“When God blesses [with revival] we exchange problems of deadness for problems of liveliness. I have no interest as a pastor in spending my life tending to a graveyard. Graveyards can be very tidy places. Liveliness can be a very disorderly thing. Oh, God grant us the problems of liveliness in our day rather than bogging us down with the problems of deadness.” J. I. Packer
I am not a fan of “revivalism”, but I heard Packer’s comments in a series of lectures on revival today and I was glad to hear them. Surely we should be glad when God sends awakening to His people, even if we might prefer to emphasize how revival can come through the ordinary means of Word and Sacrament. Sure, Christians can get overly excited and veer off in the wrong direction and these misdirections create problems that we have to fix. Packer is saying that these are problems that are better to deal with than perhaps those that involve spiritual “deadness”. Any comments?
Liveliness definitely sounds like a “better” problem to have. Those who are fed by the Word and sacrament should be those with the most liveliness.
Amen.