This post is the third in a three-part series. Read Part One. Read Part Two.
Matthew 5:6 states, “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness.” Seldom do we hear people share that they live in pursuit of greater desperation. Everything about this world pushes us toward security and stability, comfort and convenience, effectiveness and efficiency, power and protection. Money, position, influence, and fame seem to increase our capacity to secure these worldly values. So it is confusing to the world when Christians steward all that God has given toward growing desperation for more of him. Hunger and thirst speak deeply to our experience of desperation in this world. Desperation is a better life situation than all this world promises when it presses you to pray and seek God’s sovereign work in life.
Just as a “lack of” in life often forces us to seek after God, spiritual maturity leads one to pursue righteousness continually. When a person lives in the life-sustaining power of the gospel and walks in fellowship with God, relational knowledge grows a hunger and thirst for more of his presence and power. Relational intimacy is the catalytic agent that leads the spiritually mature to desperation for more of God.
God has graced us with a powerful motivator to help us in our pursuit: the remembrance of his past activity. When we remember what God has done, we can be confident of his will and desire to act in our behalf. Remembering God’s past mighty deeds reminds us that revival fire is God’s will before it is our want.
LifePoint is praying for God to bring revival in our church and awakening to our city. Our prayer is in response to the mighty deeds he has done and petitions God to raise revival from individual testimonies among us to a congregational narrative of us. Our motivation is for greater glory through deeper communion with and greater service for him.
I want to share five principles from Psalm 85 to stoke our fervency and to stand on as we pray for revival.
Principle #1: Revival begins when God’s people remember his past mighty deeds…and pray.
Psalm 85:1-3 remembers God’s work done in the past. It seemed distant, but not absent. The prophet Habakkuk records his prayer of remembrance this way, “O Lord, I have heard the report of you, and your work, O Lord, do I fear. In the midst of the years revive it; in the midst of the years make it known” (Hab. 3:2).
“Land” is referenced three time in Psalm 85. This is far more than just a reference to real estate. First of all, land was the place provided by God with the full, blessed provisions, care, and protection of God. This was the place where they enjoyed the abundance of God’s blessing. Land also represented separation from God. God’s people became so enamored in the comfort of the land’s provisions that they worshipped the gift above the Giver. Consumed by the good of the land they forsook God’s glory and promise in it and became deceived to believe they were entitled to it. Through repentance they recognized it was never the gift of the land, but the Giver who was worthy of praise, honor, and worship. Land once again represented a hope and confidence in what God could do because it was his will and covenant to dwell with his people.
There may seem to be little hope of God’s present power among them in Psalm 85:1-3, but there was full confidence in remembering what he had done. As Charles Spurgeon once said, “God’s past doings are prophetic of what he will do.”
Principle #2: Revival comes when God’s people become so convinced of God’s desire and ability that they commit themselves to seek God for revival.
2 Chronicles 7:14 has historically provided a pattern for revival. It says simply, “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.” God wants to move in powerful ways among his people. Through repentance, he has made a way to do so. The depth of one’s trust in God’s Word will determine their dependence upon it to pray. This is not a magic formula but the pattern of a promise for people to return to God.
What we have seen God do in the past is never a moment to entrench in tradition as a substitute for what he wants to do today. God’s desire to pour out his Spirit upon all people remains today as much as in his first utterance of promise. His patience and prolonged return proves this for us. The past should only serve to motivate us toward greater dependence and practice to see him move again for greater glory today.
Principle #3: Revival moves in the congregation when God’s people take personal responsibility for revival.
A shift occurs in Psalm 85:8. It says, “Let me hear what God the Lord will speak.” The pronouns move from plural to singular. The Psalmist assumes a personal responsibility for what is taking place in waiting to hear from the Lord. Prayer for revival is lifted for everyone, but the responsibility for revival to begin becomes personal. When God’s people get serious about seeking God, prayers for revival become decisively personal with hunger and thirst for righteousness.
God always uses his people to accomplish his work. This is true in revival as well. Renewal sparks in one or a few before it spreads to the whole. I challenge you to pray and ask God to spark your heat that he might use you to bring revival to others. Imagine what could happen if only a few were “lit up” in passionate pursuit of God.
A warning rests here as well. When prayers for revival grow, the task can seem to swell to insurmountable heights. The one praying must remain on guard that the size of the task does not overwhelm so as to turn to folly, which is always a great danger at this point. Nothing pushes one to turn to “folly” more than when we believe that what God wants for us is more than we can produce for him. Feeling overwhelmed drives us to despair and seek false idols, “folly”. God does not ask us to do this for him. When we grow weary we must lean on God’s sustaining power. Revival is not our work for him, but God’s work in us.
Principle #4: Revival shapes the church to be the kind of place where God dwells powerfully among his people and attracts others.
Psalm 85:10-13 shows a picture of God’s redeeming power at work. The sure and trustworthy character of God is revealed. His love and faithfulness go together. His caress is powerful when he bestows himself on his people. When God’s people walk with him, it is like the sun and the ground working together to produce beauty, substance, and goodness. “Yes, the Lord will give what is good,” is an affirming confidence, a calm assurance, and stabilizing hope in God because this is his will. This is not a conclusion to move on from, but to hold steady until God acts. God will do this!
Principle #5: Revival will come when the place you find yourself becomes less glorious to you than the place God has for you, and you turn to God.
I am leading LifePoint to pray for revival because I am hungry for God to move in more powerful ways than we have experienced before. Darkness seems to be rising in the world. This is always a time for the church to wake up and rise up. I’m hungry to see God work in more powerful ways to save people, restore families, homes, marriages, men, women, and students to walk in holiness and righteousness, to break the bondage of sinful enslavement, and to break the comfort of our culture’s stranglehold of casual Christianity. I want to see the church light up the city with Jesus and his hope.
The week before I originally preached on Psalm 85, we lead a great week of ministry for LifePoint. We trained a record number of pastors, church planters, and leaders, and hosted an electric night to launch our fall family discipleship. After a full week of ministry adrenaline, my hyper-analyzing mind dared ask, “Could this be enough?” “What more is necessary?” “Should we (I) just be happy with where we are?”
The truth is, we should be thrilled with where God has us. And I am. LifePoint is richly blessed. But God’s blessing is a never a rationale to neglect or substitute for our faithfulness. God is a God of greater glory. What he places in your hand he intends for you to invest in his kingdom. People of the world are waiting and dying to hear the gospel, and many of them live next door to a Christian.
The famous missionary Lottie Moon said it this way, “I see people everywhere to whom I owe the gospel.” The popular pastor David Platt has stated it this way, “Every Christian on this side of heaven owes every unbeliever on this side of hell the gospel.” Will you dare to pray and ask God to live it out in your life?