A Call for Revival — Michael Howard

Breaking Up the Fallow Ground

Reap in mercy, break up your fallow ground, for it is time to seek the Lord, till he come and rain righteousness upon you. So unto yourselves in righteousness, reap in mercy, break up your fallow ground, for it is time to seek the Lord, and seek the Lord, and seek the Lord, and seek the Lord beloved until he rain his righteousness upon us.

That is perhaps the greatest hallmark of the revivalist pride. It is time to seek the Lord like we have never sought him before. It is time for who to break up their fallow ground, for us to break up our fallow ground.

Many times we say, well, there's nothing wrong with me, I'm not in sin. And it's not sin that God's concerned with itself. It's the one that the prophet Hosea speaks of this wise to the children of Israel, a nation of farmers, that it was time to break up the fallow ground, the ground that had become caked hard by the sun, that was impervious, that would not receive the water, that was so hardened that nothing could grow out of it, except the strongest kind of weeds.

Many times, beloved, our lives have become so hardened by the world of sin, and hardened by our own character and nature, and hardened by ourself, that the worst, the only thing that can grow in us is the worst kind of weeds.

And it's time to break up the fallow ground. And what did they need? They needed strong oxen and deep plows to break up the fallow ground. And when they began to plow the earth, great clods of earth would come up, and they still needed to be broken down.

It's what he says in the former verse, the breaking up of the clods. And our lives, many times, are like that fallow ground, or like the big clods of dry earth. But this is the time to break up the fallow ground.

Repentance and Specific Prayer

If we want to see a visitation of the Lord Jesus Christ, if we want to see an outpouring of the Holy Spirit, like we've never done before, it's time to break up the fallow ground. It's time to get on our faces.

It's time to repent. It's time to pour out our hearts to God like we've never done before. It's time not to pray some casual prayers, to hide behind tongues, to pray general prayers, but to be so specific in the company of God's people and in our own time with God, and all to be so specific about our lives and the things where we have earned and God wrought, so that the Lord may begin to pour out His blessings upon us again, that He may begin to melt our hearts, that He may begin to transform and change us, so that through us might flow the channel of His blessings.

It's time to break up, and who must do the breaking up? It must be us. It must be us that comes before the Lord. It must be us that breaks up the fallow ground. It must be us that seeks the Lord, and seeks the Lord.

He says, seek me, and you shall find me when you search for me with all your heart. Not divided hearts, not a heart that is seeking some ambition, not a heart that is desirous of something else, but a heart that pants after God, even as the deer longs for the water brooks.

I tell you, when we begin to get to that place where we cannot have enough of God, where we're not satisfied, where, beloved, we can't wait till the next meeting because it's so exciting, where we just long to be in His presence, when we're panting after God and we're longing after God and we're thirsting after God and we're hungry for God, and we're just like a dry sponge that's going to be saturated with more and more water.

Beloved, when we seek Him on this wise, when we desire Him on this fashion, oh, He's going to pour out the rain of His righteousness, and it's not just going to be a shower. It's not going to be a former rain that comes to melt the earth so that the children of Israel could sow their seed in.

It's going to be a former rain and a latter rain that's going to bring forth abundance of fruit. Hallelujah. This world needs revival like we've never had before. The church needs revival like it's never had before.

The Urgency of Revival

And, beloved, if we don't get revival, we are dead. There's no other option. I believe we stand on the brink of the greatest age that the church has ever seen since the first century. The devil is doing everything that is possible to prevent what God wants to bring to pass.

And unless we get down to the business of being men and women who seek God and seek God and seek God until He rains righteousness, until He pours out a blessing that we're unable to contain, until we open our mouths and He will fill it, beloved, until we stay there long enough and often enough, until the showers of God's blessings begin to fall upon us and begin to melt us in the depths of our being and begin to cause us to fall in love with Him like we've never done before, until we feel the breezes of God's presence and the wind of His breath upon our lives, until the Holy Ghost comes in with His fire and His anointing and His power, we need to stay on our knees and stay on our knees and seek God until He rains His righteousness on us, until He rains with an abundant rain, until He melts our heart and hearts.

Revival Begins With Conviction and Cleansing

Conviction of sin and self is the hallmark of every revival. And revival begins in the house of God. That which was dead is revived and revival can only be extended to the lost and the dying when the house of the Lord has tasted of it.

Revive us again. Revive us again, O Lord. Visit your people. Visit your hungry people and revive them with your mighty fires. What happens? The church dies when men begin to institute their traditions in place of the Word of God.

And what revival does is that it takes us back to the Word of God. It takes us back to the Spirit of God. It takes us back to the life of God. It smashes down the traditions of men because man's tradition and man's system cannot stand in the fire of God's scrutiny and it's broken down and devoured.

Hallelujah. So that God makes a new clean way that we can walk in. He says this is the way. Walk ye in it. And O beloved, we need a revival to cleanse the filth of the church. We need a great washing of a revival to cleanse the church in this hour and to bring her back on course, to set her towards the target that God has purposed and planned.

Revival and the Anointing for Ministry

And that's what every mission organization and every mission needs, every missionary needs in his own and her life is to be men and women of visionaries of revival. Because without revival, we will never be effective.

We can preach sermons and we can preach messages and we can do everything that is in our power to do, but we will not get the results. We will not get the results. We will not get the Pentecost. We will not get the outpouring.

We will not get the conviction. We will not get the cutting words. He sendeth word for Canastir to pierce the hearts of men, as a hammer to break them as stones, beloved, or as a sword to cut asunder, as fire to cleanse and purify.

And when God's servants are anointed with his spirit and with his power because they've experienced the outpouring of his reign of righteousness in their lives, because they've experienced his greatness upon them, hallelujah, they're filled with his authority and his power and that's what we need to preach the word of God with us wherever we go.

And if we don't have it, we don't need to preach because we'll not get results. We may get some puny man results, but we won't get holy ghost results. It's time to reign righteousness. God longs to reign his righteousness.

Missionaries as Carriers of Revival

And I tell you when there's sufficient prayer going up, when there's sufficient intercession going up, oh God's going to begin to pour down his righteousness and our vision for Malawi and our vision for Mozambique and our vision for Africa needs to be that wherever we go, we are men and women that carry revival because revival is in the deepest part of our bowels.

Revival burns in our bones. It's shut up inside of them like a mighty fire that wants to come rushing forth. And beloved, we need to be men and women who carry revival because we've tasted revival. We've been in the presence of the almighty God.

He's reigned his righteousness upon us. He's equipped us with his power and his life and we go forth as carriers of it. Make us revivalists, God. If there's anything that a missionary needs to be, it's a revivalist, beloved.

And without being a revivalist, we may as well give it up. May we wake in the night hours and cry out and cry out and cry out for the souls of the lost and dying until the cry is so from the depths of our being that God transforms us and God changes us.

May we open our mouths and cry out for the living God to reign his righteousness on our lives until we're saturated and melted and undone before him until we see him in all of his glory and his holy presence.

Revival, Holiness, and the Missionary Awakening

And we can say only with the prophet, woe is me, woe is me. I am undone for I'm a man of unclean lips and dwell among a people of unclean lips. But now mine eyes have seen the king. Hallelujah. Oh, beloved, it's time for revival.

It's time to taste the fire. It's time to be immersed in it, and it's time to spread it abroad. One revival in this nation will do more than a hundred years of preaching. One revival in this land will sweep multitudes, not by their hundreds, not by their thousands, not by their tens of thousands, but by their millions into the camp of the almighty God.

And I want to tell you that Africa has never really experienced on a large scale a revival. Hallelujah. And I believe that we need to experience one before Jesus comes, before he comes to love us and he turns us forth as forerunners to pave the way for a mighty outpouring of his holy ghost to bring in the last millions of this continent.

One of the most forward marks, results of revival is a great missionary awakening. Every revival has been followed by the sending forth of multitudes of missionaries. Because when we taste revival, we can no longer be cold and indifferent to the lost souls of the multitudes of the nations.

Revival and the Expansion of the British Empire

And I want to tell you tonight that Queen Victoria was a born again woman of God. And her whole ambition in establishing the British Empire, and of course our history books will never tell us this, was that missionaries and men of God might take the gospel to the ends of the earth.

Some work. The greatest age of the British Empire was the missionary age of the mid -19th and into the 20th century. Never such an age of glory. Never such an age of noble men and women who laid down their lives to take the gospel of Jesus Christ to the dark continents and places of this world.

Because they tasted revival fire. Because they tasted the revival of the Wesley brothers. Because they tasted the revival's beloved. That swept through the nation. And when there's a revival, the nation is turned around.

We think this is an age when men have reached their lowest. I tell you, you begin to read what Britain was like before the revival of Charles and John Wesley, it was the pits. Every vice and filth ever imaginable was the order of the day and the more degrading the better.

Drunkenness was in every home and every person, man, woman and child. The British were a nation of drunkards, despised. The only thing that saved Britain from a revolution, another violent revolution in the 19th century was revival.

Jonathan Edwards and Prayer for Worldwide Awakening

At the height of his revival, Jonathan Edwards ministering in the east coast of the United States sent out his appeal for Christians of all lands to unite together to pray for a worldwide awakening and to return the church to the primitive apostolic Christianity that was laid down in the word of God.

I love it. The primitive apostolic ministry, no frills and fancies, nothing clothed in our society and system of today. But it was that apostolic work that brought results because Peter stood up on the day of Pentecost and about 5 ,000 were saved.

And every day as they preached the word of God, souls were added unto their number in their thousands, in their thousands, beloved, in their thousands. Not people that would death slide, not people that would grow cold, not people that would wander away, but they saw the fire, they saw the revival, they saw and tasted of it.

Because it was locked up in the apostles.