Revival, Formation, and the Soil of the Church
Why Awakening Alone Cannot Produce the Mature Church We Long For
by Raimer R.
by Raimer R.
I wrote this article out of a growing personal concern. Through various connections with church leaders — both locally and internationally — I often hear calls to pray for revival and fresh outpourings of the Holy Spirit. I understand that longing, and I share it. But I rarely see the same urgency for building discipleship cultures that truly align with the way Jesus formed people and with the priorities of the New Testament church. Too often, there seems to be a longing for change without stepping into the responsibility God has given us as spiritual leaders, and without embracing the deeper work needed to help produce that change. That disconnect feels both troubling and disheartening to me. This article is my attempt to lovingly but directly challenge that half-hearted approach to change — and to call us back to the deeper work of formation that Jesus Himself modeled and calls us to embrace, for ourselves and the people we lead.
— Raimer R.
Many believers sincerely long for revival, awakening, and a fresh outpouring of the Holy Spirit upon the church. They look at the shallowness, division, and lack of maturity within many Christian communities and rightly recognize that something is deeply missing. There is a hunger for God to move powerfully again — to awaken hearts, restore passion, and bring spiritual life where things have grown dry and lifeless.
The cry for renewal is deeply biblical: “Lord, I have heard of your fame; I stand in awe of your deeds, Lord. Repeat them in our day, in our time make them known; in wrath remember mercy.” — Habakkuk 3:2 (NIV)
That longing is not wrong. Throughout Scripture, God often moves in powerful ways to awaken His people. Times of spiritual renewal can soften hardened hearts, expose sin, and restore hunger for God. Genuine revival can become a mercy from God that interrupts spiritual drift and calls people back to Him.
There is nothing wrong with longing and praying for revival. In many ways, that hunger reflects something beautiful — a recognition that the church desperately needs God. Scripture itself is filled with cries for renewal, repentance, and fresh encounters with the presence of God. We should absolutely pray for the Holy Spirit to move powerfully among His people. But there is also an important tension the church must wrestle with honestly.
Sometimes believers unconsciously begin hoping that an external outpouring will solve problems that are actually rooted in deeper issues of discipleship, formation, and spiritual maturity. Revival can become imagined almost like a spiritual shortcut — a sudden divine intervention that fixes what years of shallow formation, passive discipleship, and unhealthy church culture have slowly produced.
In some cases, there can even be a preference for revival language because it feels cleaner and more immediate than the slower and more demanding work of formation. It is often easier to pray for a fresh move of God than to patiently cultivate environments where people learn repentance, emotional maturity, and obedience over many years.
Wanting revival is not the problem. Abdicating responsibility while waiting for revival is. It is possible to cry out for awakening while avoiding the deeper realities that actually require repentance, wisdom, and change. Sometimes churches long for God to suddenly fix what years of unhealthy leadership, shallow discipleship, and emotional immaturity have produced. In those moments, revival can subtly become a way of postponing responsibility.
Instead of examining:
how people are actually being formed
what kind of leadership culture exists
whether believers are learning emotional maturity
whether discipleship is relational and embodied
whether truth is being practiced and internalized
whether community is healthy and honest
whether people are truly learning the way of Jesus
There can be a tendency to simply wait for a dramatic move of God to solve everything from the outside. But throughout Scripture, God often works not only through sudden moments of power, but through faithful obedience, repentance, and long-term cultivation into the image of Christ.
Of course, without the Holy Spirit, true transformation cannot happen at all. Christianity is not merely behavior modification or human effort. The Spirit of God is essential. But throughout Scripture, the Spirit often works through long processes of discipleship, correction, and gradual formation. An outpouring may awaken people, but awakening alone does not automatically produce mature disciples.
Revival environments can strongly affect emotions, spiritual awareness, and the atmosphere of a community. Human beings are deeply influenced by collective emotion and shared experiences. People may experience conviction, renewed passion, or powerful moments with God. Those experiences can be deeply genuine and important. But emotional intensity does not necessarily become internalized transformation.
Unless truth becomes internalized through new patterns of living, spiritual rhythms, and embodied obedience over time, much of the change can remain temporary. A person may feel spiritually alive in the moment while still lacking the deeper formation needed to handle temptation, disappointment, or everyday pressures in a Christlike way. People often return to old patterns because their underlying ways of thinking, reacting, and relating have not yet been deeply retrained in Christ. An encounter may genuinely touch the heart, but formation slowly reshapes the person.
This is part of what theologian and pastor Jonathan Edwards wrestled with during and after the height of the First Great Awakening in the 1730s and early 1740s. Edwards was not merely an outside observer analyzing revival from a distance. He was the pastor of a local congregation in Northampton, Massachusetts long before revival broke out. He already knew the spiritual condition of his people, their patterns of life, and the realities of their everyday walk with God before the awakening began. Then he personally shepherded that same congregation through the extraordinary spiritual intensity of the First Great Awakening. He witnessed dramatic emotional responses, renewed zeal for God, and deep conviction of sin. But later, he also watched as many of the revival fires gradually subsided. Because he had known these people both before and after the awakening, he was uniquely positioned to observe the long-term results within the same community over time.
And that is what gave such weight to his insights. He saw the beautiful fruit of authentic transformation in some lives. But he also saw that some people who appeared deeply moved during revival did not ultimately show enduring evidence of lasting spiritual formation and Christlike change. This deeply shaped his thinking. It led Edwards to write his influential work "Religious Affections", where he wrestled carefully with how to discern the difference between temporary religious excitement and genuine spiritual transformation. Edwards did not reject emotional experiences. In fact, he believed true Christianity absolutely involved the affections — the deep loves, desires, and movements of the heart. Real encounters with God should affect people deeply. But he also recognized that strong emotions alone were not reliable evidence of maturity.
A person may:
feel overwhelming emotion
speak passionately about revival
experience tears, exhilaration, or zeal
display dramatic spiritual experiences
become highly excited about spiritual things
while still remaining profoundly immature and deeply unchanged at the level of character.
For Edwards, the real test was not the height of the experience, but the long-term fruit it produced.
Did the person gradually become:
more humble
more loving
more obedient
more gentle
more stable
more holy
more self-controlled
more submitted to Christ
more persevering over time
That was the deeper evidence of authentic spiritual formation.
Edwards recognized that revival experiences could strongly affect emotions without deeply restructuring the person. The experience created intensity, but not necessarily enduring formation. His insights carry enormous weight for leaders longing for revival today because they come not merely from theology, but from pastoral experience. He had witnessed both genuine transformation and shallow emotionalism existing side by side within the same movement. And that forced him to wrestle honestly with an uncomfortable reality: not every powerful spiritual experience produces lasting transformation. Some experiences awaken. Some soften hearts. Some genuinely begin renewal. But unless those experiences become embodied through discipleship, repentance, and long-term formation, the emotional moment itself may slowly fade while the deeper patterns of the person remain largely unchanged.
This is where the analogy of rain becomes especially important. A sudden rainstorm can absolutely be a gift to dry land. The land may desperately need rain after a long drought. But too much rain falling too quickly upon dry or unhealthy soil can actually create destruction instead of nourishment. Instead of absorption, you get runoff. Instead of cultivation, you get erosion. Instead of steady growth, you get flash floods and mudslides. The problem is not the rain. The problem is the condition of the soil receiving it.
In the same way, powerful spiritual outpourings can overwhelm unhealthy church systems that lack the depth, stability, and discipleship necessary to properly contain what God is doing.
When there is little deep formation:
emotional intensity can overflow without wisdom
zeal can outrun character
spiritual experiences can exceed maturity
charisma can outpace integrity
crowds can grow faster than discipleship
and passion can exist without rootedness
The result can sometimes be instability, confusion, or eventual collapse.
Healthy soil can receive the rain. Healthy soil can absorb it slowly. Healthy soil can hold the water deeply enough for long-term fruitfulness. But shallow or hardened soil often cannot contain the very thing it desperately longs for. That is an incredibly sobering thought for leaders longing for awakening. It means the question is not only: “How do we pray for an outpouring of spiritual rain?” But also: “What kind of soil are we becoming?”
Are we cultivating communities marked by:
humility
truthfulness
repentance
emotional maturity
healthy relationships
wise leadership
loving accountability
deep discipleship
stability under pressure
embodied faith
long-term formation into the character of Christ
Or are we merely preparing people for powerful moments they do not yet have the maturity to sustain?
Many believers sincerely recognize that something is deeply missing within much of the modern church. They see the shallowness, instability, and lack of deep Christlike formation, and they rightly long for God to move again with power. That longing should not be mocked or dismissed. The church truly does need awakening. It truly does need fresh encounters with the presence of God. It truly does need the Holy Spirit to breathe life where things have become dry or lifeless.
Perhaps one of the great works God desires to do in this generation is not only to send revival rain from heaven, but to prepare the church itself to become healthy soil capable of carrying the weight, depth, and lasting fruit of genuine renewal. Throughout Scripture and especially in the life of Jesus, we see that God’s work in people is often both powerful and deeply formative — not merely awakening hearts in moments, but patiently shaping lives over time. The Spirit of God does not only awaken people in moments. He also patiently forms people over time. He works through repentance, discipleship, and long-term formation into the image of Christ. He not only ignites passion; He reshapes human beings.
True renewal often requires both: the fresh rain of God’s Spirit and the patient cultivation of healthy soil that can actually contain the rain being poured out. Without the rain, the land remains dry. But without healthy soil, even a great outpouring can run shallow or fail to produce lasting fruit. Revival without formation often produces temporary excitement. Formation without the Spirit becomes lifeless religion. But when awakening and deep discipleship come together, believers are gradually formed into stable, loving, emotionally healthy, and Christlike people who remain faithful long after the emotional intensity fades.
And perhaps that is part of the deeper answer to the hunger many believers feel today: not merely a longing for powerful spiritual moments, but a longing to see the church truly become the kind of mature, healthy, and Christ-formed people that can faithfully carry the life of God in both revival and ordinary life.