How Bold are we in Our Christian walk

Why We Don’t
Have Revival
In an old town in Ireland they’ll show you with
reverence a place where four young men met night
after night after night praying for revival. In Wales,
there’s a place in the hills where three or four young
men only 18 or 19 years old met and prayed night
after night. They wouldn’t let God go; they would
not take no for an answer. As far as humanly possible
they prayed a revival into birth. If you’re thinking
of revival at your church without any inconvenience,
forget it. Revival costs a lot.
I can give you one simple reason why we don’t
have revival in America. Because we’re content to
live without it. We’re not seeking God - we’re seeking
miracles, we’re seeking big crusades, we’re seeking
blessings. In Numbers 11, Moses said to God,
“You’re asking me to carry a burden I can’t handle.
Do something or kill me!” Do you love America
enough to say, “God, send revival or kill me”? Do
you think it’s time we changed Patrick Henry’s
prayer from, “Give me liberty or give me death,” to
“Give me revival or let me die”?
In the 30th chapter of Genesis, Rachael goes to
Jacob and throws herself down in despair. She says,
“Give me children or else I die.” Are you willing to
throw yourself down before God to seek the spiritual
birth of spiritual children in our country?
People say, “I’m filled with the Holy Spirit.” If
the coming of the Spirit didn’t revolutionize your
prayer life, you’d better check on it. I’m not so sure
you got what God wanted you to get.
We’ve said that prayer changes things. No!
Prayer doesn’t change things. Prayer changes people
and they change things. We all want Gabriel to
do the job. God says do it yourself - with My sufficiency
and My strength.
We need to get like this woman, Hannah. What did
she do? She wept, she was grieved, she said she
had a complaint, she fasted - and she prayed.
Jesus, the anointed of God, made prayer His
custom. Paul, with his background and intellect,
depended on prayer because he said he was weak.
David, the king, called himself a poor man and
cried to the Lord. Hannah prayed for a son and
gave birth to a prophet. The prayers of a handful of
young men sparked revival.
Now I say very often - and people don’t like it - that
God doesn’t answer prayer. He answers desperate
prayer! Your prayer life denotes how much you
depend on your own ability, and how much you
really believe in your heart when you sing, “Nothing
in my hands I bring, simply to Thy cross I
cling....” The more self- confidence you have, the
less you pray. The less self-confidence you have, the
more you have to pray.
“In prayer, I must wrestle like Jacob, and pant like
David, and hope like Elijah, and be persistent like
Bartimeus, and cry with tears like my blessed Lord.”
- Alexander Smellie