“DESPERATE” PRAYER and REVIVAL

“DESPERATE” PRAYER and REVIVAL
“Something BEYOND PRAYER?” -by ‘TonguesPrayerWarrior’.   In the 1930’s Edwin Orr travelled the world stirring up prayer for Revival. Years later he wrote:  “It has often been said that the first requirement of Revival is prayer. Yet prayer for an awakening has been going on for many years without result. There is a prior requirement.”  Can you detect it in these examples of successful pre-Revival praying?:   EVAN ROBERTS (1904): “If I had not prayed I would have burst. I fell on my knees with my arms over the seat in front of me, my face was bathed in perspiration and the tears flowed in streams, so that I thought it must be blood gushing forth… The fearful bending of the judgement day came to my mind, and I was filled with compassion for those who must bend at the judgement, and I wept.”   HEBRIDES (1949): “Suddenly a cry pierced the silence; a young man burdened in agony for his fellow men was pouring out his desire in prayer. He was so overcome that he fell into a trance.” The two sisters: “We struggled through the hours of night, refusing to take a denial.”   FINNEY (1825): “I found myself so borne down with the weight of immortal souls, that I was constrained to pray without ceasing. Some of my experiences alarmed me. I would say to God that He had made me a promise to answer prayer and I could not and would not be denied.”   FRANK BARTLEMAN (1905): “My life at this time was literally swallowed up in prayer. I was praying day and night. We prayed for a spirit of Revival upon Pasadena until the burden became well nigh unbearable.”   HUMPHREY JONES (1858): “… fervent prayer in secret, several times a day, wrestling with God; each time as though it were the last.”   WHITEFIELD (c 1730): “Sometimes whole nights were spent in prayer.”   HEBRIDES (1949): “… spending three nights in prayer that God would visit their parish.”   BRAINERD (1743): “God enabled me so to agonise in prayer that I was quite wet with sweat. I gasped for multitudes of souls. The Lord visited me marvellously in prayer; I think my soul never was in such agony before.”   EDWARD MILLER (1949): “Weeping, waiting, meditating, searching the word, walking, kneeling, standing and again prostrate on the floor.”   CHINA (1908): “Her heart seemed agonised. It was scarcely possible to catch her words through her sobs. ‘O Father, is it a sacrifice that you are waiting for? If it is, then let me be the victim. I am willing that you should blot my name right out of the Book of Life, if through my sacrifice the hearts of the people might be opened to Thee.'”   There is something that precedes and, indeed, supersedes words: ‘A heart agony,’ Lily Roberts called it, “a desperate sense of need,” said Duncan Campbell, “I would not and could not be denied,” said Charles Finney.   “Every outpouring of the Spirit is preceded by earnest, agonising   intercession,” writes Dr James Stewart. “Deep spiritual awakenings begin with desperate people. God only answers prayers of desperate Christians.”   The real key to Revival is DESPERATION. If we can live without Revival, we won’t get it. But when we can’t live any longer without it, Revival will come.

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