The Altar of Reconciliation

 Ephesians 2:14–18

Revival is a breakthrough of God's Kingdom. And at the heart of that Kingdom is reconciliation: reconciliation upward, with God, and reconciliation outward, with one another. The two cannot be pried apart.

We live in a divided age. We are divided by politics and by ethnicity, divided by class and income, divided by the very algorithms that decide what we see and whom we fear. And yet the whole reason Jesus went to the cross, the whole reason he rose again, was to break down the dividing wall of hostility, to make out of a fractured human race one new humanity in himself.

This is not just revival theory. This is revival history. When the Spirit fell on the Moravians at Herrnhut, his first work was to real a bitterly divided community, and out of that reconciliation came a missionary movement that reached the ends of the earth. When revival came to Azusa Street, its worship was so multiethnic that it scandalized a segregated society. From that small mission the Pentecostal movement spread across the globe.

The East African Revival began when missionaries from England and Ugandan believers knelt together, confessing sin not only to God but to one another. And on the night before the outpouring at Asbury, a diverse company of believers from across the area gathered to confess and repent together, and many believe that gathering helped open the door for all that followed. In the book of Acts, our standard for New Testament normalcy, we watch the Holy Spirit push people past the edges of their comfort, again and again, out toward the stranger, until the church becomes what it was always meant to be: a reconciling, multiethnic, multi-cultural body. Only the Spirit can truly reconcile us, but when the Spirit moves - this is exactly what He wants to do. 

So when we pray for revival, friends, we are praying for these walls to fall. And where the walls have crept into the church herself, we are asking Jesus to tear them down.

Which leaves us with a question we cannot dodge. Are we willing to let God reconcile us? The vertical work is his, and his alone. But when the Spirit truly moves, he is never content to stop at the ceiling. He keeps working until the walls between us and our brothers and sisters are rubble. If we are envisioning a revival or an awakening that leaves the dividing walls between us untouched, what we are envisioning is something less than actual revival. 

Jesus put it plainly. If you come to the altar and remember that your brother has something against you, leave your gift there. Go. Be reconciled. Then come and offer it.

That is where revival begins. Not merely on our knees before God, but on our feet, walking toward one another in reconciliation. 

Rev. Greg Johnson
Director, Revive New England