Church History & Function #7 - Prayer & Revival

Lightly edited for readability while preserving the speaker’s meaning and substantive statements.

1. 0:00:03

   [Music] so what we're going to do today is we're going to talk about prayer and um and and how that precedes Revival there's an old quote old saying and I'd have to look it up and I think it may be I can't even remember it may be John Wesley or Charles Finney or uh one of the great revivalists it could have been Leonard Ravenhill but somebody said when when God when God is getting ready to move among his people one of the things that he does is he he sets them to praying he stirs starts stirring them up to pray now when we say pray all Christians know that they should pray okay so we're not talking about the normal type of Prayer of just kind of maintaining your relationship with God you know here and there and a little bit of this and a little bit of that um he's talking about really moving into seasons of deep intercession Seasons where you go from praying maybe an hour a day to praying two or three hours a day um but every time there has been a great move of God every single time there has been a season of how would you say a season of increased or unusual prayer that preceded it um you'll see that when you when you study as you read through this you'll be reading about the Welsh Revival that happened in 1904 you'll see what happened there was a stirring especially among young people to really get on fire for God and spend a lot of time in prayer and intercession and there was a lot of burden and groaning for lost souls so uh that groaning and that intercession is what Paul talked about travailing in birth until you brought forth he was he talked about that in the book of Galatians how he travailed in birth to bring forth you know these uh these new converts in these churches to you know to I mean Paul would go in and new churches were birthed out of prayer and preaching the gospel and he talked about how it was like travail it was it was the type of prayer I'm talking about again it's not 15 minutes Lord bless me and my family and heal my toenail and make me feel better and you know take care of this and that and all this and there's nothing wrong with praying for any of those things nothing's too big or too small to pray about but what I'm talking about is when we get into really a burden um a burden and not a bad burden but a burden for God's presence to be in our midst a burden for God's power to be in our midst a burden for people to encounter him so they can be saved and delivered and healed and so it takes a special kind of prayer and intercession and

2. 0:03:05

   listen there's no substitute I can tell you this right now there's no substitute in the life of a Christian especially the life of a minister for prayer you you can give yourself to study you can give yourself to learn the scriptures like like no one else before you but if you are not a man or woman of prayer and I'm talking about true prayer and intercession where you spend hours in prayer um you're not going to have very much power or very much success in either winning Souls seeing true converts made seeing the power and presence of God in your life and Ministry and your preaching you're not you're not just not going to see any real success you you may you may convert some people simply through intellectual arguments or you know scriptural arguments and don't get me wrong the word of God has power I mean so just speaking the word of God has power but I'm talking about long-term success making converts and making true disciples seeing them grow seeing them mature seeing them learn how to overcome the attacks of the of the devil and demons seeing them overcome attacks of sickness and disease seeing them overcome you know these things it just there's there's no substitute the church is supposed to be a Praying Church and we're supposed to be praying people that's why ever since you know I I started the first church that I ever um planted was in we really kind of started a little bit in 1993 and then there was a season I stopped for a season because I had a lot going on with you know my my family life and work and so I kind of stopped uh doing it for a little while then the Lord spoke to me I did some college campus ministry and traveled around with a big campus ministry and did that for in 94 and into 95 and then the Lord spoke to me in 1995 and said I want you to start a church in Montgomery Alabama so I did that in um in the summer of 1995 but you know very early on I knew especially being in my 20s my mid-20s at that point I knew that I wasn't going to um convince a lot of people with my uh preaching my eloquent preaching or my limited Bible knowledge that I had I knew no and don't get me wrong I knew God wanted me to preach and teach the word in fact a lot of the things I'm teaching you now I was teaching back then I haven't changed on uh 99 of what I preach and teach but the point is is that I knew that to be anything for God to see anything happen to see any true fruit lasting fruit it had to be birthed and watered and conceived and everything brought forth through prayer

3. 0:06:07

   and intercession um I thank God and I'm just gonna I'll share this with you guys I thank God that you know very early on he taught me that he taught me uh you know the the old-time Pentecostals I remember I don't know if I remember hearing David Wilkerson said or Jimmy Swaggart when he was in his Heyday of ministry but they used to say the old Pentecostals used to say and these old these you know David Wilkerson Leonard Ravenhill and um Jimmy Swaggart they were Pentecostal ministers and they would always say the old Pentecostals used to say little prayer little power a lot of prayer a lot of power I mean there's just no substitute um I think it was and I'm pretty sure this was and I'll find these quotes later but John Wesley said that God will do nothing in the earth except through answer to prayer and it was a whole theological um and reason for that because God works through men um he always and I say that men he men and women but God works through mankind to bring his will in heaven on the earth that's just the way it happens and so everything that everything that's accomplished let me just say this anytime you see some God do anything Save Somebody heal somebody deliver somebody or you see somebody getting strong and growing or overcoming something anything you see from that happens in this world and we got to get this fixed driving me crazy anyway anything you see in this world happen through prayer it's an answered prayer the lord loves it he wants us to ask he wants us to ask and keep asking knock and keep knocking and seek and keep seeking he wants us to join with him so we're going to look at some a lot of scriptures this morning on prayer but just so you know if you go back and you look at the Welsh Revival like I said 1904 to 1905 a true season of prayer preceded that uh and and the the leader of that Revival let me just say this the leader of that Revival was a young man by the name of Evan Roberts and he and a bunch of young people got on fire for God but really he had been on fire for God from the time he was like 12 years old and he worked in the coal mines because that was the main employment there where he lived in Wales at the time and he worked in the coal mine even as a boy I mean really 12. and they said that what he would do while he worked in the coal mines is he'd find a little Nook in the side of the tunnel and he'd set his Bible in there and whenever he could get a little break and he could break away from work he would walk over and read his Bible now that tells you the kind of young man he was he loved the Lord

4. 0:09:08

   and so by the time he gets into his 20s he feels called to the ministry he goes to Seminary that's that just he went to Seminary and it just didn't feel right for him he he knew that something was wrong so he went back to his hometown to his church and asked you know just had a tremendous burden but if if you read back and again I don't even know I don't even remember if all of this is in because I've read some different books about the Welsh Revival so if it's not in this one don't don't think it's not there you just have to pull from different sources but I know that Evan Roberts he got really burdened for prayer the young people around him there were some ministers that got on fire around and they were praying and it was out of one of these deep seasons of intercession uh of prayer with him and the Holy Spirit that he had a vision and he said he said I saw all whales lifted up to God and the Lord told him in that time of intercession and groaning in the spirit of true deep deep intercession that a hundred thousand Souls would be saved and that's exactly what happened and you think about this you know it's God when a 26 year old young man starts a meeting in a church that's pretty much dead that has I think they had 19 people in the first service in that church and within six weeks later 10 000 people were saved and then another six weeks goes by in ten more thousand people are safe I mean truly converted we're talking about hardcore unsaved rough and tough coal miners said so much so many of them got saved and quit cussing quit using foul language that the donkeys didn't know their commands anymore that is transformation there was such a transformation in Wales from the Revival people repenting giving their lives to Jesus getting right with God that uh that there was a period where the judges we're talking about the Civil judges had no criminal cases to try and so they would wear white gloves on the day that they had no cases to try now you think about that Revival true Revival and repentance an outpouring of the holy spirit in a city in a region or whatever will change the complexion of that entire region and sometimes the revivals are mainly in church just kind of localized sometimes it affects the city sometimes it can affect a larger region sometimes even affect the whole nation but it's awesome when God pours out his Spirit the same thing happened with the Azusa Street Revival the the beginning

The complete timestamped transcript is published as a crawlable reading page so every sermon topic remains searchable without making this video page unnecessarily heavy.