Before the opening day of duck season, two hunters bought a bird dog. They had heard that such a dog would make their hunting experience much more enjoyable and profitable. So when the big day came, they were up bright and early. They hunted all day, but as the sun began to set, they hadn’t fired a single shot. The hunters were exhausted and frustrated over the poor performance of their bird dog. Finally, one of them said, “Okay Joe, throw him up once more and if he don’t fly, I’m gonna shoot him!”
Duck season ended just two weeks ago, and I am amazed at how the duck hunters come alive at this time of year. It’s like they were revived! Their dull, routine life became infused with a passion for water fowl. They got up early. They stayed out late. They even skipped a meal or two in the pursuit of their passion, simply because the Kansas Department of Wildlife declared January 17-25, 2015, “duck season” in the low plains late zone.
Don’t you wish revival in the church and in our nation could happen so easily? Don’t you wish all a pastor had to do was declare, “God hunting season opens today”, and people would make the pursuit of God the controlling passion of their lives?
We are in desperate need of revival today just like God’s people needed it 400 years before Christ. At that time, the walls around their capital city were torn down, and the people were demoralized as they faced the impossible task of rebuilding their nation after their Babylonian captivity.
That’s when God moved the heart of one man to pray, and that prayer led to a revival, which brought physical and spiritual restoration to the entire nation. That man was Nehemiah, and we have his journal in our Old Testaments.
Wouldn’t you like to know how to pray for revival in our own land? Then turn with me, if you will, to that man’s journal, the book of Nehemiah, Nehemiah 1,
Nehemiah 1:1-2 The words of Nehemiah the son of Hacaliah. Now it happened in the month of Chislev (i.e., late November, early December), in the twentieth year (i.e., the 20th year of King Artaxerxes’ reign or 445 years before Christ), as I was in Susa the citadel (the capitol of Persia, present-day Iran), that Hanani, one of my brothers, came with certain men from Judah. And I asked them concerning the Jews who escaped, who had survived the exile, and concerning Jerusalem. (ESV)
You see, many of the Jews had returned to Jerusalem from captivity almost a hundred years before this. And Nehemiah, who is still in Persia, wants to know how his friends and relatives are doing.
Nehemiah 1:3 And they said to me, “The remnant there in the province who had survived the exile is in great trouble and shame. The wall of Jerusalem is broken down, and its gates are destroyed by fire.” (ESV)
Even though they had been there for a hundred years, the walls of the city and many of its buildings were still in rubble. This described not only their physical condition, but their spiritual condition, as well. God’s people were disgraced! So what does Nehemiah do about it?
Nehemiah 1:4 As soon as I heard these words I sat down and wept and mourned for days, and I continued fasting and praying before the God of heaven. (ESV)
Nehemiah got desperate with God. He wept and mourned for days, going without food as he poured out his heart to God. Like a widow, mourning over the loss of her husband, he was so overcome with grief that he couldn’t eat. You see, fasting in Bible days was no spiritual discipline or religious ritual. It was a sign of desperation.
Nehemiah was desperate for God to act on behalf of his country, and that’s where we need to be in our prayers if we’re going to see revival in our land. We need to…
CRY OUT TO GOD with desperate, earnest prayer.
We need to plead with God from the depths of our own souls. We need to pray with a heart-felt intensity that goes beyond any physical appetite.
There was a 5-year-old little girl attending a formal wedding with her grandmother. She had been in Sunday School before, but had never attended any kind of adult worship service. So when the pastor said, “Let us pray,” and everybody bowed their heads, the little girl was confused. She saw all the heads bowed and eyes turned toward the floor and cried, “Grandmother, what are they all looking for?” (James S. Hewett, Illustrations Unlimited, p.423)
Tell me: What are you looking for when you pray? Are you just going through the motions? Or are you earnestly, desperately seeking God?
On October 29, 2012, Hurricane Sandy slammed into the coast of the Northeastern United States. The Category 2 storm became the largest Atlantic hurricane on record (with winds spanning 1,100 miles).
As Hurricane Sandy bore down on New York City, almost everything shut down – except one rogue Starbucks near Times Square. Desperate, but highly committed Starbucks junkies fought high winds, dangerous rains, and dire warnings just to get a latte or a cup of coffee.
Bethany Owings, 28, walked 10 blocks with her one-year-old daughter for their specialty coffee. “I saw on Facebook that they were open,” she said. “It was scary not having Starbucks.”
Her neighbor and friend 29-year-old Chris Hernandez came along and later said, “When she said they were open, I was like, ‘Pack the baby up. Let's go!’ I didn't know they were all going to close. I started panicking. There's nothing else I would've gone out for. This makes my day complete.”
Alex Mwangi, 25, walked more than 20 blocks looking for an open Starbucks. He told reporters, “It took half an hour. But I'm a Starbucks fanatic. I go four or five times a day.”
David Low, also 25, said he went to three closed Starbucks before learning the store was open. Low said, “I'm really happy these guys are open. I can't get a pumpkin spice latte anywhere else. The 10-minute wait was worth it.” (Amber Sutherland, “Java junkies in 'Star' Trek,” New York Post, 10-30-13; www.Preaching Today.com)
These people were so desperate for coffee; they didn’t let the biggest Atlantic hurricane on record stop them from getting it.
How desperately do we want God in our situation? The sad fact is that so few believers are that desperate for God to act. They’re too comfortable, too complacent, in their current circumstances.
Perhaps we need to pray like Sir Francis Drake did in the 16th Century: “Disturb us, Lord, when we are too well pleased with ourselves, when our dreams have come true because we have dreamed too little, when we arrive safely because we have sailed too close to the shore.
“Disturb us, Lord, when with the abundance of things we possess, we have lost our thirst for the waters of life; having fallen in love with life, we have ceased to dream of eternity; and in our efforts to build a new Earth, we have allowed our vision of the new heaven to dim.
“Disturb us, Lord, to dare more boldly, to venture on wider seas where storms will show your mastery; where losing sight of land, we shall find the stars. We ask you to push back the horizons of our hopes; and to push into the future in strength, courage, hope, and love.” (www.PreachingToday.com)
If we want to see revival in our land, we need God to disturb us out of our comfortable complacency. We need to cry out to God with desperate, earnest prayer. But in our desperation, we dare not complain. Instead, we must…
PRAISE HIS NAME!
We must worship the LORD. We must adore our “great and awesome God”. You see, Nehemiah did not just sit down and cry; je got up and praised the God of heaven. Listen to the tone of his prayer.
Nehemiah 1:5 And I said, “O LORD God of heaven, the great and awesome God who keeps covenant and steadfast love with those who love him and keep his commandments… (ESV)
Nehemiah turned his weeping into worship. He praised God for His power and His sure and certain promises, and that’s where we must start with our prayers. We must start with praise and worship.
Why? Because it gets our perspective right. When we turn our weeping into worship, it keeps us from debilitating worry and fear. It gets our eyes off the problem and onto our powerful Lord, who is so much bigger than any problem.
Years ago, in the pioneer days of aviation, a pilot was making a flight around the world. After he had been gone a couple of hours from his last landing field, he heard a noise in his plane, which he recognized as the gnawing of a rat. While his plane had been on the ground, a rat had gotten in and started gnawing on a vital cable which led from the controls in the front of the plane to the flaps in the back.
It was a very serious situation, which created a lot of fear and anxiety. The pilot was two hours from the nearest airport, and he didn’t know what to do.
Then he remembered the rat is a rodent not made for the heights. It is made to live on and under the ground, so the pilot began to climb. He went up a thousand feet, then another thousand, then another until he was more than 20,000 feet up.
The gnawing finally ceased. The rat was dead, because it could not survive in the atmosphere of those heights. More than two hours later, the pilot brought the plane to a safe landing and got rid of the dead rat. (James S. Hewett, Illustrations Unlimited, p.296)
That’s the way it is with worry. It cannot survive the heights of praise. So when worry starts gnawing at the cables of your heart, just climb higher and higher and keep climbing until the gnawing stops. Praise the God of heaven and keep worshipping Him until the worry is gone.
The Nigerian city of Jos sits right on the border between Africa’s Muslim north and its Christian south. As a result, the city has seen a lot of violence in recent years. Just a little more than a year ago (October 2013), a Nigerian Baptist church was attacked by Muslim extremists who set the church building on fire, along with the house of the church's pastor, Sunday Gomna. On the second Sunday after the violent attack, the people of that Baptist church returned for worship in a little mud wall community center about one kilometer from the burnt church.
Pastor Gomna stood up and offered some words of gratitude. He said, “First, I am grateful that no one in my church killed anyone.” Apparently, during the chaos of the attacks, Pastor Sunday had gone around the community and some of the Muslim people said, “Pastor, thank you for the way you taught your people. ‘Your people helped to protect us.’” So Pastor Sunday was proud that his people did not kill any Muslims.
“Second,” he said, “I am grateful that they did not burn my church.” Everyone looked at Pastor Sunday with disbelief. After all, everyone was meeting in a small, uncomfortable Mud hut had been burnt to the ground. But Pastor Sunday continued: “Inasmuch as no church member died during this crisis, they did not burn our church. They only burned the building. We can rebuild the building but we could not bring back to life any of our members. So I am grateful that they did not burn my church.”
He continued, “Third, I am grateful that they burned my house as well. If they had burned your house and not my house, how would I have known how to serve you as pastor? However, because they burned my house and all my possessions, I know what you are experiencing and I will be able to be a better pastor to you. So I am grateful that they burned my house as well.” (David Smith, The Kindness of God, InterVarsity Press, 2013; www.PreachingToday.com)
That pastor understood the principle of praise in the midst of desperate times; and in our desperate times, we too must understand and utilize this principle of praise if we’re going to see revival. Cry out to God, beginning with praise. Then…
CONFESS YOUR SINS.
Acknowledge your own corruption before the Lord. Admit your own disobedience to His commands. That’s what Nehemiah did. He says to the Lord…
Nehemiah 1:6-7 …let your ear be attentive and your eyes open, to hear the prayer of your servant that I now pray before you day and night for the people of Israel your servants, confessing the sins of the people of Israel, which we have sinned against you. Even I and my father’s house have sinned. We have acted very corruptly against you and have not kept the commandments, the statutes, and the rules that you commanded your servant Moses. (ESV)
Nehemiah confesses not only the nation’s sins, but his own sins before the Lord. “We have sinned… I and my father’s house have sinned”, PERIOD. No “if’s”, “and’s”, or “but’s”. No excuses or explanations. No placing the blame. Just a simple admission of wrongdoing.
That’s a true confession. True confession is simply admitting to God, “I have sinned”, without trying to place blame on someone or something else, without trying to make excuses or minimize it in any way.
That’s how Nehemiah confessed his sins, and that’s what we must do if we’re going to experience revival. We must confess our sins specifically and without excuse. Every revival in the history of the world has had this component. In fact, there was no great move of God’s Spirit, until God’s people got right with Him and with each other.
One night some fraternity guys got up and very gently put limburger cheese on a brother’s mustache while he slept. About an hour later, he woke up and said, “This room stinks!”
He walked into the hall and said, “This hall stinks!”
He walked into the living room and said, “This living room stinks!”
Then, still trying to find the source of the stench, he walked outside and noted, “The whole world stinks!” Not knowing that the problem was right under his nose.
So often, we believers go around saying, “Our world stinks”, and maybe it does. But until we take care of the problem right under our noses, until we deal with our own sin, we’ll never experience revival.
The Bible says, “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness” (1 John 1:9).
If we want to experience revival, we must cry out to God, praise His name, confess our sins, and next…)
CLAIM GOD’S PROMISES.
Ask God to remember what He said and do it. Take God up on His Word and ask Him to fulfill it. That’s what Nehemiah did. As he talks to God, he says…
Nehemiah 1:8-10 Remember the word that you commanded your servant Moses, saying, ‘If you are unfaithful, I will scatter you among the peoples, but if you return to me and keep my commandments and do them, though your outcasts are in the uttermost parts of heaven, from there I will gather them and bring them to the place that I have chosen, to make my name dwell there.’ They are your servants and your people, whom you have redeemed by your great power and by your strong hand. (ESV)
Like Moses did a thousand years before this, Nehemiah reminds God that HIS interests are at stake. Nehemiah reminds God to take care of HIS people and to remember HIS promise.
Now that’s a prayer God can and will answer every time! Matthew Henry once said, “We must turn God’s promises into prayer, then they shall be turned into performance”.
“Millions of Americans aren’t playing their cards right”. So says Gregory Bresiger of the New York Post. “In fact”, he says, “we’ve left more than $44 billion on the table, in the form of unused gift cards, according to a study [conducted a year ago].”
“People are letting cash slip away that they could be using,” says John Kiernan, a senior analyst with CardHub. Kiernan, citing CardHub numbers, estimates that some $44 billion in unredeemed gift-card value has been accumulating since 2008.
“I’m not surprised by that number at all,” adds Bill Hardekopf, CEO of LowCards. “People get these cards and often put them away in a drawer and then forget about them. And that’s too bad.” (Gregory Bresiger, New York Post, January 26, 2014)
That IS too bad, but even worse are the believers who put God’s promises in a drawer and forget all about them. They are worth far more than $44 billion! So start redeeming those promises today! Start claiming them today. When you pray for revival, ask God to keep His Word. Don’t just pray for the little things you think to pray for. Pray for the big things God has already said He will do in His Word.
I like the way E. M. Bounds put it. He said, “When we examine ourselves, all too often we discover that our praying does not rise to the demands of the situation; is so limited that it is little more than a mere oasis amid the waste and desert of the world's sin.” (E.M. Bounds, “Prayer and the Word of God”, Christianity Today, Vol. 35, no. 6; www.PreachingToday.com)
As we look at the sin and corruption all around us, as we see a culture which embraces perversion and death, as we observe a nation sliding into ruin, we don’t really know how to pray; and when we try, our own requests are but a drop of water in the desert.
But God’s promises are a flood! So claim those promises in your prayers. When you pray for our nation, pray the promise of 2 Chronicles 7:14 – “If my people who are called by my name humble themselves, and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and heal their land.”
As you humble yourself before the Lord, confessing your own sin, as you pray and seek His face, and as you turn from your own wicked ways, ask God to hear, to forgive, and to heal our land. That’s a prayer God can and will answer!
If we want to experience revival in our land, cry out to God, praise His name, confess your sins, claim His promises, and finally…
COMMIT TO SERVING THE LORD.
Ask God to use you as an answer to your own prayer. Plead with God to make you successful in accomplishing His will. That’s what Nehemiah did.
Nehemiah 1:11 O Lord, let your ear be attentive to the prayer of your servant, and to the prayer of your servants who delight to fear your name, and give success to your servant today, and grant him mercy in the sight of this man.” Now I was cupbearer to the king. (ESV)
Did you see it? “Give success to your servant today”. Nehemiah wants God to use Him in answer to His own prayer.
Now, as it says, Nehemiah was cupbearer to the king. That means he tasted the king’s food and wine before it came to the king to make sure it wasn’t poisoned. It was a very powerful and influential position, also a very comfortable station in the palace. Yet Nehemiah was willing to give it all up in order to be used of God to rebuild the walls around Jerusalem.
He did not pray, “Lord send someone to get those walls rebuilt.” He prayed, “Lord, give success to your servant today,” and that’s the way we need to pray if we’re going to see revival in our land. We need to ask God to use US in answer to our own prayers.
Philip Yancey, in his book on prayer, says, “Most of my struggles in the Christian life circle around the same two themes: why God doesn't act the way we want God to, and why I don't act the way God wants me to. Prayer is the precise point where those themes converge. (Philip Yancey, Prayer, Zondervan, 2006; www. PreachingToday.com)
We ask God to act, but God also wants us to act. And prayer is what brings those two together.
There’s a story about an old deacon who often prayed, “O Lord, touch the unsaved with Thy finger.”
Well, one night at a prayer meeting, he was praying the same old prayer when he abruptly stopped. People thought he had a heart attack, so someone asked him if there was anything wrong.
The old deacon replied, “No, I’m not ill, but something seemed to say to me, ‘Thou art the finger’” (Bible Illustrator #2818, 6/1987.16).
When we pray, God often says the same thing to us: You are my finger. You are my hands and feet in this world to do My will. You are the one I want to use in answer to your own prayer.
So don’t pray if you don’t want God to use you. Don’t pray for God to send forth laborers into His harvest field if you don’t want to go yourself. Don’t pray for God to meet the needs of people if you don’t want to give of yourself to meet that need. And don’t pray for revival if you don’t want God to take you out of your comfortable surroundings to be salt and light in a decaying and dark world.
If we want to experience revival in our land, we must cry out to God, praise His name, confess our sins, claim His promises, and commit to serving Him.
E. M. Bounds put it well when he said, “What the church need today is not more or better machinery, not new organizations or more and novel methods, but men whom the Holy Ghost can use – men of prayer, men mighty in prayer. The Holy Ghost does not flow through methods, but through men. He does not come on machinery, but on men. He does not anoint plans, but men – men of prayer.”
Will you be that man or woman of prayer? Will you be that man or woman the Holy Spirit can use? I hope so, because then and only then will we experience the revival that we all long for.
