The Coming Revival

"Wilt Thou not revive us again, that Thy people may rejoice in Thee?"—Ps. lxxxv. 6.

"O Lord, revive Thy work in the midst of the years."—Hab. iii. 2.

"Though I walk in the midst of trouble, Thou wilt revive me: Thy right hand shall save me."—Ps. cxxxviii. 7.

"I dwell with him that is of a humble and contrite heart, to revive the heart of the contrite ones."—Isa. lvii. 15.

"Come, and let us return to the Lord: for He hath torn, and He will heal us. He will revive us."—Hos. vi. 1, 2.

The coming Revival—one frequently hears the word. There are teachers not a few who see the tokens of its approach, and confidently herald its speedy appearance. In the increase of mission interest, in the tidings of revivals in places where all were dead or cold, in the hosts of our young gathered into Students' and other Associations or Christian Endeavor Societies, in doors everywhere opened in the Christian and the heathen world, in victories already secured in the fields white unto the harvest, wherever believing, hopeful workers enter, they find the assurance of a time of power and blessing such as we have not known. The Church is about to enter on a new era of increasing spirituality and larger extension.

There are others who, while admitting the truth of some of these facts, yet fear that the conclusions drawn from them are one-sided and premature. They see the interest in missions increased, but point out to how small a circle it is confined, and how utterly out of proportion it is to what it ought to be. To the great majority of Church members, to the greater part of the Church, it is as yet anything but a life question. They remind us of the power of worldliness and formality, of the increase of the money-making and pleasure-loving spirit among professing Christians, to the lack of spirituality in so many, many of our churches, and the continuing and apparently increasing estrangement of multitudes from God's Day and Word, as proof that the great revival has certainly not begun, and is hardly thought of by the most. They say that they do not see the deep humiliation, the intense desire, the fervent prayer which appear as the forerunners of every true revival.

There are right-hand and left-hand errors which are equally dangerous. We must seek as much to be kept from the superficial Optimism, which never is able to gauge the extent of the evil, as from the hopeless Pessimism which can neither praise God for what He has done, nor trust Him for what He is ready to do. The former will lose itself in a happy self-gratulation, as it rejoices in its zeal and diligence and apparent success, and never see the need of confession and great striving in prayer, ere we are prepared to meet and conquer the hosts of darkness. The latter virtually gives over the world to Satan, and almost prays and rejoices to see things get worse, to hasten the coming of Him who is to put all right. May God keep us from either error, and fulfil the promise, "Thine ears shall hear a word behind thee, saying, This is the way, walk ye in it, when ye turn to the right hand, and when ye turn to the left." Let us listen to the lessons suggested by the passages we have quoted; they may help us to pray the prayer aright: Revive Thy work, O Lord!

1. Revive Thy work, O Lord! Read again the passages of Scripture, and see how they all contain the one thought: Revival is God's work; He alone can give it; it must come from above. We are frequently in danger of looking to what God has done and is doing, and to count on that as the pledge that He will at once do more. And all the time it may be true that He is blessing us up to the measure of our faith or self-sacrifice, and cannot give larger measure, until there has been a new discovery and confession of what is hindering Him. Or we may be looking to all the signs of life and good around us, and congratulating ourselves on all the organizations and agencies that are being created, while the need of God's mighty and direct interposition is not rightly felt, and the entire dependence upon Him not cultivated. Regeneration, the giving of Divine life, we all acknowledge to be God's act, a miracle of His power. The restoring or reviving of the Divine life, in a soul or a church, is as much a supernatural work. To have the spiritual discernment that can understand the signs of the heavens, and prognosticate the coming revival, we need to enter deep into God's mind and will as to its conditions, and the preparedness of those who pray for it or are to be used to bring it about. "Surely the Lord God will do nothing, but He revealeth His secret unto His servants the prophets." It is God who is to give the revival; it is God who reveals His secret; it is the spirit of absolute dependence upon God, giving Him the honor and the glory, that will prepare for it.

2. Revive Thy work, O Lord! A second lesson suggested is, that the revival God is to give will be given in answer to prayer. It must be asked and received direct from God Himself. Those who know anything of the history of revivals will remember how often this has been proved—both larger and more local revivals have been distinctly traced to special prayer. In our own day there are numbers of congregations and missions where special or permanent revivals are—all glory be to God—connected with systematic, believing prayer. The coming revival will be no exception. An extraordinary spirit of prayer, urging believers to much secret and united prayer, pressing them to "labor fervently" in their supplications, will be one of the surest signs of approaching showers and floods of blessing.

Let all who are burdened with the lack of spirituality, with the low state of the life of God in believers, listen to the call that comes to all. If there is to be revival,—a mighty, Divine revival,—it will need, on our part, corresponding whole-heartedness in prayer and faith. Let not one believer think himself too weak to help, or imagine that he will not be missed. If he first begin, the gift that is in him, may be so stirred, that, for his circle or neighborhood, he shall be God's chosen intercessor. Let us think of the need of souls, of all the sins and failings among God's people, of the little power there is in so much of the preaching, and begin to cry every day, Wilt Thou not revive us again, that Thy people may rejoice in Thee? And let us have the truth graven deep in our hearts: every revival comes, as Pentecost came, as the fruit of united, continued prayer. The coming revival must begin with a great prayer revival. It is in the closet, with the door shut, that the sound of abundance of rain will be first heard. An increase of secret prayer with ministers and members, will be the sure harbinger of blessing.

3. Revive Thy work, O Lord! A third lesson our texts teach is that it is to the humble and contrite that the revival is promised. We want the revival to come upon the proud and the self-satisfied, to break them down and save them. God will give this, but only on the condition that those who see and feel the sin of others take their burden of confession and bear it, and that all who pray for and claim in faith God's reviving power for His Church, shall humble themselves with the confession of its sins. The need of revival always points to previous decline; and decline was always caused by sin. Humiliation and contrition have ever been the conditions of revival. In all intercession confession of man's sin and God's righteous judgment is ever an essential element.

Throughout the history of Israel we continually see this. It comes out in the reformations under the pious Kings of Judah. We hear it in the prayer of men like Ezra and Nehemiah and Daniel. In Isaiah and Jeremiah and Ezekiel, as well as in the minor prophets, it is the keynote of all the warning as of all the promise. If there be no humiliation and forsaking of sin there can be no revival or deliverance: "These men have set up their idols in their hearts. Shall I at all be inquired of by them?" "To this man will I look, even to him that is poor and of a contrite spirit, and that trembleth at My word." Amid the most gracious promises of Divine visitation there is ever this note: "Be ashamed and confounded for your ways, O House of Israel."

We find the same in the New Testament. The Sermon on the Mount promises the kingdom to the poor and them that mourn. In the Epistles to the Corinthians and Galatians the religion of man, of worldly wisdom and confidence in the flesh, is exposed and denounced; without its being confessed and forsaken, all the promises of grace and the Spirit will be vain. In the Epistles to the seven churches we find five of which He, out of whose mouth goes the sharp, two-edged sword, says, that He has something against them. In each of these the keyword of His message is—not to the unconverted, but to the Church—Repent! All the glorious promises which each of these Epistles contain, down to the last one, with its "Open the door and I will come in"; "He that overcometh shall sit with Me on My throne," are dependent on that one word—Repent!

And if there is to be a revival, not among the unsaved, but in our churches, to give a holy, spiritual membership, will not that trumpet sound need to be heard—Repent? Was it only in Israel, in the ministry of kings and prophets, that there was so much evil in God's people to be cleansed away? Was it only in the Church of the first century, that Paul and James and our Lord Himself had to speak such sharp words? Or is there not in the Church of our days an idolatry of money and talent and culture, a worldly spirit, making it unfaithful to its one only Husband and Lord, a confidence in the flesh which grieves and resists God's Holy Spirit? Is there not almost everywhere a confession of the lack of spirituality and spiritual power? Let all who long for the coming revival, and seek to hasten it by their prayers, pray this above everything, that the Lord may prepare His prophets to go before Him at His bidding: "Cry aloud and spare not, lift up thy voice like a trumpet, and show My people their transgression." Every deep revival among God's people must have its roots in a deep sense and confession of sin. Until those who would lead the Church in the path of revival bear faithful testimony against the sins of the Church, it is to be feared that it will find people unprepared. Men would fain have a revival as the outgrowth of their agencies and progress. God's way is the opposite: it is out of death, acknowledged as the desert of sin, confessed as utter helplessness, that He revives. He revives the heart of the contrite one.

4. Revive Thy work, O Lord! There is a last thought, suggested by the text from Hosea. It is as we return to the Lord that revival will come; for if we had not wandered from Him, His life would be among us in power. "Come and let us return to the Lord: for He hath torn, He will heal us: He hath smitten; He will bind us up: He will revive us, and we shall live in His sight." As we have said, there can be no return to the Lord, where there is no sense or confession of wandering. Let us return to the Lord must be the keynote of the revival. Let us return, acknowledging and forsaking whatever there has been in the Church that is not entirely according to His mind and spirit. Let us return, yielding up and casting out whatever there has been in our religion or along with it of the power of God's two great enemies—confidence in the flesh or the spirit of the world. Let us return, in the acknowledgment of how undividedly God must have us, to fill us with His Spirit, and use us for the kingdom of His Son. Oh, let us return, in the surrender of a dependence and a devotion which has no measure but the absolute claim of Him who is the Lord! Let us return to the Lord with our whole heart, that He may make and keep us wholly His. He will revive us, and we shall live in His sight. Let us turn to the God of Pentecost, as Christ led His disciples to turn to Him, and the God of Pentecost will turn to us.

It is for this returning to the Lord that the great work of intercession is needed. It is here the coming revival must find its strength. Let us begin as individuals in secret to plead with God, confessing whatever we see of sin or hindrance, in ourselves or others. If there were not one other sin, surely in the lack of prayer there is matter enough for repentance and confession and returning to the Lord. Let us seek to foster the spirit of confession and supplication and intercession in those around us. Let us help to encourage and to train those who think themselves too feeble. Let us lift up our voice to proclaim the great truths: the revival must come from above; the revival must be received in faith from above and brought down by prayer; the revival comes to the humble and contrite, for them to carry to others; if we return to the Lord with our whole heart, He will revive us. On those who see these truths, rests the solemn responsibility of giving themselves up to witness for them and to act them out.

And as each of us pleads for the revival throughout the Church, let us specially, at the same time, cry to God for our own neighborhood or sphere of work. Let, with every minister and worker, there be "great searchings of heart," as to whether they are ready to give such proportion of time and strength to prayer as God would have. Let them, even as in public they are leaders of their larger or smaller circles, give themselves in secret to take their places in the front rank of the great intercession-host that must prevail with God, ere the great revival, the floods of blessing can come. Of all who speak or think of, or long for revival, let not one hold back in this great work of honest, earnest, definite pleading: Revive Thy work, O Lord! Wilt Thou not revive us again?

Come and let us return to the Lord: He will revive us! And let us know, let us follow on to know the Lord. "His going forth is sure as the morning; and He shall come unto us as the rain, as the latter rain that watereth the earth." Amen. So be it.

NOTE A, Chap. VI. p. 75.

Just this day I have been meeting a very earnest lady missionary from India. She confesses and mourns the lack of prayer. But—in India at least—it can hardly be otherwise. You have only the morning hours, from six to eleven, for your work. Some have attempted to rise at four, and get the time they think they need, and have suffered, and had to give it up. Some have tried to take time after lunch, and been found asleep on their knees. You are not your own master, and must act with others. No one who has not been in India can understand the difficulty; sufficient time for much intercession cannot be secured.

Were it only in the heat of India the difficulty existed, one might be silent. But, alas! in the coldest winter in London, and in the moderate climate of South Africa, there is the same trouble everywhere. If once we really felt; intercession is the most important part of our work; the securing of God's presence and power in full measure is the essential thing; this is our first duty; our hours of work would all be made subordinate to this one thing.

May God show us all whether there indeed be an inseparable difficulty for which we are not responsible; whether it be only a mistake we are making, or a sin by which we are grieving Him and hindering His Spirit!

If we ask the question George Muller once asked of a Christian who complained that he could not find time sufficient for the study of the word and prayer, whether an hour less work, say four hours with the soul dwelling in the full light of God would not be more prosperous and effective than five hours with the depressing consciousness of unfaithfulness, and the loss of the power that could be obtained in prayer. The answer will not be difficult. The more we think of it the more we feel that when earnest, godly workers allow, against their better will, the spiritual to be crowded out by incessant occupation and the fatigue it brings, it must be because the spiritual life is not sufficiently strong in them to bid the lesser stand aside till the presence of God in Christ and the power of the Spirit have been fully secured.

Let us listen to Christ saying: Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's. Let duty and work have their place. And unto God the things that are God's. Let the worship of the Spirit, the entire dependence and continued waiting upon God for the full experience of His presence and power every day, and the strength of Christ working in us, ever have the first place. The whole question is simply this: Is God to have the place, the love, the trust, the time for personal fellowship He claims, so that all our working shall be God working in us.

NOTE B, Chap. VII. p. 90.

Let me tell here a story that occurs in one of Dr. Boardman's works. He had been invited by a lady of good position, well known as a successful worker among her husband's dependants, to come and address them. "And then," she added, "I want to speak to you about a bit of bondage of my own." When he had addressed her meeting, and found many brought to Christ through her, he wondered what her trouble might be. She soon told him. God had blessed her work, but, alas! the enjoyment she once had had in God's word and secret prayer had been lost. And she had tried her utmost to get it back, and had failed. "Ah! that is just your mistake," he said. "How that? Ought I not to do my best to have the coldness removed?" "Tell me," he said, "were you saved by doing your best?" "Oh, no! I tried long to do that, but only found rest when I ceased trying, and trusted Christ." "And that is what you need to do now. Enter your closet at the appointed time, however dull you feel, and place yourself before your Lord. Do not try to rouse an earnestness you do not feel; but quietly say to Him that He sees how all is wrong, how helpless you are, and trust Him to bless you. He will do it; as you trust quietly, His Spirit will work."

The simple story may teach many a Christian a most blessed lesson in the life of prayer. You have accepted of Christ Jesus to make you whole, and give you strength to walk in newness of life; you have claimed the Holy Spirit to be in you the Spirit of supplication and intercession; but do not wonder if your feelings are not all at once changed, or if your power of prayer does not come in the way you would like. It is a life of faith. By faith we receive the Holy Spirit and all His workings. Faith regards neither sight nor feeling, but rests, even when there appears to be no power to pray, in the assurance that the Spirit is praying in us as we bow quietly before God. He that thus waits in faith, and honors the Holy Spirit, and yields himself to Him, will soon find that prayer will begin to come. And he that perseveres in the faith that through Christ and by the Spirit each prayer, however feeble, is acceptable to God, will learn the lesson that it is possible to be taught by the Spirit, and led to walk worthy of the Lord to all well pleasing.

NOTE C, Chap. IX. p. 109.

Just yesterday again—three days after the conversation mentioned in the note to chap. vii.,—I met a devoted young missionary lady from the Interior. As a conversation on prayer was proceeding, she interposed unasked with the remark: "But it is really impossible to find the time to pray as we wish to." I could only answer: "Time is a quantity that accommodates itself to our will; what our hearts really consider of first importance in the day we will soon succeed in finding time for." It must surely be that the ministry of intercession has never been put before our students in Theological Halls and Missionary Training Homes as the most important part of their life-work. We have thought of our work in preaching or visiting as our real duty, and of prayer as a subordinate means to do this work successfully. Would not the whole position be changed if we regarded the ministry of intercession as the chief thing—getting the blessing and power of God for the souls entrusted to us? Then our work would take its right place, and become the subordinate one of really dispensing blessings which we had received from God. It was when the friend at midnight, in answer to his prayer, had received from Another as much as he needed, that he could supply his hungry friend. It was the intercession, going out and importuning, that was the difficult work; returning home with his rich supply to impart was easy, joyful work. This is Christ's divine order for all thy work, my brother: First come, in utter poverty, every day, and get from God the blessing in intercession, go then rejoicingly to impart it.

NOTE D, Chap. X. p. 120.

Let me once again refer my readers to William Law, and repeat what I have said before, that no book has so helped me to an insight into the place and work of the Holy Spirit in the economy of redemption as his Address To The Clergy.

The Power of the Spirit: An Address to the Clergy. By William Law. With additional Extracts and an Introduction by Rev. A. M.

The way in which he opens up how God's one object was to dwell in man, making him partaker of His goodness and glory, in no other way than by Himself living and working in Him, gives one the key to what Pentecost and the sending forth of the Spirit of God's Son into our hearts really means. It is Christ in God's name really regaining and retaking possession of the home He had created for itself. It is God entering into the secret depths of our nature there to "work to will and to do," to "work that which is pleasing in His sight in Christ Jesus." It is as this truth enters into us, and we see that there is and can be no good in us but what God works, that we shall see light on the Divine mystery of prayer, and believe in the Holy Spirit as breathing within us desires which God will fulfil when we yield to them, and believingly present them in the name of Christ. We shall, then, see that just as wonderful and prevailing as the intercession and prayer passing from the Incarnate Son to the Father in heaven, in our intercourse with God, the Spirit who is God breathing and praying in us, amid all our feebleness, His heavenborn Divine petitions. What a heavenly thing prayer becomes.

The latter part of the above-mentioned book consists of extracts from Law's letters. These have been published separately as a little shilling volume. No one who will take the time quietly to read and master this so simple, but deep teaching they contain, without being wonderfully strengthened in the confidence which is needed, if we are to pray much and boldly. As we learn that the Holy Spirit is within us to reveal Christ there, to make us in living reality partakers of His death, His life, His merit, His disposition, so that He is formed within us, but will begin to see how Divinely right and sure it is that our intercessions in His name must be heard. His own Spirit maintains the living union with Himself, in whom we are brought nigh to God, and gives us boldness of access. What I have so feebly said in the chapter on the Spirit of Supplication will get new meaning. And, what is more, the exercise of prayer a new attractiveness. Its solemn Divine mystery will humble us; its unspeakable privilege lift us up in faith and adoration.

NOTE E, Chap. XI. p. 133.

There is a question, the deepest of all, on which I have not entered in this book. I have spoken of the lack of prayer in the individual Christian as a symptom of a disease. But what shall we say of it, that there is such a widespread prevalence of this failure to give, a due proportion of time and strength to prayer? Do we not need to enquire, How comes it that the Church of Christ, endued with the Holy Ghost, cannot train its minister, and workers, and members to place first what is first? How comes it that the confession of too little prayer, and the call for more prayer, is so frequently heard, and yet the evil continues? The Spirit of God, the spirit of supplication and intercession is in the Church and in every believer. There must surely be some other spirit of great power resisting and hindering this Spirit of God. It is indeed so. The spirit of the world, which under all its beautiful and even religious activities is the Spirit of the God of this world, is the great hindrance. Everything that is done on earth, whether within or without the Church, is done by either of these two spirits. What is in the individual the flesh, that is in mankind as a whole, the spirit of the world, and all the power the flesh has in the individual, is owing to the place given to the spirit of this world in the Church and in Christian life. It is the spirit of the world in the great hindrance to the spirit of prayer. All our most earnest calls to men to pray more will be vain except this evil be acknowledged, and combated, and overcome. The believer and the church must be entirely freed from the spirit of the world.

And how is this to be done? There is but one way—the cross of Christ, "by which," as Paul says, "the world is crucified unto me, and I unto the world." It is only through death to the world, that we can be freed from its spirit. The separation must be vital and entire. It is only through the acceptance of our crucifixion with Christ, that we can live out this confession and as crucified to the world, maintain the position of irreconcilable hostility to whatever is of its spirit and not of the spirit of God. And it is only God Himself who, by His Divine power, can lead us into and keep us daily dead to sin, and alive unto God in Christ Jesus. The cross, with its shame, and its separation from the world, and its death to all that is of flesh and of self, is the only power that can conquer the spirit of the world.

I have felt so strongly that the truth needs to be anew asserted, that I hope, if it please God, to publish a volume: The Cross of Christ, with the enquiry into what God's word teaches us to our actual participation with Christ in His crucifixion. Christ prayed on the way to the cross. He prayed Himself to the cross. He prayed on the cross. He prays ever as the fruit of the cross, as the church lives on the cross, and the cross lives in the church. The spirit of prayer will be given. In Christ it was the crucifixion spirit and death that was the source of the intercession spirit and power. With us it can be no otherwise.

NOTE F, Chap. XIV. p. 169.

I have more than once spoken of the need of training Christians to the work of intercession. In a previous note I have asked the question whether, in the teaching of our Theological Halls and Mission Training Houses, sufficient attention is given to prayer as the most important, and in some senses, the most difficult part of the work for which the students are being prepared. I have wondered whether it might not be possible to offer those who are willing, during their student life, to put themselves under a course of training, some help in the way of hints and suggestions as to what is needed to give prayer the place and the power in our ministry it ought to have.

As a rule, it is in the student life that the character must be formed for future years, and it is in the present student world that the church of the future must be influenced. If God allows me to carry out a plan that is hardly quite mature yet, I would wish to publish a volume, The Student's Prayer Manual, combining the teaching of Scripture as to what is most needed to make men of prayer of us, with such practical directions as may help a young Christian, preparing to devote his life to God's service successfully, to cultivate such a spirit and habit of prayer, as shall abide with him through all his coming life and labors.