Revival, part 1

* Unless otherwise indicated excerpts are taken from Revival! by Brian Edwards, Authentic Records of Revivals by Reid and The Power of Prayer by Samuel Prime.  The following has been transcribed from a sermon preached at the Church at War conference in Waterloo, Ontario (with minor edits).

We have heard with our ears O God our fathers have told us what work thou didst in their days in the times of old… and the psalmist when on then to plead with God to do it again. - Psalm 44:1

Can you say what he said?  Can you say that you have heard what God has done in times of old?  

I think many of us don’t even realize what is possible with God because we haven’t heard.  We’re not asking for revival because we don’t know what revival is.  We haven’t heard the stories of when God has come down among the people.  

After giving an account of revival in the Hebrides Duncan Campbell asked the people a question:
“My dear people, do you good folk understand what revival means? Have you a conception of what it means to see God working? The God of miracles, sovereign, and supernatural.   Moving in the midst of men, and hundreds swept into the kingdom.” 

I believe that is just our problem.  We don’t have any such conception of what it means to see God working.  

So picture this:  “a large crowd has gathered, far more than the church can accommodate…” 

Incidentally, that is a common problem in revival.  Then... “Suddenly it begins to rain very heavily.  The minister urges the people not to stir, ‘just protect your Bibles by putting them under your clothes.’  He himself continues to preach with his Bible wide open.  And the people?  They just sit on the ground in the pouring rain with rivulets of water running beneath them.  Though soaked to the skin, they go on listening to God’s saving Word.  Only after a long time does it stop.  There are mothers with babies in their arms, yet no one stirs until the meeting is over, and no one is anxious for it to conclude early.”

Or picture this:  “Suddenly there comes over the people a terrible conviction of sin...  so that people throughout the church are weeping uncontrollably.”   

In one place the story is told of how “as the people were praying a spirit of heaviness and sorrow for sin came down upon the... [people].  Over on one side someone began to weep and in a moment the whole assembly was weeping.  Man after man would rise, confess his sins, break down and weep and then throw himself to the floor and beat the floor with his fists in perfect agony of conviction.”

Another minister described this scene: “Did you ever witness two hundred sinners with one accord in one place weeping for their sins?  Until you have seen this you have no adequate conception of the solemn scene.  I felt as though I was standing on the verge of the eternal world’ while the floor under my feet was shaken by the trembling of anxious souls in view of a judgment to come.”

Think about the prayer meeting that takes place at your church.  When M’Cheyne came back from a mission trip he found that revival had struck. He said, “I found 39 prayer meetings held in connection with the congregation and 5 of these were conducted and attended entirely by little children”

In 1805 revival began in the Sunday School… a minister described this scene: “hundreds of children from 8 years old and upwards might be seen in the congregation hearing the word with all the attention of the most devout Christian and bathed with tears.”

In another revival it was a group of young girls who met on subsequent nights from 10:00 until 1 am.    And can you guess how they spent those hours?  In praying, singing and weeping… 

And what about the boys?  They were praying somewhere else!  

One man tells of how “the prayer meetings used to begin at 7 am on Sunday mornings but that was felt to be far too late in the day for the great business that had to be transacted before the throne of the heavenly grace!”  And this is what he said when revival came: “The meetings now begin at 6 and go on for almost seven days a week… Some of you who are strangers may smile - many of us did - but we don’t now.  It is that continuous persevering God honouring weekly campaign of prayer that has moved the mighty hand of God to pour upon this favoured people the blessings of His grace in such rich abundance; and if ever you should be asked the secret of this church’s great spiritual prosperity you can tell them of the prayer meetings, and especially of the gatherings of god’s people - 40-60 strong - at 6 or 7 summer and winter, wet day and fine - to pray.”

He said, “The revival goes on.  I cannot leave the building… until 12 and 1 am.  I have closed the service several times and yet it would break out again quite beyond the control of human power.”  

In the revival that took place in Ulster, the people had just had a three and a half hour meeting…so  the minister pronounced the benediction; but the people wouldn’t leave.  They continued to pray and praise.  Later again he pronounced benediction but still they wouldn’t leave.  The minister finally left at 2 am... and still some remained. 

He observed, “The difficulty used to be to get the people into the church, but the difficulty now is to get them out of it.  

“In revival the churches are overcrowded with people who only attend once - not because the congregation will not turn out for the evening, but because they will not go home in the morning.”
Someone has said, “One constant factor in revival is the sense of the awful holiness of God…. No one caught up in the spirit of revival can ever take it lightly and flippantly; joy there may be, but not jollity.  A holy seriousness is a hallmark of true revival.”

In revival what they want is “is no other sanctification but the privilege to sin no more; no other happiness but to be near Him, to think of Him and do His pleasure; no other self-denial but to be deprived of Him and His blessing; not other calamity but to displease him; no other life but in Him.”

“In times of revival Christians go out in evangelism spontaneously.  You cannot stop them.  Nobody can stop them.”

I could go on describing God what has done time and again...  I could describe how bars are forced to close because no one is interested anymore or how soccer fields are left empty because the people are praying. I could describe scenes of people young old gathered wherever you can find them, praying with tears and worshipping God with shouts of joy.

Instead I want you to think now about our current spiritual poverty.  It seems to me that our greatest problem in this generation is that we think we are well.  Like Laodicea, it isn’t only that we are desperately lukewarm but that in the meantime we think we are rich when actually we are naked and poor and blind.

This is a time of unprecedented spiritual declension.

Actually, I used those words to describe the Church 3 years ago.  At the time I talked about rampant immorality:  marriages in trouble, sexual immorality, hedonism.  I talked about the widespread abandonment of the 2nd and 4th commandments, I spoke of the loss of our missionary burden and commitment, widespread prayerlessness, our laziness after God, our idolatry and worldliness, and then the fact that week by week by week pastors everywhere are sowing sowing sowing and there’s no reaping.  

We are so backward in our thinking. We are still spending incessant amounts of money printing theological tomes and glorious histories of what the Church was like when she was alive, as if there were no present crisis to address.

So what - ultimately - is wrong with the churches across the continent? It is their failure to honour God. He is not the delight and joy of His people. Even in the Church He is largely forgotten

What I described when I told those stories of revival sounded unusual didn’t it?  Because you have to beg them to come to your prayer meetings… and when was the last time you heard of a group of 9 and 10 and 11 year old children gathering regularly to pray with tears?  Instead many of our churches are losing young people altogether.  They’re not interested even in Sunday worship... and what happens at your church week by week?  When was the last time you saw a congregation melted into tears over their sin.  You’ve heard shouts at a football game.  When was the last time you heard spontaneous shouts of joy from a people overcome with love for God?  When was the last time you witnessed a congregation refusing to go home because so hungry for God?   Isn’t it rather the opposite?  That there is too much levity and lightness?   As Ravenhill said they come away from worship and "immediately they’re talking all the drivel of the world"… out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks.

Do you see the crisis that confronts us?  There is so little desire for God among us.   We’re happy to be together especially if its for good clean Christian fun, but we are content to be at distance from God.  That is why our prayers lives are so pathetic, that is why our prayer meetings are so unpopular, and that is why our prayers are so often so flippant and so self-centered. If God were to come to us like He did Moses saying “listen I’m not pleased with you, so I’m not going to with you; but here’s what I will do instead: you can have all of this - an angel to lead you, victory over the Cannanite and Amorite and the hittite and the Jebusite and all the rest of them… the promised land.  Just not me."   We’d take it wouldn’t we?  Because if you listen to our praying you would notice we weren’t asking for more of God in the first place.  

This is the crying sin of the Church in this generation that we have so little appetite for God, and that confronted with the church’s poverty we are so little moved.  That instead of weeping we are laughing.  If God were to put marks on the foreheads of the men that sigh and cry for the sins of this generation and for the desperate condition of the church I am afraid He wouldn’t find very many to mark.