The Cry for Revival — E.A. Johnston

The Cry for Revival Begins in Spiritual Desperation

Well, friends, it's raining outside and that's what we need, a heaven-sent rain of revival. I've never seen a time in my life, friends, where we needed revival more than at this tragic hour. I believe God allows his wayward people to become so spiritually emaciated that they get to the place of hunger for the reality of God, and they come under such a burden to have an experience of God.

It is in that place of desperation where there comes what I call the cry for revival. A man who understood this principle better than most was Dr. Stephen Olford. Listen to his words as he describes this cry for revival.

Stephen Olford's Call for Spirit-Begotten Prayer

But on the whole, there is so little spirit-begotten and energized prayer, so little utter dependence upon God, so little authoritative preaching. Instead, there is so much of high-pressure appeals for money, for decisions, and for uninstructed membership in our church life.

These and many other disturbing features on the contemporary scene make me long and cry out for revival. Dr. Olford wrote a whole book on the subject of the cry of revival entitled Heart Cry for Revival, and I commend it to you, friends.

It's a great book written by a great man of God, Stephen Olford, and I would often spend hours talking about revival, praying for revival, and preaching toward revival. He wrote the foreword to my first book on revival, but very few pastors today want to talk about revival.

Numerical Growth Versus Spiritual Renewal

All they want to talk about is growing their church. I was standing in line to receive my Ph .D. from seminary, and next to me was standing a pastor from the South, and I asked him how often he got together with the other pastors in his community to pray for revival.

And he looked at me strangely and replied, we don't need revival because we are on the grow. In other words, so long as you are growing your church numerically, it matters not how deep it goes spiritually.

Habakkuk's Cry Amid the Church's Deadness

I believe that the great absence in our churches at this hour is the cry for revival. We hear the prophet Habakkuk cry out, revive thy work in the midst of the years. In the midst of the years, make known in wrath, remember mercy.

I don't believe the church is desperate enough yet for revival. We've grown accustomed to the deadness in our pulpits and the coldness in our congregations and the absence of God in our sanctuaries, but where oh where is the desperate cry for revival in our day?

Why aren't our sanctuaries turned into Bethels where the brokenhearted people of God lay on their faces before God and weep over the great sins of this nation to God and cry out from a desperate, brokenhearted prayer to God for revival?

The Cost of Discipleship and the Self-Absorbed Church

The lack is staggering. In America today, the bane of the church is self-indulgence, self-preservation, and self-centeredness. The modern gospel message is all about us served on a man-centered platter at a sumptuous banquet table laden with delicacies.

Other generations knew the price of discipleship and the cost of following a crucified Savior. John the Baptist had a platter with his head upon it. Stephen was baptized with stones as he saw Jesus rise from his throne.

Paul finished his ministry, not with accolades and applause, but with friendlessness and a falling axe. The blood of the martyrs cries out against the self-absorbed church of this generation. Oh friends, where is the cry for revival?

God's Search for Hearts Fully Surrendered to Him

Where is the desperation? Why all the self-satisfaction? If we could only get serious enough with God, he would get serious enough with us. Listen to the word of God found in 2 Chronicles 16 and 9. For the eyes of the Lord run to and fro throughout the whole earth to show himself strong in the behalf of them whose heart is perfect toward him.

Listen, God's eyes are continually searching the earth for those rare individuals of whom the world was not worthy. Men like Moses and John the Baptist, Luther and Calvin, Whitefield and Wesley, Spurgeon and Moody, a man who live in a different atmosphere than other mortals, a man who have annihilated self with the cross and whose lives are broken alabaster boxes, but from which fragrances arise to the heavens from the broken pieces of selflessness, self-sacrifice and self-crucifixion.

God is always on the lookout for such men until the church falls to her knees in brokenness and humility before God and cries out to God in holy desperation to see God come and revival in our day. There will remain a void in our sanctuaries of the presence of God because there is an absence of the cry for revival to see God come again and pour out his plentiful rains of effusion of grace upon our land.

Let us pray.