A God-Sized Vision: Revival Stories that Stretch and Stir [Hardcover]

Collin Hansen (Author), John Woodbridge (Author)

Book Description

Release date: November 2, 2010

Is it possible we don't see God working in mighty ways because we don't ask him to work in mighty ways? Throughout history, God has used revival to build and renew his church. God-Sized Vision challenges us to pray expectantly to see his work in our own day. God can bring revival again to our community, our country, and our world. Our faith grows stronger when we learn how God worked in the past. The historical stories of worldwide revivals in this book enlarge our hearts and expand our minds as we see God at work in human history with a power that is still available to the faithful today. Here scholars Collin Hansen and John Woodbridge recount the fascinating details of world-changing revivals, beginning with biblical events and continuing through the Reformation, the Great Awakenings, the Welsh and Korean revivals, the East Africa Revival of the 1930s, and more recent revivals in North America and China. What did these revivals have in common? How can we prepare for---and expect---revival in our own culture? With accessible language and gripping examples, Hansen and Woodbridge explore these questions and more, strengthening our understanding of God's work while deepening our faith in the possibility of revival---right where we are.

Editorial Reviews

Review

The importance of spiritual revival and the necessity of conversion is being questioned in many evangelical and Reformed circles. I'm so glad that this book is appearing now, as a witness both to how God has worked in the church in the past and what he can do in the future. --Tim Keller, Pastor, Redeemer Presbyterian Church

My dear friend John Woodbridge has hooked up with one of the ablest young minds in the Christian world to produce a timely reminder of the great moments in the history of our faith. We live in immensely serious times, and this book is a serious response that could truly inspire the church to do what it must do in our world today. May God use this to light a fire among his people. --Chuck Colson, Founder, Prison Fellowship and the Colson Center for Christian Worldview

This book shows how God has moved in extraordinary ways throughout the history of the church. Genuine revival is not the result of marketing, technique, or entrepreneurship. As the stories here show, true revival comes as a "surprising work of God." When this happens, lives are changed, the church reformed, and the world renewed. How we need such a stirring today! --Timothy George, Dean of the School of Divinity, Beeson Divinity School

Collin Hansen and John Woodbridge write very much in the spirit of Jonathan Edwards in narrating revivals as a means of edifying and inspiring. A God-Sized Vision provides accessible and thoughtful accounts of classic American revivals from Edwards to Billy Graham and includes important stories of how in the twentieth-century revivals become some of the most remarkable developments worldwide. --George Marsden, Author, Jonathan Edwards: A Life and A Short Life of Jonathan Edwards

How soon we forget! While we must never despise the ordinary means of grace that God customarily uses in the salvation of men and women, we must not forget those extraordinary times when in his mercy God has seemed to come down and pour out his Spirit in such transforming power that all of our expectations are reduced to rubble in the sheer glory of the transforming presence of God. Yes, many of these movements had downsides and charlatans connected with them--but fair-minded assessment must stand in grateful awe for these "visitations." May the renewed knowledge of what God has done in the past incite us to prayer that God would do it again. --D. A. Carson, Professor, Trinity Evangelical Divinity School

Review

The importance of spiritual revival and the necessity of conversion is being questioned in many evangelical and Reformed circles. I'm so glad that this book is appearing now, as a witness both to how God has worked in the church in the past and what he can do in the future. -- Tim Keller, Pastor, Redeemer Presbyterian Church <br><br>

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 192 pages
• Publisher: Zondervan (November 2, 2010)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0310327032
• ISBN-13: 978-0310327035
• Product Dimensions: 5.7 x 0.7 x 8.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (14 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #540,788 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Collin Hansen (MDiv, Trinity Evangelical Divinity School) is editorial director for the Gospel Coalition. Formerly an associate editor for Christianity Today, he is the author of Young, Restless, Reformed: A Journalist's Journey with the New Calvinists and has written for Books & Culture, Tabletalk, Leadership, and Christian History & Biography. He has appeared as a commentator on Fox News, and his work has been featured in Time magazine.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 12 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars The Fresh Wind of the Spirit November 8, 2010

By J. Lonas

Format:Hardcover

The prayer of so many Christians today and through the ages has been for revival--for the fresh wind of the Holy Spirit to descend and move the Church to renewed faith and obedience. Often, however, we look around at the troubles in the world and the nominalistic apathy among Christians only to conclude that God is somehow done working among us with any power.

A look at the Church history does wonders to change that perspective, and with God-Sized Vision, Hansen and Woodbridge provide a focused look at the nature and role of revival through the centuries of God's work with His people. From the annals of Jonathan Edwards, George Whitefield, and the Great Awakening to 20th century outpourings in Africa and Asia, the authors show how, time and again, the Lord has seen fit to move in dramatic fashion.

Even as each of these revivals was manifested in a different way in different places at different times, a common theme emerges from each of these stories. Each instance began with the earnest prayer of believers, mindful of the depravity around them and of God's sole power to change men's hearts. Each revival began when the Lord answered those prayers by filling men and women with His Spirit and they expressed that anointing (as is always the case in Scripture) with the faithful preaching of the Word. Each had the effect of convicting believers of sin, stirring them to repentance and greater obedience to God's will. Each produced an outpouring of evangelism that brought many unbelievers to faith in Christ.

As the authors repeatedly point out, each true revival is marked by its leaders giving full glory to God, taking no credit for any of the effects of renewal. Even as they joyfully recount episodes of revival and encourage readers to pray that the Lord would again send restoration, they are quick to extol ongoing work of biblical teaching and discipleship that are the nuts and bolts of the Christian life crucial to transitioning the glow of rebirth into long and faithful obedience.

This book filled me with hope and chastened my tacit belief that today's Western culture is beyond rescue. Indeed, the immorality and decadence of today's society mirrors many earlier periods when such sinfulness was a precursor to the great revivals of history. Hansen and Woodbridge provide a well-researched and warmly written reminder that all things are possible with God; past, present, and future.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful

3.0 out of 5 stars Not altogether good... October 18, 2012

By Justin Hoke

Format:Hardcover

I spent an entire day listening to the audio version of this book. It is my passion to seek God and I hunger for revival. This book started out Awesome but ended up not making a distinction between true and false revival. I am not saying that it did not attempt to make a distinction but I am saying it got it very wrong. It was uncritical of the Finney "revival" which was not a true revival and it considered the Billy Graham Crusades which ended up having less than 5% of those who ever went forward ever joining a local church - Which is the definition of emotionalism and not revival. I thought this book went from being about a God sized vision for the first two thirds to being a man sized vision for the final third. Just because we have not had true revival in America since the Great Awakening does not mean that we need to look for sensationalism and call it revival. If true revival was marked by large numbers then Joel Osteen and his new age gospel would be a revival. We need another great awakening like the days of Whitefield and Edwards where God moves and men are broken over their sin and have a true God sized vision. Not a man made works based emotional movement that stirs people up and then leaves them unchanged - every youth rally in America does that. As Spurgeon said, "Discernment is not knowing right from wrong, it is knowing right from almost right." This book is almost right.

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars Great Book Covering Our Heritage as Believers - It will Stir You! January 14, 2011

By Noah Hutchison

Format:Hardcover

A God-Sized Vision by Collin Hansen and John Woodbridge is really a great book. They do a wonderful job placing the various pieces of revival stories together in one book that is easy to read. It is not an exhaustive account of every instance of revival that has ever occurred, but it does cover most of the notable ones that we as believers often hear about.

While there are many books out there discussing revivals, the heart behind this book is that "Christians who want to bring their lives in line with their deepest beliefs" would be able to by being stretched and stirred by these stories of revival. The writers say they want to "take you back to days when God tore open the heavens and gave this world a glimpse of blissful eternity, that it might stir you to offer prayers that move God."

When I think about what a reader could enjoy most about this book aside from becoming more familiar with the stories of our heritage as believers, I think about balance. I personally love the paradigm the writers bring forward of the need for us as believers to "strike the right balance between pleading for God to do what only he can do and striving in the meantime to bolster the church as a faithful minister of the gospel." All to often we see leaders and lay church members lose the balance between these two things and the result I see is a fragile place where sin and neglect often triumph in these individuals lives. We need to preach the gospel and we need to ask God for a move of His Spirit in the land, however we cannot afford to neglect one for the sake of the other.

In reading A God-Sized Vision the one thing I would have loved to have seen is a little more practical application for the reader. While it ends with somewhat of a suggestion towards humility being key to be one who sees revival come, I would say most people were probably stretched and stirred by the book and left with no place to go. We do not need to be reading for merely knowledge but so we can let the knowledge propel us deeper into God.

Overall, a great book that is worth your time to read. Let's be men and women who have taken time to know the history of those who have gone before us in hopes that we too can see God do all the more through us as we pursue Him and His purposes.