Urgent & Dependent

Welcome

What does it feel like to need something desperately—and know you can’t make it happen on your own?

That tension—urgency without control, effort without self-sufficiency—is the posture God invites us into when it comes to revival. Not passive waiting. Not anxious striving. But a steady, determined pursuit of God fueled by both urgency and deep dependence.

This is the first revival practice: urgent and dependent.

These two words can feel like opposites. Urgency pushes us to act. Dependence reminds us we can't do it alone. That's exactly the point. Revival lives in the tension between them—moving forward with everything you have while trusting that only God can actually change a heart.

Revival, at its core, is you reviving your love for God.

It's not something that happens to passive people. It's what occurs when a cooled heart chooses to burn again—when affection for God rises above affection for comfort, success, and self. God initiates. We respond.

Every day, whether we realize it or not, our love for God competes with other loves. Left unattended, our hearts slowly drift. Revival happens when we turn back—when we say, intentionally and repeatedly: I'm going to love God more.

David is a picture of this. Before he ever faced Goliath, he’d been alone on hillsides with God—shepherding sheep, fighting lions, writing psalms, learning to trust. So when the opportunity came to face a giant, David didn't hesitate. He ran toward Goliath, fully dependent on God. “You come against me with sword and spear,” he said, “but I come against you in the name of the Lord Almighty.”

Urgent action. Complete trust. Both at once.

This is the posture we're called to. Do everything in your power to pursue God—and trust that only He can bring the change you're after.

One of the greatest obstacles to revival is distraction. Think about yesterday morning—how many things pulled at your attention before you'd even been awake an hour. In that kind of environment, spiritual urgency fades quietly, often without us noticing.

Revival requires the discipline to return. To wake up and say: God, today I want You more than anything else. I will not drift.

The decision to revive your love for God doesn't just stay with you. Revival spreads outward from hearts that refuse to stay cold. Families can become on fire for God. Churches come alive when enough individuals decide to seek God again. Cities—and even nations—can change. It’s happened before. It can happen again.

Before you move on, pause and ask yourself honestly: Am I pursuing God with urgent dependence?

Connect

If you or any of your group members don’t know each other, take a few minutes to introduce yourselves. Then discuss one or both of the following questions:

• Why did you decide to join this study? What do you hope to learn? 
• What is your experience with hearing, learning, or thinking about “revival”? Before this study, what was your understanding of revival?

Watch

Watch the video, and write down anything that stands out, challenges you, or raises a question.

Discuss

1. We learned about the blessing-judgment cycle. People turn to God → God blesses → blessing leads to comfort → comfort leads to complacency → complacency leads to worshiping other things → God calls us to repent → we choose revival or ruin. Where do you honestly think you are in that cycle right now and what does it feel like to be at that place?
2. When was a time when your love for God burned hot? What was different about that season? What was fueling the fire?
3. Have someone read Psalm 85:6–7. The psalmist asks God for revival. But this series is calling us to actively pursue revival in our own lives. How do those two ideas fit together? What does it look like to seek revival from God while also pursuing Him intentionally every day?
4. The sermon described urgency and dependence as a posture—the way you move through life with God. On a scale of 1–10, how would you rate your urgency toward God right now? How would you rate your dependence on Him? Which one feels weaker for you right now? Why do you think that is?
5. David didn’t prepare for Goliath in the valley. He was ready because of years of private faithfulness in the pasture—alone with God. Where in your life do you feel pressure to “perform in the valley” without having spent time with God in the pasture? What might it look like for you to begin changing that this week?
6. Have someone read 1 Samuel 17:45–47. David ran toward the battle, yet he trusted God completely for the outcome. The video challenged us to “work for revival like it depends on you and pray for revivallike it depends on God.” Which side of that balance is harder for you—taking action or depending on God in prayer? What would growth in that area look like practically this week?

Pray

Close your time together in prayer.

• Thank God for loving you enough to call you back when your heart drifts—and for wanting you on the path that leads to life and joy.
• Ask God to give your group a spirit of urgency—not pressure or guilt, but a genuine hunger to pursue Him during these 40 days.
• Pray for dependence—that each person would release self-reliance and trust that true revival comes from God alone.
• Ask the Holy Spirit to reveal distractions and competing loves that may be quietly pulling hearts away from God.
• Pray for one another by name—that this series would become a meaningful turning point in each person’s walk with Him.
• Ask God to make your renewed love for Him contagious, spreading to your families, friendships, church, and community.

This Week

Chose one of the growth steps below:

• Commit to spending 15 minutes a day with God this week. Pick a specific time and place before you leave group, and text or tell one other person in the group what you chose. The accountability makes it urgent; the daily showing up is the dependence.
• Identify your “Goliath”—a battle, fear, or area of spiritual drift in their life — and spend time this week praying over it daily, specifically asking God to fight the battle you can't win alone. This is both urgent (naming the thing, acting on it) and dependent (bringing it to God rather than white-knuckling it).
• Identify one thing you've been putting off doing out of fear, laziness, or spiritual drift—a conversation, a confession, a recommitment—and do it this week. Not because you feel ready, but because you're stepping onto the battlefield like David did, trusting God to show up. Come back next week ready to share what happened.

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