(Clip) Secret to Revival — Leonard Ravenhill

Groaning Prayer as the Secret to Revival

I'll tell you the secret of getting revival in the church, find half a dozen people that know how to groan, you won't have the same church in a year. But you can't learn groaning except by the Holy Ghost, it's the school of the Holy Spirit.

The Spirit's Intercession in Romans 8

And if you think that's unusual look at verse 26 in which he says, likewise the Spirit helpeth our infirmities, we know not what we should pray for us we ought, but the Spirit itself, really a bad translation, the Spirit himself maketh intercession for us with groanings which come at the utters.

And verse 27, the Spirit because he maketh intercession for the will of God. Hey that's pretty advanced Christianity. We know not what to pray, oh we know how to give God a shopping list, we know how to tell God do this that, oh the pastor said remember to pray for the building fund.

The devil doesn't care if you build a church from here to Miami that won't worry him. But somehow if we can get people so desiring the anointing of God that they'd rather pray with groanings and tears and sing like Gali Coetzee or have a better voice than Richard Tucker had in the opera, in New York.

Now I've heard people say when it says that we pray with groanings it's like praying in tongues, it's nothing of the kind, because if it was God would say so, it's beyond them. The greatest language of prayer has no vocabulary.

Hannah's Travail and the Church's Spiritual Barrenness

The greatest prayers in the Bible have no words. Friday night I think I'm going to talk on Hannah. Do you remember Hannah how she prayed? And even the man of God thought the priest thought she was drunk, and she groaned and she trammeled, she was barren.

I suggest to you with all the little pretty little conferences we have going on now about the Holy Spirit and all the rest, we're a barren people before God. We have no revival in the land. But I'll tell you this, when the Holy Ghost comes and begins to burden people it's a pretty pretty rough thing to learn the true language of intercession.

The Spirit's Help in Every Trial

But the Spirit helpeth our infirmities. Let's come to this verse right here for a minute or two. In all these things, he's mentioned them, sort them out when you go home with them. Tribulation, distress, famine, peril, making the sword, perils of the deep, so forth so on.

Sort them out, put them in little sections like that. And you'll find that some of them are things that attack the body, some attack the mind, some attack the spirit. And he says in all these things, there is no area in your life where as a Christian you're expected to be defeated.

You say I can't be perfect can't you? Are you sure? Jesus said in the Sermon on the Mount, be ye therefore perfect. He said of Job, to the devil hast thou considered my servant Job. He's perfect and upright.

He set a task for Abraham before the Holy Ghost was given as we know. And he said walk before me and be thou perfect. You can't have Adamic perfection in your body, you can't have mental perfection. There are many areas you can't have perfection, but you can have perfect obedience.

Costly Intercession and God's Purifying Work

One pastor got desperate, he said my people come to church, pay their tithes, routine, they've no passion, no vision. They're worldly, they enjoy bowling a lot more than groaning. They like fishing for tiddlers in the water much more than fishing for men.

The more of them are traveling than travailing. And he said to his wife and another man and woman in the church, can we agree together that God will send us and they did. They prayed all night. Sometimes it's very painful when, in fact, I don't know whether God ever does any blessing without painfulness.

If he could have done it without painfulness he'd have done it for his son, but his son had to go through the horrors of Gethsemane and the cross. So this preacher and his wife and the other man and his wife, she prayed the organ I thing, prayed.

And God began to move, move them nearly all out of the church. From about 450 people they went down to about 45 and they thought, well now Lord, Lord put the break on here, it's going to stop here isn't it, the Lord said.

And they went down until they were a very select company. The preacher and his wife, the oldest deacon and the organist, four of them. And instead of shutting the shop off he said, keep on praying. Great, God's moving.

Well he sure was. They never asked him to move that way, but after all you tell God to move he does it. And he said, for weeks I preached to four people. And then he said God began to turn the tide and they started coming back, people got saved and now he said he had hundreds of people.

In another community they heard about this and thought, my that's great. Let's ask God to work. You see the Holy Spirit is so wonderful. As I said last night, he's the spirit of truth and he convicts of error.

The Holy Spirit's Convicting Ministry

He's the spirit of life, he convicts of death. He's the spirit of power, he convicts of weakness. He's a spirit of joy and he convicts of sorrow. And he's the spirit of love. God hasn't raised you up to be a bottle-fed baby from here to eternity.

Salvation for Transformation, Not Mere Escape

He's coming to get his dues out of your life. He's invested a lot in you. He didn't save you so that you might escape eternal fire. That's a fringe benefit. He saved you that you might be conformed to the image of his son.

And however costly that may be, if you'll obey God, oh you may escape now, but brother he'll get you before long. The trouble in the church of God today is we preach half a salvation. We tell people how to get rid of a lot of lousy sins.

We don't tell them how to get rid of a prince from inside that has dominion over them. What does he say? He says, who shall deliver me from the body of this death? Well tell me tonight, can Buddha do it?

Can Confucius do it? Can transcendental meditation do it? No sir, a thousand times over. There is one who is able to do it. You're not in the flesh, but in the spirit. Come on tonight, are you in the spirit or in the flesh?

The Indwelling Spirit and Victory Over Sin

Have you got secret lust? What's biting you on the inside? An unforgiving spirit? A grudge? Laziness? Jealousy? Anger? Secret lust? What is it? He says you're not in the flesh, but in the spirit. If so be, now listen, the spirit of God dwelleth in you.

Look at the next verse. Verse 10, if Christ be in you. Look at the 11th verse, the spirit of him that raised up Jesus dwell in you. Man alive, how in God's name can you be indwelt by God, the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost to be defeated?

Don't argue with me about it. Scratch it out of your Bible if you don't believe it. If you're a Christian, you're an indwelt person. God dwells in you. The Father dwells in you. That's what it says. I didn't write that did I?

I write good books. Hmm, but they're not as good as this. The Holy Ghost wrote it. And he says I want you to know that if you're really born of God, God dwells in you. One of the favorite hymns in my church is beneath the cross of Jesus.

I think I weep every week when we sing it. It's a beautiful hymn. One phrase in it always gets to me, I ask no other sunshine than the sunshine of thy face. Dr. Tozzi used to say to me, Len, you know Christians don't tell lies, you just sing them.

Is it true you ask no other sunshine than the sunshine of his face? A phrase that rips me every time I sing it, content to let the world go by. You let it go by today. Did you ever try and jolt somebody before they slipped into hell?

Has it caused you any agonizing tears? Come on, you may be the one key holding up revival. Maybe just you, nobody else, I don't know.