Have you ever wondered what revival is? Revival is God breathing life back into His people so that His mission moves forward in the world. The word “revive” literally means to bring something back to life—and that is the meaning of revival in a biblical sense. It is not always a hype event or a feeling; it is God waking up His Church and sending His people back into the world with fire in their bones.
I used to get nervous saying the word “revival.” Like, what if I call it that, and I’m wrong? What if people think I’m being dramatic?
I’m done being nervous about it. This word gets thrown around a lot, and a lot of people picture something different than what I just described. So, before I unpack what I’ve seen with my own eyes, I want us on the same page as we ask the question “what is revival,” looking at Scripture and history.
The Three Levels of Revival: Personal, Church, and Cultural
When people ask what revival is, it helps to understand that it works on three levels at the same time.
Personal revival is where it always starts. One person gets honest with God. One person confesses sin, surrenders control, and says, “Lord, do whatever you want in me.” That person’s heart gets set back on fire. Everything changes for them personally.
Church revival is what happens when personal revival spreads. When enough individuals are set ablaze, the church catches fire. You start seeing more boldness, more prayer, more people wanting to go and tell others about Jesus. The lukewarm becomes something burning hot again.
Cultural awakening is what happens when the church revival spills out into the streets. When the community around the church starts to be changed by what God is doing in His people. When people who never stepped foot in a church start asking questions they never asked before.
These three things are connected. You cannot skip to the third level because it always flows from the first.
Revival Meaning in the Bible
As we look through Scripture with the question “what is revival” in mind, the meaning of revival is written all over its pages. The psalmist even prays for it outright: “Will you not revive us again so that your people may rejoice in you?” (Psalm 85:6). Everywhere you look, you see the same thing—God reviving His people and changing everything around them.
Think about Moses. He killed a man, ran into the desert, and spent 40 years hiding. Then he had one encounter with God at a burning bush (Exodus 3), and the course of an entire nation changed. That burning bush moment was a personal revival that became a national awakening for Israel.
Think about the man with the legion of demons (Mark 5:1-20). Jesus sets him free, and the man goes and tells everyone in the ten surrounding towns what happened to him. The next time Jesus came through that region, all ten cities welcomed Him. One person’s personal revival moment led to a ten-city cultural awakening.
Think about Peter, who was just a fisherman. No one would have remembered his name. An encounter with Jesus on a beach (John 21), and he became one of the most important leaders in the most important movement in all of human history.
The pattern is always the same: God moves in one person, that person cannot keep quiet about it, and the fire starts to spread.
The Asbury Revival in our own time followed this exact pattern. It started because one college student stood up in a chapel gathering and confessed his sin. Just one student, one honest moment before God, and from there, thousands of people poured in from across the country. The chapel ran nonstop for weeks. Lives were changed. People went home and started fires in their own cities.
One person. That is always how it starts.
Why the Church Needs Revival Right Now
So, what is revival and how does it look today, in real time, inside the Church and the world around us? Six years ago, in my friend group and my youth group, sharing the Gospel felt almost offensive. We thought we had to be sneaky about it. We had no boldness. I thought my life was going to be simple and quiet and comfortable.
Something has shifted. I have watched kids I went to high school with, kids I never in a million years thought would follow Jesus, show up at my church. I have seen a boldness rise up in my generation that was not there before. More and more people are saying, “I want to sell out for Jesus. I want to go. I want to do something with my life that actually matters.”
That is what revival is doing in this moment: it is waking people up.
This is not just happening in my small world. Missionaries my friend met in Egypt, men who had been kicking down ministry doors in the Middle East for 25-30 years, told him that things are changing. They said that the doors are not as hard to kick down anymore. Hearts that seemed completely closed are starting to open on their own. The Gospel is moving more easily through people’s lives than they have ever seen.
Reports are coming in from all over Africa, Asia, South America, and right here in the United States. Thousands of people being baptized. Churches that have been sitting in their own little silos for decades suddenly deciding to work together. In Brighton, Colorado, where I have been doing ministry with the Ignite Colorado campaign, over 50% of the local churches have joined hands. Pentecostals and Baptists are doing ministry side by side. A woman named Ermie told me she had been praying for revival in Brighton for 40 years. 40 years. And now she is watching it happen.
You cannot make that up. You cannot organize that with a good enough marketing plan. That is God.
I Watched It Happen in Ghana
In March, I went to Ghana with a team of evangelists for an outdoor ministry festival. The first two days were hard. We were working, pushing, trying our best, and nothing seemed to be breaking through.
So we stopped. We went back to the hotel as a team that second night and we cried out to God. We worshiped and surrendered. We basically said, “We have been trying to do this in our own strength, and it is not working. You have to move.”
By the end of the trip, 11,000 people had decided to follow Jesus.
The crowds tripled overnight. I stayed late one evening and watched hundreds of kids dancing around the festival grounds praising Jesus, waving tissues and paper in the air like it was the best night of their lives. People were still walking in off the street at 9 o’clock at night because they had heard something was happening and they wanted to be part of it.
One moment I will never forget: a young Muslim girl gave her life to Jesus during the festival. We gave her a copy of the Gospel of John. She came back the next day and said she had read the whole thing. Then she asked for another copy for her Muslim brother. Then, without anyone telling her to, she walked to the decision table, picked up a whole stack of Gospels, and started praying for people and handing them out.
That was day-one of her faith. Day one. You cannot explain that apart from God.
Why God’s Plan for Awakening Runs Through Ordinary People
Here is the thing I keep coming back to when I think about what revival is and how it actually works.
God does not seem very interested in waiting for the most impressive person in the room to be ready. He keeps choosing regular people: fishermen, fugitives, and even a girl who just said yes to Jesus yesterday.
Two weeks ago, I was sitting in a coffee shop praying a pretty ordinary prayer. I was just asking God to search me, sharpen me, get rid of anything in me that was not of Him. Nothing special, just a quiet moment between me and God.
The second I finished praying, a stranger walked up and said, “Hey, what are you reading?”
I told him I was reading the Bible. We started talking. He was not a believer. He built websites for a living. But at some point, he looked at me and said, “I don’t know how to explain this, but I feel God’s presence just talking to you right now.”
Then he said he was going to walk down the street to Barnes and Noble and buy a Bible. “Whatever you have,” he said, “I want that.”
I did not give a speech or use a strategy; I just prayed and sat there, and God moved through that moment.
That is the whole point. Revival does not run through superstar Christians with massive platforms. It runs through people who are hungry for God and willing to be used by Him. That is what Forge calls a Kingdom Laborer (Matthew 9:35-38). Not someone with a title or a seminary degree or a stage. Just someone who says yes to Jesus and pays attention to the people around them.
How Revival Goes From a Moment to a Movement
When we ask what is revival, the answer always comes back to this: God breathing life into His people so they can carry His mission forward. A moment becomes a movement when ordinary people refuse to stay quiet about what God has done in them.
The demoniac told his ten cities. Moses went back to Egypt. Peter preached to thousands. The Muslim girl in Ghana handed out Gospels on day one.
The fire spreads when people carry it with them.
That is the vision. More Kingdom Laborers. More ordinary people stepping into the revival that is already happening and carrying it into their neighborhoods, their workplaces, their families, their schools. Not waiting for someone else to do it. Not waiting to feel ready. Just going.
Here is what I want to leave you with. Draw a circle around yourself. Stand inside it. And ask God one question: “What do you want to do in me?” Not “What do you want me to do for you.”
“What do you want to do in me?”
Let Him start there. Let Him revive you personally. And then watch what happens around you.
The worst thing that can happen when you start sharing your faith in the United States is someone walks away from the conversation a little fast. Trust me, it has happened to me. The best thing that can happen is someone who has never known Jesus meets Him for the very first time, and their whole life changes forever.
The revival is real. I have seen it in Ghana, in the Middle East, in a coffee shop in Colorado. And I believe with everything in me that there are people in your neighborhood, on your street, in your circle right now who are more open to hearing about Jesus than you think.
Do not sleep through it. The invitation is open. And it starts with you.
Where are you in the journey? If you’re still asking what is revival, it often becomes clearest when you begin to see where God is already moving around you. Revival starts with one person saying yes. Take the Spiritual Multiplication Quiz to see where you stand: Seeker, Believer, Follower, or Laborer, and what your next step looks like.
