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THE PROBLEM

I’m 26 years old.

Since i can remember i’ve heard from pulpits everywhere that God would send revival to America in my generation. Now i’m married and the possibility of having children is right around the corner. All my siblings and many of my friends have children of their own.

What does this mean?
The next generation is already 5-10 years old.
My generation still has yet to see the hoped for revival.

I’m grateful for the many refreshings, awakenings, renewals, and outpourings we’ve experienced since Brownsville while i was in junior high but i have never seen anything so culture affecting as the Azuza Street Revival or the two Great Awakenings or the many revival that happened between the Second Great Awakening and Azuza.

While reading about “Praying Hyde” i was again gripped with the reality that though true revival is a soveriegn gift of God he does not send it if his people are not asking.

Many at this point will say, “But we have been asking!” Amen, we have. But there is a type of asking that is born from the deep of one’s heart. There is a type of asking that comes from the place of hunger and says, “Lord, if you don’t send another revival, I’ll die (Sergio Scataglini; Argentina).” There is a type of asking that refuses food and rest and playtime in order to ceaselessly bombard the Throne of God seeking a touch of heaven for one’s own heart and on society, for a holy, powerful church and the salvation of the lost.

Here is the paragraph the struck me:

The [Prayer Union] saw one method of attaining this spiritual awakening, even by prayer. They set themselves deliberately, definitely and desperately to use the means (by prayer) till they secured the result. The Sialkot revival was not an accident nor an unsought breeze from Heaven. Charles G. Finney says: “A revival is no more a miracle than a crop of wheat.” In any community, revival can be secured from Heaven when heroic souls enter the conflict determined to win or die–or if need be, to win and die–”The kingdom of Heaven suffereth violence, and the violent take it by force (Matt. 11:12).
Praying Hyde; Edited by Captain E.G. Carre

Revival will only come if we ask our good Father for it (Luke 11:13). “As long as we are content to live without revival, we will. (Leanord Ravenhill)” The most disturbing thing i see in my generation, in my own soul, is contenment to live without revival.

This is not okay.
This
is
not
right.

We talk about justice and ask God to end abortion, ridicule those who don’t help the poor, protest those who demand we pay our debts, raise money to dig wells in villages in Africa, but we are content to live unsanctified lives that are void of the power and presence of God. We are content to live without the testimony and stigma of Jesus Christ. We’d rather have our music, food, and entertainment than the “weighty” presence of the Lord, the Holy Spirit.

This, my friends, is the great injustice of our generation.

Something must change. It must change in our appetites. It must change in our hearts. And if it is going to change in society it must be our change first.

THE CHALLENGE

Here is the invitation that i am extending to all who are even slightly thirsty for heaven to touch earth, for God to touch us.

I’m inviting everyone to take thirty minutes everyday between the hours of 6pm and 8pm to pray for revival starting tomorrow, November 1 through December 31. (I’m starting a Facebook page for this. I’m not sure how those work but find it and join in. It’s called “The Watch”)

It isn’t glorious. It isn’t often exciting. But it is a cry of desperation. If we truly believe that our nation is at a crossroads, that the judment of God is looming over our national head, that the souls of millions are hanging “by a thread over” the pit of hell (Jonathan Edwards) then we must do something about it. All of history’s revivalists were agreed that the most important and necessary thing to obtain revival is prayer.

It’s only half an hour.

So let me ask you, are you content to live without revival? Are you satisfied to live without the unction and power and baptism of the Holy Spirit? Are you so satiated with your movies, songs, and games that there is no room for the presence of God in your life?

Or are you hungry?
Are you thirsty?
Are you troubled at the injustice of compromise in your generation?
Are you grieved by the murder of millions of unborn babies?
Do you long for God to transform your heart into a holy thing?
Do you long for God to transform your church into a sactuary and refuge for the sick, dying, broken, lost, and sinner?

Or do you desire to be one who hungers?

Join me, starting tomorrow at 6pm, and pray for half an hour that God would cleanse this nation by the blood of Jesus and send another society shaking revival to the United States of America.

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