Longing for a New Normal

Pray

Psalm 85:4-7

Some commentators think this psalm may have been written during the exile, when Israel had been conquered and the people were kicked out of their homeland. Others believe it may have been the period after, where some of God’s people were allowed to go back home to Jerusalem, but they were still under the thumb of foreign rulers, and unbelief and idolatry continued. In either case the move didn’t change their hearts, just their zip code. It didn’t revive the people spiritually. So the psalmist cries out for revival (v. 4). The prayer could be translated, “Turn us.” I love how big a prayer that is.

In one sense the ultimate judgment would be for a sovereign God to refuse to overcome that which is most normal about life here, namely, global and personal idolatry—for God to give us over to our cravings. Romans 1 describes God’s judgment this way. Three times it says that he gave them over. It is God taking his hands of mercy off and letting fallen humanity run, unhindered, charging in the direction of our idols. The psalmist is saying, “Don’t let that happen. God, turn us.”

However, if you know Christ, if you’ve been revived (made alive) by God’s grace, it’s not because he merely said, “Turn!” because he would’ve been saying “turn” to someone who by nature does not seek God (Rom 3:11). He would’ve been shouting “turn” to someone who was “dead in trespasses and sins” (Eph 2:1). But Ephesians 2 tells us what God did to counteract our unresponsiveness. He turned us! He answered this prayer in Psalm 85; he straight up turned you to himself!

But God, who is rich in mercy, because of his great love that he had for us, made us alive with Christ even though we were dead in trespasses. You are saved by grace! He also raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavens in Christ Jesus. (Eph 2:4-6)

If you have a hard time believing in the possibility of revival, look no further than your own personal testimony! You were dead, and he made you alive. You were running for your idols, and he turned you.

The psalmist doesn’t merely pray, “Help us to turn.” He says, “Turn us! Revive us again so that your people may rejoice in you” (vv. 4,6 author’s paraphrase).

This is not a God who is locked outside. This is no Deism. This is gospel-charged theism. It features a God who breaks in on planet earth, who breaks into living rooms, college dorms, bedtime prayers, dark nights of the soul. He breaks in among unreached peoples. He does things that are not normal.

I love the result of this reviving work of God in verse 6. This is a revival unto joy! And verse 7 seems to be the means God often uses in reviving his people. God revives his church by revealing himself afresh. He shows us his faithful love. Paul talked about Christian transformation this way: “We all, with unveiled faces, are looking as in a mirror at the glory of the Lord and are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory; this is from the Lord who is the Spirit” (2 Cor 3:18). Moses’s life-changing request in prayer wasn’t “Change me.” It was “Let me see your glory” (Exod 33:18).

This faith-filled prayer for a new normal is a kind of rebuke. It’s as though it’s saying that if you don’t believe personal, societal, national, even global revival is possible, you have forgotten the power of God.

Christian friends, if we don’t pray for things that might set us up for disappointment, we’re not doing it right. We are not called to merely pray safe, self-protecting, “realistic,” face-saving prayers. So often I pray prayers that match the normal patterns I see in life. In my everyday life, hard-to-reach people continue to be hard to reach. In my everyday life, the church exerts little influence on the world around us. But on page after page of Scripture, God is seeking to convince us that he has options! He intervenes. He brings life where there was death. He brings beauty from ashes. He removes fear while we walk through the valley of the shadow of death. He can cause his word to not return void. He can bring reviving grace to any person you know, any resistant people group, and he could do it by the end of the week.

Charles Spurgeon spoke of the poor condition of the church one hundred years prior. The Church of England, Spurgeon said, was asleep.

It looked as if the living church of God would be extinguished altogether; but it was not so, for God did but stamp his foot, and, from all parts of the country, men like Mr. Wesley and Mr. Whitefield, came to the front, and hundreds of others, mighty men of valor, proclaimed the gospel with unusual power, and away went the bats and the owls back to their proper dwelling-place. (“On Expectations”)

When is the last time we were audacious enough to ask God to stamp his feet? We are to pray and hope as though God had options!

Trust and Obey

Psalm 85:8-13

Do you hear this note of trust in verses 8-13? He will speak. He will give peace. Salvation is near. Truth springs up. The Lord will provide what is good. Trust is all over these verses. But there’s also a call to obedience. Verse 8 warns us not to go back to foolish ways. Whatever this reviving work of God is, it’s not something that renders the believer passive. There’s an assertive stance, a posture of readiness we’re called to. There’s a preparation for God’s work. Recall. That is, stay in his Word. Let it frame our expectations. Pray. Ask, seek, and knock, and keep knocking. Strive for godliness. Don’t turn back to foolishness.

I read a great book on revival several years ago, called When God Comes to Church by Ray Ortlund Jr. I love it because it makes sense of all God’s Word has to say about what to expect in life and ministry. Listen to how he describes revival:

Revival is a season in the life of the church when God causes the normal ministry of the gospel to surge forward with extraordinary spiritual power. . . . Revival is seasonal, not perennial. God causes it; we do not. It is the normal ministry of the gospel, not something eccentric or even different from what the church is always charged to do. What sets revival apart is simply that our usual efforts greatly accelerate in their spiritual effects. (Ortlund, When God Comes to Church, 9)

Don’t you long for that? Wouldn’t it be awesome if we didn’t alter the method? If we shunned gimmicks of every kind? If we instead continued to lean in to the normal ministry of the gospel and, suddenly, our usual “efforts greatly accelerate in their spiritual effects”? What might it look like to ask God to greatly accelerate the spiritual effects of his ministry through our lives and our witness?

Turn to Psalm 126. Verse 1 in each text points to the same thing. In Psalm 85 he’s longing for God to restore the fortunes of Jacob, as though he’s never experienced it. The author of Psalm 126 talks about having seen God restore the fortunes of Jacob; then he tells us some of the effects:

When the Lord restored the fortunes of Zion, we were like those who dream. Our mouths were filled with laughter then, and our tongues with shouts of joy. Then they said among the nations, “The Lord has done great things for them.” (126:1-2)

Church, what do you want? I’m not talking about what you can live with and be content with. What’s the dream?

We want to see lives marked by such love and faith and joy that there’s an impact beyond our own lives, relationships, marriages. Then this city and the nations of the world will say, “The Lord has done great things for them.” That’s a scale big enough for God to be honored, for God to say, “They must believe I’m awesome. Here’s what they asked: They asked for the ‘earth [to] be filled with the knowledge of the Lord’s glory, as the water covers the sea’ (Hab 2:14). They must believe I’m both rich and generous.” When believers live with hope and boldness in the face of impossible circumstances, we demonstrate our belief in the bigness of God.

Concerning the vision of Isaiah 64, Raymond Ortlund Jr. writes:

The prophet envisions God taking the sky, which he has spread out like a curtain, taking that cosmic veil, which hides him from our view, grabbing it in his strong hands, ripping it apart from top to bottom, and stepping down into our world! It’s a thought to make every believer tremble with joy. . . . But the prophet is not thinking of a literal earthquake. The “mountains” symbolize long-established, well-positioned, difficult-to-remove resistance to God. That’s the world we live in. And that’s what the church cannot change by her own efforts and programs and good intentions. But the Lord’s presence (“before You”) changes everything. The evil that we cannot budge is, to God, like mere twigs before a fire or water set to boil. It has no power to resist. (When God Comes to Church, 30)

The presence of fallenness in this world assaults our senses every day. We see it, we hear it. It’s all around us. Will we recall the power of God? Will we pray reckless prayers to a God who is “rich and generous”? Will we trust and obey, not only with our personal lives in view, or our local church life in view, but with a scope that is big enough to demonstrate that God’s global mission is in our hearts?

We don’t need some new initiative, as if that would trigger revival. What we need is renewed confidence in the power of God’s Spirit working through the gospel.

Reflect and Discuss