The Source of Revival

“Have you noticed how much praying for revival has been going on of late—and how little revival has resulted? I believe the problem is that we have been trying to substitute praying for obeying, and it simply will not work. To pray for revival while ignoring the plain precept laid down in Scripture is to waste a lot of words and get nothing for our trouble. Prayer will become effective when we stop using it as a substitute for obedience.”

A.W. Tozer

Kirk Cameron’s Comment

This lesson makes me consider how much I actually love people. If I’m really concerned about their eternal salvation, I ought to be wrestling in prayer day and night, talking with the unsaved as often as possible, and begging God for a mighty move of His Spirit.

Questions & Objections

Lesson

Prayer was the ignition to every revival fire in history, and the key to the doorway of ministry for every preacher used by God in the past. It is evident that God is calling His Church to prayer, the kind of prayer that will storm the very gates of hell. We need a worldwide revival in the Church that will boil over into the world! We need to seek God daily to break the hard hearts of hell-bound sinners. And we need such an anointing on our preaching that men will weep from a sense of their own sinfulness. That can come only through prayer.

God is not willing that any perish; He wants all to “come to the knowledge of the truth” (2 Timothy 3:7). Therefore we can confidently pursue God for men—then, in urgent zeal, pursue men for God.

Look at the burden on the heart of Oswald J. Smith as he speaks about the type of prayer that moves Heaven’s Hand:

Can we travail for a drowning child, but not for a perishing soul? It is not hard to weep when we realize that our little one is sinking below the surface for the last time. Anguish is spontaneous then. Nor is it hard to agonize when we see the casket containing all that we love on earth borne out of the home. Ah, tears are natural at such a time. But oh, to realize and know that souls, precious, never dying souls, are perishing all around us, going out into the blackness of darkness and despair, eternally lost, and yet to feel no anguish, shed no tears, know no travail! How cold are our hearts! How little we know of the compassion of Jesus! And yet God can give us this, and the fault is ours if we do not have it. Jacob, you remember, travailed until he prevailed. But oh, who is doing it today? Who is really travailing in prayer? How many, even of your most spiritual Christian leaders, are content to spend half an hour a day on their knees and then pride themselves on the time they have given to God!

If you are a normal human being, you will find it hard to pray. The flesh resists the thought of travailing prayer. Other things in our busy life will want to have priority. However, being a Christian means being a disciplined person. It means setting aside time to deny ourselves and pray. Here are some practical things you can do in the battle to pray:

1. Find yourself a regular “closet.” This is a place of secret prayer. It may be a spare room, an attic, a basement, or even a physical closet. This means that you will not only be free from distractions, but you will have no one to impress with “eloquent” prayers. It will be just you and your Creator.

2. Kneel down. Humble yourself in both body and soul.

3. Put a pen and pad beside you, and write down thoughts and verses that may come to you in prayer.

4. Confess any sins to God. Pour out your heart to Him. Ask for forgiveness for that second look, that failure to share your faith, selfishness you exhibited, or some harsh words spoken during the day.

5. Ask the Holy Spirit to help you pray, then begin crying out for lost souls. Think of their eternal destiny in hell. Pray for laborers to reach them. Offer to be one of those laborers. Ask God to open doors for you. Ask Him to help you overcome your fears, your pride, your self-indulgence. Pray for great wisdom. Name unsaved loved ones, friends, coworkers, and strangers. Pray for our leaders. Pray for nations. Think big. Believe big—because nothing is too hard for God.

Look again at Oswald J. Smith’s passion to reach the lost:

We expect extraordinary results, and extraordinary results are quite possible; signs and wonders will follow, but only through extraordinary efforts in the spiritual realm. Hence, nothing short of continuous, agonizing pleading for souls, hours upon hours, days and nights of prayer, will ever avail. Therefore, ‘gird yourselves, and lament, ye priests; howl, ye ministers of the altar: come, lie all night in sackcloth, ye ministers of my God. Sanctify ye a fast, call a solemn assembly, gather the elders and all the inhabitants of the land unto the house of the LORD your God, and cry unto the LORD’ (Joel 1:13, 14). Ah, yes, Joel knew the secret. Let us then lay aside everything else and ‘cry unto the Lord.’

We read in the biographies of your forefathers, who were most successful in winning souls, that they prayed for hours in private. 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 in God’s name let us begin to follow those who through faith and patience obtained the promise. Our forefathers wept and prayed and agonized before the Lord for sinners to be saved, and would not rest until they were slain by the Sword of the Word of God. That was the secret of their mighty success; when things were slack and would not move, they wrestled in prayer till God poured out His Spirit upon the people and sinners were converted.

Beware, however, of the subtlety of passive prayer. Many Christians are praying for revival—that God would pour out His Spirit and save this world—but it is made blatantly evident by statistics that few actually share their faith. They are substituting prayer for a move of God, for obedience to the Word of God.

True prayer is a travail of the soul. It is a groaning empathy. However, it does more than groan outside the grave of Lazarus. It tells him to “Come forth.” To travail in prayer for revival, but to fail to speak to those who are dead in trespasses and sins, is to have a Gethsemane without a Calvary. It is to stay in the Upper Room and worship the One who commanded us to move out and preach the gospel to every creature. A.W. Pink said, “It is true that [many] are praying for worldwide revival. But it would be more timely, and more scriptural, for prayer to be made to the Lord of the harvest, that He would raise up and thrust forth laborers who would fearlessly and faithfully preach those truths which are calculated to bring about a revival.”

In Ephesians 6:11, we are told to put on the whole armor of God. Many Christians are truthful; they have their heart free of sin, are sure of their salvation, and rightly use the Word of God. But they are shoeless—they are not prepared to share the “gospel of peace” (v.15). Those who do not advance the cause of the gospel are stationary soldiers; any evangelistic movement is too painful for them. If they are not seeking to save the lost, they are not taking ground for the kingdom of God. Paul climaxed his admonition to the Ephesians by highlighting what the battle is for. He pleads with them to pray for him to have boldness to reach out to the unsaved, citing his moral responsibility (v.20).

Make sure you don’t pacify a guilty conscience by simply praying for the salvation of the lost, but not preaching to them. It is the gospel that is the power of God unto salvation. How shall they hear without a preacher (Romans 10:14)?

Words of Comfort

No one likes bad drivers. They fail to signal. They tailgate. They drive too fast, or they drive too slow. Some even read maps while driving. They shouldn’t be allowed on the road. I thank God that I am not like them.

Don’t get me wrong—I do have one small driving flaw. I tend to get lost very easily. In fact, I have the sense of direction of a blind ostrich on a moonless night.

I was aware of this minor fault when I planned to drive about 15 miles down a Los Angeles freeway to a business that sold magnets. I have always had an attraction to magnets, and these folks made what was supposed to be the world’s strongest.

I wisely printed out a map with driving directions, grabbed it as it came out of my printer, and ran out the door. Sue was a little worried that I would get lost, but I assured her that with the map in hand I would have no trouble at all. In fact, I called her on my cell phone when I was halfway there, just to let her know that getting lost was a thing of the past.

I exited the freeway and confidently lifted the full-color map, being careful to slow down as I approached the lights. Unfortunately, I had run out of my office before the second page of the map had printed out, and (unbeknown to me) my directions finished at the point of telling me where to exit the freeway.

As I looked at the map, my van accidentally drove onto the island in the middle of the road (just for a few feet). I skillfully pulled the vehicle back onto the road and followed the turn lane left onto a side street. I then picked up the map again, wondering why it didn’t give me any directions when I needed them. This time I wisely slowed down to about 3 mph. It was then that I heard a honk, and noticed that a truck was tailgating me. I quickly sped up and pulled into a driveway, both to let the truck pass me and to look again at the driving directions.

As I sat in the driveway, I heard another honk. It was the tailgating truck. I had pulled into his driveway. I drove forward, did a U-turn, and parked the van. I then called Sue (who wasn’t surprised to hear from me) and had her guide me step-by-step to my destination.

Questions

1. What has been the ignition to every revival fire in history?
2. Would you be anguished to see a child drown? Are you as anguished about the unsaved? If not, what does this tell you about yourself?
3. What can you do to right this situation?
4. What are some of the reasons we find it hard to pray?
5. What are many Christians doing to promote revival?
6. What is “true prayer”?

Answers to these review questions are provided in the back of the printed book / source PDF.

Memory Verse

“How, then, can they call on the one they have not believed in? And how can they believe in the one of whom they have not heard? And how can they hear without someone preaching to them?”

Romans 10:14

Last Words

Weep not for me, I pray you. God by this sickness calls me hence to enjoy a better life; and now I shall enter into the desired haven toward which this frail vessel of mine has been a long time steering.

Queen Jane of Navarre (1572), sometimes referred to as Jeanne D’Albrets