Things Were Getting Worse And Worse
By Elmer G. Klassen
Our religious life is in a decline. The political, social as well as religious life is showing disrespect to Evangelicals. There is among Evangelicals an increased interest and concern in the political strife in Washington. Injustice among ethnic groups is taking the resources of Christian on either side of the issues that dominate the news given by a godless press.
Our financial and commercial prosperity is becoming concern to Christians and is having an adverse effect on our Christian testimony. Trade with other people is giving us wave after wave of prosperity and people are enjoying accumulating wealth as the interest for the Evangelical message is being neglected.
Some people are losing faith in prophecies of the coming of Christ because some have set dates for His coming which did not prove true. This has given the Evangelical church some ridicule and caused faith in Jesus Christ to be weakened as more prophecies are being overemphasized.
The above is how a historian describes life in America 140 years ago just before the financial panic and the second worldwide Evangelical revival in the beginning of the mid-nineteenth century.
It was not the financial panic of 1857 that brought repentance and change of heart which changed our nation. In times of distress people often become yet more antagonistic against God. Twenty years before there had also been a commercial revulsion as widespread and unexpected as that of 1857 and much more disastrous, yet there was no noticeable turning to God. However in the middle of the 19th century Evangelicals began to pray as never before. When the factories were shut down, people were unemployed, despair stared in their faces and the hope of financial security was taken from the people, some Christians began to hear the voice of the Spirit calling them to repentance. The people prayed, repented and encouraged others to do the same by the thousands. Prayer meetings began all across eastern America. One historian described these prayer meetings as the beginning of the second worldwide Evangelical revival that began with a spirit of prayer and conviction of sin, continued with an emphasis upon the authority of the Scripture and recognizing the spiritual unity of all believers in Christ. It was said that Evangelicals prayed like Calvinists and worked like Armenians for the salvation of souls.
Difficult times do not mean that revival is coming. What happens when things get worse and worse? It all depends on us Christians. The Old Testament teaches that sometimes things just continued to get worse. Other times God’s people humbled themselves and prayed and things got better.
There were men preaching repentance in the 19th century that changed the spiritual climate of a nation. The best known and most greatly used of all evangelists was Charles Finney. He writes that adversity or a crisis in a nation is not what will cause people to repent. In his Lectures on Revivals Finney goes into detail to explain that a revival is not a miracle. He writes that revival is the result of the right use of the appropriate means.
Most of us Christians are inclined to put the responsibility for revival on God or somebody else. Our praying often leads us to believe that revival depends on someone else’s decision.
Revival praying begins with Spirit-filled Christians. The Spirit of intercession is given to Christians who have assurance of salvation and victory over sin and have heaviness of heart for the lost condition of friends. Revival begins with God setting His people to praying.
One of the best examples of this principle is found in the Book of Romans. After the proclamation of salvation and assurance of victory at the end of chapter eight the Apostle Paul in the next verses in chapter nine intercedes for his brethren and kinsmen. He writes, “I have great heaviness and continual sorrow in my heart” after he has just exclaimed that he was more than conqueror through Him who loves us. This burden from God came after Paul wrote that he was persuaded that nothing could separate us from the love of God. Then came the heaviness and continual sorrow in his heart for the sake of the people of Israel.
Wesley Duewel, in his newly published, Gods Power Is For You, explains in one of his chapters that revival comes when Christians like you and me respond to God’s desire for revival. He writes:
“Revival always comes from God, but it also always comes through a person of God. God has chosen to make His kingdom and His glory to a certain extent dependent on you. If you do not experience continuous personal revival in your own heart, God will fail to receive His full glory, His kingdom will suffer, and you will lose the reward God desires to bestow on you.
“Every great movement of God in real revival has been marked by His use of the prevailing prayer of many prayer warriors as they obeyed God’s call to prayer. It has also involved His anointing of a few chosen leaders.
“Often the rivers of revival blessings that transform the barren deserts into gardens of God are fed by numerous hidden streams. The foundations for every great work of God go much deeper than is apparent to the human eye.
“Before God demonstrates His mighty power publicly, He calls His saints to pray and humble themselves alone before Him. Before God manifests His transcendent glory in His church, He gives His hidden ones hungry hearts. Every hunger and thirsting in your heart for God’s revival power and glory is proof of God’s desire to bless and work exceedingly above your small comprehension. Every such passionate desire in your soul should make you pray, believe, and praise as never before. This is clear evidence that God desires to use you as one of His instruments for revival.
“Our greatest need is not for revival leadership. God always raises up His chosen instrument when the hour is fully come. God often chooses His leaders from the most unlikely of places. Any one of a multitude of people could be God’s chosen leader in revival if he or she is utterly and fully yielded to God.
“No can be God’s leader in revival unless he or she is God-anointed. That means that the glory and miracle power are God’s alone. Every past or present leader in genuine revival will gladly and repeatedly admit that he was neither able nor worthy of the position into which God thrust him. God uses such people so that the glory may be totally His own. No, our greatest need is not for some great leader.
“Our greatest need is for people like you and me to faithfully carry a burden of prayer. Our greatest need is for adequate hidden sources for revival. Revival will come only when there are enough hungry hearts, enough pleading intercessors, enough saints who will weep as they pray, enough who will be desperate enough to fast and pray. God has chosen to make His children a kingdom and priests (Rev. 1:6). They are to be ready always to intercede--in a constant fellowship with their Lord because He always lives to intercede (Heb. 7:25).
“God could have chosen otherwise, but He has chosen that the prayer of a righteous person will be powerful and effective. He has chosen that we will not have until we ask, that we will not have an open door until we knock, that we will not find until we seek. God always does far beyond what we ask for, but He nevertheless says, ‘You do not have, because you do not ask God’ (James 4:2).
“We are living in the Holy Spirit’s dispensation, in the church age, in the revival age. We have not yet even begun to realize all that God longs to do for and through His church. You are a part of that church. You have not even begun to realize all that God can do for and through you. You will either help or hinder revival, you will either be an instrument of the Holy Spirit to help bring about revival or you will bring grief to the Holy Spirit. Which will it be? To what extent are you willing to pay the spiritual price that revival may come at least partly through you?
“Lord, use my intercession to prepare Your way for revival!”
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