I went into this year's recent corporate revival services, carrying great expectation.
Last year, we witnessed a move of God that people only dream to see. And that event became a catalyst for so many wonderful changes within our church family at large.
This annual event is one of the most significant moments on our church calendar, and this year, we approached these moments even more spiritually prepared.
We didn't simply promote our event and hope for the best. As a congregation, we fasted for an entire week. We covered the days leading into revival with 48 continuous hours of prayer. We asked God for people to come. We prayed for salvations. We prayed for baptisms. We asked for lives to be transformed and for the presence of God to move with unmistakable power. “God, meet us here. Show your love and grace to people, may You be glorified through convincing signs and wonders…"
Then the nights came, and what I had personally built-up in my mind and had hoped, did not happen.
The attendance felt short of what we had prayed for. The salvations and baptisms did not come in the numbers I had expected. Some elements of the services, left me disappointed and troubled rather than strengthened. The revival I had imagined, the event that I had looked forward to all year… the event in which we had spent so much time, energy and care preparing for, did not seem to materialize.
Even writing this aloud is difficult to admit.
Christians often know how to testify after an answer to prayer or a breakthrough, but we do not always know how to speak when we prayed, fasted, believed, and still walked away short of what we had hoped.
So what do we do when our request appears consistent with God’s heart, our preparation is sincere, and the outcome still falls short of what we hoped to see?
Well, I’ve spend a lot of time thinking, praying, and studying to be able to answer that very question for myself. And, thought it pertinent enough to share this with you.
A Godly Desire Is Not the Same as a Divine Promise
There was nothing wrong with asking God for full rooms, record salvations, and endless baptisms. Jesus came “to seek and to save the lost” (Luke 19:10). Heaven rejoices when sinners repent (Luke 15:7), and Christ commanded His Church to make disciples and baptize them (Matthew 28:19). These things in which we interceded for were not selfish prayers. They were prayers for things that honor God.
But a desire that agrees with God’s character is not necessarily a promise concerning a particular event, date, or number. Check this- our faithfulness isn’t assurance of God meeting our own expectation.
Without realizing it, we can take a biblical desire and build a detailed mental picture around it: how God will move, when He will move, how many people will respond, what the atmosphere will feel like, and what visible evidence will prove that our prayers were answered. We may even treat that personal picture as though God gave it to us (here here).
When the picture fails, it can feel as though God failed. Or that we failed God. But God may never have promised the picture that we designed to begin with. Sounds more simply like us placing an expectation on God that He never promised to fulfill. Maybe He had different or even better plans?
This does not make our faith foolish or our prayers wasted. It simply reminds us that faith is confidence in God, not confidence in a particular outcome or result that we constructed for Him.
Fasting Is Surrender, Not Leverage
Here is another healthy reminder for myself, and for you. Fasting and prayer are critically powerful tools. Scripture shows God’s people fasting in repentance, seeking direction, commissioning ministry, and crying out for divine intervention. But fasting is not a transaction through which we purchase a desired result. We do not accumulate enough sacrificed meals or prayer hours to place God under obligation. How quickly we forget this… it isn’t meant to be, “I’ll scratch your back, You scratch mine.”
True fasting does not bend God’s will toward ours. It bends us toward His.
That can be difficult to accept after genuine sacrifice. We may quietly think, Lord, we fasted. We prayed around the clock. We asked for what You want. Why did we not see more?
And do you know what, there is nothing wrong with inquiring and questioning. Curiosity isn’t necessarily rebellion. It can be honest lament. The Psalms are filled with faithful people asking God how long, why, and where He is. God is not threatened by a wounded question asked from a heart that still wants Him.
The danger begins when disappointment becomes accusation… when we decide that God was unfaithful because He did not respond according to our timetable. Fasting prepares us to say more than, “God, do this.” It prepares us to say, “God, even when I do not understand what You are doing, I still belong to You. Help me to grow, see, and learn.”
Visible Results Matter, but They Are Not the Whole Story
Numbers are not inherently worldly. Every number represents a soul. The book of Acts records 3,000 people being added to the Church in one day (Acts 2:41), and later says that the number grew to about 5,000 men (Acts 4:4). Baptisms, salvations, attendance, and transformed lives are worth counting because people matter.
So let me vocalize this- we should never use “God is working invisibly” as an excuse for lack of progress or lack of seeing God’s provision, weak preparation, poor stewardship, or the absence of fruit. Leaders should be willing to evaluate honestly what was effective, what was distracting, what lacked spiritual weight, and what should be handled differently in the future. Trusting God does not eliminate responsible reflection.
At the same time, visible results are not the only measure of God’s activity.
Paul wrote, “I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth” (1 Corinthians 3:6). Some gatherings reap what others spent years sowing. Other gatherings sow seeds that someone else will one day reap. A person may have entered the room resistant and left unsettled. A marriage may have moved one step toward healing. A prodigal may have heard one sentence the Holy Spirit will bring back months from now. A believer may have repented privately without ever approaching an altar.
Let’s never invent unseen fruit merely to make ourselves feel better. But neither should we assume that nothing happened simply because we did not witness the harvest we expected. God alone knows the full reach of a moment.
Disappointment Can Reveal What We Have Made Responsible for Our Faith
Large altar responses can encourage us. Powerful preaching can stir us. Baptisms can make the movement of God visible. We should celebrate all of them.
But if our confidence in God rises and falls entirely with the visible success of a service, we may be placing the weight of our faith on an event rather than on Jesus.
Habakkuk described a season in which the expected evidence of blessing was absent: no figs, no grapes, no olives, no crops, and no livestock. Yet he concluded, “Still I will rejoice in the LORD; I will take joy in the God of my salvation” (Habakkuk 3:18).
That wasn’t a denial. He named every empty place before declaring his trust. Biblical faith does not pretend the field is full. It looks honestly at an empty field and refuses to call God unfaithful.
Maybe, just maybe, this is one of disappointment’s hardest lessons: sometimes God permits our expectations to collapse so that our trust can become more deeply rooted in Him. We know that in all things, God is present and working.
Discernment and Honor Must Remain Together
It is possible to love church events and still acknowledge that an event did not carry the fruit, depth, or wisdom we had hoped for. Honor does not require dishonesty. We can recognize that certain decisions, messages, or moments were disappointing without attacking people, assigning motives, or allowing criticism to poison our hearts.
Healthy discernment asks, What can we learn from this? What should we strengthen? What should we change? Offense says, Because this disappointed me, I will withdraw, accuse, or stop believing.
Those sentiments are nowhere near the same response.
We should speak truth with humility, give leaders room to evaluate, and remember that a disappointing event does not erase months or years of genuine fruit. God has moved in our church. Lives have been changed. People have been baptized. Families have been restored. Our family is growing. The disappointment of one season cannot be permitted to rewrite the testimony of every previous one.
What Do We Do Now?
This is the tough one, but I believe that we examine our expectations. We evaluate our stewardship. We refuse offense. We remain grateful for every life God touched, even if the number was seemingly smaller than we requested.
And then we pray again.
Not because prayer is a technique we failed to perform correctly. Not because another fast will force God to produce the outcome we wanted. We pray again because He is still worthy, the lost still matter, the Church still needs awakening, and our assignment has not changed.
Jesus told His disciples that they “ought always to pray and not lose heart” (Luke 18:1). The temptation after disappointment is not merely to feel sad; it is to lose heart. To lower expectation. To protect ourselves from hoping again. To decide that fervent prayer was naïve… This is when darkness rises and the enemy prevails.
To continue to grow into what God meant in this season, we must resist that temptation.
Maybe the next great move of God will not begin beneath stage lights. Maybe it will begin in a living room, at a restaurant table, in a jail, beside a hospital bed, in a prayer room, or during an ordinary conversation with someone who is finally ready to hear about Jesus. Revival is not proven by the success of a scheduled event. Revival is revealed when hearts return to God and the people of God become obedient to Him.
I am still disappointed and will not pretend otherwise. I hoped to witness more people come, more people surrender to Christ, and more people enter the waters of baptism. Those are the very strong desires of my heart, because those people matter. But disappointment will not have the final word.
God is not less faithful because the outcome was smaller than my expectation. Our prayers were not meaningless because the answer was not visible in the way we had hoped. Our fasting was not wasted if, through it, God taught us to desire Him more than a result.
We asked for revival… perhaps part of the revival God wants to bring is the purification of our own faith, the kind of faith that seeks boldly, evaluates honestly, grieves without bitterness, and continues obeying when the visible outcome falls short.
Again, sometimes disappointment is not evidence that we missed God. It is evidence that we expected Him to fulfill His will according to the picture we had formed in our own minds.
To wrap up, these are the teaching points outlining all of the above weighty truths:
Faith is not proven only when God meets our expectations; it is proven when we continue trusting Him after He does not.
A godly desire can still become a personal expectation that God never specifically promised.
God’s movement cannot always be measured by crowds, visible responses, emotional intensity, or immediate results.
Prayer is not wasted simply because its answer did not appear during the event we attached it to.
Disappointment must be processed in God’s presence, or it can quietly become offense, cynicism, or spiritual withdrawal.
We may honestly lament without accusing God or dishonoring others.
Sometimes the harvest we expected to witness publicly is happening underground, in hearts we cannot yet see.
Our responsibility is obedience; the outcome and timing belong to God.
So we will keep praying. We will keep sowing. We will keep inviting. We will keep preaching Christ. We will keep calling people to repentance, salvation, baptism, and discipleship.
And we will leave the increase where it has always belonged: in the hands of our loving, faithful God.
Let revival continue, Lord. And let it continue deeply within me.
~ Devin
Devin Osborne
The Early Church
