How remarkable it is to hear true gospel preachers declare that they long for an old-fashioned revival, while they, at the same time, dictate to God the direction and terms on which they would have the revival come. They insult the Holy Spirit by telling Him what kind of revival to bring! They dictate to Him the avenues and channels He must use for His movements. 

The trouble is that the Lord's people will not "let go and let God." They won't hand over the entire service or campaign to the Spirit's control; they insist on keeping entire control of the gathering. They want to be able to turn on and off the workings of God as they so desire. They won't countenance anything they dislike or which they think isn't perfect decorum. For instance, the jailor's piercing cry of soul agony at the midnight hour (recorded in Acts 16) would have overstepped the bounds of dignity and decency in the estimation of some. They want a push-button revival. 

They want revival. But it must be one of their own understand - a poor, puny thing they can organize to death. They've been so accustomed to the natural that they insist on suppressing all supernatural workings of God. They've lived in the realm of the natural so long they're absolute strangers to the miraculous. Again and again, I've witnessed the blessed Spirit seeking to breakthrough in a gathering of believers convened for the express purpose of acknowledging their need of Him. Invariably, He was frustrated in His attempts to work as the chairman kept everything under his control. The dear man had forgotten that in the conventions of the early church, the true chairman was the Holy Spirit Himself - "It seemed good to the Holy Ghost …" (Acts 15:28). 

How familiar is this pattern becoming! A blessed messenger tells in a quiet, conservative manner something of the mighty workings of the Spirit. The hush of God is over the gathering. Then the chairman's closed remarks throw cold water over it all. He intimates to the believers that they mustn't expect - nor even desire - such unusual manifestations of deity. 

Many don't want their beautiful, cut-and-dried programs upset. They want everything to go according to time and pattern. Such people should read the Book of Acts on their knees for warning. They'll see how again and again the Spirit is limited and suppressed by a disobedient church. His greatest battle is to break through the convention of the church and upset its carefully calculated plans of evangelism. 

Some say they're afraid of wild fire and thus must suppress anything that isn't on the planned program. Now, we don't deny the possibility of false manifestations of the flesh; we detest and deplore any cheap playing upon the people's emotions by psychological tricks from the preacher. We don't deny also the possibility of Satan's seeking to counterfeit the workings of God in the heat of revival. We've experienced this in our own ministry, but we've also discovered that the Holy Spirit is more powerful than the wok of soulish believers or the work, even, of demons. 

In the true manifestation of revival, the Spirit works mightily upon the consciences - and, consequently, the emotions - of the people. Such scenes of emotions and seeming confusion have never failed to call forth strong and disapproving criticisms at such times. Witness Jonathan Edwards' masterly vindications of the supernatural workings of God in his ministry. See Murray McCheyne standing before his brethren in The Church of Scotland to give an account of the unusual happenings during the revival in his church. Surely, it's scarcely reasonable to expect that men and women should not have their emotions affected to an unusual degree when the Spirit of God is present in an extraordinary manner. In defense of the upsetting of our ordinary routine, Jonathan Edwards says:

I don't think this is confusion or unhappy interruption, any more than if a company should meet in a field to pray for rain and should be broken off from their exercise by a plentiful shower. Would to God that all the public assemblies in the land were broken off from their public exercises with such confusion as this the next Lord's day! We need not be sorry for breaking the order of meetings by obtaining the end for which that order is directed. He who is going to fetch a treasure may not be sorry if he's stopped by meeting the treasure in the midst of his journey! 

Many want a dignified revival or no revival at all. They don't want anybody's feelings hurt or people's sense of orderliness insulted. That blessed man, Duncan Campbell, told me once that after speaking to a ministerial group concerning the mighty manifestations of God in the Hebrides, one pastor declared, "If that's revival, I, for one, do not want it." What a tragedy. As E.W. Mills has so beautifully stated:

 Revival has to do with life - and more life, rich life, abundant life, zestful life, spacious sparkling life, overflowing life, victorious life, colorful life, and many-splendored life. There will be nothing tame and dull when the Spirit works. It will mean goodbye to deadness, to dullness, to boredom, to complacency, to sophistication, and all the other features of second-rateness. 

This is copyrighted material from James Stewart's book Come O Breath!, available from Revival Literature, PO Box 6068, Asheville, NC 28816.