Revival of Prayer — Mark Greening

Prayer as the Foundation of Revival

Over the past few weeks. We have been considering the topic of revival as highlighted through the actions of various kings in the Old Testament. We've considered surrender to God Humility dealing with idolatry in our lives and Giving is key events that sparked revivals in the land of Israel.

This morning. I would like to focus on prayer is the key to revival an ongoing revival in the life of the church. And in our own personal lives the psalmist asks in psalm 85 6 will you not revive us again?

That your people may rejoice in you. Is that your heart's cry this morning to be revived? Someone once said not all those mark who pray for revival are willing to pay the price of revival in their own lives.

May that not be so of us today. Young people thank you for joining us today. I'm going to be laying a groundwork From scripture that will set the tone for why prayer is so important. I trust you'll never forget this message because it is key and fundamental to your own spiritual growth and for how God will use you.

As you mature and grow in him in these years to come by the end of the sermon I will be giving some illustrations that will help us to understand How and why prayer is so fundamental for Oak Ridge and your youth group and all of our groups and everything we do here.

So you be patient some stories are coming but in preparation for that Let's turn to 2nd Chronicles chapter 6 verse 12 where we read of Solomon's prayer of dedication for the new temple. By way of background prior to the construction of the temple God had instructed Moses to build a portable worship temper temple and a portable worship center as it were where The Ark of the Covenant was housed in the Holy of Holies in the tabernacle and as they moved around God and his presence that was manifested by that Shekinah glory the cloud and the fire at night Would follow them and lead and guide them.

But now that the Israelites were established in the land It was time for a temple a permanent structure to be built and Solomon was given the honor to construct that in 2nd Chronicles 6 verse 12 We read these words.

Then Solomon stood before the altar of the Lord in front of the whole assembly of Israel and spread out his hands. Now he had made a bronze platform five cubits long five cubits wide and three cubits high.

And it placed it in the center of the outer court. He stood on the platform and then knelt down before the whole assembly of Israel and spread out his hands towards heaven. He said O Lord God of Israel.

There is no God like you in heaven or on earth. You who keep your covenant of love with your servants who continue wholeheartedly in your way. And then jump down to verse 21. Hear the supplications of your servant and your people Israel.

And when they pray towards this place Hear from heaven your dwelling place and when you hear forgive. And then down to chapter 7 verse 1 when Solomon finished praying fire came down from heaven and Consumed the burnt offering and the sacrifices and the glory of the Lord filled the temple.

The priests could not enter the temple the Lord because the glory of the Lord filled it. When all the Israelites saw the fire coming down and the glory of the Lord above the temple They knelt on the pavement with their faces to the ground.

They worshiped and gave thanks to the Lord saying he is good his love endures forever. Now this is a summary of the prayer of Solomon now. I want to read some familiar verses. You'll understand them as soon as and remember them as soon as we go through them.

But the context of these verses is very important after this wonderful prayer and the sincere prayer of Solomon With God displaying his glory and falling on that place in so much. They could not even do their work.

It's wonderful when God's glory so fills a church that we don't need to work and he builds it without us. Notice what chapter 7 verse 12 says. The Lord appeared to Solomon at night and said I have heard your prayer and have chosen this place for myself as a temple for Sacrifices when I shut up the heavens so that there is no rain or Command locusts to devour the land or send a plague among my people if my people Who are called by my name will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways.

Then will I hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and will heal their land. Now my eyes will be open and my ears attentive to the prayers offered in this place. Now our passage teaches us that the first priority to God in anything we do is prayer of All the things that God could have chosen to emphasize in this passage regarding the grand unveiling of the temple he chose to highlight prayer above all else of the 53 verses that describe this dedication 45 referred directly to prayer and God's response to that prayer and only eight verses speak of the sacrifices.

Music and the festival that followed and when that sincere prayer was offered up in the people's hearts were with Solomon as he prayed. The glory of the Lord filled the temple and people were in awe of God and worshipped him.

Prayer and the House of God

What will it take for the glory of the Lord to come on Oak Ridge Bible Chapel prayer. What we need most in our churches today is a revival of prayer. For then and only then will we truly rejoice in the Lord and experience his power to change and to save.

Is this not what God meant back in Isaiah? 56 -7 we're speaking of the Gentiles you and I who are here today. For those of us who would put our faith in him. He said all the way back in Isaiah 56 -7 these I will bring to my holy mountain and give them joy in my house of prayer.

For my house will be called a house of prayer for all nations. Did Jesus not confirm this in Matthew where he said it is written? My house will be called a house of prayer, but you are making it a den of robbers.

You may remember the story Jesus came to the temple and found people were carrying on a profitable business. Selling animals and charging excessive fees for converting currency for Passover. And he overturned the tables and he made a whip of cords and he thrashed them all out of that place.

Somehow the religious people there had missed the whole point of coming to fellowship with God. And Jesus reminded them my house will be called a house of prayer. But you have made it a den of robbers in other words.

You think that when you come together. It's just like any other gathering here at the temple. You can you think that you can carry on just like the rest of your week and come in and bring that thought and that Attitude and that emphasis and that it's okay.

But my house shall be called a house of prayer out with you. This tone of prayer is to characterize everything we do in our churches. In everything we do if we're to please God. Jesus did not say that my house shall be called a house of worship and great singing that we just had Yes worship, but my house shall be called a house of prayer.

He did not say my house shall be called a house of entertainment and well-run programs. My house shall be called a house of prayer. He did not say my house shall be called a house of great preaching and intellectual sermons and Theology and doctrine my house shall be called a house of prayer.

It's not how we sing and teach and plan and organize. But it's why we sing. Why we plan? Why we exercise our gifts why we teach why we speech what speak why we help? It's why we do these things. Is it for the glory of the Lord so that his glory might descend or is it so that I can be recognized and praised and thanks know this.

Preaching and teaching and doctrine and theology will not bring about a revival because my house Shall be called a house of prayer. God did not say if my people who are called by my name will study the Bible more will listen to better sermons.

Know their theology cold. He said if my people whom are called by my name will humble themselves and pray. Then will I hear now my eyes will be open and my ears attentive to the prayers offered at Oak Ridge.

I Don't know who made this saying. But I've never forgotten it. Someone says if you're clever Jesus won't be wonderful. And if Jesus is wonderful, you won't be so clever and Jesus becomes wonderful through prayer.

Have you ever considered that if Jesus said my father's house will be called a house of prayer then prayer must have been so important. To him nowhere. Do we see the importance of prayer to Jesus like we do in Revelation chapter 5 there in that wonderful passage John has this vision and he sees Jesus this lamb slain.

Standing at the center of the throne and as he stands there, there's 24 elders surrounding him with gold Balls in their arms. What's in the gold balls the prayers of the Saints? How wonderful is Jesus that he places your prayers and gold balls and they're before his throne every day.

How wonderful is Jesus that according to Psalm 56 a he puts our tears at his bottle and he saves them. Not only we should we pray because Jesus is wonderful we should pray because our prayers are wonderful to him.

Prayer, God's Promises, and Revival History

First Timothy 2 1 Paul says I urge first of all that Requests prayers and intercessions and thanksgiving be made for everyone. Why Paul verse 3? This is good and pleases it. Pleases God our Savior. Prayer is pleasing.

It is wonderful to God. Just think of all the promises of God to us. Ask and you shall receive. Seek and you shall find. Knock and the door shall be open to you. Call unto me and I will show you great and mighty things that you do not know.

You will seek me and you will find me when you seek for me with all your heart. I Father in heaven come near to God and he will come near to you. What great and precious promises there are from God to us.

And when we pray God answers and when we pray God saves and when we pray he builds his church. And when we pray God sends revivals. If we look at the history of the church Whenever the church reached a low point spiritually and was powerless with both men and God.

What did God do? He sent a revival. And what is the first thing that characterizes any revival in church history? People pray. At the turn of the 20th century in Wales before the Great Welsh Revival came were 100 ,000 people were saved in a very quick and immediate move of God.

What was it people prayed? When God moved powerfully in the Great Awakening in the u .s. In the 1700s it was because people pray. Who was the great preacher? Who is the great singer? People pray. Great music came out of the movement.

Great messages came out of those revivals. But people pray. What church growth strategies. What Bible College. What seminary. What doctorates? Spawn these things. None people prayed. One of the main characteristics of a revival of prayer is that the presence of God is felt in a new and powerful way as a Matter of fact, I've heard people say I learned more about God and theology in one week in a revival.

Then I did in all the years of Bible College put together. One such revival took place in 1857 in the city of New York. Jeremiah Lamphere a 46 year old businessmen felt led by the Holy Spirit to Start a businessmen's prayer meeting in downtown, New York.

He started a noontime weekly prayer meeting. Where? Any businessmen could come and the rules were very simple. You Anyone could attend from any denomination? People could leave whenever they wanted and Prayers were to be fairly short.

Lamphere printed printed out some leaflets and he handed them out to the warehouses and some of the business establishment around that area and Had people come to the Old North Dutch Reformed Church on Fulton Street in New York at noon to pray.

On his first announced prayer meeting on September 23rd 1857 Lamphere arrived alone and prayed by himself for a half an hour. After that half hour six more men came in at various times until there were seven of them in prayer.

By next Wednesday, there were 20 on October 7th. There were nearly 40. There was such a desire for prayer that people began to meet daily and one week later over a hundred men were in Attendance at those meetings including many unsaved people who came and under conviction of the Holy Spirit got saved.

Within one month prayer meetings sprung up in churches all over the city and before long they were overcrowded men and women young and old from every denomination. People praying with only one common denominator a love for Christ a love for one another and a love for the lost.

People were being saved on a regular basis and those presence Present expressed they tangibly felt God's presence as never before. By March 19th the theater opened for prayer and Hundreds were standing outside and a half hour before the theater opened for prayer.

They were turning people away by the hundreds. It was packed out. By the end of March over 6 ,000 people met daily in prayer gatherings in New York. Many churches added at evening prayer meetings to their services.

Soon there were a hundred and fifty different United prayer meetings each day across Manhattan and Brooklyn. Spontaneously prayer meetings broke out all across the u .s. And in some towns nearly the whole population was converted.

It was said of Atlanta that only 50 people remained unsaved. The Presbyterian magazine reported that as of May there had been 50 ,000 converts of the revival. A New York Methodist magazine reported a total of 8 ,000 conversions in Methodist meetings alone in one week.

The Louisville Daily Paper reported 17 ,000 Baptist conversions in three weeks during the month of March and According to a June statement the conversions figures figures stood at ninety six thousand two hundred and sixteen and still counting.

One town was distraught because two two teenagers in a high school were still unsaved. These are just brief examples of what was happening continuously and spontaneously all across the u .s. People said that the presence of the Holy Spirit seemed to hang like an invisible cloud over cities.

This was especially true of the eastern seaboard. There are historical accounts of people coming in on ships approaching the east coast. They felt a solemn holy influence as far as 100 miles away without even knowing what was happening in America.

Revival began aboard one ship before it even reached the coast of the u .s. People on board began feeling the presence of God in a sense of their own sinfulness. The Holy Spirit started convicting them and they began to pray and as they neared the ship's harbor the captain Had an emergency Morse code go out.

Send a minister as the ship neared the harbor. Hundreds and that ship came to Christ. Another small commercial ship arrived in port with the captain and every member of the crew converted in the last hundred and fifty miles.

Ship after ship arrived with the same story passengers and crew were suddenly convicted of sin. Syncretism as Jim preached about last year. We worship God, but we've got these things on the side that we do during the week.

They were convicted of sin. And they turned to Christ before even their ship reached the American coast. The battleship North Carolina was anchored in New York Harbor as a naval receiving ship. And more than a thousand young men were aboard.

Four Christian men agreed to meet together and to pray and they knelt on the lower deck one day. And the Holy Spirit so filled them with joy in their hearts that they broke out into song. But ungodly men on the top deck heard them and they ran down the stairs and they began mocking and jeering and by the time They got to the bottom deck the Holy Spirit had dropped them to their knees and they began crying to God for mercy and they were saved.

Night after night these sailors prayed and hundreds were converted on the ship. Ministers were sent for to counsel and the disciple and As those men were trained by those ministers. Then they went out to other ships and every ship they went to to talk about the revival.

God sent revival even unto those ships. You say mark those those are stories from the past. No. This still happens in the world today. I've mentioned to you the 1972 revival for the young adults. Earl Lackey who was involved in that in 1972 in Saskatoon shared his testimony with your group a few weeks ago.

I'll never forget what Earl said he says mark a small church of 200 started to pray and Before long prayers spread to other churches and with with within a short period of time within five weeks. There were 3 ,000 of us in prayer at the Civic Auditorium in Saskatoon on gray on Grey Cup Sunday.

We packed it out. No one wanted to go watch the game. He says what does it take to do that? Earl said we had many reports of people driving along the 401 and being compelled to drive off and go to a gas station and They would say this something is different.

What is happening in Saskatoon? They would say go see and they would send them down to the revival in the prayer meetings. In one class Earl had mentioned to us That there were seven students who would pray on a weekly basis and they could get any interest in the rest of their classmates to Come and pray.

But when God started to hover over that place because of the prayers of God's people. Within one week they went in and there were 50 teens waiting there expectantly looking to meet with God most of them saved that week.

Prayer and Conversion at Park Royal

I Remember back in Park Royal and God showed us this just in microcosm. Where the elders began to pray for three months that the spirit of grace and supplication would fall in the rest of the congregation.

After three months 17 men spontaneously said we need to pray first. We need to get right with God and then we need to pray and they began to pray and for six months we prayed together and Then on December 31st that happened.

God began to move we sensed his presence. We would witness the people they would come to the Lord we would read two or three verses to people they would weep and come to Christ. The Holy Spirit was no respecter of persons.

We didn't even have to know the languages of those. We were witnessing to. I remember a Mandarin lady was brought to me and The husband says witness to her. She'll come to the Lord if you witness to her.

I said I don't. I can't do anything. I don't save people and so I Started to share with her the gospel and and she could hardly understand English and At the end and you could tell she didn't want to be her husband had dragged her into that meeting with me and at the end I said Do you want to become a Christian and she understood enough English to say no.

And then I said do you believe these things that I've been saying to you? She said no. What do you do has anyone. Has anyone ever witnessed to someone who said no twice to you and seen them come to Lord?

Have you ever seen that? Do you know within ten minutes as I sat there with her? She began to weep Uncontrollably and began talking to her husband. She was a Buddhist. Talking to her husband and he looked at me said mark good news.

She's under conviction of the Holy Spirit. She got saved got up hugged us and was Rejoicing in the Lord. Since that time she's let almost all of her Buddhist family to Christ. What technique. No technique people were praying for me while I was witnessing to her.

I used to think that I had the gift of evangelism. I don't. In the time of God's moving even if you don't have the gift of evangelism God will use your testimony so powerfully you think you're going to be the next Billy Graham.

But you see people prayed. You know, it's a wonderful thing to be so used to having people saved that when God stops saving. You call an emergency board meeting. God used to save every week. The lowest number we ever saw saved was one a week and we were grieved when we only saw one saved the week.

We had no programs. No evangelistic meetings. Nothing people would be saved. We'd meet people at the back of the church. Why'd you come here today? God sent us. Are you a Christian? No, but God sent us.

Anyways, he woke us up. He sent us. People would be on the parade. The ladies would be on their knees praying. People would be saved in other parts of the city. No one witnessing to them. God convicted us one day.

You're not seeing salvations. Two weeks went by two weeks. No one got saved. The Holy Spirit showed us you've grieved me. An event took place in this church. Right in Park Royal that grieved me. You repent elders.

God laid on my heart to stand up and preach a sermon. I'm grieving the Holy Spirit because he is here today. He is a person and he feels and he is grieved by my sin. He's grieved by our sin. I preached the message on grieving the Holy Spirit.

I had the whole congregation stand we held hands and I prayed and I asked God to forgive us our sins. Whether through ignorance or not, I prayed that he would forgive us our sins. And the power of God once again came and 20 more people were saved in short order.

See. Surely the arm of the Lord is not too short that it cannot save his ear is not too dull that it cannot hear but Your sin have separated between you and your God so that he will not listen. My father's house shall be called a house of prayer.

People have somehow made the sermon or teaching or Bible studies the central focus in our churches. But the preacher the teacher. If we have done our job, right we'll point people to the throne of grace.

Why. Because it's there at the throne of grace that we can obtain grace and find mercy to help in our time of need. God doesn't say let us come to the sermon. Let us come to the counselor. Let us come to the teacher.

Let us come to the youth event the worship service to Sunday school. He said let us come to the throne of grace because my house shall be called a house of prayer. And if we're doing our jobs exercising our gifts, we will always point people to the throne.

Nothing wrong with counseling. Nothing wrong with teaching. Nothing wrong with mentoring. But at the end of the day are we leading our people to the throne of grace to find mercy and grace to help in their time of need.

Prayer, the Birth of the Church, and a New Churchwide Meeting

Have you ever noticed that the Christian Church was born not while someone was preaching but while people were praying. For ten days they did nothing but pray. They remember Jesus's words that if you being evil know how to give good gifts to your children.

How much more shall my heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him? My house shall be called a house of prayer. As elders we have been Tremendously burdened about this over these past weeks and months and been praying about how the Lord would have us move forward at Oak Ridge.

We're grateful for the many prayer meetings and cells that go on praise God and thank you for those who've been so faithful in these. But we feel that the Lord is leading us to make another opportunity for prayer to add another to this church.

Tonight we were supposed to meet for our end of month prayer, but we're not having one tonight. Instead on Wednesdays beginning this week at 730 most many parents drop off. Their teens to Ridge and other events from 730 till open-ended 830 or 9 you leave like with these Jeremiah Lanphier prayers whenever you feel so led to leave, but we're gonna have times of prayer.

We're gonna ask the Lord to lead these. And let God be glorified in our midst as we give testimony and praise to what he's doing and as we pray for one another. Pray for one another that you might be healed.

So we're asking if you're able to come. The most important event is not this message today. The most important event is not the wonderful worship. We experience week by week. The most important event that we can ever be involved in is praying and seeking God on our faces.

Communion and Affectionate Remembrance of Christ

This morning as we prepare for communion I'd like to read a Familiar verse and 1st Corinthians 11 25 in the same way after supper He took the cup saying this cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this.

Whenever you drink it in remembrance of me. Growing up. I don't know if any of you heard this growing up. But my pastor used to read that from the amplified version and the amplified version says this.

Do this as often as you drink it to call me affectionately. To remembrance. Now the word affectionately does not appear in the original language. But that's what's implied and that's what the translators paraphrase that at that.

It wasn't just Jesus saying I want you to have a cold hard theoretical remembering of what I did on the cross. No. We're to remember him affectionately. They threw that word in to give the sense of what Jesus wants us to do.

Did you know that the end of the book of 1st Corinthians Paul had dictated this. Tradition says he had bad eyesight. So perhaps that was the reason he used an aminus is a scribe to to write his book for him.

But he got excited at the end of the book. He wanted to say something. And so he wrote this in 1st Corinthians 16 21 these next four verses. I'll only read two of them. But he said this. I Paul write this greeting with my own hand and here's what I'm gonna write.

Verse 22. If anyone does not love the Lord a curse. Beyond him come O Lord. Do you love the Lord Jesus this morning? Do you really love him? Earlier in my message. I spoke about prayer being the precursor to revival in our lives in our church and in our nation.

Flory Evans and the Welsh Revival

But I'd like to tell one last revival story that took place in the early 1900s during the Welsh Revival after much prayer in these churches. One specific event was the flashpoint for revival to begin.

Remember lots of prayer lots of great speakers even some theologians in the mix. Yet no revival. Burden for prayer a burden for revival a sense of God moving. No revival. One man Ava Roberts had said the Lord had showed him that God would save 100 ,000 people in that revival yet.

No one was being saved. And on the 2nd of February. Or the second Sunday rather of February in 1904 after the morning service the youth got together in the vestry. Their pastor Joseph Jenkins asked them tell me what is God doing in your life?

One or two got up and started to preach and to read and Jenkins looked at them and said no. That's not what I asked you tell me What is God doing. Is he real to you. And then a teenage girl by the name of Flory Evans stood up.

And she said these words and I quote I am unable to say very much today. But I love the Lord Jesus with all my heart. He died for me. And these words were the flame that ignited the revival. That youth group got so revived they began to pray.

They began to express their love something that the adults in their congregation had not done to that day. They shared their love with the adults in the congregation they went out and they shared their love for Jesus to the people around and the revival began and a hundred thousand people were saved.

And Internationally even more because the revival spread all around the then known world. God sometimes confounds the wisdom of the wise and the theologians and the pastors and the teachers by calling things that are not as though they were.

And using teenagers even in your group today. Do not let anyone despise your youth. You can love the Lord more than any of us here this morning. Do you know why. Because you haven't learned to sin. You haven't learned to not repent.

You haven't learned to hold on to things and money and who and and Ambitions and all these things that may be good, but God may not have told you to have. Seek the Lord will he may well he may be found in your youth.

Seek him and the Lord will do wonderful things in your Life. Fall in love with Jesus and let the revival start with you. If anyone does not love the Lord you were bought with a price. Therefore honor God with your body.

Communion Prayer for Revival

Scripture says. Let's pray for communion. Heavenly Father We come to you and what greater love has a man than this that a man laid down his life for his friends. And you laid down your life for us. Oh Lord you left everything for us.

Can we not leave sin? Can we not leave pleasures of this world? Lord have mercy on us. Lord might you descend upon us by your spirit of grace and supplication to turn our hearts to you if We as your people will humble ourselves and pray and turn from our wicked ways and seek your face.

Then will you hear for from heaven and forgive our sin and heal our land? Now your eyes will be open in your ears attentive to the prayers offered to this place. Heavenly Father move and our hearts only you by your spirit of grace can do this.

To go out today and say we're going to change that's in the flesh and that's proud that is pride through and through. But heavenly Father if you will move on us by your spirit of grace. We will change.

If you will shed your love abroad and our hearts by the Holy Spirit whom you've given us according to Romans 5. We will love you. We wish to worship you in spirit and in truth. We wish for streams of living water to flow from within us to the people around us.

Heavenly Father only you can do this for revival is from you. Lord as we consider The body and blood of the Lord Jesus Christ as we come to communion we just ask that you would Fill our hearts With love and adoration for you.

Lord hear our prayers hear our confession. May none of us this morning eat in an unworthy manner and so sin against the body and blood of the Lord Jesus. We thank you for this opportunity to partake together God Move in our midst revive us.

We pray that your people here at Oak Ridge might rejoice in you in Jesus name. We pray these things. Amen.