Thoughts on Revival

If you want the Kingdom speeded, go out and speed it yourselves.Only obedience rationalizes prayer.Only Missions can redeem your intercessions from insincerity.William Carey

Lars, this is good. I have been seeking God on what to do with myself. I've never been whole enough in the past to be of much use to God. Now, I feel that God is placing a fire inside me, but I don't know which direction to go. Please pray that I will hear his voice and follow him. Love, Dian.

We are glad to do some work in prayer in this direction.God's training is always "on the job training".Lars

Compassion costs. It is easy enough to argue, criticize and condemn, but redemption is costly, and comfort draws from the deep. Brains can argue, but It takes heart to comfort.Samuel Chadwick

Some people do not like to hear much of repentance; but I think it is so necessary that if I should die in the pulpit, I would desire to die preaching repentance, and if out of the pulpit I would desire to die practicing it.Matthew Henry

The neglect of prayer is a grand hindrance to holiness.John Wesley

I like this one by Wesley the best so far.Thx Bro. Lars

While women weep, as they do now, I'll fight;while children go hungry, as they do now I'll fight;while men go to prison, in and out, in and out, as they do now, I'll fight;while there is a drunkard left, while there is a poor lost girl upon the streets, while there remains one dark soul without the light of God, I'll fight - I'll fight to the very end!William Booth

Revival:A general breaching of the breakwaters of sin and pride.A. Skevington Wood

Yes, there lies before us a beautiful possible life - one that shall have a passion for giving: that shall be pored forth to God – spent out for man: that shall be consecrated for the hardest work and the darkest sinners.Lillias Trotter

Oh, for closest communion with God, till soul and body, head, face, and heart - shine with Divine brilliancy! But oh! for a holy ignorance of our shining!Robert Murray M'Cheyme

Neglected Christian truths can be revitalized only when by prayer and long meditation we isolate them from the mass of hazy ideas with which our minds are filled and hold them steadily and determinedly in the focus of the mind’s attention.A.W. TozerThe Divine Conquest

True prayer will achieve just as much as it costs us.Samuel M. Zwemer

Prayer is buried, and lost and Heaven weeps. If all prayed the wicked would flee from our midst or to the refuge.Evan Roberts

Oh, for closest communion with God, till soul and body, head, face, and heart - shine with Divine brilliancy! But oh! for a holy ignorance of our shining!Robert Murray M'CheymeThis is wonderful, it reminds me of Chambers The new life manifests itself in conscious repentance and unconscious holiness. My Utmost – August 15

That, which begins not with prayer, seldom winds up with comfort.John Flavel

Why is there so little forethought in the laying out of time and employment, so as secure a large portion of each day for prayer? Why is there so much speaking, yet so little prayer? Why is there so much running to and fro to meetings, conventions, fellowship gatherings and yet so little time for prayer'? Brethren, why so many meetings with our fellow men and so few meetings with God?"Andrew Bonar

The Azusa revival began where every revival should rightly begin-in repentant tears. It began in tears, it lived in tears, and when the tears ended the Azusa revival ended.A.G. Osterberg

We Christians too often substitute prayer for playing the game. Prayer is good; but when used as a substitute for obedience, it is nothing but a blatant hypocrisy, a despicable Pharisaism. . .To your knees, man! and to your Bible! Decide at once! Don't hedge! Time flies! Cease your insults to God, quit consulting flesh and blood. Stop your lame, lying, and cowardly excuses. Enlist!C. T. Studd

The men that will change the colleges and seminaries here represented are the men that will spend the most time alone with God. It takes time for the fires to burn. It takes time for God to draw near and for us to know that He is there. It takes time to assimilate His truth. You ask me, How much time? I do not know. I know it means time enough to forget time.J. Mott

It is natural to man, from his earliest infancy, to cry for relief when in danger or distress, if he supposes that any one able to relieve him is within hearing of his cries. Every man then who feels his own dependence upon God, and his need of blessings which God only can bestow, will pray to Him. He will feel that prayer is not only his duty, but his highest privilege.Edward Payson

In the Irish Revival of 1859, people became so weak that they could not get back to their homes. Men and women would fall by the wayside and would be found hours later pleading with God to save their souls. They felt that they were slipping into hell and that nothing else in life mattered but to get right with God... To them eternity meant everything. Nothing else was of any consequence. They felt that if God did not have mercy on them and save them, they were doomed for all time to come.Oswald J. Smith

Does it grieve you my friends, that the name of God is being taken in vain and desecrated? Does it grieve you that we are living in a godless age. . . But, we are living in such an age and the main reason we should be praying about revival is that we are anxious to see God's name vindicated and His glory manifested. We should be anxious to see something happening that will arrest the nations, all the peoples, and cause them to stop and to think again.Martyn Lloyd-Jones

My Lord was pleased to die for my sins; why should I not be glad to give up my poor life out of love for Him.Girolamo Savanarola

To preach to a church that are undoing all his work, and contradicting all his testimony, and that will not alter! No. Let him shake off the dust from his feet for a testimony, and go to the heathen, or to the new settlements. The man is wasting his energies, and wearing out his life, and just rocking the cradle for a sleepy church, all testifying to sinners, there is no danger. Their whole lives are a practical testimony that the Bible is not true. Shall ministers continue to wear themselves out so? Probably not less than ninety-nine-hundredths of the preaching in this country is lost, because it is contradicted by the church. Not one truth in a hundred that is preached takes effect, because the lives of professors testify that it is not so.Rev. Charles G. FinneyRevivals of ReligionLecture IX

The cross and the Spirit are inseparable. The soul that understands that death to self is the gate to true life is ready to learn what and who the Holy Spirit is.Andrew Murray

The depth of a revival will be determined exactly by the depth of the spirit of repentance.(This is very similar to a quote attributed to Finney if I recall.)- Frank Bartleman

If missions languish, it is because the whole life of godliness is feeble. The command to go everywhere and preach to everybody is not obeyed, until the will is lost by self-surrender in the will of God. There is little right giving because there is little right living, and because of the lack of sympathetic contact with God in holiness of heart, there is a lack of effectual contact with him at the Throne of Grace. Living, praying, giving and going will always be found together, and a low standard in one means a general debility in the whole spiritual being.Arthur T. Pierson

The angel fetched Peter out of prison, but it was prayer that fetched the angel.Thomas Watson

How we have prayed for a Revival - we did not care whether it was old-fashioned or not - what we asked for was that it should be such that would cleanse and revive His children and set them on fire to win others.Mary Warburton Booth

Do not have your concert first, and then tune your instrument afterwards. Begin the day with the Word of God and prayer, and get first of all into harmony with Him.James Hudson Taylor

Revival must find its strength in intercession. Let us begin as individuals to plead with God, confessing whatever we see of sin or hindrance in ourselves or others. If there were no other sin, surely the lack of prayer is matter enough for repentance, confession, and returning to the Lord.Andrew Murray