would say that, “Anytime Jesus you want to come and be here, we live in a way that is as though you are with us all the time. We don’t have anything in the house that would offend you. I don’t think how our money is spent. That’s pretty much up to you. Maybe you’re going to push us in that area. I think that will respond.” I would say that this home, it’s a home where Jesus lives. I think if people would come and live with us, they wouldn’t say, “Golly, these are wonderfully holy people.” But I think they would say, “Jesus is loved there and he returns that love to these people.” If we would say, does that move over to the local church? I would say that we’re not there yet in terms of the church. Part of that in my mind is again because we have given years to the local church, but I’ve kind of jumped to that level of where is the country? That’s where my key burden is.

Karen: I know you speak of feeling so close to the Lord in a way that’s different than what you’ve experienced before. I have observed you being very faithful through the decades to being in scripture and to thinking about the Lord’s work. You aren’t a man who promotes yourself or has an ego that needs to be fed. How is this present moment where you feel like there’s a personal revival going on in you different than other times in your life where I have observed you being very faithful to those spiritual disciplines?

David: I believe that with the broadcast as wonderful a privilege as it was, I moved into workaholism. I’ve confessed that. But having to do a broadcast six times a week, it was just too much. And there were people who accused us of being new age and so on that took the ministry down. But I think the Lord used that in a very real way in my life to give me more time because it was just huge trying to keep up. You just finished a program and then you got one due.

Karen: Well, not only that raising enough money to pay salaries of 55 staff people and pay radio bills which were huge daily radio bills on 600 stations.

David: I’m not in that hurry hurry.

Karen: But it’s been 20 years or so since we closed the broadcast ministry down.

David: I think it took that many years for me to slow down and just have time with the Lord. And I think also, Karen, that I’m at a place where I say, “Whatever my words are, they’re going to not be enough.” And if I’m asked to speak again, which would be quite unusual because…

Karen: You haven’t. I haven’t asked you.

David: I would say, “Lord, what is it you want me to say?” And I will do my very best to say it. I’ve always had that attitude. But I’ve not had that sense of saying, on my own, apart from speaking your word, it really is not going to accomplish all that much. Maybe preaching will not be.

Karen: The vehicle that God uses in the ministry.

David: Maybe it will be writing. You know, I mean, it may be it will be praying. I would agree. I think that during this time in my life, praying with others has been a great growing part of my life where I’ve heard other people pray the same kind of prayers I’ve been praying, but in different words. And that’s helped me so much. I’ve learned a great deal by praying.

Karen: Well, you and I have been conversing recently about the fact that we would like to be more prayerfully vital in the lives of so many of our friends who have followed us and supported us for decades. Because of this whole history of growth and the empathy you understand as to the perils and the joys of being human. But I think that a lot of that is coming out of a feeling for the body of Christ that you have had time to really visit and look at. And it’s something that the Lord is opening up in you, I think, just as a widely observance here. But to me, it’s extremely interesting that you’re at this point in your life because I’ve always lived with a godly man.

David: A flawed godly man.

Karen: Well, we’re all flawed.

David: This is right.

Karen: Absolutely. And we know it, you know, but that’s been one of the great things I admire about you. Actually, selfishly, I’ve sometimes thought, “Karen, you’re not spending enough time in the Word anywhere. Well, David’s covering us all. So that’s kind of what he’s called into.” And I’m doing some of this other stuff. I feel like the Lord is laid in my heart. So I think it’s interesting for people to hear that at 84, you are experiencing a renewal of your spiritual vitality in a way that you have not experienced it in the decades of the past and probably could only be worked in you at this stage in your life because of your age, because of the passage of time, because of the fact that God has put you aside for 20 years. Now, that is extraordinary. 20 years without an invitation to speak or to preach or to be a part of meetings so that you could just become close to Him.

David: Yeah. And so that I could write, I believe that it’s going to be more written Word than a spoken Word. That’s fine. In fact, in some ways, when you write, you’re much more careful as to what your words are saying. And personality doesn’t get in as much because you go back and rework it and regularly say, “Lord, is that how you want it expressed and so on?” So I’m a happy man. I find great joy in my life.

Karen: So David, you’re also a man who always has a purpose sentence or a theme sentence. Do you want to tell us what that is and we can sort of summarize what we’re saying?

David: Yeah, can I summarize? I’m not sure I can. Understanding the usual process of spiritual awakenings helps us pray for its reoccurrence.

Karen: I think that’s great.

David: So usually there is that deep-seated discontent. It ought to be better. How do we make it better? That’s the beginning point. It’s a holy discontent. It’s not a, “I have the answers come and listen to me.” It’s not that.

Karen: For me, there’s a wanting that renewal and that movement of God to not just impact the church or the people in the church, but the whole land. And I think it’s so desperately in need of not being content with being superficial with life, not being content with relationships that don’t empower one another to do good. And I’m not just talking about the church. I’m talking about the whole society. I see hunger out there. I think partly because of the COVID isolation.

David: The hunger isn’t enough. It’s got to move to the protracted prayer.

Karen: But it’s a place that’s, it starts. And I don’t mean just among Christian folk, but I think there’s a dialogue that’s going on in our culture that people have had time to look at their lives and say, what is it all about? What’s it all for? So that God would begin to raise up hunger among non-Christian folk, non-Christ followers in a way that they would look at a movement of God and say, “That’s what I’m looking for. That’s what I want. What is happening? Draw me into that. I want to know what’s going on. I think I’ve been seeking for this all my life.”

David: If that were to come, just as you’re describing, that would be revival. It would be exactly what we’re talking about. What manifestation it would take, I don’t know, but the superficiality, the human personality, the rah-rah, the spotlights, all the different things that have so much of the human in them, they would take a backseat. There would be the simple awareness that God is here. It’s like that.

Karen: Simple but powerful awareness.

David: It’s like the old miner. Oh my gosh.

Karen: Yeah, standing outside that. I don’t know if I want to go in there. Yeah, that’s what we need. Well, let’s really begin to pray for that. We would invite our listeners to join us in this kind of prayer. I ask God to give them also a burden for it. And so it’s so big, we can’t do it with our own capacities. And if it’s going to get done, that means God is going to have to do it. That’s a good place to be, I think.

David: Right. It’s exactly where God wants us to be as well. Saint, let me show my hand.

Outgo: You’ve been listening to the Before We Go podcast. And if you would like to write to us, please send us an email at the following address, hosts@beforewego.show. That’s all lowercase letters, hosts@beforewego.show. If you’ve enjoyed this podcast, please remember to rate, review, and share on whatever platform you listen. This podcast is copyright 2021 by Mainstay Ministries, Post Office Box 30, Wheaton, Illinois 60187.