The Urgent Need for Revival Today

Pastor Stephen Morse mentioned the subject of revival in a comment on the post about the alarming statistics reported by Ron Luce. Whenever I think of revival and I want to read something that will encourage me to keep on praying and working while I wait on the Lord for the outpouring of his grace and mercy I turn to Martyn Lloyd-Jones. Of course, he is not the only one who has written on the subject and in menti0ning him I am not forgetting other great writers like Jonathan Edwards. But my mind turns to Lloyd-Jones because when I read his books and sermons I am impressed with how much he longed to see the Lord move in this way. It comes through in so many of his expositions because he believed that the history of the church is in a sense, the history of revival. As Christians we are in constant need of the work of the Holy Spirit awakening and reviving us again. Drawing us to see that our real and full inheritence is in heaven. What is also interesting about Lloyd-Jones is that he saw so little of what he longed for in his own lifetime yet he continued to long for it. May he inspire us today to seek great things from our God with whom nothing is impossible.

In a book entitled "Revival" published by Crossway Books, we have a collection of sermons that he preached on this grand theme on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of the Welsh Revival that took place in 1859. Here is a section from the end of the first message called, "The Urgent Need for Revival Today."

Now, this is but the introduction to the theme that we are going to consider, but it leads me to ask this question: 'are you really concerned about the present position? Are you desperately concerned about it? Are you praying about it? Do you ever pray for the power of God in the Church today? Or are you just content to read the weekly newspapers which tell us about all these various efforts and to say, 'It is all right, the word is going on.' 'This kind cometh not forth but by prayer and fasting.' This word fasting is not in all the ancient manuscripts, but it implies not only literal, physical fasting, but concentration. The value of fasting is that it enables you to give your undivided attention to a subject. So what our Lord said to the disciples is this: you will never deal with this sort of problem until you have been praying, concentrating in prayer, waiting upon God, until he has filled you with the power. When you know you have got it, then you go out with authority. That is the way, and that is the only way. Surely no one should need to be convinced, today, that nothing short of a mighty outpouring of the Spirit of God is adequate to deal with our situation in this mid-twentieth century?