PRAY AND SEEK HIS FACE
II Chronicles 7:14
INTRODUCTION: In 1857 there was a 46 year old man named Jeremiah Lamphere who lived in New York City. Jeremiah loved the Lord tremendously, but he didn’t feel that he could do much for the Lord until he began to feel a burden for the lost and accepted an invitation from his church to be an inner city missionary. So in July of 1857 he started walking up and down the streets of New York passing out tracts and talking to people about Jesus, but he wasn’t having any success. Then God put it on his heart to try prayer. So he printed up a bunch of tracts, and he passed them out to anyone and everyone met. He invited anyone who wanted to to come to the 3rd floor of the Old North Dutch Reform Church on Fulton St. in New York City from 12 to 1 on Wednesday to pray. He passed out hundreds and hundreds of fliers and put up posters everywhere he could. Wednesday day came and at Noon nobody showed up. So Jeremiah got on his knees and started praying. For 30 minutes he prayed by himself when finally five other people walked in. The next week 20 people came. The next week between 30 and 40 people came. They then decided to meet every day from 12:00 to 1:00 to pray for the city. Before long a few ministers started coming and they said, "We need to start this at our churches". Within six months there were over 5000 prayer groups meeting everyday in N.Y. Soon the word spread all over the country. Prayer meetings were started in Philadelphia, Detroit, and Washington D.C. In fact President Franklin Pierce started going almost every day to a noonday prayer meeting. By 1859 some 15,000 cities in America were having downtown prayer meetings everyday at noon and thousands were brought to Christ. The great thing about this revival is that there is not a famous preacher associated with it. It was all started by one man wanting to pray. See only God can start a revival and God is quite clear about what He expects before He will return to His people. II Chronicles 7:14 READ TEXT You don’t have revival by seeking revival, but by seeking God. God says if you will pray and seek my face, I will hear and forgive and heal. If God is going to come and be with His people, He is not going to come until his people ask him. Yet some times I think people feel the object of prayer is to overcome God’s reluctance. It is like God is taking a nap, He really doesn’t want to be bothered, but if you pray just right He might do something for you anyway. Folks, prayer is not overcoming God’s reluctance, prayer is confessing our need, and our desire, to be conformed to His will. God is waiting to hear His people pray and ask for revival. And until some people get on their knees, humble themselves, seek God and ask Him to come, revival will not become a reality. But what is revival praying? The answer is found in one of the great revivals in the Bible. We will study later on this Fall the revival in the city of Nineveh; a pagan city that received a powerful revival at the preaching of Jonah. From one verse in that story we find the substance of real revival praying. Look at Jonah 3:8. READ TEXT This morning notice three characteristics of revival prayer.
I. REVIVAL PRAYER IS CHARACTERIZED BY BROKENNESS
A. That is what the king meant when he said, "I want the whole city to be covered in sack cloth." Look back in vs.5. When Jonah preached everyone started fasting. Remember what we said last time? Fasting is the Old Testament way you humble yourself. The way you show you are broken, the way you show you are desperate, and that is what God is looking for.
1. God has said, "If my people will humble themselves." God will visit when his people reach a point of desperation. When we surrender that pride, the idea that we can do pretty good on our own, and we get down on our knees and admit things are not as they should be, then God will come to His people. God says that the first thing I am looking for in their prayers.
2. Later on we will study the revival at Mt. Sinai. In Exodus 33 the Bible says that when the people heard that the Lord had left them they began to morn and nobody put on any ornaments. They were broken. We will also study in Nehemiah 9 about that great revival. Look at Nehemiah 9:1,2 with me. Now that is revival praying.
3. Remember what Jesus said about 2 men who went to the temple to pray. One struts his stuff and says God I’m glad I’m not like most people. I’m religious and proud of it. And he lists all the good things he had done for God. The second guy said there is nothing worthy about me, God. I’m a sinner, please have mercy. Who did God hear?
4. David said in Psalm 51:16,17, "You, O Lord, do not delight in sacrifice or I would bring it; you do not take pleasure in burnt offerings. The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart..." Only the broken heart is big enough for God to dwell in. Broken hearts are rare today. Even more rare are broken churches.
B. I think most people today are pretty satisfied with the state of the church, and I want to ask you this morning if you are. Do you think that the church in America today is pretty healthy? I think most of us do, because it doesn’t seem to me that we are on our knees very often asking for revival.
1. I’ll tell you why we are fairly satisfied with the church today. We are comparing today’s church to the world and not to the New Testament church. As long as we compare ourselves to the world, we will always feel pretty good about ourselves because we are a little bit more moral, and a little bit less perverse than they are.
2. But when we compare ourselves to the New Testament church, there is only one thing for us to do. That is to humble ourselves in brokenness and pray for God to come. I don’t think revival will come as long as we just continue to rock along and do church with no burden. Notice Revelation 3:1 – Is this where we are in the Church today?
C. Revival prayer is not for people who are unwilling to morn, and be burdened. Revival prayer is when God’s people get on their knees with tears and with hurting hearts asking God to intervene in their lives. That is what God is waiting to hear.
II. REVIVAL PRAYER IS CHARACTERIZED BY URGENCY
A. The king in Nineveh said, "I want you to put on sackcloth and I want you to call URGENTLY on God." Urgently – that means with a sense of emergency and with intensity. People who pray revival prayers are those people who pray long, hard, intense, and unyielding prayers from the depths of their hearts. One person calls this full-throttle praying.
1. Jeremiah 29:11-13 says, "For I know the plans I have for you," declares the Lord, "plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future. You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart." That is Full Throttle praying and that is exactly what God is looking for!
2. Some people say, "I prayed for revival in my marriage for a whole week and nothing happened." That’s not revival praying. Some say, "I’ve been praying for a whole month for revival at my church and nothing’s happened." That’s not revival praying either. Those who pray revival prayers are desperate, whole-hearted, never-ending petitioners of God. They never give up, they never quit.
B. Dwight L. Moody, a famous evangelist from Chicago went on vacation to England. He wasn’t planning to do any preaching; he was on a sabbatical. But he met a preacher there who said, "Mr. Moody you’re so well know, would you come and speak at our church?" So he went to preach the next Sunday morning.
1. That afternoon Moody wrote in his journal that they were the deadest crowd he had ever seen and that the only thing worse than preaching to those people was that he had promised to go back that night and preach again. But he went back that night, and about halfway through the sermon something happened.
2. The people started to come to life, and he felt compelled to ask if anyone there would like to become a Christian and a lot of people stood up. He didn’t know what to do. So he said, "Maybe you don’t understand what I am asking. So when we are dismissed if you want to become a Christian come over to this little room and meet with me." When the service was over, he went to the room it was packed. Moody said to the minister, "What does this mean?" He said, "I don’t know. But I think you need to preach again tomorrow night."
3. The next day Moody got on a train and went to Ireland to continue his vacation. But when he got off the train there was a memo that said, "Come back. Revival has broken out." So Moody got back on the train, went back to that church and preached 10 straight nights. And 400 responded to the invitation.
4. Moody couldn’t understand. Those people were dead, and something changed it. Come to find out that an 80 something year old invalid widow named Mary Ann Adelard had read one of his sermons in the newspaper and had started praying every day that God will bring D. L. Moody to her church. That is revival praying.
5. What does Paul write in I Thessalonians 5:17? He doesn’t say sing with out ceasing, or fellowship without ceasing or even preach without ceasing. He said, "Pray without ceasing." That’s revival praying! In Luke 11:1, the disciples said to Jesus, "Teach us to pray." Notice they did not say, "Lord, teach us what to say." Rather I think they were saying, "Lord teach us how to pray, to pray like you do."
6. Immediately after that question, Jesus taught the only two parables that deal with prayer: the parable about the widow who goes to the judge and the parable about the guy who needs bread in the middle of the night. I’ll sum up both parables in 3 words. "Don’t give up." The main thing that Jesus taught about prayer is "Don’t give up." Keep on praying!! Folks, we need that type of commitment to prayer.
C. We need to be like Jacob. Remember when He saw an angel of the Lord at the brook Jabbok, and he wrestled with him all night. The angel in the morning said, "Let me go." What did Jacob say in Genesis 32:26, "I will not let you go until you bless me." Church I challenge you to pray that way. I challenge you to pray that God send revival to McMinnville, TN and to say, "God I’m not going to give up until it comes."
III. REVIVAL PRAYER IS CHARACTERIZED BY HOLINESS
A. The king of Nineveh said, "I want you to put on sackcloth, and I want you to pray urgently to God and I want you to give up your evil ways." What did God say in II Chronicles 7:14? If you will humble yourselves, that is brokenness. If you will pray and seek my face, that is urgency. And if you will turn from your wicked ways, that is holiness.
1. Isaiah 55:6,7, "Seek the LORD while he may be found; call on him while he is near. Let the wicked forsake his way and the evil man his thoughts. Let him turn to the LORD, and he will have mercy on him for he will freely pardon."
2. David said in Psalm 66:18, "If I had cherished sin in my heart, the Lord would not have listened." Folks I tell you the chief thing that won’t let revival come to America is that the church won’t confess their sins and get holy. God has not promised to respond to the prayers of people who cherish sin.
3. Do you remember what James the brother of Jesus said in ch 5:16. It doesn’t say prayer is powerful and effective. It doesn’t say the prayers of men are powerful and effective, but the prayer of a righteous man is powerful and effective. God will forgive and hear and heal when holy people pray. God will turn and hear our prayers when we turn and obey.
4. I Tim 2:8…lift up holy hands in prayer. Now it’s funny that over the last several years every time I have heard that verse talked about we all get off on the word "hands". The word "hands" is not the point of the verse. The point of the verse is the word "Holy". He is looking for holy men to start praying for a nation. That is how revival comes, when that verse gets practiced.
B. Maybe the greatest revival in the last 50 years is the revival on the Hebrides Islands. Incredible things happened there, but no one knew what started it. Come to find out that 7 young men had been meeting three times a week in a barn praying for revival for months and months and months. They had based their prayers on Psalm 24:35, "Who may ascend the hill of the Lord? Who may stand in His holy place? He who has clean hands and a pure heart."
1. Throughout that revival, people all over the city would stop each other on the street and ask one another the same thing, "Have you done business with God today?" Good question.
2. Some of us come to church every Sunday with unrepented sin in our life. Anger, malice, jealousy, lust, greed, and all kinds of sins. Folks, we can pray and pray and pray for revival until we are blue in the face, but until we pray in holiness God will not respond.
3. That’s what they did in Nineveh. They humbled themselves, called urgently on the Lord, and turned from their sin. Jonah 3:10 says, "When God saw what they did and how they turned from their evil ways, he had compassion and did not bring upon them the destruction he had threatened."
C. I wonder if we are ready to do business with God? Let me tell you folks, if we are serious about being His people and about God being found in our lives in a powerful way we must make sure our hands are holy and our hearts are pure. Are you ready to do business with God? Let me tell you what I have learned. Past revivals declare that God will visit when He is genuinely invited. I think the real question at Westwood is do we really want God to come.
CONCLUSION: Let me close with a great story. I started by telling you about the great prayer revival of 1857. It moved from New York to Detroit, Buffalo, Washington D.C. and it moved to Philadelphia in a powerful way. One of the leaders in Philadelphia was a young man named Dudley Ting. He started a noonday prayer meeting at the YMCA, and some days 5000 people would come at noon and pray. One day Dudley stood up and he read Exodus 10:11, "Go ye that are men and serve the Lord." He then said, "I had rather my right arm cut off than not give you that word." Later that week Dudley went out into the country to see some friends. While in a barn at his friend’s place he got his arm caught in a corn threshing machine and the main artery in his are was severed. They took him to a bed and tried to save his life but he had lost too much blood. So his friends gathered around him and asked him what he would like to say. He said, " Tell them to stand up for Jesus." So the next Sunday his good friend George Duffield stood up at church and preached in memory of his friend. He said, "I just finished writing a poem in honor of Dudley and I want to read it to you." Stand up, Stand up for Jesus, ye solders of the cross. Lift high His royal banner, it must not suffer loss. From victory unto victory His army shall He lead, till every foe is vanquished, for Christ is Lord in deed. Stand up, Stand up for Jesus, the trumpet call obey. Forth to the mighty conflict in this His glorious day. Ye that are men now serve Him, against unnumbered foes. Let courage rise with danger and strength to strength oppose. Stand up stand up for Jesus, the strife will not be long. This day the noise of battle, the next the victor’s song. To him that overcometh a crown of life shall be, he with the king of glory shall reign eternally. All across America, city after city people would meet for one day and pray for their country, and sing Stand up Stand up for Jesus. It’s time to decide if we want to do business with God. Some of you need to decide if you are going to be baptized today. Pray for revival and courage.
