Book recommendation: Sounds from Heaven

As I am returning to this blog I must admit that I have nothing new to add from my personal experience. Still praying, still waiting, still hungering and thirsting for God to pour out his Spirit. I have come across a very good book about the Revival on the Isle of Lewis, written by Colin and Mary Peckham. The title of the book is "Sounds from Heaven". Great reading, very challenging, though. The amount of prayer that went up to God prior to the revival seems to have been colossal. Those Scottish Presbyterians knew how to persist in prayer. I don't see this intensity yet anywhere around me here in Ireland. Another fact that I learned the past week about the revival here in Dublin in 1967: There was a blind man who was the leader of the Nazarene Church at that time. He and another guy in the congregation fasted and prayed for 40 days prior to the outbreak of the revival. There seems to be a very high price attached to this special blessing of revival - a price of persistent and sacrificial intercessory prayer. And who is able for that? How do you "go through with  God?" How do you persist in God's presence without being legalistic? Without trying to twist his arm? Without trying to impress him with your good works, with your good prayers? How do you learn to be a true intercessor? - You can only learn it by doing it. By entering into this dangerous, lonely and demanding place before the face of our holy God. Only he can teach you how to pray while you are praying. To bear the burden of unsaved souls, to feel some of the pain HE is feeling in view of so many people perishing in their sins. In Ezekiel 22 God laments the fact that he sought one person to stand in the gap between him and the people so that he would have a reason to stop his judgment - and he found none. Intercession is a lonely and very demanding calling. Who will heed the call? - My prayer is: Here am I, Lord, take me. But can I really do it? With God's help I will try - that's all I can say. Anybody want to join in?

Revival starts with Us

It's been a while since my last blog entry. A few days after I wrote it my father passed away - unexpectedly and suddenly. Life has been challenging and intense since then. But in the midst of it all I sense God working mightily in me.

A few weeks ago God started to move on my heart in an unprecedented and unusual way. The hunger for revival, the hunger for his manifest presence in my life and in our church grew so strong that I couldn't shake it off anymore. In addition to that God sent confirmation through different sources and different people all across the spectrum of the Christian Church. One weekend I wasn't able to prepare my sermon that I had intended to preach. Hunger for God and conviction of my own sin gripped me so hard, I had to spend hours in prayer before God, seeking his face in tears and repenting of all known sin and my idols. Instead of preaching on the intended text of Acts 1, 1-8 I just gave a testimony of what God is doing in my life. Those of you who would like to hear about it can log on to www.nazarene.ie and listen to the sermons of the last couple of weeks. The importance of and the urgent need for repentance gripped my consciousness and penetrated my thinking. God is on the move. And he starts with us. After the service where I couldn't preach my intended sermon one of the members of my congregation forwarded to me the following email that she had received from Simon Guillebaud (A Christian Author whom God had used to speak to me):

I'm feeling very challenged of late, and the below hit me hard:

This man was born in a gypsy tent, of humble origins, and yet ended up being invited to the White House by two presidents. Rodney ‘Gypsy’ Smith came into the world in 1860 in Epping Forest, just outside London. Forty five times he crossed the Atlantic to preach the gospel to millions of people on both sides. His passion was almost unparalleled, and there was great fruit in what he did. What was his secret? Private prayer. His praying was even more powerful than his preaching.

A delegation once came to him to enquire how they might experience personal and mass revival as he had. They wanted to be used the way Gypsy was. Without hesitating, he said:

“Go home. Lock yourself in your room. Kneel down in the middle of the floor, and with a piece of chalk draw a circle round yourself. There, on your knees, pray fervently and brokenly that God would start a revival within that chalk circle.”

How badly do we want it?

SG

It is good to pray for revival in Ireland, or Germany, or Russia or the world. But the start of it is very personal: revival starts with us. I don't have a piece of chalk to draw a circle around myself, but there is a rug in my study that I often kneel on to pray. My intense prayer now, as I kneel on this rug, is  - Lord, send revival to this rug.

Revival and Prayer

Now I come to a subject matter that is very close to my heart: prayer. Not that I am an expert on prayer - far from it. But I have always been fascinated by it, drawn to it, often disappointed and tired and exhausted because of it. I don't fully understand how it works. I don't understand why it is so important, I only know that it is very important and that it works in a mysterious and hidden kind of way. When it comes to revival prayer plays a decisive, if not THE crucial part, in bringing it about. As far as we know all revivals in history have been preceded by seasons of intense and persistent prayer - either by individuals or by groups of people, or both.

Just a few examples from history: the first revival of the New Testament era started with a prolonged time of communal prayer of the first followers of Jesus. Before the Holy Spirit was poured out on them in power they spent 10 days waiting in Jerusalem for it, no doubt most of the time they spent together was spent in prayer, waiting on God, seeking his face, preparing themselves to receive the gift he promised. And all throughout the book of the Act of the Apostles prayer plays a crucial part in reaching out to the world in power.

There is a fascinating talk by Dr. J. Edwin Orr (originally from Belfast) entitled, "The Role of Prayer in Spiritual Awakening." He is an expert on American Revivals and in this talk he shows from history how every spiritual awakening in America has started with intense prayer.

Before the Dublin Revival in 1968 that I mentioned earlier in the blog regular prayer meetings across denominational barriers were held every Wednesday for several decades in that city, praying to God for revival.

The revival in Indonesia of the 1960-s and 1970-s - with two German Theologians playing a prominent part in it (Detmar and Volkhard Scheunemann) - started with two month of intense prayer at a bible institute in Batu. The burden for prayer was so strong that many students and teachers prayed through whole nights. They stopped the regular school routine and devoted all their days and many nights to seeking God's face, repenting of lukewarmness and sin, and praying for revival. When God sent it, it strongly resembled the accounts of the Acts of the Apostles in its intensity and spiritual power.

Reuben R. Torey, a preacher who was mightily used by God in spiritual awakenings around the world at the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century, even went so far as to give a prescription how to start a revival. He writes: First: let a group of Christians get thoroughly right with God. If this isn't done, the rest will come to nothing. Second: Let them bind themselves together to pray for revival until God opens the windows of heaven and comes down. Third: Let them put themselves at the disposal of God for his use as he sees fit in winning others to Christ. That is all. I've given this prescription around the world... and in no instance has it failed. It cannot fail.

The promise of Scripture is very clear: 

if my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then will I hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and will heal their land. (2 Chronicles 7, 14)

Still I am sure revival is the sovereign work of God. It is God who initiates it by his holy Spirit. But he always uses prayer of his children as a means to this end. That's why we have started this year with a week of prayer in our church. That's why we are organizing United Prayer Nights in our church each month. That's why I have often prayed in my individual prayer times to the point of physical and emotional exhaustion. So far this is the weak point here in Greystones. There is no movement in prayer yet. And sometimes the temptation to give up is very strong. And yet, there are signs that God is moving. Yesterday I was at a united  prayer and worship event in Hillside Evangelical Church in Greystones - and it was very encouraging and uplifting. So I want to get up, start praying again, with effort, with faith, with intensity, with conviction.

Anybody reading this wants to join in? The United Prayer Nights in our church are happening every first Sunday night of the month at 7 pm. So the next one is on the 5th of February. Let's come together for praise, prayer and intercession. There is no way around it if we want to see revival come to this land.