What is the price for revival?

True revival is always accompanied by deep repentance and crying out to God for mercy and it is shown by transformed lives

Source: PInterest

The Hebridean Revival and the Welsh Revival had a common factor; people travailed (to engage in painful or laborious effort) in prayer. In the Welsh Revival (1904-1905), Evan Roberts who was key to it, prayed for 13 years and said that prayer for him was a greater sustenance than food. In the Hebridean Revival a group of men travailed in prayer in a barn and through the long hours of the night, three nights a week until four or five in the morning for many months. They did this despite having jobs and the demands of home. They took 2 Chronicles 7:14 to heart. ‘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 I will hear from heaven and forgive their sin and heal their land’.

Also, two elderly women, Peggy and Christine Smith prayed through the night several times a week. One was blind, the other nearly doubled over with arthritis. God gave them Isaiah 44:3 - ‘For I will pour out water on the thirsty land, and streams on the dry ground. I will pour out my Spirit on your offspring, and my blessing on your descendants’. He also told them to ask Duncan Campbell, a preacher to come and speak in the churches.

What was the key factor here? The answer was an earnest desire to see people saved and for the spiritual climate to change. In addition, in all of the cases mentioned above, those involved were prepared to make the sacrifice of time prayer for many hours. In the case of the men they had to go to work the next day and be fully involved in home life. On the night before revival broke out, the men praying in the barn entered a time of personal repentance challenged by Psalm 24:3-4 ‘Who may ascend the hill of the Lord?  Who may stand in His holy place?  He who has clean hands and a pure heart’; at 5am that morning revival started.

Source: Nancy Kay Grace

At the first meeting that Duncan Campbell held, nothing happened, however a deacon said, ‘Don't be discouraged, it's coming, I already hear the rumbling of heaven's chariot wheels. We will have another night of prayer and then we will see what God is going to do!’ So, a group of people went to a nearby cottage and began to travail in prayer. At three in the morning, God swept in and about a dozen of them were laid prostrate on the floor. As they left the cottage that morning, they found men and women desperate to find God. No one was sleeping! Three men were lying in the road, utterly convicted of their sinfulness and crying out to God for mercy. This was the start of a mighty revival where people weren't just converted in churches but where God struck them down in the fields, on the roads, on their boats: all repenting and all crying out to God to have mercy on them.

True revival is always accompanied by deep repentance and crying out to God for mercy and it is shown by transformed lives. In the Welsh Revival, the pit ponies in the mines did not respond to the miner's instructions as there was no more swearing! The jails emptied, the pubs emptied.  People's lives were utterly changed, and this was also the case in the Hebridean Revival. Revival comes through people getting together and labouring in prayer and not stopping and it is accompanied by personal repentance.  Another factor in revival is when people repent on behalf of the nation and because of the state of the church. When the Holy Spirit comes into this, there is much weeping. It is about people coming together, whatever churches they are in. It is about people setting to pray and spending much time labouring in prayer.

Father, give me the burning desire to pray for the nation and the ability to persevere in prayer until it comes. Work in me so that I have clean hands and a pure heart. Enable me to offer up the sacrifice of time.  Amen.

Author: Muriel Allen

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