Again, as a fellow idealist, I am going to attempt to actually “trump” your conception of idealism. I was with you in this post up until your last sentence where you used the word “radical”. In the last few years, it has occurred to me that when folks like John Piper and David Platt throw out references to a “radical Christian lifestyle”, as much as I am favorable toward the vision they cast, I am not so comfortable with calling it “radical”. Take for example the rich man being instructed to sell all he possessed to give to the poor, and following after Jesus without encumbrance. Was that a call to “be radical”? I don’t think so. I think that was a call to basic, “normal” discipleship. If we idealists are not careful in our use of the term “radical”, we can unwittingly strengthen the compromising pragmatist in their conception of what is “normal”.

Likewise with the cited reference from Acts. Although I know that many Christian’s view of the “Apostolic Age” would differ from mine, personally I would argue that the placement of these passages in the span of redemptive history is because they demonstrate a “model” of what “normal” life of Jesus’ church is “supposed” to look like during this harvest time subsequent to the fulfillment of the Feast of Pentecost. A seed contains the essence of what is to come, and the germinal state of the church is “no exception”!

Here is probably the biggest area I would disagree with John Piper, who is one of my favorite preachers to listen to. I disagree with his theology of revival in which his posits two categories of thought: “steady state Christianity” with which we should be content, and a “heightened state” during revival. As I look through Scripture for a systematic “theology of revival”, things that immediately come to mind are the reforms under Hezekiah and Josiah, and the letters to the seven churches of revelation.

Regarding OT “revivals” the “steady state” of the church was one of sinful idolatry, and “revivals” were repentance away from conformity to the pattern of the world, unto the “normal” relationship that Israel was supposed to be having with her God all the time.

Regarding the seven churches, I would briefly note the connection between Rev 3:1b-2 and the literal, etymological meaning of what it is to be “re-vived”. In the letter to Ephesus in Rev 2, I believe “the height from which you have fallen” and the “first works” both refer back to the expected “normal” state of the church in Acts 2 & 4, and perhaps more specifically to the original zeal and expectations of whole-hearted devotion displayed in Ephesus itself (Acts 19, see also chp. 20:17ff).

Personally, I am not a big fan of “praying for revival”. I think we would be better off to realize the depth of sin that our own hearts and our Christian culture have conformed to and fallen into, look back to the model of how “we” (the church) were and first, and repent. Revival is not a heightened state, revival is coming back to life after having been dead.