Revivals
– Part 3 - ‘If My People’ – by Rev. Don Crisp
The
Key verse in each of these three messages on REVIVAL is from Zechariah 1:3 - “Return to Me declares
the Lord Almighty and I will return to
you.”
Someone
said:
“Revival
is God stepping into His relationship with you and filling it with His presence
and power in a fresh way.”
When
God steps in He is looking for me to talk to Him and listen to Him:
First
Message:
·
Gilgal
Ø Home base
Ø Remember
Ø Renounce
Ø Restored
Ø Renewed/Refreshed
Second
Message:
·
Mizpah
Ø Commitment
Ø Confession
Ø Consecretion
Third
message, today, is entitled “If My People” – It’s 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 I will hear from
heaven, and will forgive their sin and heal their land.”
God Speaks -
‘if My people who are called by My name
will humble themselves, and pray.’
Real life story:
In 1857 there was a 46 year old man named Jeremiah Lamphere who lived in New York
City.
Jeremiah loved the Lord tremendously, but he
didn’t feel that he could do much for the Lord until he began to feel a burden
for the lost and accepted an invitation from his church to be an inner city
missionary.
So in July of 1857 he started walking up and
down the streets of New York
passing out tracts and talking to people about Jesus, but he wasn’t having any
success.
Then
God put it on his heart to try prayer. So he printed up a bunch of tracts, and
he passed them
out
to anyone and everyone met.
He
invited anyone who wanted to to come to the 3rd floor of the Old North Dutch Reform Church on Fulton St.
in New York City from 12 to 1 on
Wednesday to pray.
He
passed out hundreds and hundreds of fliers and put up posters everywhere he
could.
·
Wednesday day came and at Noon nobody showed
up.
So
Jeremiah got on his knees and started praying. For 30 minutes he prayed by himself
when finally five other people walked
in.
·
The
next week 20 people came.
·
The
next week between 30 and 40 people came.
They then decided to meet every day
from 12:00 to 1:00 to pray for the city.
·
Before
long a few ministers started coming and they said, "We need to start this at our churches".
·
Within six months
there were over 5000 prayer groups meeting everyday in N.Y.
·
Soon
the word spread all over the country. Prayer meetings were started in Philadelphia, Detroit,
and Washington D.C.
·
In
fact President Franklin Pierce
started going almost every day to a noonday prayer meeting.
·
By 1859 some
15,000 cities in America were having downtown prayer meetings everyday at noon and thousands
were brought to Christ.
·
The
great thing about this revival is that there is not a famous preacher
associated with it. It was all started
by one man wanting to pray.
Our Part:
If
My People, who are called by My Name will:
·
Humble
themselves
·
Pray
·
Seek
My face
·
Turn
from their wicked ways
A picture of a church people who need
to be Re-Vived
1
They have lost their first love
2
They don’t meditate daily on God’s Word.
God’s
Word has become a recipe book
3
They only pray ‘911’ prayers
4
They don’t take sin seriously
5
They tolerate bad theology and immoral behavior
6
They are too comfortable with their history/tradition
and good name.
7
They have stopped depending on God and His Word.
The
Church constitution has replaced the Bible.
These
people have become too Comfortable. (Their prayer might be...)
“Dear Lord,
Please leave me alone!
Just let me sit here in my pew.
And Lord, please guard my seat.
Lord, you know that it’s my seat.
Please don’t let anyone else sit in
it.
Please get me out of here quickly when
the Service ends before these church fanatics try to recruit me to do
something.
Lord, help them to accept me and understand
that I am happy just the way I am.
I’m happy just to show up each Sunday.
Well Lord, until next week…..
Nice talking to you.
Amen”
This
is a picture of people who are:
·
Lethargic
·
Apathetic
·
Pathetic
These
are people who want only 'Sermonettes for Christianettes'.
God asks for more in 2
Chronicles 7:14
God’s Part:
·
I
will hear from heaven
·
Forgive
their sin
·
Heal
their land
Do
you believe in prayer?
Do
you pray like you believe God is listening?
Listen
to this story:
Dwight L. Moody, a famous evangelist from
Chicago went on vacation to England. He
wasn’t planning to do any preaching; he was on a sabbatical. But he met a
preacher there who said,
"Mr. Moody you’re so well know,
would you come and speak at our church?"
So
he went to preach the next Sunday morning.
That afternoon Moody wrote in his
journal that they were the deadest crowd he had ever seen and that the only
thing worse than preaching to those people was that he had promised to go back
that night and preach again. But he went back that night, and about halfway
through the sermon something happened.
The people started to come to life, and he felt compelled to ask if anyone there would like to become a Christian and a lot of people stood up.
He
didn’t know what to do. So he said, "Maybe
you don’t understand what I am asking. So when we are dismissed if you want to
become a Christian come over to this little room and meet with me."
When
the service was over, he went to the room it was packed. Moody said to the
minister, "What does this
mean?" He said, "I don’t
know. But I think you need to preach again tomorrow night."
The next day Moody got on a train and went to Ireland to continue his vacation. But when he got off the train there was a memo that said, "Come back. Revival has broken out."
The next day Moody got on a train and went to Ireland to continue his vacation. But when he got off the train there was a memo that said, "Come back. Revival has broken out."
So Moody got back on the train, went
back to that church and preached 10 straight nights. And 400 responded to the
invitation.
Moody couldn’t understand. Those people were dead, and something changed it.
Moody couldn’t understand. Those people were dead, and something changed it.
Come to find out that an 80 something
year old invalid widow named Mary Ann Adelard had read one of his sermons in
the newspaper and had started praying every day that God will bring D. L. Moody
to her church.
That
is revival praying!
Mary
Ann Adelard had humbled herself and prayed and God heard and answered her
prayer
Let
me close with a great story the great prayer revival of 1857.
It moved from New
York to Detroit, Buffalo,
Washington D.C.
and it moved to Philadelphia
in a powerful way.
One
of the leaders in Philadelphia was a young man named Dudley
Ting.
He
started a noonday prayer meeting at the YMCA, and some days 5000 people would come at noon and
pray.
One day Dudley stood up and he read Exodus 10:11, "Go ye that are men and
serve the Lord."
He
then said, "I had rather my right arm cut off than not give you that
word."
Later that week Dudley
went out into the country to see some friends. While in a barn at his friend’s
place he got his arm caught in a corn threshing machine and the main artery in
his arm was severed.
They
took him to a bed and tried to save his life but he had lost too much blood. So
his friends gathered around him and asked him what he would like to say.
He
said, " Tell them to stand up for
Jesus."
So
the next Sunday his good friend George
Duffield stood up at church and preached in memory of his friend.
He
said, "I just finished writing a
poem in honor of Dudley and I want to read it to you."
“Stand up, Stand up for Jesus, ye
solders of the cross.
Lift high His royal banner, it must
not suffer loss.
From victory unto victory His army
shall He lead,
till every foe is vanquished, for
Christ is Lord in deed.
Stand up, Stand up for Jesus, the
trumpet call obey.
Forth to the mighty conflict in this
His glorious day.
Ye that are men now serve Him, against
unnumbered foes.
Let courage rise with danger and
strength to strength oppose.
Stand up stand up for Jesus, the
strife will not be long.
This day the noise of battle, the next
the victor’s song.
To him that over-cometh a crown of
life shall be,
he with the king of glory shall reign
eternally.”
All across America, city after city
people would meet for one day and pray for their country, and sing Stand up
Stand up for Jesus.
Revival
- God said: “Return to Me … and I will return to you.”
If
My People will ...
Ø humble themselves and
Ø pray
Ø seek
Ø turn
Then
I will ...
Ø hear
Ø forgive
Ø heal
Prayer:
“Gracious, Loving Heavenly Father, We
thank You for such a powerful verse as they were building that temple, and
ready to dedicate it to the honour and glory of God, and Solomon was ready, and
I’m sure so excited. Then You stopped, and You spoke to him. You said, “You
tell your people and you tell My people, if they will 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.”
Father, we realize that You are
speaking to us, today, in that way. And Lord, we want to just respond to you
right now and say, Lord, we want to serve you. We want to commit our lives to
You, We want to confess to you. We need to consecrate our lives before You.
That is what Mizpah was all about.
We thank You today, Father, that we
are privileged to be called Your people. And Father, today, I just pray that
each one of us -- each one of us -- would recommit ourselves to You, even now.
And for those who don’t know You, that
they would make that all-important decision to say, Lord Jesus, would You come into
my life, and change my life. Forgive me of my sins and turn me around, (that’s
called repentance), turn me around, so that I can start living for You and
start serving You and start bringing honour and glory to Your Name, so that I can
stand up, and stand up for Jesus.
Lord, thank you for the promise that
You hear our prayers, in Jesus’ Name, Amen.
________________________
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