As of this morning we are two weeks out from our planned Revival.
I shared last week how our expectation for God to work in our midst can only be as high as the amount of time we have been willing to give to prayer.
We may plan for a revival but only God can make revival happen.
Revival is a GIFT FROM HEAVEN. We don’t work it up. God sends it down.
Jim Cymbala ‘Revival is the saints getting back to normal’
Do you want to experience ‘God’s normal’ in your life?
Do you want to see what ‘God’s normal’ would look like in our church?
Do you want to see what ‘God’s normal’ will do to a community?
Do we need revival at Holly Brook Baptist Church?
Do we need revival in our community?
Do you need revival in your life and family?
1. How does revival happen? How did it happen in the past?
From the day of Pentecost there has not been one great spiritual awakening in any land which has not begun with prayer: no such movement has continued after such prayer meetings have declined. A.T. Pierson
Whether we like it or not, asking is the rule of God’s Kingdom. If you have everything by asking and nothing without asking then I beg you to see how absolutely vital prayer is. C.H. Spurgeon
Prayer is the first thing, the second thing, and the third thing necessary especially if we have revival. Edward Payson
2. How does God promise revival?
a. People pray for it:
God has no greater controversy with His people today than this, that with boundless promises to believing prayer, there are so few who actually give themselves unto intercession. A.T. Pierson
Leonard Ravenhill ‘The church has many organizers, but few agonizers; many who pay, but few who pray; many resters, but few wrestlers; many who are enterprising, but few who are interceding… Tithes build a church, but tears will give it life. In the matter of effective praying, never have so many left so much to so few’.
I heard this week that statistics show that people who go to church have 5% lower blood pressure than those who don't. They also have a 25% less chance of dying. They also live longer than those who don’t. The average extension of life is 7 years. That means that if you come to church weekly that for that hour you sit in church you gain almost 15 hours of additional life.
I think that we could expect even greater benefit for every moment we spend on our knees adding a gain in our spiritual lives that is off the charts. It will not only add years to our life but real life to our years.
Anorexic churches: Starving and gaunt from trying to exist without prayer.
Difference between a dynamic and a typical church is found in the answer to one question: Are we a people of prayer?
Visitor to Spurgeon’s Church: While looking at a full sanctuary asked, ‘How is it that God does such wonderful things in this room?’ Taken downstairs to room underneath and found it full of people praying as service was going on upstairs.
Devil works every day to shorten our prayer lists or to at least edit them to things outside the will of God: He loves it when we are too busy to pray, or there is too much self in our prayers or we feel too defeated to pray.
Satan knows the real power of those who pray:
A young missionary named Raymond Edman staggered in from an Ecuadorian jungle, desperately ill the doctor predicted. “He’ll be dead by morning,”.
Edman’s mourned and those who knew Edman began to make arrangements for his Funeral. However, thousands of miles away in Boston, Edman’s friend, Dr. Joseph Evans, interrupted a prayer meeting, saying, “I feel we must pray for Ray Edman in Ecuador.” The group prayed and the rest is history: Raymond Edman recovered, and went on to become president of Wheaton College in Illinois and to minister for another forty years!
b. People desire it: God works in the lives of desperate people
A person may not come to church if it starts to sprinkle but they will sit through a pouring rain to watch a ball game they are interested in. They may not get up and spend time in God’s Word but they will be up at the crack of dawn to save 3 dollars on a sale item. They may not be willing to put any sacrificial amount in the offering plate but they will go into credit card debt to buy this or go there or see that. They are obviously not desperate for the things of the kingdom of God like they are for the things of this world.
God works in the lives of those who can’t live without Him doing so.
Those who won’t rest until He touches their lives.
They are like Jacob who wrestled in Genesis 32. After a night of wrestling and with even an injury to his hip Jacob refused to give up saying, ‘I will not let you go unless you bless me’. Jacob limped away from that encounter with a new name.
The name he now had was ‘Israel’ which means ‘prince’. As Jacob left he said, ‘I have seen God face to face and yet my life has been preserved’.
True prayer is getting hold of God and not letting go until His work is done in our lives. I want us to get a glimpse of God that we will walk away from and never be the same.
Like Jacob we most certainly will leave an encounter with God having cost us something. We may limp away with a new name, a new purpose and a new confidence that God is working something amazing in our lives.
The one concern of the devil is to keep Christians from praying. He fears nothing from prayerless study or work or religion. He laughs at our work, mocks at our wisdom, but trembles when we pray. Samuel Chadwick
When Satan sees us grabbing hold of God and not letting go until we are forever changed then his greatest fears are finally coming to pass.
Give me 100 men who fear nothing but sin and desire nothing but God, and I care not whether they be clergy or laymen; such alone will shake the gates of hell and set up the kingdom of heaven on earth. God does nothing but in answer to prayer. John Wesley
c. People PURSUE it:
Matthew 7:7-8 Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; Knock and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks it will be opened. ASK – SEEK – KNOCK
Revival comes to those who in their desperation begin to reorder all of life around the purpose of truly experiencing God.
Oswald J. Smith: ‘We read in the biographies of those before us who were most successful that they prayed for hours. The question therefore arises, can we get the same results without following their example? If we can then let us prove to the world that we have found a better way, but if not, then let us begin to follow those who through faith and patience obtained the promise.
From the beginning of my Christian journey I fell in love with the reading of biographies.
I bought and read a shelf full from the very beginning of my walk with Christ.
The problem I began to encounter was the lack or real biographies being available in bookstores or from publishers.
While studying at Midwestern Seminary I spent a lot of time at the seminary library for obvious reasons. I was having trouble finding new biographies so I began rereading some of my older ones.
One day I made a life changing discovery in the library. It was a three story building and I finally wandered up to the second floor. I walked up the stairs and opened a heavy metal door. There were no light on and as I stepped inside a floor filled with book shelves and I realized I was all alone. What I found there were shelves of biographies upon biographies. I found ones I had been looking for and ones I had not known about. Most that I found had not been check out in many years. The result was that, although I majored in a Master of Divinity at seminary, I minored in biographies. These great biographies of the past were not about someone winning a Superbowl or overcoming a single life event but they were about great lives used in great ways.
The common threads were surrendered lives, a passion for the Word of God and a commitment to life changing prayer.
They not only lived revival but brought it to others.
A prayerless ministry is the undertaker for all God’s truth and for God’s Church. He may have the most costly casket and the most beautiful flowers, but it is a funeral. A prayerless Christian will never learn God’s truth; a prayerless ministry will never be able to teach God’s truth. E.M. Bounds
E.M. Bounds said this about true revival and prayer:
1) Put full force into their churches by prayer: (experience God as never before)
2) Keep individual Christians at a high spiritual attitude: ‘Not just that someone will be saved but be mightily saved’.
WILLIAM PENN was so liked by the Indians in the area that would one day be Pennsylvania that they told him once, ‘You can have all the land you can walk around in one day.’ William Penn actually did it. When he told the Indians they were surprised he had actually done this but decided they would honor their promise.
He had simply taken them at their word and the land he gained was much of modern day Philadelphia. Might be surprised what might happen if you start taking God at His Word.
Devil would begin to lose lots of territory in people’s lives.
Spurgeon used to say that ‘some Christians would make such good martyrs.
They burn so well because they are so dry’.
Acts 2:42-43, 47 ‘And they continued steadfastly in the apostle’s doctrine, and fellowship, in the breaking of bread and in prayer’. ‘Then fear(awe) came upon every soul, and many wonders and signs were done through the apostles’…. Praising God and having favor with all the people. And the Lord was adding to their numbers day by day those who were being saved.
3. How would revival change us?
a. Greater witness in our community having favor with all the people
b. Greater worship in our church – ‘And they continued steadfastly in the apostle’s doctrine, and fellowship, in the breaking of bread and in prayer’. Greater love for God’s Word – God’s People – God’s Presence
c. Greater works in our lives. ‘Then fear(awe) came upon every soul, and many wonders and signs were done through the apostles’.
English preacher Sidlow Baxter at age 85 said, ‘I have pastored only three churches in my more than 60 years of ministry. We had revival in every one. And not one of them came as a result of my preaching. They came as a result of the membership entering into a covenant to pray until revival comes. And it did come, every time.’
Jer 29:13 ‘And you will seek Me and find Me when you search for Me WITH ALL YOUR HEART’.
Ps 42:1-2 ‘As the deer pants for the water brooks so pants my soul for you O God’. Picture of an animal having run itself out and finally arrives at what will quench it’s thirst.
Have you tried everything else in your life to find spiritual satisfaction?
Have we as a church repeated traditions year after year and added new programs along the way and still there is something more?
Have we tried everything thing else but what God has called us to do first?
Oswald Chambers said, ‘Prayer does not fit us for the greatest work, prayer is the greatest work.
You are never more in line with God’s will than when you are praying.
1960: Missionaries Matt and Lora Higgens were traveling thru Narobi during the Mau Mau uprisings. The developed car trouble in the middle of nowhere and pulled to side of road. The car could not be started so they locked themselves in the car and began quoting Psalms 4:8 ‘In peace I will both lie down and sleep, for thou alone doest make me to dwell in safety’.
They woke up safely the next morning and soon found help from a passing car.
It was some time later that they discovered a band of Mau Mau soldiers had come across their car in the night but said they had been frightened away by SIXTEEN armed men.
When the Higgens returned to the states soon after they had a man from their church asked them about that particular evening. The exact date and time. ‘Did you have any problems occur that night?’ WHY? I became so concerned about you on that evening that I called some of the men of the church and we gathered to pray for you. HOW MANY OF YOU DID THAT?
There were SIXTEEN of us.
Wouldn’t it be wonderful to see a soul saved for every person who truly commits themselves to prayer during the weeks ahead?
To see lives completely changed in our church for each person who becomes a true spiritual warrior in our midst?
It will most certainly transform the one who prays.
