Transforming revival is a corporate encounter with a supernatural God that is tangible, measurable, and observable by all who live at the visitation location. God’s presence brings accompanying fruit that characterizes His nature and His heavenly kingdom with transformational changes happening at every level—individuals, families, church, society, and land.
“Transforming revival” refers to the entire process of change a community undergoes as a result of God’s manifest presence and subsequent spiritual awakening. Like classic revivals in the four previous eras, transforming revival (fifth era) always impacts both the church and society.
Moreover, it involves an acute awareness of God and His holiness that changes the spiritual climate of a community or region with transformational results. It’s a manifestation of God’s glory, love, wisdom, and power to people who have intentionally abandoned themselves to prepare for His divine presence.
Transforming revival is a significant invasion of God and His kingdom to people and the community where they live. Transforming revival is God’s salvation destroying the works of the devil; His extravagant grace replacing poverty and lack; His justice conquering injustice; and His love bringing life to the brokenness of society.
Theologically, everyone agrees that God intends to manifest His kingdom on the earth. Most believers, however, have no expectation of entering into the experiential reality of what is believed theologically and what is promised biblically. As transforming revivals occur in communities today, God is closing the gap between what He has promised in His Word and what believers are experiencing as present reality on the earth.
Transforming revival extends beyond personal salvation to honoring Jesus as the Lord over spheres of society such as education, business, finances, and the land. In transforming revival, God is not just filling big buildings with people, He is also bringing redemption and His kingdom to every sphere—family, church, society, and the physical land itself. This is a radical new dimension in revival!
In communities experiencing transforming revival, there is objective evidence that God and His kingdom are impacting the visited communities with dramatic changes in their spiritual atmosphere and physical environment. This change includes broad-scale salvation in the community, deliverance from demonic oppression, miraculous reduction in addictions and abuse, and many times supernatural transformation of the land itself.
How Does Transforming Revival Occur?
Where transforming revival is occurring, God’s activity reveals an interesting pattern. The visitation by the Lord is in response to a formal invitation by the community in the form of intentional preparation by desperate believers, not simply a mysterious eruption of God’s presence.
George Otis, Jr. comments about this pattern:
Transformed communities do not materialize spontaneously. If they did we might legitimately wonder why an omnipotent and ostensibly loving God did not turn the trick more often. We would also be left to ponder our own value as intercessors. Fortunately, such thoughts can be banished immediately. This is because community transformation is not an arbitrary event but rather the product of a cause and effect process.1
Transforming revival occurs as a result of profound obedience to remove every obstacle to God’s holy presence. At the heart of transforming revival is corporate repentance among desperate people that prepares the way of the Lord to impact the church and community with His presence and power.
This revival of repentance is preceded by deep humility and conviction that the problems we face in society are rooted in spiritual—not simply natural—causes. Seeking God’s face and His divine intervention becomes the highest priority for the well-being of the people, families, congregations, and the community.
In every observable transformation story occurring in the nations today, a similar process has been identified that includes these three distinct and measurable stages: Invitation, Visitation, and Transformation. While each transformed community is unique in the specific fruit that God’s redemption brings to families and society, the process by which they got there is the same in every community.
Each community that has attracted the presence of God has done so by humbling themselves before the Lord, taking responsibility for their desperate condition, repenting of their sins corporately, and returning to covenant and intimacy with God.
In response to this intentional process of corporate repentance and renewed covenant, God’s manifest presence comes to the community with a fresh flow of His life and healing! As the spiritual atmosphere begins to change, people are filled with expectation and desire to further prepare the way of the Lord into their families, congregations and communities, removing every offending sin and obstacle to His holy presence.
Then, as God promises in His Word, He “hears their cry, forgives their sin and heals their land” (2 Chron. 7:14). We have no record in Scripture or in contemporary testimonies that a corporate people has ever returned to the Lord in genuine humility and true repentance that the Lord turned a deaf ear or refused to fulfill His part of the covenant!
How long does this process take? While the time frame for each phase of the process varies, the first phase of preparation varies more than the others because this phase depends wholly upon commitment levels, humility, and the focused resolve of the people. For some communities the struggle for breakthrough can continue for a long period of time until transforming revival becomes their primary focus and priority. In other communities where the leaders and people abandon themselves wholeheartedly to the preparation process, God faithfully responds!
Societal transformation flows out of a season of preparation and invitation by God’s people in response to His initiative. God’s supernatural visitation cannot be scheduled on a calendar, but it can and must be prepared for! After God initiates the process of transforming revival, His presence then continues to undergird and sustain the process.
Key Characteristics of Transforming Revival
Though transforming revival shares the common characteristics of classic revival, we are now seeing something qualitatively unique in the twenty-first century. Among the more prominent features of transforming revival are the following:
• manifestation of God’s presence at the community level
• an intentional, corporate process of returning to covenant relationship with God
• corporate obedience to God’s Word
• measurable and sustained societal impact
• healing of ecology
• re-identification of communities based on God’s transforming intervention
Copyrighted by Fusion Ministries, all rights reserved. Above excerpt taken from “REVIVAL – It’s Present Relevance and Coming Role at the End of the Age” by Wes Adams and Rhonda Hughey. Available in Fusion Bookstore visit our store.