Why Us Charismatics Might Miss the Next Revival

Revival always has a key ingredient that is missing from the cupboard of most current Charismatic movements

Every Charismatic or Pentecostal pastor plants a church expecting it to be the next center of revival. We live and breathe revival, it is in our spiritual DNA. But what if the next move of God is coming—and we miss it entirely? I am increasingly convinced that when revival hits America again, it most likely won't be in a Charismatic church because many of us have no revelation of what Jesus wants to change in our hearts and ministries.

My Painful Transformation

I did not grow up in church, and if anyone needed revival, it was me. I knew it. Before I was converted to Christ, I had serious issues that affected many areas of my life, one of which was rage being a destructive force that I had learned to live with. My anger and other issues felt like features, not bugs. I knew something needed to change, but never had the power to change it. When I turned to Jesus, I had a genuine desire to be transformed.¹

Before I met Jesus, I could not explain why certain things set me off, but they did. After my conversion, the nature of my anger changed. Instead of being triggered by personal slights, I found myself deeply enraged by hypocrisy, injustice, and spiritual elitism. While my outbursts were no longer physical, I still struggled to control my words when I witnessed these things. I had to learn to stay quiet for fear of sounding like a raving lunatic.

Learning to Be Prophetic

Without any desire of my own, I began functioning in a prophetic anointing early in my walk with Christ. I started to see the world differently. I saw hypocrisy, injustice, and spiritual elitism not just as personal annoyances but through a prophetic lens. I recognized the disparity between God's ethics and what I witnessed around me. But even with this gift of discernment, my reactions were still very much in the flesh. I would shut down and stew in my frustration, angry that others did not see what I saw but unable to communicate in a way that would be received.

I did not want to be an abrasive jerk. I did not want to be the judgmental guy that people marginalized because I could not share my insights without the uncleanness of anger. I mean, I really, really tried to keep this under control.

For years, I would not drink coffee before church just in case I received a prophetic word. I did not want to word vomit it all over the victim of my caffeinated, turbo-charged wrath. I was trying everything I could!

Like Paul in Romans 7, I simply could not be the man I wanted to be. I kept falling short. But I had the cheat code for personal revival. I desired to be better and had a willingness for God to change me. I was experiencing godly sorrow and that was the catalyst for the change I needed.

God met this desire in the most unexpected way.

One night at a meeting at Cutler Bay Worship Center, a worship leader from Toronto, Connie Sinnot prayed that I would experience the Father's love. She didn't pray long, but it completely wrecked my world. Over a two-year period, my entire life changed.²

I have not arrived by any means. But when I tell people about my former wrath, they have a hard time believing it because it just is not a feature of my life. I share this not for shock value but to demonstrate that God honors the godly desires of our hearts, and His grace will meet us at our point of failures.

The Absence of Godly Sorrow

This is what really troubles me about a large section of the American church today and why I don’t expect the next revival to be in the Charismatic church. There simply is no desire to be better. Many do not even have the willingness to desire to be better.

I hear so-called Christians speak about 'the woke' as if these people were not made in the image of God. What happened to “Love your neighbor as yourself?” When I hear violent rhetoric or fantasies of retribution against liberals, I cannot help but wonder how their hearts have become so cold to the teachings of Jesus. When I see sexual sin normalized, I shudder to think of the spiritual doors being opened in their places of worship.

It’s impossible to read prophetic texts without seeing how we will be judged by how we treat immigrants. But folks have simply cut those portions out of their Bibles.³ The Vice-President gave a heretical speech to a faith group and no Charismatics pushed back. You know who did? The Catholic Church.⁴

A Humble Way Forward

Us Charismatics need a major dose of humility and a baptism in the teachings of Jesus. I know we love Acts, but lets turn our Bibles to the left for a while and understand what message all that power in Acts was testifying about.

The Gospels are about a supernatural love for people we disagree with. It’s about seeing people we think are wrong and trying to understand them enough to resonate with their pain and creating a bridge to Jesus.

It looks something like praying,

Father, I hate what I see these liberals/conservatives doing to our country. Forgive me of my hatred. Please keep my heart pure so I can love them as you loved me in my sin.

And

Father it is easy for me to see what these people are doing to our country. I feel really justified in my bitterness and judgment. I know how dangerous it is to feel comfortable in this emotional place. Help me see what is in my heart that is equally offensive to you.

Tim Lee recently wrote about his optimism for revival among Gen-Z because of their willingness to change. My spirit resonates with this. The most 'revival-minded' parts of the church feel as justified as Israel before its exile, perfectly happy in their sins despite the clear teachings of the prophets. They never thought they needed to repent and never experienced God as they were intended to.

Gen-Z is cognizant that there is something better out there. And they are willing to put in the work to find it. They don’t want to live with their heart issues and are looking for answers.

We mature ‘revivalists’ need to be like these ‘children’ and live with a heart posture of willingness to change in areas we may feel justified.

What Do We Do?

I want revival more than ever. I want to see a fresh outpouring of the Holy Ghost that changes lives. But I am afraid we won’t see it because we keep thinking ‘they’ need revival instead of ‘we’ need revival.

Revival is in our spiritual DNA, but revival does not come to those who are already satisfied. It comes to the hungry, to those who know they need to change, to those with a genuine desire for God to transform their hearts. If we want to see revival in our churches and in our nation, we need to begin where all true revival starts—with a willingness to be changed for the better.

We must ask God to give us the desire to change. Even if we do not feel it right now, we can start by asking Him to help us want to want it. God honors even the smallest spark of willingness, and He meets us at our point of failure with His overwhelming grace.

The good news is that God is not looking for perfection; He is looking for a willing heart. He took my desire to change my rage and turned it into a testimony of His love. He can do the same for the church if we are willing to humble ourselves, repent, and seek His face.

My prayer is that we, as the church, would move from a place of comfort in our sin to a place of godly sorrow. That we would exchange our sense of self-justification for a deep desire to be conformed to the image of Christ. This is where revival begins—in the quiet place of repentance and the honest cry for God to change us from the inside out.

1. In my younger years in the faith, I used to share a long list of the crazy things I did when my rage took over. I wanted people to understand how real my struggle was. I am grateful that by the time I became an adult, my rage no longer led to the kind of legal trouble I got into as a youth. But I no longer feel the need to convince anyone by tales of darkness.

2. I have alluded to this story many times and will write about it at length another at some point. But that unbalanced message of the Father’s love completely transformed my life and my view of God. It forced me to rethink the direction of my life and ministry and caused me as much pain in my transformation as joy.

I continue to see how this revelation of the Father’s love transforms hearts today.

3. Countries need immigration laws. But how we view these immigrants, whether here legally or illegally is pretty clear in the Bible. To treat them as anything other than fellow image bearers of Christ is sin and we are warned time and again how God views this.

4. Isn’t it crazy that the Catholic Church, who much of the Evangelical world this is apostate can see the centrality of the teachings of Jesus where these “Bible believing” churches don’t?