What Revival Should You Pray For?

Oh! men and brethren, what would this heart feel if I could but believe that there were some among you who would go home and pray for a revival men whose faith is large enough, and their love fiery enough to lead them from this moment to exercise unceasing intercessions that God would appear among us and do wondrous things here, as in the times of former generations.  Charles Spurgeon

A groundwork of prayer is required for the inception of revival.  Prayer for the birth of a revival cannot be answered by God until we pray.  God desires to answer our prayers but too often, in relation to revival, we either do not pray, or we pray for the wrong things.

What kind of revival should we be praying for?  A true revival is not going to be the same this time, as any other true revival from God.  However, there are some factors in a revival which do remain constant.  There are also many misguided ways to pray for a revival.

Whether you’re a Charismatic believer or a believer who does not believe in the Baptism of the Holy Spirit, I hope we can agree that God is powerful, and that He does work in people's lives today.  God does heal.  He does work miracles.  The Holy Spirit does speak to the hearts of men.

First let me talk about something I have seen in Charismatic circles.  I have heard pastors urge their parishioners to pray for revival, something like this:  “We need to pray for revival.  We want God to come down in power.  I want to see people who are ill or injured to be brought to the church first before being sent to the hospital.  When people drive past our church, the Holy Spirit moves them to pull into our driveway and come to our service without understanding why they would do such a thing.  I want God’s presence to be so powerful in our church that the dead would be raised to life.”

What is wrong with that?  Actually, nothing is wrong in desiring God to work so mightily in a church.  There are testimonies of these things happening in our modern day world.  The problem lays not in the desire to see such power, but in thinking that this is a revival.  It is not!

This is simply God’s power manifested in a very mighty way within a church.  I believe God can do all those things and more, but if the hearts of believers are not brought closer to Christ, if non-believers are not brought into the saving grace of Jesus, than all the great signs of God’s workings are useless.

I do not care about seeing miracles or even someone brought back from the grave, if the souls of men are not changed.  I know, seeing great miracles will change people's hearts.  Someone raised from the dead can’t help but raise people's faith in God.  The problem is that miracles, healings and great works of God are products of faith and not the other way around.  We have to have a heart change before we have God working wonders in our midst.

Once we are seeking for God to bring the hearts and minds of men in line with His own, we will see lives consecrated to God.  When people die to self and seek His will for their lives, we will see God’s might manifested in the more relatively minor ways of miracles and healings.

We want the thrill of seeing miracles.  Every miracle and healing which Jesus did, in and of itself, was not as exciting or as life changing as one person who decides to accept Jesus’ death on the cross as the only way of salvation for him, and that living his life in selfless sacrifice to the Lord Jesus is the only fitting way to Love God.

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