Habakkuk chapter 3, verse 2, actually verses 1
and 2 is what we're going to look
at this evening.
A prayer of Habakkuk, the prophet, on Shignanath.
O Lord, I have heard your speech and
I was afraid.
O Lord, revive your work in the midst
of the years.
In the midst of the years, make it
known.
In wrath, remember mercy.
The first two chapters of the book of
Habakkuk give us the prophet having sort of
what we might call a question and answer
time with God.
He asks God a question and God gives
him an answer.
He does that a few times in the
first couple of chapters.
Now that God has answered Habakkuk, the prophet
brings the book to a close in chapter
3 with a prayer.
And the prayer is very simple.
He says, O Lord, I have heard your
speech and was afraid.
O Lord, revive your work in the midst
of the years.
Habakkuk simply prayed for revival.
He was well aware how God once worked.
He was aware of how God's people once
responded to the moving of the Lord.
And Habakkuk wanted to see that again.
And so he says, revive your work in
the midst of the years.
I've been thinking a lot and reading a
lot and hearing a lot in the past
several months about revival.
I think it's very important for us to
understand what revival is and what it isn't.
Habakkuk prayed for revival, but what was he
praying for?
Well, first of all, we should understand that
revival is not a week of meetings held
by an evangelist.
That's a very common way that revival is
used in our English vocabulary.
You can drive by a church and see
a sign and it might say revival this
week.
Or an evangelist may schedule it and say,
we're going to have a revival, you know,
this and such week.
Well, there may be a certain sense in
which a revival meeting is when evangelists comes
to town and they have special music and
there's a special emphasis on conversion and rededication.
That may be a cultural meaning of the
term revival, but it's not a biblical meaning.
J.
Edwin Orr speaks of a man who told
him, Dr. Orr, we had a revival last
winter and nobody got revived.
The man told Dr. Orr how they hired
an evangelist.
They rented facilities, even described to him the
budget that they had for public promotion and
all the rest of it.
But no one got revived.
Now, surely it's a curious thing in America
that you can have a revival and nobody
gets revived.
But that's not what real revival is.
Here's a definition from Webster's 1828 dictionary.
Revival, noun from revive.
Return, recall or recovery to life from death
or apparent death.
As in the revival of a drowned person.
In other words, you have something that's dead
or apparently dead.
Doesn't really matter, does it?
Whether it's dead or just apparently dead, it's
in bad shape.
And revival describes the coming of life again
to that thing that was dead or apparently
dead.
Here's another definition, the second one.
Revival is return or recall to activity from
a state of languor, as in the revival
of spirits.
Somebody's spirits are revived, they're picked up.
They're up when they used to be down.
They used to be blue, but now they're
happy.
Here's a third definition.
Recall, return or recovery from a state of
neglect, oblivion, obscurity or depression.
As in the revival of letters or learning.
If you talk about a revival of Christianity,
you're talking about perhaps a time where Christianity
and its truth and its strength is obscured,
where it's in the background, but it's revived
and brought into prominence again.
And then a fourth and final definition that
Webster gave in his 1828 dictionary, that it
was a renewed and more active attention to
religion, an awakening of men to their spiritual
concerns.
Let me primarily say that revival is the
restoration of life and vitality.
It is not the creation of life and
vitality.
It's the restoration of life and vitality.
Therefore, revival, at least in its primary sense,
is not conversion, is not awakening.
Those are the outflow or the partners of
revival.
In this sense, in its most primary sense,
revival can only be a work among the
church.
If a sinner is dead in sin, there's
nothing there to revive.
There's something there to create.
And if any man be in Christ, he's
a new creation.
All things have passed away and all things
have become new.
But if a Christian has life, has this
new creation living inside of them, and it
lapses into death or apparent death, and let's
not worry about whether it's dead or apparently
dead, it's in bad shape, then life and
vitality can be restored.
So, again, I want to point out that
in this sense, at least in its primary
sense, revival is not conversion or awakening.
Those are the outflow or the partners of
revival.
It's primarily a work among God's people.
When Habakkuk prayed, Oh, Lord, revive your work
in the midst of the years, he was
speaking about among the people of Israel.
He didn't have in his mind the Babylonians
coming to faith, nor the Syrians, nor the
Egyptians.
He had primarily in mind a work of
God among Israel.
Now, revival, especially as we take a look
at history, it's often accompanied by massively effective
evangelism, a great number of conversions, and a
general spiritual awakening among the lost.
But I would say that those are the
evidence of revival.
They're not primarily revival itself.
Revival begins with awakening Christians and convicting them
of their worldly and unconsecrated lives.
I would have to say that I think
that this is primarily one of the largest
misunderstandings that there is about revival.
There are many people with wonderful intentions and
with great heart long for revival, but they
primarily see revival as a work that God
has to do outside of the church to
bring people into the church.
I don't believe that that's where revival begins.
In its primary sense, the work of revival
is God doing something wonderful and powerful within
the church itself.
And then it spreads forth from outside of
there.
Now, I think we would say that true
revival, as we take a look at it
in its great sense, true revival is a
broad work.
This is reflected by how Habakkuk uses this
phrase.
Look at it here in verse two.
Oh, Lord, revive your work.
That speaks of a broad work.
And that's a word important for Christian workers
to remember.
Revival doesn't grow in the soil of congregational
competition or the desire for personal glory, for
personal fame, for personal income or credit.
The longing after those things will always squelch
revival.
No, notice that prayer.
Revive your work.
And the confession of many Christian workers would
actually be that their prayer is, Lord, revive
my work.
No, I'm not saying that it's wrong to
want your work revived, your own work.
But actually, revival has a broader vision than
that.
Revival has the vision.
Oh, Lord, do a great work among us
and them and them and them and among
all the believers in the community.
Because oftentimes revival is sought out of selfish
reasons.
Lord, bring great revival and let me be
known as a great revival leader.
Well, that's just wickedness.
That's just a wicked heart right there.
You're desiring to profit off of the work
of God.
No, the prayer really has to be revive
your work.
And Lord, whatever part I am of your
work, then revive me.
But God, make it a lot bigger than
just me.
Begin with me, work in me, but extend
it far out beyond me as well.
Charles Spurgeon, in preaching on this text, said
this.
Shake off all the bitterness of everything that
has to do with self or with party.
And now pray, Lord, revive thy work.
And if thy work happened to be more
in one branch of the church than in
another, Lord, give that the most reviving.
Give us all the blessing, but do let
thine own purposes be accomplished and let thine
own glory come of it.
And we shall be well content, though we
should be forgotten and unknown.
Wouldn't it be remarkable if God said to
a church or to a ministry, they said,
well, I will bring revival to your community
if you will remain completely forgotten and obscured
in it.
Will you still passionately pray for revival?
Well, no, God, I don't want a revival
if it's not going to exalt me.
You see how important it is to pray,
Lord, revive your work.
Now, at the same time, when we think
of the broadness of the work of revival,
we also have to consider, though, that revival
has a very personal, immediate aspect.
It is not wrong to pray, Lord, revive
me.
Because we need to pray that that's where
revival needs to begin.
We too often blame the church for sin
or corruption or laziness or prayerlessness or lack
of spiritual power or whatever.
And, you know, we forget when we blame
the church for all of those things.
We forget who the church is.
It's us.
We are the church.
Pray for personal revival and diligently search yourself.
God, revive me, not revive me in competition
with other people, but Lord, revive me along
with everyone else.
And so you need to do a diligent
check of your own life.
If you will really and sincerely, with faith,
pray this prayer, Lord, revive your work, then
you're going to check your conduct.
Is your walk glorifying the Lord as it
should?
How about your private conduct, that conduct that
the Lord alone sees?
Does that glorify the Lord?
How about your conversation, your speech?
Is your speech profane or impure?
Do you talk about Jesus with others?
Have you seen it on the television?
And it's very common these days.
You know, when I was younger, I never
recall ever seeing this.
But all the time now on the news
shows and all kinds of programs, you can
call or write in and they'll send you
a transcript of the news show that evening
if you're interested in it.
Well, what if somebody were to throw down
a transcript of everything you said in a
day?
And they poured over the transcript for evidence
whether or not you were really a follower
of Jesus Christ.
Wow, this person talked about a lot of
things today.
Look at all that they talked about.
And they're pouring over it.
You have, you know, investigators pouring over every
line.
And it's all in that legal stationary, you
know, double space.
They can make notations and all the rest
of it.
And all the lines are numbered because it's
a great investigation.
And they're saying we can find hardly any
evidence that this person is a Christian based
on what they said in this day.
Does your conversation glorify Jesus Christ?
Then not just checking your conduct, not just
checking your conversation.
Check your communion.
Are you living a growing, abiding life with
Jesus?
There's a great passage I turn to time
and time again, not a passage as if
it's a passage in the Bible.
It's a writing from a guy named Alan
Redpath.
And it's a set of self-examination questions
that he uses.
He says one night at his church, they
were having an all night prayer meeting or
at least a late night of prayer.
And they drew up these questions for self
-examination.
And I like to read those often because
I think we should search ourselves often.
We should say, search me, O God.
And one of the things he says in
there when he challenges us to examine our
own lives, he says, do I enjoy my
prayer life?
And then he says, that's a OK, that's
a tough question on its own.
But then he follows it up with the
real heart sticker.
Did I enjoy it today?
Well, I just don't want to know if
you pray.
Do you enjoy your prayer life?
And did you enjoy it today?
That's your communion.
Do you have a living, growing, abiding life
with Jesus?
Friends, when we talk about, Lord, revive your
work, we're talking both about a very broad
work, but we're also talking about a work
that's well, that's just about as big as
what can fit in your seat.
That's you.
A great old evangelist named Gypsy Smith, he
used to say, when you want to see
revival, you get a chair, set it in
a room, draw a circle in chalk.
I guess he was used to floors that
you could draw a circle in.
Draw a circle in chalk around that chair,
sit in the chair and say, Lord, bring
revival and let it begin inside of the
circle.
You see, that's that's where revival has to
come.
It has to come with both a broad
work and understanding that, but it's also intensely
personal and say, Lord, check my conduct, check
my conversation, check my communion.
You see, you can have personal revival, you
can have a church revival.
But there have been many great works of
community or national revival in history.
That's sort of what Habakkuk refers to.
Look at it again here in verse two.
Oh, Lord, I've heard your speech and was
afraid.
Oh, Lord, revive your work in the midst
of the years.
And if that wasn't enough, he repeats it
in the midst of the years.
Make it known.
You see, Habakkuk longs for God to do
a work that's evident to everyone as a
work of God.
I want it to be done, Lord, in
a time and place in the midst of
the years, not just be able to say,
oh, Lord, well, it just seems like you're
doing a great work.
But to be able to say, well, look
at this great thing God did in this
great thing.
And here's this life that was transformed.
And this aspect of God's work to be
very specific, that God's great revival would take
place in a certain time and in a
certain place, not just as an idea in
somebody's head.
Not just as a heightened sense of enthusiasm
among believers.
Well, a heightened sense of enthusiasm is great.
I'd rather have a heightened sense of enthusiasm
than no enthusiasm, wouldn't you?
But that's not necessarily revival.
Revival is when it is, when it's channeled
in or when it exhibits itself in definite
works.
In 1949, Dr. J.
Edwin Orr published his doctoral thesis, a work
that earned him a Ph.D. at Oxford
University.
The title of the work was The Second
Evangelical Awakening in Britain.
It's a book I read fairly recently, and
it's just one book among many where many
remarkable examples of revival are recorded.
What happens exactly?
What Habakkuk is talking about in the midst
of the years, in the midst of the
years, make it known, or described very vividly
in this book, that during these times of
great outpouring of the Holy Spirit, Christians are
first revived and then the community is greatly
touched.
Here's an example.
In autumn of 1863, William Booth, who was
the founder of the Salvation Army.
William Booth wrote a letter to a friend
describing God's work in Cradley Heath, a city
of more than 20,000 people.
Booth first spoke on a Sunday morning at
the church, and the church was full.
It was too full.
It was crowded, passed, comfortable.
You know how a room can be crowded,
passed, comfortable?
That's how it was in that church.
And Booth began by calling on the leaders
of the church to make a renewed consecration
of themselves to God.
You know where revival has to begin in
a church.
It begins among the leaders.
It begins with the leaders of the church
getting serious and consecrated to God.
And then after that, and I'm quoting Booth
now, a gracious melting and breaking up of
heart followed, each blessing a greater number throughout
the chapel.
Meetings were held each night throughout that week
with many conversions.
And he gives one example that at the
beginning of one of the prayer meetings, a
very sturdy looking man, just a big, strong
man.
Now, he had been coming to the services
every night, but he went away hardening his
heart each night.
But he came.
And at the very beginning of the prayer
meeting, he jumped up onto the platform and
he spoke out before the people.
He said, do you know me?
And all the praying men, it was a
prayer meeting.
The room was filled with praying men.
I said, yes, we know you.
He said, what am I then?
Man standing up on the platform.
I said, what am I then?
You know what they replied back to him?
You're a backslider.
Well, then he said, I will be a
backslider no longer.
All of you come to Jesus with me.
And then he fell into an agony of
prayer to God to have mercy on him.
And indeed, the anguish and desire of his
soul was too much for him, for he
swooned away on the floor before us all.
His wife was one of the first converted
of the previous week, and only that evening
sent up a request that God would save
her husband, who was a poor, miserable backslider.
About 30 that night were converted.
Isn't that remarkable?
But it begins with a man like this
who was not a new convert, but a
backslider coming up and saying, I'll be a
backslider no longer.
Being honest.
You know, putting away the pretense, well, I'll
just kind of play it cool and I'll
just repent quietly in my own heart and
just work it out.
No, he said, I've been a backslider.
I've been a hypocrite.
You all know it and I know it.
Come to Jesus with me, he said.
God greatly used William and his wife, Catherine
Booth, in this great revival of 1859, 1860.
There was a great work of God happening
at Hayley in southern England in August of
1861.
William and Catherine Booth had a meeting at
a church, but no actual conversions were reported
on the first Sunday.
They were kind of disappointed.
You know, God had been doing a great
work and they come to this one church
and nothing really seemed to happen on the
first Sunday.
So Monday night he spoke to the believers
on hindrances to Christian labor and Christian joy.
So something's wrong here.
You know, everywhere else I go, something happens,
but it's not happening here.
So that was Sunday.
Monday, he says, let's talk to Christians about
hindrances.
Well, after the regular meeting, they had a
prayer meeting afterwards and after meeting and at
that prayer meeting afterwards, nearly everybody who came
to the service stayed for that prayer meeting.
Booth preached a second message and a woman
made her way to what they called back
then the anxious seat.
Have you ever heard of the anxious seat
or the anxious bench?
It was something that they used in the
early days when they first started giving altar
calls and instead of calling people to come
up and stand in front of an altar,
they would say, if you feel conviction of
soul, if you begin to feel anxious about
your salvation, you come on up and sit
on the anxious bench or in the anxious
seat.
And what would happen is typically somebody else
would come along and personally minister to you
if you were there at the anxious seat.
They said, here's a person seeking after salvation.
Let's go minister to them and lead them
to Christ.
Well, this woman came and sat at the
anxious beach, but waiting for someone to come
and personally minister to him.
And she was saved that night.
William Booth said that she that he hoped
that this woman would be the first fruits
of a glorious harvest.
She was in and around that town over
the next 18 months, seven thousand people were
converted.
Five hundred were converted in the first six
weeks.
Now that's revival.
That's an outpouring of the spirit of God.
But it began with Christians getting right.
Christians hearing about hindrances that had to be
put out of the way and then moving
on from there.
It's very interesting when you think about this,
oh, Lord, revive your work in the midst
of the years, these these markers in time
of place of what characterized some of the
great revivals of history.
One of the evidence is a revival is
a great conviction of sin, first in Christians
and then of the unconverted.
This conviction of sin brings them to Christ.
Again, I'm quoting from this excellent book by
J.
Edwin Orr.
He talks about a high ranking army officer
in Scotland who spoke of the conviction of
sin in his Scottish town.
Listen to this.
He says, those of you who are at
ease have little conception of how terrifying a
sight it is when the Holy Spirit is
pleased to open a man's eyes to see
the real state of his heart.
Men who were thought to be and who
thought themselves to be good religious people have
been led to search into the foundation upon
which they were resting and have found all
rotten that they were self-satisfied, resting on
their own goodness and not upon Christ.
Many have turned from open sin to lives
of holiness, some weeping for joy, for sins
forgiven.
It's a remarkable thing.
One of the great works of revival is
God seems to open up a window on
the soul and people who previously thought, well,
you know, sure, I'm a Christian.
Suddenly God shines his light upon their lives
and they say, oh, I'm I may be
a Christian, but if I am, I am
a miserable Christian.
I am not serving God at all.
I am not consecrated to him.
And then their heart and mind is filled
with how much Jesus Christ has done for
them and how little their response.
And they're just so convicted that they must
get it right with Jesus.
That happens among believers, and then it happens
also in a marvelous way among unbelievers, and
it virtually compels them to come to Christ.
And it doesn't matter.
Rich, poor, noble, weak, you know, great job,
no job.
Doesn't matter the race.
It doesn't matter the education.
It doesn't matter if a person is a
fine, upstanding person in the community or if
the person is a horrible sinner.
They come to a new recognition of their
great need before God and have an absolute
urgency to set it right or explains in
his book about in the town of Coleraine,
Northern Ireland.
There was a schoolboy who was under so
much conviction of sin that he couldn't go
on in his classroom.
I know what you're thinking.
You're thinking, well, this was just a classroom
prank to get out of a test or
something.
Teacher, I'm so convicted of sin.
Can I go home?
Well, this little boy was he was so
troubled by his own soul, by the state
of his own soul, he just couldn't continue
on.
And the teacher very mercifully sent the boy
home in the company of another boy who
was already converted.
You know, Johnny, go take Billy home.
Billy is under great conviction of sin.
Johnny, you're saved, boy.
You go take him home.
Well, on the way home, the two boys
noticed an empty house and they stopped there
to pray.
And the unhappy boy was saved.
He found peace.
He returned to the classroom immediately and he
told the teacher, I'm so happy I have
the Lord Jesus in my heart.
Now, could you imagine what that was like
for the teacher?
The boy leaves just tormented in heart and
soul.
It's written all over him.
He can't even continue on in class.
And he comes back sometime later.
And as he comes back, he just lets
everybody know he goes, I have Jesus in
my heart.
Now, I'm so happy that testimony had such
a striking effect on the class.
That boy after boy slipped out of the
classroom and then the teacher pretty soon looked
outside of the window and saw outside of
the window boys kneeling all over the schoolyard,
one by one, just praying them and God
alone.
The teacher was so convicted by this that
the teacher asked that first converted boy to
come and minister to him.
The teacher came to Christ.
It raised such a stir on that day
at the school that the administrators sent for
pastors and ministers to come to the school
and to minister to the students, to the
teachers.
And then when the parents came to pick
up the kids to the parents, people were
receiving ministry at that school until 11 o
'clock that night.
Now, you scratch your head, you say that
that's not normal.
That's not everyday occurrence.
That's great revival, a great work of the
spirit of God.
And I think we also have to remember
this last line from verse two, that true
revival is a work of great mercy.
It says there, Lord, revive your work in
the midst of the years, in the midst
of the years, make it known in wrath,
remember mercy, have a good praise, knowing very
well that they don't deserve revival.
And so he prays for mercy.
The idea is, Lord, I know that we
deserve wrath, but in the midst of your
wrath, remember mercy and send revival among us.
You know, sometimes we think that we earn
revival.
Prayer plays an absolutely pivotal place in God's
work of revival.
But don't think for a moment that great
prayer earns revival.
No, not at all.
You can't earn revival through diligent prayer or
faithful service or by surviving trials.
That's nonsense.
Revival is a work of great mercy in
the midst of wrath.
Remember mercy.
We need to realize that none of us
deserve a great outpouring of God.
Not the one time this is a great
rebuke to ourselves.
Sometimes we think, well, you know, Lord, I'm
so spiritual and I've got such a heart
for spiritual things.
I'm obviously way more spiritual than the people
around me, Lord.
Matter of fact, could you just bring them
up to my level?
That'll really spread revival all over the place,
Lord.
You know, in that kind of heart, Spurgeon
said about that, he said sorrowfully, not wishing
to be an accuser of the brethren.
It does seem to me that considering the
responsibilities which were laid upon us and the
means that God has given us, the church
generally, there are blessed exceptions.
The church generally has done so little for
Christ that if Ichabod were written right across
its brow and it were banished from God's
house, it would have its just desserts.
Therefore, we cannot appeal to merits.
It must be mercy.
We don't deserve such a great outpouring.
Even the most godly, the most spiritual, the
most spiritually exalted and mature among us, we
don't deserve it.
Now, on the one hand, that is a
great rebuke to our pride, but on the
other hand, is a glorious open door into
heaven because you don't have to deserve it.
It's not a matter of you getting holy
enough for revival to come.
It's just a matter of you passionately pursuing
Jesus, him being alive and revived in your
heart and then praying, praying, praying, knowing that
none of it earns God's outpouring of the
spirit.
You're only appealing to his mercy.
You know, part of this great display of
mercy is the spiritual awakening of a community
and God mercifully and powerfully draws sinners to
himself.
I mean, a rank sinner has done nothing
to deserve God's intervention in their life to
draw him to himself.
It's just all mercy.
And so when you say, Lord, in the
midst of wrath, remember mercy, pour out that
mercy upon the community, God, pour it out,
bring people who have no business coming to
you.
You bring them to yourself, God.
Do it wonderfully.
Do it dramatically.
Now, again, many examples of this come from
the second great awakening in Britain.
Now, I'm quoting this not because this revival
was unique among historical revivals.
It's just the book I read last.
I mean, if you come to me in
two months, I'll give you examples from a
different book.
But in West Bromwich, England, the first revival
sermon in one community was preached to eight
people.
Well, that's not much.
Well, soon there was such an outpouring of
the Holy Spirit that a thousand people crowded
into the hall and hundreds were turned away
in the first three months.
A hundred people were converted and joined that
particular church in three months.
In another nearby town, there was such a
work of God that they had to have
church in the biggest building in town, which
happened to be a theater.
But on the first meeting at the theater,
so many people were pressing in hundreds of
people past the building being filled to capacity
past that hundreds of people were pressing to
come in.
You know what they had to do?
They had to chain the doors so that
no more people could come in.
Now, can you imagine that?
So many people want to come in to
be a part of God's work.
You have to lock the doors to keep
them out.
It's a safety hazard.
It's the church of the locked door because
we just can't take anymore.
And that's amazing.
That's a great work of mercy.
So Edwin Orr writes about an Irish evangelist
named Gretan Guinness.
He was the most popular evangelist in Northern
Ireland during this great time of the 1859
-1860 revival.
On one occasion, and I'm absolutely amazed by
this, Guinness addressed 20,000 people from speaking
on top of a cab.
You say, well, what's the big deal about
that?
You know, go to Promise Keepers or you
go to this and there's, you know, 50
or 60 or 70,000 people.
Friends, this was before they had public address
systems.
With his own voice, this man spoke to
20,000 people.
Fifty years later, this man, Gretan Guinness, recalled
this great outpouring of the Spirit of God.
He said, the predominating feature was the conversion
of people of all ranks and positions in
ways sudden, startling and amazing.
And before that time, I had seen tens
or scores brought to Christ under gospel preaching.
But this new movement of 1859 was something
quite different.
Ministers were occupied until midnight or even two
or three o'clock in the morning, conversing
with crowds of inquirers who were crying, what
shall we do to be saved?
That's an amazing work of God.
Now, the last issue that I really want
to jump on here and I say last,
not because I just have a few sentences
left, but this is the last heading that
we want to consider is to consider that
true revival comes from God.
That's been a great question.
Where does revival come from?
How do you have revival?
What do you have to do?
Well, first of all, look at what he
says at the end of verse two in
Remember Mercy.
This shows that Habakkuk relied on the power
and the presence of God to bring revival.
It would come from God's mercy, not primarily
from man's work or man's deserving.
It's not like Habakkuk.
Lord, you know, look at all we're doing.
Look at the evangelistic campaign.
We're starting.
Look at all this.
So, Lord, send revival.
No, he throws up his hands in prayer
towards heaven and he says in wrath, remember
mercy, not remember my works, not remember my
heart, not remember my intentions.
Remember your own mercy.
Oh, Lord.
There's a significant theological disagreement on this very
question.
The question being, how does revival come?
Now, a great American theologian.
Some people say that this man was the
greatest theologian that America ever produced.
His name was Jonathan Edwards.
He lived in colonial America.
And Jonathan Edwards was a significant part of
a tremendous revival.
The first great awakening in America, you know,
the days of Wesley and Whitfield and all
of that.
Jonathan Edwards was right in the midst of
that in colonial America.
And Jonathan Edwards has some authority about revival.
And he said revival is the work of
God.
He stressed that it was a sovereign work
of God.
Man can't bring it.
God just sovereignly sends it at a time
known and understood only by God.
God says, I'll send revival there.
I'll send it here.
I'll send it the other way.
It's just God's work.
And that's all there is to it.
Well, there was another great theologian of revival.
His name was Charles Finney.
And Charles Finney was a part of significant
revivals in the United States in the 1830s.
Charles Finney had a different opinion about revival.
He said revival is the right use of
the appropriate means.
In other words, all you have to do
to have revival is follow X, Y and
Z and you'll have revival.
Now, that's almost completely opposite to Jonathan Edwards,
isn't it?
One of them says, hey, look, man, just
God does it.
And there's no there's nothing for man to
do.
It just sends it.
You don't know when you don't know how
you don't know where.
And then Finney says, man, you can have
a revival right now.
Right now, just fulfill X, Y and Z
and you've got revival.
Well, I think that you can get into
error if you take either one of those
statements too far.
Now, there's a lot to respect in Charles
Finney.
But I disagree with him at that point.
Revival is not just a cause and effect
matter with man being the cause.
Revival comes from God.
In wrath, remember mercy.
It's a work of mercy, not a work
of cause and effect.
However, do we deny for a moment that
God moves in response to the prayers of
his people?
We do not deny that for a second.
In other words, revival comes from God.
There's no doubt about it.
But prayer is what moves the hand of
God.
So it is of no use going too
far down the way that Jonathan Edwards said,
well, revival is just from God.
And it's a sovereign work and there's nothing
for man to do, nor is it no
good to to go down too far the
road that Finney went.
Well, it's a cause and effect thing.
You do this and this and this and
revival comes.
No, you say revival is the work of
God.
No doubt about it.
Have a new debt yet.
Yet there's something for man to do in
its pray.
Prayer is our recognition that revival does come
from God.
That's why we're praying.
That's why we earnestly pray for it.
If you notice, that's how it all started
out in verse one.
Did you see that a prayer of Habakkuk,
the prophet?
You see, this shows that Habakkuk knew what
he had to do to bring revival.
And that was pray.
The prayer of Habakkuk shows us that revival
is a work of God.
It's not the achievement of man.
But there's something that man can and should
do for revival.
And that's simply cry out to God and
to plead for his reviving work.
Just like Habakkuk did.
You can notice this historically, that every great
awakening, every great revival has been marked by
a great spirit of prayer.
Revivals are different.
Some revivals seem to be predominantly preaching revivals.
Some revivals make great note of prominent leaders,
like in the first great awakening, there was
Wesley and Whitfield, two giants of that awakening.
In the great awakening, the second great awakening
of 1858 in America and 59 and 60
in Great Britain, there were no really great
names.
It was more of a lay movement.
So revivals differ greatly from historical time to
historical time.
But friends.
I don't think you will ever find a
revival that you could call the prayerless revival.
Because prayer is common to every great revival.
There is a great spirit of prayer.
Well, pray, but what do we pray for?
Have you ever asked that?
Oh, yeah, I want revival.
What do I pray for?
The primary thing you pray for is a
great outpouring of the Holy Spirit.
The plea has to be for an outpouring
of the Holy Spirit, not just on a
preacher.
Not just on myself.
But on the church and on the community.
In other words, I hope you do pray
for me.
And I hope you do pray, Lord, bless
the preacher.
Pour out your spirit upon him.
And that's good.
But I don't think that goes far enough
in what God wants you to pray for,
for revival.
It's good to pray for yourself to be
filled with the Holy Spirit and to keep
yourself in that place of constant yieldedness and
surrender to the Lord and to say, Lord,
pour out your Holy Spirit upon me.
But that doesn't go far enough.
Now, friends, what's notably different about revival is
there is a great outpouring of the Holy
Spirit upon congregations and upon communities.
Think of two different spirit filled ministers, each
preaching the word.
Here's your two preachers, Peter on the day
of Pentecost and Stephen before the Sanhedrin.
Were both of them filled with the spirit?
Absolutely so.
Were both of them preaching the word?
You better believe it.
Yet each had very different results.
Now, we wouldn't say that Stephen was a
failure or had no results, even though he
was martyred and nobody was converted on the
day that he was martyred.
I mean, there you are.
He's preaching before this hostile crowd.
He's filled with the Holy Spirit.
There he is, just a shining example of
Christian witness and testimony.
But nobody was converted on that day.
Now, great ministry happened.
You know, it's interesting.
That was Stephen.
The greatest fruit was not found so much
in direct results of his preaching, but in
the distant results of his prayer.
In his dying prayer, it was answered in
the conversion of one of his killers.
And that was Saul of Tarsus.
So by no means am I trying to
imply that Stephen was a failure and Peter
was a success.
No, not at all.
But when you look at what happened when
Peter was preaching on the day of Pentecost
and what Stephen was preaching before the Sanhedrin,
it was very different results, right?
Well, what was the result?
What was the difference?
The difference wasn't in the preacher or in
his message.
Both Peter, both Stephen were filled with the
Holy Spirit.
Both Peter, both Stephen were preaching the word
of God.
The difference was, was that there was a
radical outpouring of the Holy Spirit upon those
people on the day of Pentecost.
And if there was any kind of outpouring
upon the people who heard Peter at the
Sanhedrin, excuse me, Stephen, when he spoke before
the Sanhedrin, they hardened their hearts against it.
You see, Peter's preaching on the day of
Pentecost was remarkably fruitful in conversions because the
spirit of God was poured out on the
hearers.
And so, yes, pray for the preacher, please
pray for yourself.
Absolutely.
But I think one of the great needs
is for Christians to come together as broadly
as possible and to plead with God for
an outpouring of the Holy Spirit upon the
congregations and upon the community to bring great
conviction of sin, great transformation of life and
great conversions unto the glory of God.
You see, in seasons of great revival and
awakening, people are converted like they were on
the day of Pentecost.
They're converted in droves and oftentimes they're converted
in the strangest ways.
Again, J.
Edwin Orr cites a few examples.
He says that there was an incredible work
of God going on in the city of
Manchester.
And one of the things that the enthusiastic
people of the city of Manchester decided to
do was they distributed invitations to a tea
meeting.
I don't know what we would call today
a tea meeting.
You know, we think of that something for
women.
This wasn't for women.
This, I don't know, maybe we would call
it, you know, a breakfast or a luncheon
or something like that.
You know, a banquet probably.
Well, they distributed these invitations for this tea
meeting, for this banquet.
And they took them.
Where did they take them?
They took them to all the dens of
vice and immorality in Manchester slumps.
It would be like today going to the
worst bars, to the crack houses, to anywhere
where you could find sin and iniquity.
You took those there and you brought invitations
and you said, listen, we want you to
come to this banquet.
But it was interesting on the invitations.
They said clearly on the invitation that nobody
but thieves would be admitted.
That's all you got to be a thief
or you can't come now.
Totally contrary to what a lot of people
expected.
No less than 300 actual thieves came to
hear the gospel.
And a lot of them were converted on
that meeting.
It's crazy.
But it's a great example of a work
of God.
Another account in Orr's book that I like
is happened in the northern England city of
Halifax, where there was a daytime prayer meeting.
And a woman who was just recently converted
was in earnest prayer for her husband.
And she suddenly found that her husband was
there at the prayer meeting.
Now, again, this is something remarkable about times
of great outpouring and revival.
People who you would normally think, well, they
would never darken the door of a church.
They come, they come.
Something of the spirit of God is compelling
them to come.
Now, I'm not saying that they're not invited,
that they're not brought.
Of course they are.
But you know, how many people have you
ever invited to come to church?
And how many of them just, well, you
know, they kindly, but they blow you off.
Well, in a time of a great outpouring
of the Holy Spirit, all of those people
come.
And not only do they come, they bring
other people with them.
Well, this woman, she had just gotten saved
and she was at the prayer meeting.
And she suddenly found out while she was
in prayer at the prayer meeting.
I don't know.
She looks around.
She saw there's my husband over there.
So, you know what?
She starts praying.
She begins to pray at the top of
her voice.
He is here, Lord.
Save my husband.
Make him as happy as me.
Well, the man came back to church that
night to hear the gospel that had changed
his wife so much.
The prayer meeting began and the wife began
to pray for her husband again.
I'm sure the same kind of prayer.
He's here again, Lord, to save him, God.
When she started praying, the man ran out
of the room, running for the door.
And some kind men stopped him at the
door, talked with him, brought him back into
the meeting.
He was trembling from head to foot.
He finally gave in to the conviction, surrendered
his life to Jesus Christ and was marvelously
changed.
That's what God can do.
You see the point of it all?
Make it your prayer.
Oh, Lord, revive your work in the midst
of the years.
Our great God can do these great things.
He does them out of his mercy.
And you and I have as much right
to appeal to the mercy of God as
anybody else does.
Does Billy Graham have more right to God's
mercy than any of us?
Of course not, because it's mercy.
Everybody has a claim on mercy.
So Charles Spurgeon said that this is how
we should pray.
Oh, God, have mercy upon thy poor church
and visit her and revive her.
She has but a little strength.
She has desired to keep thy word.
Refresh her, restore her to thy power and
give her yet to be great in this
land.
That is our prayer.
Father, that's what we pray tonight.
Revive your work, Lord.
Revive your work in the midst of the
years.
In the midst of the years, make it
known.
In wrath, remember mercy.
Oh, how we need this God.
How we do not want to be satisfied
for a moment with a normal Christian existence
in light of what this world thinks is
normal.
No, Lord, we long for you to do
great things in our midst.
We see the end of the age rushing
in upon us.
God, we plead with you that there would
be a great revival to bring back backslidden
Christians to bring many into your kingdom before
you snatch away your church to rescue us,
Lord, from the coming calamity on this earth.
Lord, send a great revival.
This is our prayer, Lord.
Oh, God, have mercy upon our poor church
and visit us and revive us.
We have but a little strength, but we
have desired to keep your word.
Oh, refresh us, restore us to thy power.
And give us yet to be great in
this land, not for our glory, Lord, but
for yours.
Exalt yourself.
And do it through a great work in
our midst.
We pray this, Lord, unto you this evening
in Jesus name.
Amen.