TIMES OF REVIVAL

Acts 3:19 – So repent (change your mind and purpose); turn around and return [to God], that your sins may be erased (blotted out, wiped clean), that times of refreshing (of recovering from the effects of heat, of reviving with fresh air) may come from the presence of the Lord;

I have pondered the powerful meaning of this verse for the last thirty years. It was thirty years ago at this writing that I experienced life changing encounter with the Holy Spirit. At the time of my encounter I had been a Christian for 21 years, I was baptized in the Holy Spirit exercising my prayer language for all of that time. Yet something happened to me in August of 1994 that was the same yet quite different from anything that had happened to me or in me in all of those years. I began experiencing waves of His presence in my life, similar but much more intense than I had ever experienced before. Today’s verse kept coming to me again and again, that there would be multiple seasons of revival and outpouring in this generation. There are two words in this verse that we need to stop and consider. The first word is times or in the original text kairos.

Kairos – Vines’ Wordbook – is used of “a fixed and definite period, a time, season, and is translated “opportunity”

Strongs Wordbook – time, season, opportunity:– age, appointed times

So the implication in this verse is that these were not random but very specific appointed times of unusual outpourings of the Spirit. Experiencing that type of refreshing creates a hunger and anticipation of additional times of visitation from the presence of the Lord. The next important word in this verse is refreshing and in the Greek text anapsuxis. Here are definitions of this beautiful word.

Robertson’s – The word anapsuxis – from anapsuchō, to cool again or refresh. Surely repentance will bring “seasons of refreshing from the presence of the Lord.”

Strongs’ anapsuxis; a recovery of breath, a relief, refreshing:– refreshing.

Simmons – a cooling breeze.

The times of refreshing bring new life and power into God’s people. The onslaught that Christianity has endured through the depravity of this generation demands that there is another distinct season of recovery, recovery from the effects of everything this season has thrown at us. There is always access to the presence of the Lord by faith in His blood but what I am talking about today is something quite different. Today’s passage is describing unusual seasons of God’s outpouring, we desperately need one of those seasons now.