I've entitled this study tonight, Memoirs of the
Revivalists.
And we're going to look at the earliest
years, so this will be part one, if
perchance we're able to do a second study,
maybe in the up-and-coming weeks.
But I'd like tonight to begin to look
at some of the revivals that Brother Charles
Finney and others had been involved with.
I'd like to lay a little bit of
a foundation, if I could, just basically launching
from last week's study where we looked at
a little bit of the life of Charles
Finney and just begin from there, praying that
you might preach.
Praying that you might preach.
It's been over 150 years since Charles G.
Finney began preaching the great revivals that would
eventually be part of what we know as
the Second Great Awakening.
See, Charles Finney believed that two things were
required to have revival.
He believed that there should be prevailing prayer
and powerful preaching.
As we learn from his lectures on revivals,
preaching is done to influence men, but prevailing
prayer is done to influence God.
I think also that it's important to rightly
understand the meaning of genuine love for God
and our neighbor before we even proceed looking
at some of the accounts of Charles Finney's
preaching methods and the results.
And the reason being is that when you
read them, a lot of people in our
day would think that a lot of his
methods were quite cruel or that maybe he
was a very strong preacher and maybe that
he lacked the love of God or something
like that.
So I'd like to begin by laying a
little bit of framework and just kind of
look at some things concerning the love of
God so that we can have a better
understanding of what really was behind a lot
of the preaching that Brother Charles Finney would
do.
See, love for God and His Christ will
cause you to place His glory above all
other motives in life.
And as a minister, love for your neighbor
will drive you to pray and to preach
until you prevail with God and man for
the salvation of their eternal souls.
This is genuine love that Christ would receive
those for whom He died.
See, it's not love to just sit back
and watch people lost and dying in their
sin.
That's not love.
See, that's not love.
And Brother Charles Finney did not believe in
exercising this kind of passive so-called love
that we so often have to deal with
and contend with in today's society.
A lot of things have been said about
Charles Finney and his methods of preaching revival.
People didn't like them then, and to be
honest, many do not like them now.
Charles Finney did not believe in preaching assurance
of salvation apart from obedience to God's Word.
He believed that if you were a Christian,
that your life would exemplify that Christianity.
His theological positions would seem to be unorthodox
to many.
He believed that when a Christian sinned, that
they were on the same footing with the
sinner before God.
And this led to preaching that demanded that
people live upright before God if they ever
expect to see a moment in heaven.
Jesus told us to go into the highways
and the hedges and to compel the people
to come in.
This is exactly what Charles Finney did under
the Holy Spirit and the anointing of God.
He compelled them, and the Spirit of God
convicted them.
And when the people were thoroughly convicted of
their sins after sometimes many days without an
altar call, Charles Finney would show them Christ,
and they would reach out for a pardon
in faith.
For the revivals of the second great awakening,
the compulsion that led to conviction yielded conversion
by the Spirit of God.
God calls His servants to compel that He
might convict and convert.
And so it is.
Before I go on, I would like to
read a little quote from Leonard Ravenhill that
was passed to me by Brother Jesse Murrell.
And I think that this quote really does
speak to Charles Finney and the way that
he did preach.
Finney never made an altar call.
I believe this was the Rochester revival this
was referring to, but I'd have to look
into it.
Finney never made an altar call within the
first 28 nights of preaching.
Most of our evangelists don't have 28 sermons.
Leonard Ravenhill talking.
28 nights in a row, he never made
an altar call.
He didn't preach the love of God.
He didn't say you're a sinner and God
loves you.
He said God is angry with the wicked
every day, Psalm 711, which the Word of
God teaches.
He didn't preach grace.
He preached law.
He didn't preach love.
He preached judgment.
He didn't preach heaven.
He preached hell.
He didn't say you're a wonderful person.
He said you're a rebel.
But he got results.
64% of D.L. Moody's converts backslid.
But 72% of the converts Finney got
stood because he knew how to attach the
human will, not just the emotions.
And that could be attack there.
That, of course, being a quote by Leonard
Ravenhill.
Praise the Lord.
Let's continue on in our study.
The evangelistic team.
Daniel Nash, or as we may know him
as Father Nash, was a former pastor of
a small church in the frontier of New
York for six years that later traveled as
a prayer warrior with Charles G.
Finney for seven more years until his death.
See, Daniel Nash was deemed too old to
preach at his church.
So on September 25, 1822, a strange church
meeting was held at an unusual time, and
he was voted out by a vote of
nine to three.
The only reason surviving to this day in
the records was that they wanted a young
man to settle in.
And at the age of 46, they felt
that Daniel Nash was too old, and they
resented his traveling.
But God still used this former pastor to
send revival, but he was never reinstated.
God blessed him, though he was rejected.
Through all of this, God was breaking him,
as it were, and preparing the heart of
this man to lead the life of public
ministry of preaching for a private life of
prayer.
For those of you who know anything about
Brother Daniel Nash, he traveled with Charles Finney,
as we'll look at here in a minute.
But I think it's important to realize that
it wasn't just the preaching of Charles Finney
that made for such powerful revivals.
There was a tremendous amount of prayer that
would go into the messages that would be
preached.
There are a lot of stories that abound
about people going into town before he would
ever come to preach, and they would pray
sometimes for as long as three weeks in
prayer he would spend.
Staying sometimes in people's cellars in various places,
anywhere that they could find a spot to
kind of come in, undercover as it were,
and begin praying for the place where they
were about to preach.
The plight of the prayer warrior.
If there is one thing that has a
crushing effect on a person, it's rejection.
For Daniel Nash, he had been to his
own personal garden of crushing, or Gethsemane, in
the time following his removal by the church
board.
About this same time in 1824, Charles Finney
was to be examined for a license to
preach.
There would be their first encounter.
They ministered together, Brother Nash and Brother Finney,
for seven years.
They also traveled with another man by the
name of Abel Clary, who would go before
them and they would preach.
He would preach and they would pray until
God moved.
J.
Paul Reno writes, It is said of Finney
that his evangelistic party, or his prayer team,
as it were, consisted of prayer partners who
went before him and sought the Lord in
some secluded spot.
And when Finney was preaching, Father Nash, Daniel
Nash, that is, and Mr. Clary were hidden
away somewhere praying for him.
No wonder cities were stirred and a vast
harvest of souls was reaped.
This concept of evangelistic party was made up
of praying men, has nearly been lost in
the days of organizers, promoters, big names, etc.
Such praying men not only sustained Finney's ministry,
he continues, but explained the power in preaching
and the long-lasting results.
This partnership and ministry lasted roughly seven years.
And after the passing of Daniel Nash, Charles
Finney took a position of pastor within three
months at Chatham Chapel.
See, I believe Charles Finney understood the power
of prayer.
Many times he called on Brother Nash to
begin to pray and agreed it with him
in prayer when people would begin to rise
up against the revivals, he would call upon
him and they would agree together in prayer
for that revival.
J.
Paul Reno summarizes the life of Daniel Nash
in his ministry, in his death.
He says, his tombstone is in a neglected
cemetery along a dirt road behind a livestock
auction barn.
His church no longer exists.
Its meeting house location marked by a historical
marker in a cornfield.
The building is gone.
Its timber is used to house grain at
a feed mill four miles down the road.
There are no books that tell of his
life story, no pictures or diaries can be
found.
His descendants, if any, cannot be located and
his messages are forgotten.
He wrote no books, started no schools, led
no movements, and generally he kept out of
sight.
See, Daniel Nash entered his prayer closet in
secret and the God who answers by fire
rewarded this man in the meetings that Charles
Finney preached openly.
Reno continues, the majority of prayer for those
who would be so used must be in
private.
They do not seek either the eye nor
the ear of men, but rather the ear
of God.
They seek a closet alone with God.
Nash used a cellar, a room in a
boarding house, or a nearby house, or a
grove of trees where he could pour out
his heart to God alone, or just with
a few others with a similar burden of
heart.
See, Daniel Nash died on his knees in
prayer.
That's how he was found to have died.
Praise the Lord.
I think it's important for us to realize
that any preacher who preaches must have those
who will agree with him in prayer.
I've heard of many, many ministers who even
to this day, the whole time they're preaching,
they have people interceding before the Lord for
the services that are going on.
Your next section, the six-month mission.
The six-month mission.
At the age of 31 years, roughly three
months after Charles City was ordained to preach
by the St. Lawrence Presbytery, the Female Missionary
Society in Oneida County, New York, commissioned him
to preach for a six-month term in
the counties to their north.
If you're ever looking at a map of
New York, Oneida County, I hope I'm pronouncing
that right, is centered in the state, and
just to the north would be Lewis County,
then Jefferson County, and if you go back
towards the west, you see Lake Ontario, which,
of course, if you go on back to
the west would be Toronto.
There's a lot of revival history in this
area, and this is where Charles Finney was
sent and commissioned to preach for these six
months.
Charles Finney had no regular training for the
ministry, and he did not expect or desire
to labor in large towns or cities, or
minister to already cultivated congregations.
He didn't go there to build upon another
man's work.
He intended to go into the new settlements
and preach in the schoolhouses, the barns, the
groves, or even outdoors, anywhere that the doors
were open.
Charles Finney went first to the northern part
of Jefferson County and the northwestern part of
New York and began his ministry at Evans
Mills in the town of Luray.
Now, the village of Evans Mills is situated
within the town of Luray in Jefferson County,
New York.
Here he found two churches.
He had a small congregational church that did
not have a minister, and he found a
Baptist church that did have a minister.
He presented his credentials to the deacons of
the church, and they gladly accepted him, and
he began to minister, of course, for the
congregational church.
The churches had no meeting house, but the
two worshipped alternately back and forth in a
large stone schoolhouse that was large enough to
accommodate all of the children that were in
the village.
It was a pretty good-sized building, I
guess, compared to what we have today.
It wouldn't be, but in that time, it
was.
The Baptists occupied the house on one Sunday
and then the Congregationalists on the next.
So he had the house every other Sunday.
Then he could use the schoolhouse in the
evenings whenever he wanted to.
And because of this, Charles Finney decided to
then divide up every other Sunday between ministering
in Evans Mills, and then on the other
Sunday, he would minister in Antwerp, which, of
course, was about 12 miles to the northeast.
So he would alternate back and forth.
Let's start to look a little bit at
Charles Finney's messages and what it was like
to sit into one of his services.
The preparation, we've talked about a little bit
of it that leads up to his service,
but let's begin to look at what his
services were like.
See, Charles Finney began to preach from week
to week in the schoolhouse at Evans Mills.
And the people were very interested.
They thronged the place to hear him preach.
They celebrated.
They enjoyed his preaching.
And the little Congregational church became very hopeful
that there would be a revival.
And see, that's kind of the situation that
we have today.
See, a lot of people are really attuned
to the idea of revival.
And if you had asked a lot of
Christians, they would say, yes, we want to
see a revival.
But a lot of times, they're not really
thinking about the revival that God's wanting to
send.
They want to see some kind of stirring
come or maybe some kind of evangelistic move,
but they don't want to see a revival.
And the evidence that we see in this
case comes out pretty quickly.
However, there was no general conviction that it
appeared among the people corporately.
Finney was very dissatisfied with the state of
things.
And on one of the evening services, after
having preached there two or three Sundays and
several evenings in the week, he told the
people at the close of his sermon, this
is what he said, quote, I have come
here to secure the salvation of your souls.
My preaching, I know, is highly complimented by
you, but I did not come here to
please you, but to bring you to repentance.
It matters not to me how well you
are pleased with my preaching, if, after all,
you would reject my master.
Something is wrong, either in me or in
you.
The kind of interest that you manifested for
my preaching is doing you no good, and
I cannot spend my time with you unless
you are going to receive the gospel.
Charles Finney, he then went on to quote
the words of Abraham's servant who said, Now
will you deal kindly and truly with my
master question?
If you will, tell me.
And if not, tell me, that I may
know whether I shall turn to the right
hand or to the left.
You see, Charles Finney wanted to know whether
or not they were going to receive the
Lord Jesus Christ or whether they were going
to simply resist the gospel.
If they determined to resist, he was going
to leave.
But if they were going to receive Christ,
he would say, stay.
He said to them, you admit that what
I preach is the gospel.
You profess to believe it.
Now will you receive it?
See, there's a difference.
There's a difference.
Do you mean to receive it or do
you intend to reject it?
You must have some mind about it or
you must be thinking about it, in other
words.
And now, he said, I have the right
to take it for granted, inasmuch as you
admit that I have preached the truth, that
you acknowledge your obligation at once to become
Christians.
This obligation you do not deny, but you
will meet.
Will you meet the obligation, he asked, or
will you discharge it?
Will you do what you admit you ought
to do if you will not tell me
and if you will tell me that I
may know whether I shall turn to the
right hand or to the left?
Charles Finney wanted to know who was on
the Lord's side.
He wanted to know who was on the
Lord's side.
See, Charles Finney was not an entertainer.
He had one objective, and that was to
see the people turn to God and to
walk upright before him.
He was not looking for the praise of
men.
He pressed this congregation by telling them to
stand up, stand to their feet, that is,
if he, if they rather, wanted to receive
Christ.
They remained seated.
He sent them home then to ponder that
they had rejected the Lord.
Reflecting back on this, Finney writes, I said
to them, then you are committed.
You have taken your stand.
You have rejected Christ and his gospel, and
you are witnesses one against the other, and
God is witness against you all.
This is explicit.
And you may remember so long as you
live that you have thus publicly committed yourselves
against the Savior.
Then he said, we will not have this
man, Jesus Christ, to reign over us, as
if that was what they were saying.
This is the purport of what I urged
upon them, and as nearly in these words
as I can recollect.
When I thus pressed them, he continued, they
began to look angry.
And then they arose in mass and started
for the door.
And they began to move.
I paused.
As soon as I stopped speaking, they turned
to see why I did not go on.
And I said, I am sorry for you.
I will preach to you once more, the
Lord willing, tomorrow night.
I asked the question, who in our day
would take such a stand for Christ?
Who would be willing to press so hard
upon the minds and the hearts of men
to move beyond the emotions and move their
will?
This type of preaching came with a large
price tag.
Then he continues, but for that evening and
the next day, they were all full of
wrath.
Deacon McSee and myself agreed upon the spot
to spend the next day in fasting and
prayer separately in the morning and together in
the afternoon.
I learned throughout the course of the day
that the people were threatening me.
They were going to ride me out on
a rail to tar and feather me and
give me my walking papers, as they said.
Some of them cursed me.
And they said that I had put them
under an oath and had made them swear
that they would not serve God, that I
had drawn them into a solemn and public
pledge to reject Christ and his gospel.
The time came for the service to begin.
They left the woods.
They had been in prayer.
They went to the village.
The people were already thronging until the house
was filled almost to capacity.
As was always Finney's method, he did not
have a sermon written out to preach.
And in this case, he didn't even think
about what he was going to preach.
That's how Finney preached.
If you've ever studied him, you would know
that what he would do is he would
pray and seek the Lord and be full
of the word of God.
And then he would get behind the pulpit
and wait for the Lord to impress upon
him at that moment what to preach.
Oftentimes, he didn't even have his sermon text
in front of him until he got behind
the pulpit.
And then later on, after he got through
preaching, then he would go back to wherever
he was staying and sit down and write
out the outline of what he could recollect
that the Spirit of God gave him for
the people at that moment.
Or that night, rather.
See, Finney recounts the start of the meeting.
He said, The Spirit of God came upon
me with such power, it was like opening
a battery upon them.
For more than an hour, perhaps an hour
and a half, the word of God came
through me to them in a manner that
I could see was carrying all before it.
It was a fire and a hammer breaking
the rock.
And it was a sword that was piercing
to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit.
I saw that a general conviction was spreading
all over the whole congregation, he says.
Many of them could not hold up their
heads.
I did not call that night for any
reversal of the action that they had taken
the night before, nor for any committal of
themselves in any way.
But I took it for granted during the
whole of the sermon that they were committed
against the Lord.
Then I appointed another meeting and I dismissed
the congregation.
Compelled and convicted.
You see, this is where 99% of
ministers would have made an altar call.
But not Charles G.
Finney.
He sent the people home again to ponder
their estate before God.
Before he was through ministering, the fallow ground
of their hearts was thoroughly plowed and mellowed,
if they were even in the least yielding
to the Spirit of God.
And in that brokenness, God can plant a
seed of his good word.
Many ministers in our day stop well short
of such brokenness in their preaching, and the
results bear this out.
You may wonder what kind of an effect
this type of preaching has on a person.
You may wonder.
One account Finney gave was very telling.
Here he writes, As the people withdrew from
this meeting, I observed a woman in the
arms of some of her friends who were
supporting her in one part of the house.
And I went to see what was the
matter, supposing that she was in some kind
of fainting fit.
But I soon found out that she was
not fainting, but she could not speak.
There was a look of the greatest anguish
in her face, and she made me to
understand that she could not speak.
I advised the woman to take her home
and to pray with her and see what
the Lord would do.
They informed me that she was Miss G.,
sister of a well-known missionary, and that
she was a member of the church in
good standing, and had been for several years.
That evening, instead of going to my usual
lodgings, I accepted an invitation and went home
with the family where I had not been
stopped before overnight.
Early in the morning, I found that I
had been sent forth to the place where
I was supposed to be, and several times
during the night to visit families where there
were persons under awful distress of mind.
This led me to Sally, forth among the
people, and everywhere I found a state of
wonderful conviction of sin and alarm for their
souls.
He continues, after lying in a speechless state
about sixteen hours, Miss G.'s mouth was opened
and a new song was given unto her.
She was taken from this horrible pit of
miry clay, and her feet was set upon
a rock, and it was true that many
saw it and feared.
She later told her testimony that she had
never really known the Lord and had believed
a false hope.
She was saved for the first time in
her life, though she had been many years
in that church.
I ask the question, is it love?
Is it love?
I must take a moment to reflect on
this one question.
Is it love to allow people that we
esteem as friends or family to go on
believing a lie and be damned?
Is that love?
Or is it cruel to minister in a
way that would leave a person unable to
speak or in agony of soul for days
if that was the only way that a
person could be converted?
Keep in mind that this woman was the
wife of a missionary and had heard countless
messages in her life that never brought her
to genuine repentance and faith.
How many messages do you think she may
have heard in her life?
What would have happened had Charles G.
Finney not been sent by God to that
church?
What would have happened?
What would have happened to this woman?
Great opposition.
Anytime God is doing a work, the enemy
is working through people to bring all sorts
of distractions and resistance.
This was also true in this revival.
Finney recounts, there was one old man in
this place who was not only an infidel,
but a great railer at religion.
He was very angry with the revival movement.
I heard every day of his railing and
blaspheming, but I took no public notice of
it.
He refused altogether to attend a meeting, but
in the midst of his opposition, and when
his excitement was great while sitting one morning
at the table, he suddenly fell out of
his chair in a fit of apoplexy.
That's a brain hemorrhage.
A physician was immediately called who, after brief
examination, told him that he could live but
just a short time, and that if he
had anything to say, he should say it
at once.
He had just enough strength and time, as
I have been informed, to stammer out these
words, Don't let Finney pray over my corpse.
And this was the last of his opposition
in that place.
See, it's a dangerous thing when people begin
to go out and move against the true
and genuine move of God, as it was
with this man as he found out.
There are accounts of various people resisting the
word of the Lord and refusing to repent,
and then going out into eternity in that
condition.
One woman was a universalist who did turn
to Christ.
Her husband was a universalist also, and when
he heard that Finney had preached the gospel
to her and that she was converted, this
man went into a rage.
He swore that he was going to kill
Finney.
He armed himself with a loaded pistol, and
that night he went to the meeting where
he was going to preach.
See, Finney didn't even know he was there.
He didn't know he had a gun either.
The meeting that evening was at the schoolhouse
in the village.
The house was packed almost to suffocation as
he described it.
Finney described the night, I went on to
preach with all of my might, and almost
in the midst of my discourse I saw
a powerful looking man about in the middle
of the house fall from his seat.
He sunk down and he groaned.
Then he cried and he shrieked out that
he was sinking down into hell.
He repeated this several times.
The people knew who he was, but he
was a stranger to me.
I think I had never seen him before.
Of course, this created a great excitement.
It broke up my preaching and it was
so great.
His anguish was that we spent the rest
of our time praying for this man.
You think about a man that was coming
to kill the preacher.
He had a gun.
He was going to kill the man of
God.
I believe it was the prayers of people
like Daniel Nash.
It was God intervening to protect Brother Finney
and his divine providence and to make sure
that this would happen.
Moreover, we see the conviction that was so
great within the house that when he came
in to kill the man, he ended up
being at least dealt with and later on
possibly even turned his life over to the
Lord.
The man went home sorely distressed, but was
miraculously converted and met Finney in the road
early the next morning as a new man.
Read the account of this.
He was walking down the road.
Brother Finney, you've got to think about this.
The night before, this guy had come bringing
a gun, going to shoot the man of
God, and he's just seeing him walking down
the street.
He runs up to Charles Finney, takes him
up in his arms, and begins to spin
him around, carrying him in a circle with
this glow on his face about how God
had so changed this man.
It's a powerful thing.
Powerful testimony how God had so turned him
around.
Praise the Lord.
Binding together with the Prince of Prayer.
You know, that's what they call Daniel Nash,
so I understand.
There's a book about his life.
I think you can find it on the
Internet for about a buck seventy-five, probably
a little book that talks about him.
There's also information that you could just look
over and find.
When Father Nash came to Evans Mills, Charles
Finney said that he was full of the
power of prayer.
He was another man altogether than what he
had meant earlier on when he was being
ordained.
Finney writes, I found that he had a
prayer list, as he had called it, with
a list of the names of the people
that he had made subjects of prayer every
day, and sometimes many times a day he
would pray for them.
And praying with him and hearing him pray
in the meeting, I found that his gift
of prayer was wonderful and his faith was
almost miraculous.
He had come just in time to help
pray for a village tavern owner that we
shall simply call Mr. D.
The tavern owned by Mr. D.
was a refuge for all the opposers of
the revival.
The ballroom was a place of blasphemy, he
said, and Mr. D.
himself was the most profane, ungodly, and abusive
man.
He went railing about in the streets about
the revival and would go out of his
way to swear and blaspheme in the presence
of Christians.
You ever met someone like that?
You get around Christians, all of a sudden
they just step up their cursing to another
level.
Try to make a show or something.
A young Christian lived across the way from
me, told Finney he was moving out because
every time Mr. D.
saw him, he would swear and curse and
say everything he could to hurt his feelings.
See, actually, Mr. D.
knew very little about Christianity and the revival.
See, Father Nash, Brother Daniel Nash, got word
of Mr. D.'s behavior and immediately put his
name on his prayer list.
He remained in town a day or two
and moved on then to another place that
the Lord had called him.
Finney remarks on what had happened next, not
many days afterward as we were holding an
evening meeting with a very crowded house.
Who should come in?
Who should come in, he asked, but the
notorious D.
His entrance created a considerable movement in the
congregation.
People feared that he had come to make
a disturbance.
The fear and abhorrence of him had become
very general among Christians, I believe, so that
when he came in, some of the people
got up and left.
I knew his countenance and I kept my
eye on him.
I very soon became satisfied that he had
not come in to oppose and that he
was in great anguish of mind.
He sat and writhed upon a seat and
was very uneasy.
He soon arose and trembling asked me if
he could say a few words.
I told him that he could.
Finney continues.
He then proceeded to make one of the
most heartbroken confessions that I have almost ever
heard.
His confession seemed to cover the whole ground
of his treatment of God, his treatment of
Christians, of the revival, and everything good.
This thoroughly broke up the fallow ground in
many hearts.
You know the Scripture said that they overcame
him by the blood of the Lamb and
by the word of their testimony.
You think about how powerful this man's testimony
was as he got up to speak.
He soon came out and professed a hope,
abolished all the revelry and profanity of his
bar room, and from that time as long
as I stayed there, I know not how
much longer, but a prayer meeting was held
in the bar room nearly every night.
You think about the power of this revival
and God moving among the people when the
bar rooms turned into a place that could
become a prayer room.
Praise the Lord.
And finally tonight, I simply asked a few
questions.
What can close a bar room and convert
the hardest of sinners?
Revival.
What can move the hand of God in
these days of declension?
Prevailing prayer.
What weapon can God use in his hands
to smite the hardest of hearts?
Powerful anointed preaching.
When the compelling words of the preacher are
backed by the anointing of God through prevailing
prayer, men and women are converted.
When the preacher is patient enough, patient enough
to allow the Holy Spirit time to do
his work, even if it takes days or
weeks, God will change lives.
May we find those qualities of ministry in
our lives.
May we find them.
May we find that patience.
May we move even as ministers beyond the
time where we need to be instantly gratified
by seeing people respond to a 30 or
45 minute message and realize that you might
need to preach to them three or four
times, four, five, six times, in some cases
many, 29 days in a row before some
people are broken down to a place to
where God can really move and change their
life and they be born again of the
Spirit, according to John 3.3. May we
learn the virtues of being patient and staying
the course until God moves.
Heavenly Father, Lord, I just want to end
tonight by saying, Lord, God, we're thankful that
you have been patient with us.
Lord, not 29 days, not 29 weeks, many
times over 29 years you've been patient with
us, God.
Lord, we just pray that you would teach
us to have patience as well as we
minister, even as Brother Finney.
God, that we would learn the power of
prevailing prayer, that we would prevail in the
Spirit, God, for souls to be birthed into
your kingdom.
Lord, we pray, God, that revival would come
to our nation.
Lord, I pray that you would prepare our
hearts for revival.
Lord, we may not even be prepared for
the revival that you're wanting to send.
We have a concept of revival, but God,
you know what you want to do.
And Lord, we pray that your perfect will
be done.
Lord, I pray for those that are attending,
Lord, and hearing tonight, God, that you would
touch their hearts, that you would touch their
lives, that you would draw them nigh unto
you.
God, break every setter that binds in their
life.
God, that they could pursue you, that they
could move and go into the sides of
the north, God, with clean hands and a
pure heart before you.
And God, I pray finally for Sermon Index,
God, that you would keep your hand upon
this...