Abraham Lincoln once confessed half-jokingly, “When I hear a man preach, I like to see him act as if he were fighting bees!” Raised by Baptists in the rural Midwest during the Second Great Awakening, Lincoln was no stranger to passionate preaching.

Now, 170 years later, this is still how many Americans conceive of revival: an animated speaker who captivates and converts large audiences from a stage. But a reviving work of God, an outpouring of the Holy Spirit, cannot be confined to a pulpit or sanctuary, and the seeds of revival are sown long before sinners are born again. There’s always a revival before the revival: a previval.

Some Americans believe we may be witnessing just such a movement. For the first time in decades, young people are expressing a renewed interest in Christianity. Many churches have reported spikes in baptisms. Since Charlie Kirk’s death, Bible sales have surged. Talk of revival is in the evangelical air, we might say.

However, others contend that the optimism is premature and even misplaced. How can we assess whether this movement is an authentic work of the Spirit? With history as our guide, we should begin at ground zero for every spiritual awakening: the local church.

The first showers of an outpouring of the Holy Spirit appear much less extraordinary than most tend to think. Historically, revivals have been birthed from (1) a recovery of sound gospel theology, (2) the reading of Scripture, (3) the discipline of prayer, and (4) conversations among God’s people about sin and salvation.

In this sense, revival is always a “surprising work” (to borrow Jonathan Edwards’s phrase), but it’s never a spontaneous work. Extraordinary works of God in the local church—through ordinary means—have repeatedly led to widespread revival.

These shoots of revival generally don’t gain national attention and may even seem unimaginative to the worldly eye, but they’re nonetheless attended with supernatural power. On the fulcrum of gospel-centered preaching, spiritual awakening traditionally begins at the prayer meeting and the Bible study, not at the altar call and certainly not at the ballot box.

Bible Studies

The revival in Northampton, Massachusetts, under the preaching of Edwards in late 1734 is typically identified as a prelude to the Great Awakening, which was sparked by George Whitefield’s ministry.

According to Edwards, the revival at his church didn’t spring out of thin air. His grandfather Solomon Stoddard was witness to “five harvests” of souls at the church over the course of 60 years, none of which typically makes its way into our history books.

The first showers of an outpouring of the Holy Spirit appear much less extraordinary than most tend to think.

These “harvests” laid the foundation for the famous Northampton revival. While some were greater than others, Edwards notes this pattern: “In each of them, I have heard my grandfather say, the greater part of the young people in the town, seemed to be mainly concerned for their eternal salvation.” This stirring of young hearts would become a common theme throughout the history of revivals, including in the famous Yale revival in 1802 led by Edwards’s grandson Timothy Dwight.

After the death of a young woman in Northampton, the young people were “moved and affected.” But a shocking death wasn’t enough to kindle the fire of revival. It wasn’t until Edwards challenged them to divide into small Bible studies that they developed a spiritual hunger.

Before long, older Christians imitated the young-adult Bible studies. Edwards then began to preach on the doctrine of justification by faith alone, and “their minds were engaged the more earnestly to seek that they might come to be accepted of God, and saved in the way of the gospel.” After this time, the “Spirit of God began to extraordinarily set in, and wonderfully to work amongst [them].”

What followed in the coming weeks was “earnest application to the means of salvation, reading, prayer, meditation, the ordinance of God’s house, and private conference.” The blueprint for revival wasn’t unlike the blessing of revival itself. The spiritual trickle had become a river of devotion to the Lord.

Seek the Lord in Prayer

Supplication played a significant role in the Massachusetts revival, as it would for the Great Awakenings and the modern missions movement.

In England in 1784, inspired by Edwards’s An Humble Attempt and Scripture texts like Ezekiel 36:37, John Sutcliff proposed that his fellow Baptists in Nottingham meet for monthly “meetings for prayer, to bewail the low estate of religion, and earnestly implore a revival of our churches, and of the general cause of our Redeemer, and for that end to wrestle with God for the effusion of his Holy Spirit.”

By the end of the month, Sutcliff’s church had established a monthly prayer meeting that continued for years, contributing in large measure to the formation of the Baptist Missionary Society in Kettering in 1792.

At the same time, pastors in Northwest Connecticut met for “praying conferences,” petitioning God for an outpouring of the Spirit on the frontier. The conferences, sometimes attended by a theology “lecture,” were eventually adopted by laypeople in the local churches on a weekly basis. They were the primary engines for some of the first showers of the Second Great Awakening, predating the Cane Ridge Revival of 1801.

Decades later, Asahel Nettleton was one of the most well-known revivalists in New England. However, as a key opponent of Charles Finney’s “New Measures,” Nettleton didn’t believe in stage gimmicks and anxious benches to manufacture converts.

The spiritual trickle had become a river of devotion to the Lord.

Instead, he believed in simple gospel preaching and private gospel conversations. The latter, called “meetings of inquiry” were often held at the house of the pastor to pray with young people and to assist in their discipleship and introduction into the church. According to Nettleton, there was a difference between proclaiming the gospel and proclaiming a revival. “A true work of grace needs no proclamation,” he declared, for it comes by the Spirit’s power, not by ours. By announcing revival without announcing Christ, we undermine the Lord’s work.

True revival is marked less by its press coverage and more by its attention to the ordinary means of grace. By teaching sound gospel theology, returning to the discipline of reading Scripture, devoting ourselves daily to prayer, and enjoying consistent fellowship with the saints, we can be sure that a revival of the best sort will come.