A Deep Hunger for Renewal

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.

When Revival Becomes a Substitute for Formation

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.

Awakening Is Not the Same as Maturity

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.

Jonathan Edwards and the Problem of Religious Affections

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.

The Rain and the Soil

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?

The Kind of Renewal the Church Truly Needs

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.