I pray that God, the source of hope, will fill you completely with joy and peace because you trust in him. Then you will overflow with confident hope through the power of the Holy Spirit. 

—Romans 15:13

Scripture:

Hope is a precious commodity in today’s world. Our 24-hour news cycle feeds us story after story of events and tragedies that are far beyond our control. Many people spend hours online “doomscrolling,” obsessively searching for content that reinforces their negativity or triggers their anxiety.

As a nation, we’ve certainly faced our share of dark times before. For many, there was little hope to be found during the years of the Civil War or in the struggle for civil rights. But our current culture feels different. The algorithms that drive social media seem to reinforce a sense of hopelessness. And the occasional piece of content that momentarily offers hope often turns out to be AI-generated.

So when people encounter genuine hope, the results are often profound. That’s why the apostle Paul wrote, “I pray that God, the source of hope, will fill you completely with joy and peace because you trust in him. Then you will overflow with confident hope through the power of the Holy Spirit” (Romans 15:13 NLT).

Believers understand that with God, there is no such thing as hopelessness. Andrew Jackson understood that. In a letter to his wife he wrote, “I trust that the god of Isaac and of Jacob will protect you, and give you health in my absence, in him alone we ought to trust, he alone can preserve, and guide us through this troublesome world, and I am sure he will hear your prayers. We are told that the prayers of the righteous prevaileth much, and I add mine for your health and preservation untill we again meet.”

The overflowing hope that Paul spoke of springs from a spiritual passion. That’s why revival is essential to the lifeblood of believers and to the lifeblood of our nation. For believers, revival involves recapturing the first bloom of a love relationship with Jesus Christ. Sometimes when we’ve been walking with the Lord for a while, our spiritual passion begins to fade. Our zeal begins to erode. We lose some of our initial excitement about our relationship with Him. Revival is how we get it back.

When we as Christians restore the passion and fervor to our relationship with Christ, good things happen—in and around us. That renewed passion and fervor feeds on itself. Hope fills and then overflows our lives and then splashes all over the people around us. That’s how revival spreads.

I was speaking once with Chuck Smith, who is regarded as the father of the last great spiritual awakening in our country—an event known as the Jesus Movement. I asked him, “Chuck, do you think we’ll ever see another Jesus Movement?”

His answer was this: “I don’t know, Greg. I don’t know if we’re desperate enough.”

It’s time for God’s people to rediscover our passion, our hope, and our desperation.

Reflection question: What would renewed spiritual passion, hope, and desperation look like in your life? Discuss this with believers like you on Harvest Discipleship!

Harvest.org | Greg Laurie

 Restore us, O LORD God of hosts; Cause Your face to shine, And we shall be saved! 

—Psalm 80:19

Scripture:

Before we get too deep in our discussion of revival in our country, we should probably define the term. What is revival exactly? Too often believers mystify the word without understanding its true meaning. Revival is simply another word for “refreshment” or “restoration.”

A psalmist wrote, “Won’t you revive us again, so your people can rejoice in you?” (Psalm 85:6 NLT). Another psalm says, “Restore us, O Lord God of hosts; Cause Your face to shine, And we shall be saved!” (Psalm 80:19 NKJV). Revival carries with it the idea of returning something to its original condition.

Think of someone who buys a beat-up old car from a junkyard. They do bodywork on it. They repaint it. They drop a new engine in it. They put new tires on it. And when you see it cruising down the road, you can hardly believe it’s the same car. That’s called a restoration.

Think of a plant that’s beginning to wither. You give it some water and take it out into the sunshine, and it comes back to life again. Think of the fatigue you experience when you work out in the hot sun all day. Then think of the feeling you experience when you come inside an air-conditioned house and drink some cool water. Revival is the spiritual equivalent of that kind of restoration and refreshment.

A spiritual revival is when God’s people come back to life again because they’ve been refreshed. They’ve been refilled. They’ve been restored to their original condition.

The United States experienced a remarkable revival a few decades before the Declaration of Independence was signed. The impact of that revival reverberated powerfully in the founding of our nation. Being restored to that original condition could look like many different things in our country. Noah Webster, often referred as the Father of American Scholarship and Education, offered a starting point when he said, “The moral principles and precepts contained in the Scriptures ought to form the basis of all our civil constitutions and laws. . . . All the miseries and evils which men suffer from vice, crime, ambition, injustice, oppression, slavery and war, proceed from their despising or neglecting the precepts contained in the Bible.”

For the church, which is the spiritual center of our nation, being restored to the original condition would resemble the description of Paul and Silas found in Acts 17:6: “These who have turned the world upside down” (NKJV). The church is meant to impact the world, not be impacted by it. It’s meant to disrupt the status quo and not to settle for it. The church is meant to shine a light on the darkness of this world and not to ignore it or make excuses for it.

Revival encourages us to embrace the full extent of our God-given potential. It compels us to do the hard work to become the best possible versions of ourselves—as individuals, as a church, and as a nation.

Reflection question: What would a spiritual refreshing or restoration look like in your life? Discuss this with believers like you on Harvest Discipleship!

Harvest.org | Greg Laurie

 This is all the more urgent, for you know how late it is; time is running out. Wake up, for our salvation is nearer now than when we first believed. The night is almost gone; the day of salvation will soon be here. So remove your dark deeds like dirty clothes, and put on the shining armor of right living. 

—Romans 13:11–12

Scripture:

This month, we celebrate the 250th anniversary of the founding of our nation. And this month’s devotions will tie into that celebration. They will also tie into our nation’s greatest need at the quarter-millennium mark in our history: the need for revival.

Let me start with a few questions. Think of the last time you got a phone call in the middle of the night. Did the person begin the conversation with the question, “Did I wake you?” If so, did you have the urge to say, “No, I was already awake”?

Sometimes when I watch television with my wife, she will pick a show that I don’t find very interesting, like some British baking show. And before long, I’ll fall asleep. And when I open my eyes, I’ll find my wife staring at me. “You were sleeping,” she’ll say. And my first instinct is to say, “No, I wasn’t,” even though I woke myself up with my own snoring.

What is it about human nature that causes us to deny that we’re sleeping? Maybe we see tiredness as a weakness. Maybe we’re reluctant to admit that we’re not bright-eyed, bushy-tailed, and fully alert every second of the day.

It’s one thing to be physically asleep and not own up to it. It’s quite another thing to be spiritually asleep and deny it—and not just for an individual believer. A nation can be spiritually asleep, and I think that’s the condition the United States finds itself in right now.

This week we will celebrate the grace that God has shed on our country. We will recount the many blessings He has bestowed on us over the past 250 years. Our celebrations will be marked by loud music and fireworks. Yet even then, we will go on spiritually sleeping.

So as the Fourth of July approaches this year, I will be praying for a revival for our nation. And revival begins with a spiritual awakening—a profound awareness of our distance from God and our need to close that distance.

I will be praying for a sense of spiritual urgency among God’s people. The apostle Paul wrote to the believers in Rome, “This is all the more urgent, for you know how late it is; time is running out. Wake up, for our salvation is nearer now than when we first believed. The night is almost gone; the day of salvation will soon be here. So remove your dark deeds like dirty clothes, and put on the shining armor of right living” (Romans 13:11–12 NLT).

It’s time to sound the alarm. The time for revival has come.

Reflection question: How can you be a “spiritual alarm clock” to the people God has placed around you? Discuss this with believers like you on Harvest Discipleship!

Harvest.org | Greg Laurie