Words blazed in my soul this morning with such force that I had to scramble to my feet to find paper. I’d prayed a few minutes earlier out on my front porch for true revival: for such a groundswell of souls saved that we’d have no earthly explanation, and for believers to be flooded by the Holy Spirit in such a way that our souls would be purified with a holy, selfless, unstoppable fervor. I have prayed those kinds of things before but this time I called upon the Lord with my whole heart to rip away this ceiling that seems to be over our heads. The Holy Spirit is moving with breathtaking force in parts of the world and in segments of the church. Why not among all of us?? And why not now? We love Him, too!
So many of our pastors, leaders, evangelists, and teachers are crying out for it. We see glimpses of it. We feel it pressing on the walls of many of our churches. The paint is beginning to crack. We sense a change coming. The roof shifting. We know the sun of righteousness is rising on a different kind of day and the horizon beaming with a new shade of color on young and old, on rich and poor. On all who would let Him lift their chins despite their sins, for our redemption draws near. I feel the stirring of a fresh work of the Holy Spirit in my own congregation and sense that He’s ushering us step-by-step and person-by-person and Sunday-by-Sunday to a place of open-armed willingness for whatever He would give us. For many of us who have felt the breezes of revival stirring, we can’t often define how the Holy Spirit is working or explain the difference between one gathering and the next. All we know is that there are times when we are left to say, “Only God could do that.” We taste it. It’s on the tip of our tongues but our throats are still parched. Our voices may be hoarse and our volume weak but, at the sound of His yes, the mute would find speech.
I cried out this morning for Him to remove the obstacles that hold us at bay on the damp edges of a mighty torrent of revival when, before us, is the deep. We have seen drops of rain but, if we’re willing to be honest, most of us know that we have not yet seen what the living Lord Jesus Christ is capable of doing when He has a mind to pour His Spirit out on millions and wreak the holy havoc of true revival with innumerable souls. We have blamed our government and every secular institution possible when revival has ever remained a matter between God and His own people in the pages of Scripture. They are not our problem. We point fingers at our pastors when many of them have nearly broken their backs trying to drag us to revival. We hold worship leaders responsible for our own small worship and say that it must be the songs.
My heart burns with a sense that part of this ceiling over our heads is our demand that God must bring awakening and revival within our means, keep our rules, and respect our boundaries. If Christ is to do what He longs to do, we must relinquish all our expectations and formulas for revival. Lest we think we can’t leash a work He’s willing to perform, the words of Matthew 13:58 and Mark 6:5-6 won’t peel off the gospel page. We keep getting together and rehearsing for a revival He’s not yet fully attending. Why?? Why does He wait?
I think one reason is that we are afraid for Him to do whatever it would take. We are scared of the uncertainty of revival. We don’t trust God with the work of His own Spirit. He might embarrass us. Or make us change our minds. God won’t work contrary to His Word but many of us must admit that it is not His Word we are worried about Him working contrary to. We are worried about Him working contrary to our tastes. We are worried that He will not use our methods. I said we. I have done the same thing. I want Him to work in a way that makes me feel comfortable. But maybe a true outbreak of revival is not comfortable. I don’t know. I can’t say I’ve ever seen what I believe God may want to do in our day. Meanwhile, numerous gatherings of believers dwindle and die or rust for the sake of routine. Generations are falling away as revival clings to our doorposts. It’s there. It’s close. But why won’t it come on in? We feel it. We hunger for it. Why does it delay? Perhaps there are many reasons why revival waits and we could write more blog articles and list the possible hindrances and deliberate over them and mull over them and debate them and exert more and more energy while we have less and less time.
Or maybe we could say today,
Lord, if Your time is now – and it’s the only time countless millions have – remove the obstacles, whatever they are. Shove them out of the way and COME, Lord Jesus, with a torrential downpour of Your Holy Spirit.
I’m just looking for anyone out there who would be willing to echo a prayer something like this one. I bring it to you in humility, lacking much, wanting much. I do not wish to put words on any tongue detached from a heart. Vocabulary is meaningless without volition. If this is not you and if these sins are not yours and these aches find no place in your soul, you are not who I’m talking to. But this is me and I wondered if it might be anyone else, for where two or three are gathered in His Name, crying out for a cracked-open heaven, that ceiling that we feel shifting over our heads could shatter to our feet. I’m tired of giving God an inch and expecting a mile. I want to go with Him wherever He’s going.
Most glorious all-powerful, merciful God,
Your Son died for more than these. We thank You for what You’ve already done but we beg You to do infinitely more. Look upon this ailing planet, pulsing with the hopeless, helpless, the hiding and the dying. You have willed that people would not die in their sins but be saved and redeemed through Your Son, Jesus Christ. You promised that the Cross was big enough for us all, with stakes pointed northward, southward, eastward, westward, reaching everlasting arms to the ends of the earth. We know what Your Word says You can do and we confess to You that many of us have not yet seen it with our eyes but we feel it stirring in our souls. Hosanna, Lord! Save now!
We who are willing confess to you our sinful arrogance. We have prescribed to You by what means You, the solitary Healer, should heal souls and You have refused to sign Your Name to our prescriptions. We say to You this day, write Your Name across our sky and bring revival! Save by whatever means brings You glory. Bring it any way You like but bring it, Lord. We free You from using our methods. We free You from using our denominational names. We free You from using our buildings though we welcome You to them. We free You even from using us, though we cast ourselves before You at Your complete disposal and beg that You would. Use none of us. Use all of us. Use whatever people and whatever means honors You most but do it, Lord. Please do it!
We confess to You our appalling narcissism in asking You to mirror us. We confess to You our over-sophistication and snobbery. We confess to You that we are terrified of Your Holy Spirit. We confess our pathetic arrogance for having forbidden signs and wonders when there could be no greater sign and wonder than a tidal wave of salvation rolling on our dry banks. Oh, Jesus, that we would not leave You to marvel that You could do so few miracles among us because of our unbelief.
We repent this day for not trusting You with what revival should look like. We repent this day from prioritizing our dignity over Your downpour. We confess to You that we have torn pages from our Bibles and handed them back to You and demanded that You work through what was left. We confess to You this day that the tent pegs of Scripture are vastly wider than our imaginations and our expectations.
Lord, if souls are saved by the thousands of thousands and millions of millions, we pledge to You this day that we will not, in our sectarianism, pick apart the process and reason how it was not legitimate. We are ready even if it’s messy. Even if, atop the beautiful feet carrying the good news, are bruised and broken bodies of willing evangelists.
Open Heaven. Rain down, Holy Spirit. We repent for having asked You to respect our boundaries. We bow now to Your boundless Spirit and make room over our lowered heads for You to fall upon us with power and might and a firestorm of Your great affection. You have loved us so. You have loved us well. Scar our hearts with Your Cross and love through us, Lord. Oh, Holy Spirit of the Living Christ, come without limit. We have known You were able but begged You to be willing. All the while, we have been disabled because we have been unwilling.
To what conceivable degree we could have held them in our hands, we turn the reins of revival back over to the Rider who is Faithful and True and we plead that You would not let them rest on the neck of that great horse but that You’d bid him run.
Whatever, Lord. Do what You want but do it now. Do it here. You have no peer. Make Your name glorious. Save now. We avail ourselves.
O God, I avail myself.
In the holy name of Christ our King. Amen.
Savior, Savior, Hear my humble cry;
While on others Thou art calling, do not pass me by.
I was just having a conversation about this two nights ago.
I stand with you, Beth! Beautifully stated. I also pray God will take me out of my box and work whatever He wants in and through me.
I am so thankful that, on SSMT day, 7/15, I went back and found this blog from 7/2. I’m so thankful that God reveals so much through you. Your words are contagious and uplifting. I will regularly make this my prayer and I have and will share it with others. May God continue to bless you to be a blessing!
I have been praying this, and still weep each time.
That’s all.
Dearest sister Beth~ I hear the Holy spirit through your words….Pleading with us to prepare our hearts for prayer and petition for revival….Thank you for this beautiful wake up call to Hear the Spirit and to know the Hand of the Lord is at work….moving….stirring and preparing. Love you my friend…..
Thank you for sharing this. I felt as if some one had taken my thoughts and prayers. I want to see God move in His way and power. Pew sitting is just not enough and I realize it’s me that needs to surrender. Send the rain and drench us in your Spirit!
OMGosh, I know this is what God has been preparing my heart & life for. My heart hungers after God, in my life’s imperfections, BUT God, He’s so faithful to keep walking & talking to me every moment of every day. I do want revival & I do want it at any cost.
When I got done reading your blog I was sobbing cuz it is my hearts desire. A heart after God & what He wants, in His way!
Thank You So Much!!
Pu’uwai
My husband and I have been praying for revival for years and join you in your plea. Revival is coming! Hang on everyone!!!!!!!!!!!!
This is soooooooooo God. I came upon this blog writing, through a friend of a friend on a Facebook link. This very day, July 15th our new little (3 woman) prayer group prayed for this event to happen. Though only our second time meeting, we have wept over this very same prayer. We have wept for the unsaved all over the world, the unsaved in our country and in our families.
I learned something from your prayer, and will continue to pray for my limitations on the Holy Spirit to be broken and put aside. Thank you Beth, and thank you Lord Jesus. I will pass this on to others who will pray.
I thank God every day for the way He works! He knows just how fast or slow to give me the understand that my simple mind can grasp. The best feelings I’ve ever gotten on this earth are the ones I get from reading and understanding the Word. I wish I were more eloquent with the language of the Bible, but He shows me in ways I can comprehend. When my diligence starts to wane, He has performed actual miracles in my life to let me know that He has not forgotten Me and that my time on this journey is short!! Thank You Lord!!!!!!!!!!!!!
. . .’WE free YOU . . . but DO IT NOW’ . . .I probably have the wrong end of the stick but how do we FREE the Lord God who created all . . .I rather think that He is free and that it is US that aren’t . . . and DO IT NOW??? . . .What kind of arrogance is it to demand from the Lord God of all that NOW is good . . .He truly is working already and in the most amazing and often almost hidden ways . . .my prayer is for Him to continue and not abandon us to our ideas of how things should be . . .These are just some of my thoughts . . .
Thank you Beth for boldly sharing your heart. My heart’s cry has been for the Holy Spirit to move across our nation and send a revival that will shake the foundations of our churches, communities, states and nation. My prayer has been for the Lord to send the Wind of His Holy Spirit to blow away the chaff. Send the Fire of His Holy Spirit to burn up the dross and refine His children. Send the rain of His Holy Spirit to bring refreshing and life to His Children. Send the Wind, send the Fire, Send the Rain!
“Even to your old age,
I am He,
And even to gray hairs I will carry you!
I have made, and I will bear;
Even I will carry,
And will deliver you.”
Isaiah 46:4 NKJ
Lord, if Your time is now – and it’s the only time countless millions have – remove the obstacles, whatever they are. Shove them out of the way and COME, Lord Jesus, with a torrential downpour of Your Holy Spirit.
Amen
Amen and amen! Come on! Lord become greater and teach us to become much less. Do what only You can do, how You want to, everywhere You want to!
Thank you for sharing! Yes Our beautiful savior is calling!
I love you
This is so beautiful, it touches my heart
It has been edifying to my Spirit
My prayer is that I would be sensitive to the Spirit
that everyone of the members of my family will be sensitive to the move of God and the revival He wants to bring
that my clay will not war against the Spirit but will yield gladly to what the Spirit of God wants to do.
Standing on the Rock w/ you!
I totally hear you! I am always in the same boat! And I’ve gone from one extreme to the other and back again! At times wanting Him to use the church and only the church to grow me and then wanting Him to use anything BUT the church to grow me and at times wanting Him to only use a particular church or a particular type of church to help me grow! So many crazy extremes, trying to fit Him into the little boxes I would like Him to fit in, because He’s safer that way. I want a safe God and He’s not safe! I’ve known that all of my life, but to let go of trying to make Him safer seems to be impossible for me. I want so much to be in control that it seems impossible for me to let Him be in control, even though my head knows it would be better if I let Him take the driver’s seat. In the rare moments that I have let Him, things have worked out a lot better. Certainly not the way I thought they would or should, but it always turned out He knows better than I and yet somehow I still get this idea that maybe I do know how He should do things and I’m always wrong, but why can’t I just accept that fact and always let Him run the show?
OH Lord, I agree with my sister. We are desperate for your presence. Where the Spirit of the Lord is – there is freedom, healing, empowerment, passion, purpose, and vision.
I have prayed many of these same things and I agree with them all. Please, Lord, pour out your revival. Please do it now. Please do it here. We want nothing short of your greatness.
Beth! I have been praying this for weeks now! I know I came to this through a different journey but all the same I am weary and thirsty. I am parched! I had asked my close sister in Christ to pray for me and telling her I sense there is MORE that I am not grasping through Christ in me. She gently introduced me to my best friend the Holy Spirit who I just casually spoke with in prayers. I have missed it all along! I did not understand the power of the Holy Spirit within me. I crave it and last night I was in the room when you spoke on this at the conference. It was so personal to me I thought you were going to say, “Edie, I am talking to you!” I know it is a message for all but God is speaking to my spirit in a fresh way that I did not know how to translate before. I am like a child at his feet relearning how he wants to fall fresh on me daily. Oh how I thank you for your words lasat night. Oh I love our Lord and I know the scoffers will be those closest to me. So be it!!! I am ready to see the Holy Spirit move! Fall fresh on me Lord, fall fresh. Thank you thank you for being the messenger.
You know,I’ve been thinking about this post since the day it went up. I have been searching scripture and have found that revival (in the sense we mean it) is not mentioned in the NT. psalm 119 mentions revival several times regarding being revived by God’s word, testimonies, ordinances, etcetera.
Then I found this from ray stedman, it brought tears of assurance that our God is adequate, in every season to accomplish His desires.
Elijah, 1 Kings 19:1-18.
And he said, Go forth, and stand upon the mount before the LORD. And behold, the LORD passed by, and a great and strong wind rent the mountains, and broke in pieces the rocks before the LORD, but the LORD was not in the wind; and after the wind an earthquake, but the LORD was not in the earthquake; and after the earthquake a fire, but the LORD was not in the fire; and after the fire a still small voice.
Elijah’s great lesson is to come to a clear understanding of the processes of God’s working and, in typical oriental fashion, God taught it to him through the parable of this scene here. The prophet went out and a tremendous hurricane swept around the mountain of Sinai, so strong and powerful that it began to loosen the very rocks and they crumbled and fell around the prophet. I doubt if this bothered Elijah in the least. I think the power and brutal force of that storm matched the storm that was raging inside the prophet. There is nothing to indicate that he was afraid in the least. And following the great tempest came an earthquake, as the rocks shook beneath him. The ground trembled and moved and rolled and shook under him. I think there is no natural force more terrifying than an earthquake. But, he is still not afraid. After that, a tremendous electric storm with the lightning leaping from crag to crag around him and the sky split asunder moment after moment by these tremendous white hot sparks of lightning. After the fire, there comes, what the Hebrew calls, the gentle voice of stillness – absolute silence. And, in that silence, the prophet is aware that God is moving.
Now what does this parable mean? It reveals to us, I think, much of what was going through the mind and heart of Elijah. This great prophet, with his eagerness for God’s welfare – his concern for God’s purity – doubtless had been longing, as we often do, for a mighty wind of the Spirit to blow through this nation (we have our Lord’s conversation with Nicodemus where He speaks of the Spirit of God as a wind that blows where it desires) – the wind of the Spirit, sovereign, mysterious, mighty in its moving. The prophet had longed that this would happen to the nation, but no wind came. Nothing was happening. He hoped for a political earthquake that would overthrow the throne of Ahab and the godless queen Jezebel and destroy the idols around; but, no earthquake came. He longed for a searching, scorching blast of the fire of judgment, coming down and consuming the forces of heathenism in the nation; but, none of it happened. But, he was to learn that the still, small voice of an awakening conscience is the most powerful force in all the world – that God moves there. It is quite wrong for us to assume that whenever God is at work, there must be blood and fire and noise and smoke and power. No, God works when things, apparently, are at a standstill. Throughout the Scripture, you have again and again, this lesson driven into our hearts by these old stories that when things seem to be utterly hopeless – nothing is happening – in the resources and activity of God, the greatest things of all are happening.
YES. YES. You put into words where my heart has been since January 2011. YES and AMEN.
I will echo this prayer too, salvation draws near to those that wait on the Lord exciting days ahead
With groanings of repentance i say AMEN!
Left 2013 behind and entered 2014 with this prayer. Thank you, sweet sister, for allowing the precious Holy Spirit to have His way! As I finished, the words to a praise song of a few years ago kept playing in my mind: Lord move…or move me! Looking forward to a downpour of HIM this year!
These words burn in me as I read them. It reminds me of Ezekiel – dry bones coming to life. We will see them live! Thank you Lord. And thank you Beth for sharing your heart.
Thank you God for letting me read this today. Help me to be able to live this as my prayer for 2014….
Thank you for putting this into words. This is my burning desire for 2014!
I agree with you in a heart cry to the Lord to send a Holy Spirit powered revival among his people. We NEED HIM!! We need to experience His presence and need to know His will. Help us, Lord, to humble ourselves before you and look to You for a revival, renewal, reformation in ourselves, our churches, our communities, and our nation! Have mercy upon us, oh Lord, for we have sinned by allowing the world to creep in to what should be the holy place in our own lives, our homes, our society. Forgive us, Oh Lord, and cleanse us, I pray. We need Your presence; we need Your Holy Spirit! Amen
After today’s SCOTUS ruling on same sex marriage, I looked this prayer for revival back up. Revival is breaking through. We must all join together in prayer.
I read the post about Is This All There Is, and it started to burn a hunger for revival in me. I searched “revival” and came upon this blog. Oh my word. Yes. My chest is full with the Holy Spirit for the first time in a long time. And the word I hear Him whisper is Prepare. O Lord, do not pass me by. This is the cry of my heart. I want more of what You want, Lord. Show me, Lord, how to prepare. I want revival, I want eyes to see what You are doing, Lord. And I don’t want to be in the way of what You are working out. Lord God, I am prone to wander. Reign me in so You alone can reign in me. I know this was a post from four years ago, but it is timeless and relevant. Truly an anointed word, Miss Beth. I was meant to find this today.
Dear Mrs Beth, your words in this blog have been in my mind through the years. Waiting. These past few days for your people, your hometown, this post has been a picture of what you were saying. “Rain Down Revival”, “a mighty torrent of revival”, “with a torrential downpour of Your Holy Spirit”, “Open Heaven. Rain down, Holy Spirit”. I have always believed you were anointed. This prayer may be answered. Houston is showing the world a revival. The Christlike servanthood, the rescues, the losses. God only knows how your witness will lead the way for millions to be saved. I don’t know if you will see this comment but please be encouraged. We love you! We want to see God move in this generation. Praying for Houston! Lord, “Make Your name glorious. Save now.”