#3: Pray And Seek His Face Series

I Timothy 2:8. Paul says, “I want men everywhere to lift up holy hands in prayer.” That verse doesn’t say what many have wanted it to say. Holding up hands for the sake of doing so is not the point of the verse. The key word is “HOLY”. I want men to lift up holy hands.” In otherwords, hands that are clean before God, not clutching on to anything. He’s looking for holy people to start praying for a nation.

Maybe the greatest revival in the last fifty years was on the Heberdies Islands in the British Isles. Incredible things happened when revival broke out. They tried to find out what started that revival. Everyone knows Duncan Campbell came and started preaching. But they found out later seven young men were meeting three times a week in a barn praying for revival for months and months and months. But nothing was happening. And then one night one of the young men read from Psalm 24:3, 5: “Who may ascend the hill of the Lord? Who may stand in his holy place? He who has clean hands and a pure heart. He will receive blessing from the Lord.” And that young man said, “Men, what good does it do for us to pray for revival if we’re not pure? Are my hands holy? Are my hands pure?” They say suddenly he just fell to the ground, and all the men fell to the ground overwhelmed at the holiness of God and their own need to get rid of sin. They didn’t know that two days later Duncan Campbell decided to come to the Heberdies Islands. All through that revival they say people would meet each other on the street and they would say the same thing: “HAVE YOU DONE BUSINESS WITH GOD TODAY?” Good question.

We come to church every Sunday, and some of us know, we know when we came of sin in our life that we’re cherishing and we’re not trying to do anything about. Anger at people. Mistrust and suspicion of brother and sisters, gossip, slander, greed, and all kinds of sin. We can pray and pray and pray until we’re blue in the face for revival but until we pray in holiness, God does not promise to respond.

That’s what they did at Ninevah. They humble themselves and called earnestly on God and they turned from sin, and the Bible says in Jonah 3:10, “When God saw what they did and how they had turned from their evil ways, he had compassion and did not bring upon them the destruction he had threatened.” I wonder if we’re ready to do business with God?

Past revivals declare that God will visit when he’s genuinely invited. I think the real question at Eagleville is do we really want God to come. I think that’s a fair question. Have you ever asked someone to come and didn’t really want them to? Let’s say you tell someone, “When you’re in town, drop by and see us.” You may not have really wanted them to show up? I wonder if we do the same thing to God? I wonder if we invite God, but don’t really want him to come? Are we eager to do business with God.

I want to close by telling you a story. I started by telling you the story of great prayer revival of 1857 and 1858. It moved from New York to Detroit, Buffalo, moved to Philly in a powerful way. One of the leaders in Philly was a young man named Dudley Ting. He started a noon day prayer meeting where as many as 5,000 people would come to pray at noon for the city. Later that week he was out on a farm and got his arm caught in a corn threshing machine. Artery was severed. They tried to save his life but he lost too much blood. All his friends got around him and his last words were, “TELL THEM TO STAND UP FOR JESUS” So the next Sunday his good friend George Duffield stood up in his church and preached in memory of his friend. And he said “I just finished writing a poem in honor of Dudley. And he read it: STAND UP STAND UP FOR JESUS. All across America city after city people would meet for one hour each day and pray for their country. And they would sing ‘STAND UP STAND UP FOR JESUS”. It’s time to decide if we want to do business with God. It’s time for you to decide. Some of you need to be baptized today, it’s time to decide. Let’ stand and sing.

(Fashioned for my audience from a series by Rich Atchley)