It's that time of year again—the time when I reflect on the year that has been. I'm going to follow a structure in my reminiscing which will be as follows:

1. In this post I will think about my own personal life, and in particular my relationship with God.
   
   
2. In the next post I will consider my family.
   
   
3. Then I will consider my church.
   
   
4. Finally, I will spend some time reviewing the blog.

This order truly does reflect the relative priority I place on each aspect of my life.

I find this whole process sets me nicely in the mood to then switch off totally over Christmas and into January. Although I myself will continue my break, beginning on January 1st, thanks to my editor, Annette, we will be publishing a particular series of posts that I have already written and sent to her.

You will notice that there is a clear omission from my list—my job. This is because I don't like to mix my work and my blog. I'm keen to keep my professional life entirely separate from this hobby I carry out in my spare time. This is not because I don't enjoy my job—I very much do. It's just wise to keep some boundaries of separation between the multiple domains of my life.

I am a very busy person, although I'm sure I would have it no other way. If I have some spare time, I tend to fill it with something. I'm not a great believer in simply staring blankly into space! I try to make time for entertainment and relaxation also. Managing my competing responsibilities is all about making the most of every second available to me, and where possible, recycling time or effort so it benefits me in more than one way. Thus, I try not to re-invent the wheel, and find that things I'm thinking about in one aspect of my life often pop up in another area in a surprising way to help me there.

As I end the year, I am painfully aware that the person who can get squeezed out at times is the One Person who makes it all possible, and who is my top priority. I can honestly say that this year I have been better at taking time to pray and truly listening to what God has to say to me personally in his Word than I have in the past. But I do need more extended times when I forget all my other responsibilities and focus only on him. January will be a month very much devoted to that goal, alongside the responsibilities that I cannot lay down for such a season. I am looking forward to a weekend retreat that will help greatly, and by not blogging for several weeks, I will have some time to accomplish this on a daily basis.

If I don't make sure that I am connected to God, filled by God, thrilled by God, and empowered by God, I simply can't get those things done which God intends for me to do. Being well-oiled by the Spirit of God makes all the difference to everything else I do. I very much notice the negative effects on every area of my life when I have rushed this, or when I am shamefully treating God like just another drain on my time.

The good news is that although I am now, like many of you, in real need of a rest, I end this year significantly less worn out and weary than I think I was at this time of year in the last few years. While 2007 has been busy, I have been better at pacing myself and taking time out when I needed it. I still do far more than I sometimes think I ought to be doing. But I'm learning to say "No!" and, where possible, I've handed over things I don't have to do myself.

When we know we are doing God's work, then we can be confident that he will give us all we need to accomplish that work. I wear many hats, all of which he has given me—blogger, writer, doctor, father, husband, preacher, church leader, coach, friend. I need to make sure that I take off all those hats more often and just get before God in prayer as his son.

If you can spare some time, please do pray for me that 2008 will be a year when I learn how to pray more effectively than I currently know how to, and live in more obvious and active dependence on the One to whom I owe everything.

May God help me to continue all I do in the power that his Spirit supplies.

Over at Unashamed Workmen, there are a number of great quotes on the vital place of prayer in preaching. The one that really stood out was in the comments section. I think this quote expresses perfectly why we need to plead with the resurrected Jesus to pour out his Spirit on us before we dare think of preaching:

“This divine unction is the one distinguishing feature that separates true gospel preaching from all other methods of presenting truth. It backs and interpenetrates the revealed truth with all the force of God. It illumines the Word and broadens and enrichens [sic] the intellect and empowers it to grasp and apprehend the Word. It qualifies the preacher’s heart, and brings it to that condition of tenderness, of purity, of force and light that are necessary to secure the highest results. This unction gives to the preacher liberty and enlargement of thought and soul—a freedom, fullness, and directness of utterance that can be secured by no other process.”

—Power Through Prayer by E. M. Bounds

I just had to share this quote from Spurgeon on prayer:

If some of the prayers at certain prayer meetings were less doctrinal, less experimental, and more argumentative with God, they would be more like true prayer should be, for true prayer is just pleading with the Most High, spreading our case before him, and then pressing our suit with all the arguments we can muster. . . .

You can say, “Lord, thou didst tell me to believe in Jesus Christ, thy Son; then, wilt thou not accept me, for his sake, for I have done what thou didst bid me do? Thou hast said, ‘Call upon me in the day of trouble;’ Lord, this is a day of trouble with me, and I do call upon thee; so wilt thou not answer me?” If you argue with the Lord in such a style as this, you will find that this kind of pleading is potent with him who is omnipotent . . .

When a man has promised you something that you really need, you take him by the buttonhole, and you say to him, “Now, you promised to give me that;” and if he is an honest man, you can hold him by his own word; and shall the God of truth ever fail to perform his promise? No, that is one of the things that God cannot do; he cannot lie, and yet cannot run back from his promise, nor does he want to do so. O Christian, if you would get anything from God, find a promise of it in his Word, and then thou mayest count the thing as good as received. When a man of means gives you his cheque, you count it just as good as hard cash; and God’s promises are even better than cheques or bank notes. We have only to take them, and plead them before him, and we may rest assured that he will honor them.

— Charles Spurgeon, Sermon No. 3010

In this quote, taken once again from the Doctor on Ephesians, we see a strong emphasis on experience. The Christian must KNOW God. Oh, how little we emphasize that today! How poor our experience often is. How few people glow when they speak about their relationship with their precious Saviour. How this challenges me personally once again to seek God!

"There are, unfortunately, even many evangelical Christians who deny that God has any direct dealings with men today, and who hold feeling and emotion at a discount. They frequently substitute for true emotion a flabby sentimentalism. They are afraid of the power of the Holy Spirit, and so afraid of certain excesses which are sometimes found in mysticism and in certain people who claim to have unusual experiences of the Holy Spirit, that they 'quench the Spirit' and never have any personal knowledge of Christ. Indeed, they often go so far as to deny the possibility of such a knowledge.

This is obviously something with which we must deal, for if we hold this particular view we shall clearly never seek the knowledge of which the Apostle is speaking, and therefore shall never have it. How then do we answer this charge?

There is, of course, a false mysticism. This becomes quite clear in books on the subject and especially in the biographies of certain mystics. Beyond a doubt, there were aberrations in the lives of many of them, and much that was morbid and unhealthy. There is a morbid, introspective, selfish, impractical and useless type of mysticism. But because certain mystics have been guilty of such things we should not allow ourselves to be blinded to that which is a true and healthy mysticism, a mysticism which is taught in the Bible itself . . .

. . . we must remind ourselves that this teaching is found, perhaps supremely, in the words of our blessed Lord Himself. In the fourteenth chapter of John's Gospel, having told them that He is about to leave them, our Lord says: 'Let not your hearts be troubled. Ye believe in God, believe also in me'. They were troubled when told that He was going to leave them. They had been with Him three years, they had looked into His face, they had seen His miracles, heard His sermons, and could always ask Him questions. But now He is going to leave them, and they feared that they could not possibly continue to live and be happy without Him. His answer was, 'I will come unto you. I will manifest myself to you' (vv. 18, 21, 22). But still more explicitly in the sixteenth chapter we find Him saying, 'It is expedient for you that I go away' (v. 7). It would be good for them that He was going to leave them and to go away from them in the form in which He was then with them, because (as He proceeded to explain) 'if I go not away, the Comforter will not come unto you; but if I go away I will send him unto you'. How can it be expedient for the disciples that He should leave them in the flesh and go away from them in the body? How can that be true if it is not possible for the Christian to know Him immediately and directly? Obviously the supreme blessing is to be with Him, in His presence and in His company. What He is really saying is that after He has gone and has baptized them with the Holy Ghost, He will be more real to them than He was at that moment. And this is what actually happened. They knew Him much better after Pentecost than they knew Him before. He was more real to them, more living to them, more vital to them afterwards than He was in the days of His flesh. His promise was literally fulfilled and verified . . .

Nothing stands out more prominently in the life of George Whitefield than his consciousness of the love of Christ. He knew it to an exceptional degree and you will find that it was always after he had had some exceptional experience of Christ that he was given unusual enlargement and liberty in his preaching, and that men and women were broken down and melted before his holy eloquence and his portrayal of the love of God in Christ Jesus. Charles Wesley knew it equally well, and so writes:

Enlarge, inflame, and fill my heart
With boundless charity divine!
So shall I all my strength exert,
And love them with a zeal like Thine.
This has been true of God's greatest servants in all ages, in all centuries, in all places.

. . . The secret of the early Christians, the early Protestants, Puritans and Methodists was that they were taught about the love of Christ, and they became filled with a knowledge of it. Once a man has the love of Christ in his heart you need not train him to witness; he will do it. He will know the power, the constraint, the motive; everything is already there. It is a plain lie to suggest that people who regard this knowledge of the love of Christ as the supreme thing are useless, unhealthy mystics. The servants of God who have most adorned the life and the history of the Christian Church have always been men who have realized that this is the most important thing of all, and they have spent hours in prayer seeking His face and enjoying His love. The man who knows the love of Christ in his heart can do more in one hour than the busy type of man can do in a century. God forbid that we should ever make of activity an end in itself. Let us realize that the motive must come first, and that the motive must ever be the love of Christ.

I end with the question which I asked at the beginning: To which of the circles do you belong? Are you pressing your way right into the centre? You may have seen people in a crowd, when the Queen or some other notable person is passing, trying to push themselves forward in order to have a front-line view. The same thing occurs at various games. There are those who always want to be in the front to have the best view. Are we pressing into the innermost circle? Are we seeking the Lord's face? Are we coveting the knowledge of His love? The Apostle prayed for every single member of the Church at Ephesus that he or she 'might be able to comprehend with all saints what is the length and breadth and depth and height, and to know the love of Christ, which passeth knowledge.' How tragic it is that any of us should be living as paupers, out on the cold street, while the banqueting chamber is open and the feast prepared. Let us search for the knowledge of the Lord in the Scriptures and read about it in the lives of the saints throughout the centuries. As we do so, we shall never be content until we are in the innermost circle and looking into His blessed face."

Lloyd-Jones, D. Martyn. An Exposition of Ephesians 3: The Unsearchable Riches of Christ, Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1979, pp.247-253.

For more information see my previous posts on Lloyd-Jones and the MLJ Recordings Trust website.

Just as it is not possible to really understand a car without knowing about its engine, you cannot understand Newfrontiers without knowing about the engine which lies under its hood. That engine is in very large part what happens several times a year when church leaders gather for a time of prayer and fasting. This past week it was truly awesome to gather with 750 others to devote ourselves to seeking God. In the context of prayer, prophetic words are shared and evaluated. We catch the heart of God for our next thrust forward. Family news is shared. And what news! We have now seen God work in such a way that there are over 200 churches in the UK. We also heard about fresh drives to plant churches in Paris, Rome, Berlin, Dublin, Porta, Amsterdam, and Valentia, among others. There are even some more churches looking at joining our growing family in the USA. In every continent of the world, Newfrontiers churches are growing and multiplying. With the work God is also doing in other groups, it is increasingly possible to believe that reformed, charismatic, grace-filled, relational churches will be planted all over the world.

To join a resounding chorus of praise to God and prayer for the success of all these endeavors was deeply moving. We also heard about how the churches of Zimbabwe with whom we are in touch are full of joy and faith despite the difficult circumstances they face. Who could not have been stirred by Terry Virgo's fresh challenge to us to rediscover the vital place of shepherding God's flock and focusing our best efforts on caring for churches even as they go out on a mission? Meeting with some of you my readers was also great fun.

The worship was very rousing. In particular, I felt my heart swell as we sang Jesus My Only Hope. I found myself thinking—if he is our only hope, what of those who have no hope? How can we not share him with them? As you can imagine, I was all the more thrilled therefore to witness baptisms this morning at our own church. He really is our only hope!

Words and music by Mark Altrogge
As recorded on Songs for the Cross-Centered Life

Lyrics

I come into Your presence
With nothing in my hands
I only bring thanksgiving
For Jesus, God and Man
I cast myself on mercy
I cast myself on love
I trust Your gracious promise
To wash me with Your blood.

I will not fear Your judgment
For me, no wrath I dread
For it was spent on Jesus
Poured out upon His head
When Satan’s accusations
Make my poor heart afraid
I hear my King declaring
“Father, that debt is paid.”

Jesus my only hope, my only plea
My righteousness, my Great High Priest
Who intercedes for me before the throne
Jesus, I trust in You alone.

© 2002 Sovereign Grace Praise (BMI).

My buddy, Mark Moore, has asked us to pray for a friend of his who is a pastor facing persecution in India. See Mark's blog for the full story:

“One of our international pastors in Acts 29, Pastor Sudhakar in India, is facing tremendous persecution, having been drug out of his church on a Sunday morning and beaten by twenty men. He is now standing trial for "converting Hindus to Christianity."

One of the temptations for us Reformed Charismatics is to just not talk about our experiences of the Spirit and the things we see. If we just don't talk about our charismatic experience it is much easier for us to fit in with our reformed brothers. At times I feel I am more interested in fitting in with my reformed brothers than my Arminian Charismatic brothers! I wonder even if I have many Arminian readers? If you are one, do let me know....

Anyway, I am thrilled with Terry Virgo for not succumbing to that temptation. The following story of Dyslexia being healed by God is worth a read.

Five years ago his parents were told, ‘Parker has the worst case of dyslexia we have ever seen in our thirteen years.’ This was the assessment of the Director of Applied Learning Processes, one of the nation’s most recognised learning disability centres. Throughout his high school years he was given a classification which allowed him to have his reading provided in audio form as well as other special provisions...

During one of the worship sessions his friend Jon Alden felt that God had spoken into his heart concerning Parker, so he leaned over to him and said, ‘The letters will be where they are supposed to be and God will make you see things you never thought you would.’ Parker immediately knew what this meant. Running back to the book table, he picked up a book and started reading. Miraculously for the first time ever in Parker’s eighteen years he could read clearly and understand!"

Because he is of course a reformed charismatic Terry of course followed it up with a post about the latest books he has been reading, as well as mentioning Mark Driscoll. I loved what he said about the man from Mars Hill.

"Though his unconventional style is mildly shocking to the ears of this particular English preacher, who can no longer claim to be in his middle years, Mark Driscoll, coming clearly through my iPod in this last week, has been a huge blessing (www.marshillchurch.org).

As I walked to my office, in hopefully not a vain attempt to lose a few pounds, my spirit was soaring as I heard his outstanding commitment to preaching Christ. His Biblical perspective was magnificent. Verse after verse insisted first on Christ’s humanity and then on His deity. How wonderful to hear preaching so centred in Christ albeit with fascinating contemporary asides. How rarely one hears sermons so exclusively about Jesus and simply talking about Him, focusing on Him, glorying in Him and feeding my soul."

After sharing his theological reading, Terry then ended on some more recent healings he has observed

On my return from the USA last week it was great to hear of healings following prayer times while I was there. Particularly thrilling was a breakout of healings at Christ Church in Kaiser, Missouri, where one lady was healed from an allergic backlash to eating fish and also from asthma. Since my being there she has happily eaten salmon with no problem and went for a 1-mile run without use of her medicine and with no related difficulties. Also another lady, whose spine was out of line, straightened up, and a further lady with a hip out of line, which gave her great pain, ran around the church building. Over a dozen or so also came forward at Christian Fellowship in Columbia, Missouri, to testify that they had been healed on the night that I prayed for them. Praise the Lord! God keeps telling us that a new era has started for us. I intend believing Him and keep on pushing the door and looking for fresh manifestations of His presence and power.

This Piper Friday, I would like to share an extract with you from an old sermon by John Piper. It rightly entwines three themes that were flowing through my head (and hence this blog!) earlier this year: The study of God’s Word, prayer, and the activity of the Holy Spirit. I am increasingly convinced that we need these three things more than anything else! Oh, God . . . make us preachers to be men like this!

“The minister of the Word must not choose between study and prayer. Study without prayer is the work of pride. Prayer without study is presumption. This is what the Proverbs teach: "If you cry out for insight and raise your voice for understanding (that's prayer), and if you seek it like silver and search for it as for hidden treasures (that's study), then you will understand the fear of the Lord and find the knowledge of God" (Proverbs 2:3–5).

Prayer humbles the heart and gives it the tone of Christ and makes it ready and open and sensitive to the truth of Scripture. But it is study that brings in the truth and fills the heart with joy and power.

Meeting the Almighty God
The ministry of the Word is a ministry of prayer because in prayer the minister meets God and has real living dealings with the Almighty so that his preaching and teaching have the aroma of God about them. The ministry of the Word must be a ministry of earnestness and intensity, and where are these to be found if not in our private meetings with God where you learn to know if you are real or just playing games?

One great Baptist pastor, Hezekiah Harvey, put it like this in 1879: "Moral earnestness can never be assumed; it is the attribute only of a soul profoundly feeling the power and reality of divine truth. The man, therefore, who would speak God's Word with the pungency and fervor of a Bunyan, a Baxter, a Flavel, or a Payson must, like them, be constant and fervent in prayer. The springs of spiritual life opened in the closet will pour forth never-failing streams of life in the pulpit."

Without much prayer all the study in the world will leave us shallow and lean. Without prayer there creeps in what Richard Cecil called the "low, managing, contriving, maneuvering temper of mind among us."

E.M. Bounds is right when he says, "What the Church needs today is not more machinery or more 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."

Over the weekend Mark Driscoll has posted about feeling exhausted and struggling with poor sleep. He is typically honest and open. More honest and open than many religious Christians would like him to be. I am a little concerned with my psychiatric hat on that such symptoms, if ignored, could be the prelude to something more serious. It maddens me that some bloggers have taken this openness as an opportunity to hit him whilst he is down. Don't they realize how much the church needs men like Mark? We need instead to pray for him, right now!

The truth is that such experiences of desperation and need of God are common to all men of God. If even Elijah got so low that he wanted to die is it any wonder a man of God in the spotlight like Driscoll has experienced a season of feeling the way he describes himself. I am pleased that Driscoll has been taking counsel from the likes of C.J. Mahaney. I just hope that he will be able to take some time out and rest — perhaps someone else can fill his pulpit for a few weeks? It is surely a great load to preach every Sunday for so many years — even if that was all a man did - which of course it isn't.

Interestingly, the last two times I preached there were passages that spoke from my own experience of the frailty of the messenger. Perhaps these will help you if you have gone further down the road to exhaustion and despair than it sounds like Driscoll has:

"Hope is infectious . . . as is despair. We should surround ourselves with those who will instill hope into us! But our hope must come from the Scriptures and not a false whipped-up hope. I can speak personally about how this works. As I was a bit tired out before Christmas, I asked Tope for a break from preaching for awhile. This was a good thing as everyone needs a break from time to time. But I lifted my foot off the accelerator a bit regarding my study of God's Word, and was also not praying as much - obviously when you are preparing to preach you study more and pray more. But what I found was that as my break from the hard work of preaching lengthened, my level of hope was slowly being reduced. I found myself feeling even quite fearful. I remember even having the thought come into my mind, "Perhaps I've forgotten how to preach." But there were also a couple of personal situations where I was beginning to allow fear to have a foothold. So, how did I deal with this? Well, two things seem to have lifted me. The first was that I received prayer on Saturday morning. The second was that as I went back to a more rigorous Bible study program and began to pray more, I found that hope began to return and fear subsided. It is God's Word, soaked in prayer, that gives us hope, that lifts us, that gives us life! God wants us increasingly to be almost aggressive in how much we place our hope in His Word. Many prayers in the Bible remind God of His promises and almost "sue" him to act. I believe God responds to that kind of prayer - prayer that is mixed with God's own Word." (God's Reviving Word)

The second message was when I was preaching about the prayer life of Elijah and touched on the time he felt like that as follows:

"God does not mind if you get to the end of your own strength and cry out to Him in despair. But He certainly doesn't want to leave you there in your despair. Now, for Elijah, suddenly it isn't a dead boy that needs reviving, or a wet sacrifice that needs the fire to fall on it, or the rain clouds that must be summoned. We see here that God is still interested in the man Elijah - who, in this story more than any other, shows us that he was just a weak man like us. When a weak man or woman comes to God, then God is eager to REVIVE them, which is exactly what happened to Elijah. We must remember that it is not merely a matter of what words we use when we pray, or even what emotion we feel. It is more a question of who we are coming to. Elijah comes to the living God. And when the living God meets a man who wants to die, what is the result? Life from death. A new start. A new commission. As I was preparing this, I believe God dropped into my heart that there would be some here who had been this desperate, who like Elijah felt they had been faithful, but like Elijah they believed they had reached the end of the road. Perhaps you even had a "ministry" that is now "over" in your mind. Perhaps you feel you disqualified yourself. God is in the business of restoring and reviving us and wants to do just that to you." (Reviving Prayer)

The following is a full set of notes, including background information and quotes I used whilst preparing my sermon entitled, "Reviving Prayer," which was preached at Jubilee Church on the 25th of February 2006. Much of this material was never designed to form part of the sermon — instead it is, if you like, part of the "iceberg" that lies beneath the surface supporting what I actually said. You can download the audio (you may need to right click and save the file onto your PC) or listen right here using the following embedded player:

A. INTRODUCTION

Last Sunday at Jubilee we heard about how we believe that God is calling us to be a people of faith — a people who trust in God to do the miraculous. One way in which we express our faith — and in which our faith can grow — is by prayer. I know that for me, as I look back on my life, there are many times when I have wrestled with God in prayer and seen Him answer me. Times when things have been hard, and I have prayed, and suddenly a corner was turned. The time when attempts at moving to a new house didn't happen the way I wanted it, but I prayed and God worked it out so we had a far better house than we originally planned. Times when I have been sick, and prayer led to one of those miracles the doctors call "spontaneous remissions." Times when I felt at the end of my tether, and God intervened and refreshed me, sometimes without even solving the problem.

Sometimes it's not so much our situations that need changing — it's us. Sometimes we might be struggling in a job or a relationship and God wants us to suddenly realize the reason He has put us there. Perhaps you face lots of problems at work and it's getting you down. You might be praying to get out of a job. But God shows you in prayer that if it wasn't for all those problems, they wouldn't be paying your salary. It is often WE that need to be revived from our depressed state.

The kind of prayer I want to look at today is THAT kind of prayer — prayer that changes us. Prayer that revives. There are many great promises attached to prayer in the Bible. One of these is found in 2 Chronicles 7:14:

If my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then will I hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and will heal their land.

This is a key verse — one you will have probably heard if you have been a Christian for awhile. It is often quoted when we are talking about prayer. In this verse God makes a glorious promise. It is essentially a promise that He will heal and revive us if we will turn and pray.

Last time I spoke we looked at revival and the example in Acts 2 — several points about that passage reflect the "typical" revival as seen in church history. One of these is prayer. This is a pattern that is repeated in Acts and throughout church history. Every revival I have ever read about in Church history started with a prayer meeting.

This quote from a journal which writes exclusively on revival supports the observation that no revival comes without prayer:

" ... let us draw some general lessons from our consideration of the Second Great Awakening . . . It is quite evident that prayer was an essential element in this revival movement, as it is in all revivals. There is no revival without prayer. It would profit us to carefully go over the title of Edwards' thesis on revival praying: "A Humble Attempt" — Every relationship to God must begin with humility, for God gives grace only to the humble (James 4:6; 2 Chronicles 7:14). "For Explicit Agreement and Visible Union of God's People" — An essential condition for revival, as well as an evidence, is unity (Psalms 133; Acts 1:14; Acts 2:1; Acts 4:24ff; Acts 5:12). "For Extraordinary Prayer" — It was Leonard Ravenhill who said, "A church will never have a revival on one prayer meeting a week." May God pour out a "spirit of grace and supplication" upon us! We need first a revival of prayer. (Reformation and Revival Volume 6, 1997)

Let me give a couple of examples of this in church history. During revivals, prayer becomes more intense, and all-night prayer meetings are not uncommon. It is often said of revival times: "You did not have to whip them up to prayer meetings; you could not keep them away." (Martyn Lloyd-Jones).

In revival, even non-Christians come to the prayer meetings and get saved!

Some examples of this:

1. This was my experience at school.

2. Perhaps one of the most striking examples of the place of prayer in revival happened in Coleraine in 1859:

   "A schoolboy in class became so troubled about his soul that the schoolmaster sent him home. An older boy, a Christian, went with him, and before they had gone far, led him to Christ. Returning at once to school, this new convert testified to his teacher, 'Oh, I am so happy. I have the Lord Jesus in my heart.' These artless words had an astonishing effect; boy after boy rose and silently left the room. Going outside, the teacher found these boys all on their knees, ranged along the wall of the playground. Very soon their silent prayer became a bitter cry; it was heard by another class inside and pierced their hearts. They fell on their knees, and their cry for mercy was heard in turn by a girls' class above. In a few moments, the whole school was on their knees! Neighbors and passers-by came flocking in, and all as they crossed the threshold came under the same convicting power. Every room was filled with men, women and children seeking God."

3. Something similar happened that year in New York where a prayer meeting which began with just six people the first week swelled to fill theatres and led directly to 1 million out of 30 million Americans being saved in a year.

This clear link between revival and prayer has led some to think this is an automatic process — that if you do certain things a massive revival is always the result. These words, however, do not remove the sovereignty of God — there is mystery, and the truth is we cannot force God's hand like that. Nor should we stop everything and just pray! Booth said "work as if everything depends on you. Pray as if everything depends on God."

BUT, if people turn and pray, in a certain way I do believe it is almost irresistible to God and He will revive them — even if this does not lead to a widespread "revival." Last time I made the point that I believe that what happens on a global or national scale in revival can be mirrored in an individual church or group of Christians, or even in a single life. God is in the business of reviving those who fear they are almost dead.

So if prayer is what triggers the people of God to be healed and revived, it is also what triggers me personally to be revived as well. How strange it is that we all struggle so much to pray as we ought!

If we were really convinced that prayer changes the way God acts, and that God does bring about remarkable changes in the world in response to prayer, as Scripture repeatedly teaches that He does, then we would pray much more than we do. If we pray little, it is probably because we do not really believe that prayer accomplishes much at all. (Wayne A. Grudem, Systematic Theology: An Introduction to Biblical Doctrine, p. 377.)

I wish I was more of an expert at prayer. I am not; but I am learning. I wish I knew more about reviving prayer. If there was ever a man who the Bible holds up as an example of fervent reviving prayer, it is Elijah. I would like to introduce us today to a man who certainly knew how to pray. I want to look at the prayer life of Elijah, since the dramatic events of his life are often seen as representing revival — we pray "send the fire" or "send the rain" — he saw both literally. Intriguingly, Solomon, to whom God is speaking in the above promise, had also seen literal fire, as did, of course, the early church in the book of Acts. Fire is very instructive to us about how God the Holy Spirit works.

The New Testament honors Elijah in the book of James:

James 5:16-18. The prayer of a righteous person has great power as it is working. Elijah was a man with a nature like ours, and he prayed fervently that it might not rain, and for three years and six months it did not rain on the earth. Then he prayed again, and heaven gave rain, and the earth bore its fruit.

So what IS effective prayer? We will look at every recorded prayer of Elijah beginning in 1 Kings 17 where we find the first recorded prayer of Elijah. But before we launch into it, I want you to know that there is no doubt this was not the first prayer of Elijah. We know this for certain because the verse in James we just read tells us that Elijah prayed for the rain to stop. That prayer is not recorded in Scripture, which I think tells us that we must learn to pray in the secret place — I am very sure that Elijah will have prayed for all kinds of small things before he began to pray his "big prayers."

B. WHAT IS REVIVING PRAYER LIKE?

If there is one prayer in the whole Bible that is an example of reviving prayer it is that first recorded prayer of Elijah found in 1 Kings 17. The widow who has been looking after the prophet Elijah during the great drought probably expected some kind of reward from God for doing so. What happened instead? Her son died. This prayer is a prayer that quite literally brought a corpse back to life — it revived the boy. This should be enough to make us sit up and take notice and say, "So what can we learn about prayer from this?" Sometimes we have to be brought into a desperate situation in which we have no "clever" answer in order for us to be driven to prayer.

"He gave no answer to her expostulation, but brought it to God, and laid the case before him, not knowing what to say to it himself." (Matthew Henry)

A REVIVING PRAYER . . .

1 Kings 17:20-21. And he cried to the Lord, "0 Lord my God, have you brought calamity even upon the widow with whom I sojourn, by killing her son?" Then he stretched himself upon the child three times and cried to the Lord, "0 Lord my God, let this child's life come into him again."

1. Recognises the situation — doesn't deny it. For example, Abraham (in Romans 4:19)

   ". . . did not weaken in faith when he considered his own body, which was as good as dead (since he was about a hundred years old), or when he considered the barrenness of Sarah's womb" (or as the NIV puts it) he "faced the facts ... " Essentially, both Elijah and Abraham had one eye on the situation and were being honest and real about it, but also had one eye on God. They both knew that "where God is present, there is nothing that lies outside the realm of possibility."

   "Abraham was fully aware that his own body was as good as dead ("utterly worn out," TCNT). He was, at that time, about one hundred years old (cf. Gen 17:1). Furthermore, Sarah was "past the age of childbearing" (Genesis 18:11). From a common sense standpoint, there was not the slightest possibility that she would bear a child. This, however, did not cause Abraham to weaken in his faith. Faith goes beyond human potentiality. It acknowledges the existence of one who is not bound by the limitations of the created order. 'Conscious of his own utter impotence, Abraham relied simply and completely on the all-sufficient power of God.' Where God is present, there is nothing that lies outside the realm of possibility. The church of Jesus Christ is in desperate need of those who will insist that God is able to bring to pass anything that is consistent with his nature and in concert with his redemptive purposes. Your God Is too small is a sad epitaph inscribed on all too many ecclesiastical groups who, strange as it may seem, claim to worship the Almighty." (Robert H. Mounce, vol. 27, Romans (electronic edition, Logos Library System; The New American Commentary, Nashville: Broadman & Holman Publishers, 2001, (c1995), p. 129.)

2. Cries to God — has a strength about it — challenging God, which almost reminds me of Genesis 32 (Jacob wrestling with God).

   The great thing is that as Elijah cries out to God passionately, his prayer is answered. The boy lives. But something happened here to Elijah — it was one more lesson in the university of prayer. Elijah learnt something, so much so that by the time we get to the very next chapter, we find a bold Elijah, not now hidden in his room, but before the whole nation, standing next to an altar that is soaking wet and a bunch of religious fanatics who have been cutting themselves with swords, trying to persuade Baal to send fire. To make matters worse, he has been mocking them - in clear proof that there ARE jokes in the Bible! So is he nervous? Not a bit of it! Listen to his clear, bold, prayer:

   1 Kings 18:36-39. "0 Lord, God of Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, let it be known this day that you are God in Israel, and that I am your servant, and that I have done all these things at your word. Answer me, 0 Lord, answer me, that this people may know that you, 0 Lord, are God, and that you have turned their hearts back." Then the fire of the Lord fell and consumed the burnt offering and the wood and the stones and the dust, and licked up the water that was in the trench. And when all the people saw it, they fell on their faces and said, "The Lord, he is God; the Lord, he is God."

3. Calls on the God of history. When we read about what God has done in the past — both in church history and in the Bible — it should make us conclude that the God who acted then can to do the same today; more than that, He wants to do the same today. All we need do is ask. God seems to delight in the kinds of prayers we see often in the Bible which say "do it again, Lord."

   Habbakuk 3:2. "0 Lord, I have heard the report of you, and your work, 0 Lord, do I fear. In the midst of the years revive it; in the midst of the years make it known;" (ESV)

   The NIV paraphrases this nicely here: "Lord, I have heard of your fame; I stand in awe of your deeds, 0 Lord. Renew them in our day, in our time make them known."

4. Desires that God be honoured. When we pray we must examine our hearts and say — "Why am I asking for this?" Is it that I can be more comfortable? Or is it that God can be glorified? How will God be glorified in that new Ferrari you are yearning for?

5. Recognises that repentance is God's work. Some of us have prayed for years for a child who has wandered far away from God, or a friend or relative that never knew Him. Knowing that it is GOD who turns the heart around to follow Him should inspire us to not give up. If we were relying on our friend or family member seeing sense on their own suddenly, how could we believe for that? No, for as 2 Corinthians 4 puts it: "The god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers, to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ" (v4) — we were all like that once. BUT God didn't leave us like that "For God, who said, 'Let light shine out of darkness,' has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ" (v6). If you don't know Jesus, you must ask him to do the same — only HE can make you a Christian.

6. Asks God to act "answer me." Too often prayer is simply worrying out loud. We rehearse our woes to God, then feel a bit better for having done so. Like the early church praying for the release of Peter, we are often shocked when our prayers are answered! Peter standing there knocking at the door whilst intense prayer is going on inside has always seemed humorous to me. "No, don't be silly it must be his ghost!" We must actually ASK God to do something and then not be surprised when He does it! Elijah wasn't surprised. Nor did he stop there. He had another prayer to pray ... almost the next verse:

   1 Kings 18:41-46. "And Elijah said to Ahab, 'Go up, eat and drink, for there is a sound of the rushing of rain.' So Ahab went up to eat and to drink. And Elijah went up to the top of Mount Carmel. And he bowed himself down on the earth and put his face between his knees. And he said to his servant, 'Go up now, look toward the sea.' And he went up and looked and said, 'There is nothing.' And he said, 'Go again,' seven times. And at the seventh time he said, 'Behold, a little cloud like a man's hand is rising from the sea.' And he said, 'Go up, say to Ahab, Prepare your chariot and go down, lest the rain stop you.' And in a little while the heavens grew black with clouds and wind, and there was a great rain. And Ahab rode and went to Jezreel. And the hand of the Lord was on Elijah, and he gathered up his garment and ran before Ahab to the entrance of Jezreel.

7. Gets perspective by going high. "No one will ever live higher than their view of God and their view of Jesus Christ."

8. Silent recognition of God's superiority. Bowing before God — in almost every culture, bowing is seen as being subservient — Elijah is recognising God is his king. Of course, any one particular posture in prayer is not critical. It is just as foolish to think we must ALWAYS pray on our knees as it is to NEVER bow our knees before God. When things go well for us — that is the time to make sure we humble ourselves before God once more.

   There was no one posture required for the exercise of prayer. Most often prayer was made standing (e.g., I Samuel 1 :26); the great prayer of the Jewish synagogue was to be called the "standing prayer" (Amidah). On occasion, however, one might pray kneeling (I Kings 8:54), or prostrate (I Kings 18:42), with hands spread out (I Kings 8:22,54; Isaiah 1:15), or lifted up." (Psalm 63:4; 1 Timothy 2:8). (Wycliffe Bible Encyclopedia).

9. Is persistent in waiting on God. He doesn't give up!

10. Has the faith that sees a small sign as settling it. Sometimes there comes a point in prayer where we almost feel we need not pray any more. We don't stop praying, but a confidence comes that we know God has settled it. In fact, we sometimes even start to thank Him before we have received! Elijah now knew the rain was coming. But even Elijah didn't live on the mountain top — on a high with God — forever. In the next few words, he is right down in the valley of despair. But even in that despair, he prays.

    We see two prayers that are very different - not entirely for us to copy, but let's not forget that God honored these prayers with a very rare OT manifestation of his presence - in the "still small voice." He cannot have been totally disapproving of them. Thus, I do believe we have something to learn from them.

    1 Kings 19:4. "It is enough; now, 0 Lord, take away my life, for I am no better than my fathers."

    1 Kings 19:10. "I have been very jealous for the Lord, the God of hosts. For the people of Israel have forsaken your covenant, thrown down your altars, and killed your prophets with the sword, and I, even I only, am left, and they seek my life, to take it away."

11. When at the end of tether, is at least honest before God and engages with Him. However this is an exaggeration — a "me" centered prayer. Look, the point is this — God does not mind if you get to the end of your own strength and cry out to Him in despair. But He certainly doesn't want to leave you there in your despair. Now, for Elijah, suddenly it isn't a dead boy that needs reviving, or a wet sacrifice that needs the fire to fall on it, or the rain clouds that must be summoned. We see here that God is still interested in the man Elijah - who, in this story more than any other, shows us that he was just a weak man like us. When a weak man or woman comes to God, then God is eager to REVIVE them, which is exactly what happened to Elijah. We must remember that it is not merely a matter of what words we use when we pray, or even what emotion we feel. It is more a question of who we are coming to. Elijah comes to the living God. And when the living God meets a man who wants to die, what is the result? Life from death. A new start. A new commission. As I was preparing this, I believe God dropped into my heart that there would be some here who had been this desperate, who like Elijah felt they had been faithful, but like Elijah they believed they had reached the end of the road. Perhaps you even had a "ministry" that is now "over" in your mind. Perhaps you feel you disqualified yourself. God is in the business of restoring and reviving us and wants to do just that to you.

    2 Kings 1:9 "If I am a man of God, let fire come down from heaven and consume you and your fifty. "

12. Declarative prayer. (NB this is an Old Testament prayer - but it did happen to Ananias and Sapphira!)

As I have said earlier, it is NOT a case of "follow this list and you'll get a global revival" because revival comes through a sovereign act of God. I do believe, however, this kind of prayer connects you as an individual with the reviving Spirit of God - and ANYTHING can be the result!

C. TWO MORE THINGS TO LEARN FROM ELlJAH'S LIFE OF PRAYER

1. The invitation to others. 2 Kings 2:9-10. Elijah said to Elisha, "Ask what I shall do for you, before I am taken from you. " And Elisha said, "Please let there be a double portion of your spirit on me." And he said, "You have asked a hard thing; yet, if you see me as I am being taken from you, it shall be so for you, but if you do not see me, it shall not be so."

2. The successor's prayer. 2 Kings 2:14. "Where is the Lord, the God of Elijah?"

Elisha asked, "Where now is the God of Elijah?" We can sometimes ask that same thing today — Where are the miracles? Where are the salvations? Where are the dramatic acts? — Where is God?! The answer is — He is right here in this room! And as we pray, if we are praying in the centre of His will, we can be confident that He will answer. Our God really is the One who answers by fire.

We worship a God who hears our prayers and revives us. I could tell you many stories from my own life. But the one I want to tell you is perhaps close to my mind at the moment because it concerns the first few months of my soon-to-be second youngest son. In my wife's family, there is a tendency towards deafness. Andree has a 30 per cent loss herself, but manages to hear something and covers it up quite well. When our son was born, it was soon clear that he was deaf. A screening test confirmed that there was no response to sound. We observed that, unlike our other babies, he never startled to sound. Suddenly it wasn't just our relatives. It was us! Dreams were shattered. We were clinging onto God, but it was not an easy time. One day I read in the Scriptures a verse that simply said "In that day the deaf shall hear the words of a book" (Isaiah 29:18). I shared this with my wife and she said, "We know he will hear one day" - meaning, of course, the final day. This is comforting, but something within me cried out, "Why not now!" So we prayed. This church prayed. Then after just a few days, I had a phone call. My wife said "I think he just startled to noise." I was shocked. To be honest, I didn't believe it. But, sure enough, a few days after that, when we had more detailed tests carried out, his hearing was perfect! Not only that, but all our children’s hearing was also perfect, and from that day to this, none of them have shown any signs of being hard of hearing. We serve a God who heals. We serve a God who revives. Let's stand and pray.

If you are looking for another example of a prayer for revival, why not read Psalms 85:

Lord, you were favourable to your land; you restored the fortunes of Jacob.

You forgave the iniquity of your people; you covered all their sin. Selah.

You withdrew all your wrath; you turned from your hot anger.

Restore us again, 0 God of our salvation, and put away your indignation toward us!

Will you be angry with us forever? Will you prolong your anger to all generations?

Will you not revive us again, that your people may rejoice in you?

Show us your steadfast love, 0 Lord, and grant us your salvation.

D. WHAT DO YOU NEED REVIVED IN YOUR LIFE?

• Restoring of fortunes - e.g. work and/or relationships.

• Forgiveness of sins? For the first time, or because you have drifted away?

• Renewal of relationship with the God you feel is angry with you?

• Renewal of JOY in God - knowing God brings happiness.

• Demonstration of God's love to your hearts?

Most Mondays, I take the time to raid my electronic version of Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones' materials, which is produced by Logos Bible Software. Today's quote centers on the vital place of prayer in revival:

“If you look back across the history of the Christian Church, you immediately find that the story of the Church has not been a straight line, a level record of achievement. The history of the Church has been a history of ups and downs. It is there to be seen on the very surface. When you read the history of the past you find that there have been periods in the history of the Church when she has been full of life, and vigour, and power. The statistics prove that people crowded to the house of God, whole numbers of people who were anxious and eager to belong to the Christian Church.

Then the Church was filled with life, and she had great power; the Gospel was preached with authority, large numbers of people were converted regularly, day by day, and week by week. Christian people delighted in prayer. You did not have to whip them up to prayer meetings, you could not keep them away. They did not want to go home, they would stay all night praying. The whole Church was alive and full of power, and of vigour, and of might. And men and women were able to tell of rich experiences of the grace of God, visitations of his Spirit, a knowledge of the love of God that thrilled them, and moved them, and made them feel that it was more precious than the whole world. And, as a consequence of all that, the whole life of the country was affected and changed.”

Lloyd-Jones, D. M. (1987). Revival (26). Westchester, Illinois: Crossway Books

Hello, Tamasin here! I would just like to tell you a funny story about my youngest brother Joel.

Once we all went to the prayer meeting together as a family and near the end there was a time where people were praying for one another. My mum was looking after Joel, and asked him to pray. So Joel said, assuming that this was the only prayer that existed, 'Dear Lord Jesus, thank you for this lovely food, Amen!' And I thought it was hilarious!!

Got this on email: Dr. Mohler had to have emergency eye surgery at Duke University two days ago at 2 p.m. You may know that he has been battling a degenerative corneal disease for many years now, and with another injury to his eye on his way to the Southern Baptist Convention meeting in North Carolina, his doctors decided to do what's called a phototherapeutic keratectomy (PTK).

Please do keep Dr. Mohler in prayer. As I'm sure you can imagine, he has a number of responsibilities at the SBC meeting this week, and now he is pretty seriously impaired in his vision and in a good deal of pain . . . all of which should be temporary, thank goodness, but all of which also have come at a very bad time.

Please join us in praying for a speedy recovery for Dr Mohler!