“Once when Jesus had been out praying, one of his disciples came to him as he finished and said, “Lord, teach us to pray, just as John taught his disciples.”(Luke 11:1).
I have studied the history of the Church, revivals and awakening from the Bible and from many books. I found out that all the genuine men and women of God, used to pioneer fresh moves of the Holy Spirit or to advance the gospel in one way or another have one significant thing in common. They are men and women given to prayer. They live a life of prayer.
No matter how great your vision, calling, ministry, gift, or assignment is, if you fail in the place of prayer, you fail in all. This is because prayer is an unfailing medium through which you connect with God. It helps you depend on Him and it sustains you, in your walk with Him. Prayer is fellowship with God.
The greatest legacy Jesus left His followers was the habitual practice of prayer. This is apart from His main purpose of coming to earth; His agape love expressed by laying down His life for us.
Jesus started His ministry with prayer.
His followers asked Him to teach them how to pray. He commanded His followers to pray to God for a bountiful harvest on the field. Christ’s zeal for prayer is indisputable, He never joked with prayer. He started His ministry with prayer.
This reveals and exposes His undying love for prayer. His zeal for communing with God was further expressed when He chased the money changers out of the temple who wanted to change the place of prayer to a place of merchandise.
Chasing the money changers out of the temple explains the value Christ placed on prayer. He was showing us that a house of prayer for all nations must never become a house of merchandise.
As if it was not enough, He completed His ministry on the Cross with prayers, and to crown it all, He is still at the right hand of the Father in heaven interceding for the Church. Jesus is still praying for His Church until she’s taken up to reign with Him forever. Leave a legacy of prayer for revival in your church, community, nation and the world.
*In the midst of global distress, revival and harvest of souls increases.*
I have been weeping in prayers for the sins of the Church, the sins of my nation Nigeria, sins of the world. I have been praying for a great revival and harvest of souls for many years now. Revival has broken out, and millions of people are being touched and are coming to Christ around the globe.
A new generation army that has crucified the flesh, and left the lust, affection, and glory of this world behind is rising. A generation that refused to bow to Satan and the gods of silver and gold but rather depend solely on Christ, having their eyes fastened on eternal rewards is rising.
Thank you Father and glory be to Jesus. Lord Jesus, help me and others that you have given the same vision and burden for revival to continue in prayers day and night, until the knowledge of the truth of the gospel of the Kingdom: righteousness and holiness, prevails and reaches the ends of the earth.
Until the whole world is engulfed with revival fire, resulting to many more labourers being raised and released. To pull out the remaining lost souls from the inferno of hell, and your Kingdom experiences the greatest harvest of souls, before your second coming.
The greatest challenge in the Church
There are so many preachers that are currently working for God but not walking with Him. So many sermons today were not made in the prayer closet. There are many pulpits that are not on genuine fire from God. So many preachers have their pride in educational qualifications, oratory prowess, and motivational skills, without the auction from God.
There are many churches that are spiritually dead, cold, worldly, and choked with materialistic value, and are raising mercenaries instead of disciples and missionaries. They are breeding unsaved Christians and miracle seekers, sending souls to hell.
Satan through his deceptions and lies has succeeded in deceiving and destroying the prayer life of many preachers and shifted their hearts to use natural and demonic ways of growing their ministries or churches. “But the wicked men and imposture will go on from bad to worse, deceiving and leading astray others and being deceived and led astray themselves” ( 2 Timothy- 3:13).
I agree with the words of Mathew Zachariah, ” Beloved, the utmost qualification of a man of God is soul- passion. We can have the very best qualification. But unless we love souls, unless we pray with hot tears, our qualifications mean nothing to God.
Do we preach with passion and auction? Do we elevate the people up to the throne of God? Have we ever gone through the throws of birth pains for the deliverance of the ungodly?
Servants of the Lord, ministers of Calvary, this is no time to rejoice in our religious accomplishments. God needs no crowd-pleasing and applause-loving men. But rather He needs men who can courageously walk into a blazing fire, and pull someone out of the burning inferno. He needs no magnificent cathedral or modern facility to convict the world of its sin.
Let me ask you. How much office space does it take to have a prayer closet? The prayer closet speaks death to the man of self. In private prayer. One comes to know how insignificant he really is when compared to the holiness of God. He who does the most for God is the one who spends much time in the prayer closet”.
*The prayer legacy of John Wesley and how Billy Graham got the fire?*
I got this story from a video by an American preacher whose name was not disclosed. Here is the video transcription.
“It was in the 1940s or so when there was a professor who was in England, his name was Professor Orr. He taught theology at a university. One day he decided to take some of his physiology students on an excursion, so to say, a field trip.
“So he gathered up his students and said we gonna visit some of the historical places here in England that has some sort of theological significance. He took them to many religious sites, some of which had been very strategic in building up of the Church in the Christian Faith. One of the places that they visited was the Earth wharf rectory which would have been the home, the living place, and the study place of one of the great reformers of the church, his name was John Wesley.
John Wesley would put in place much of the theology of the church that you and I attend. A lot of that foundational theology was crafted by reformers like John Wesley. So John Wesley would study, teach, preach, and pray that revival would spread out not only in England, but he prayed for us here in our country that revival would break out.
He and others like him ushered in, through prayers some of the greatest revivals that swept through America in the early 1900s, where people in mass were coming to know Jesus Christ as their Lord; where heavens seemed to be opened in an unusual way and revival broke out in an unprecedented way. It’s because guys, many of them like John Wesley were on their knees praying that God would move.
Artist impression of John Wesley
The house where Wesley lived
So, these theology students went and visited this rectory, the house where he lived. And they went into the Kitchen, Professor Orr showed them, where John Wesley would have eaten his lunch and dinners, where he could have cooked, could have lived his life. He also took them to where Wesley could have studied.
These theology students were enamored, because of the old books that John Wesley could have studied from, that he had written in, and some of those notes he had preserved, were still there on the desks and on the bookshelves.
So, these theology students were feeling in their spines of those books, just enjoying the richness of this history. And then, Professor Orr walked the students up to the second floor, the most intimate quarters that could have been his bedroom and the students began to file around the bed, filling up the tiny space in that bedroom.
Two small patches
As they all filed into the room, one of them noticed as they gathered around the farther side of the bed that there were two small patches, well-worn patches in the carpet fibers of the floor, they were right next to each other and they were beside the bed.
He asked his professor about those patches that were worn right beside the bed. Professor Orr explained that it is said that those two patches were the actual places where every single morning not for a minute or two, but for several hours, John Wesley would plant his knees right beside his bed and he prayed so long and so hard for revival that his knees had actually imprinted themselves on the floor.
That the carpet fibers were worn as he prayed for revival. So the students stood in there for a moment, and after a few moments they left the room and went downstairs, they all got on the bus to go to the next location. Professor Orr stood at the front of the bus, counted the students to make sure everybody was there and he realized one was missing.
Do it again Lord!
He walked back into the house, went into the kitchen to look for the student, nobody was there, went into the study to look for the student, nobody was there, walked up the stairs into the bedroom and he could just see across the other side of the bed the head and shoulders of a student who had planted his knees down in those well-worn patches on the floor and he could hear the student praying, Do It Again Lord! Lord Would You Do It Again! And Would You Do It Again With Me?
Dr. Billy Graham
Professor Orr walked around the side of the bed. He put his hand on the shoulder of the student and said it was time to go. And rising from his knees, Billy Graham went and joined the rest of the students on the bus that day. And then, GOD DID IT AGAIN!
Make me uncomfortable being a nominal Christian
But I just wonder what would happen if this week there are people who are brave enough to say Lord Would You Do It Again! Would You Not Allow Me To Be A Christian In Name Only! Would You Make It So That I’m So Uncomfortable With Being A Nominal Christian Who Just Comes To Church, Who Just Reads A Verse A Day To Keep The Devil Away, Who Is Just A Good Person But Isn’t A Person Who Is Completely Sold Out For The Course Of Jesus Christ!
Lord Would You Make It So That I Am Different, Unique, Set Apart, And Saturated By The Holy Spirit Of God! Lord Would You Do It Again! And Would You Let It Start With Me!
I’m praying for revival, I’m talking about straight up old school flat-footed revival, I’m talking about where the Holy Spirit breaks out so clearly and so fully that there is not one person that walks the face of the earth that does not know that there is A God somewhere and that He sent His Son Jesus Christ to redeem us from our sins, That He is The Way, The Truth, The Life and that no man comes to the Father except through Him. LORD DO IT AGAIN!
*”What did John Wesley say about prayer?*
“Prayer, Wesley said, “is the grand means of drawing near to God” (Letter to Miss March, 3–29–1760); it is “the breath of our spiritual life” (NT Notes, I Thes. 5:16). While petition and intercession are forms of prayer, they are not the whole. The focus of prayer is not on our requests, however urgent, but on God.
How many hours did John Wesley pray?
He called prayer “the grand means of drawing near to God” and found believing and persistent prayer to be the necessary first step to seeing God move. He modeled this conviction by devoting at least two hours a day to personal prayer and made fervent prayer a hallmark of the movement”.
*What did Billy Graham say about prayer?*
*Prayer is crucial in evangelism: Only God can change the heart of someone who is in rebellion against Him. No matter how logical our arguments or how fervent our appeals are, our words will accomplish nothing unless God’s Spirit prepares the way.
* Prayer is more than a plea, it is a place where we must spend time if we are to learn its power.
*Leave a legacy.., hard work and determination by BGEA.*
It was the knowledge of God’s love that changed Billy Graham’s heart. And he spent more than 70 years passionately telling anyone who would listen, “God loves you!”
Before he went to be with Jesus on Feb. 21, 2018, at age 99, Billy Graham preached the Gospel to more people in live audiences than anyone else in history—nearly 215 million people in more than 185 countries and territories. Hundreds of millions more have been reached through TV and radio broadcasts, newspaper columns, evangelistic films, and the internet.
In fact, many people have told BGEA they chose to put their faith in Christ after Mr. Graham’s death, through watching his funeral service, hearing the Gospel on Sirius XM’s pop-up Billy Graham Channel, or online through www.stepstopeace.org
Billy Graham said,” I’d rather hear my father pray than anybody in the world”.
*Are you ready to leave a legacy of prayer?*
Anyone who is not praying for sinners to be saved has no iota of Christ’s love or compassion. Some people have no specific time to pray, some consider prayer as a waste of time, while so many others pray and prophesy out of hatred, selfishness, unforgiveness, and in fact ignorance, like praying for the death of their persecutors and perceived human enemies.
Some people pray for miracles and their insatiable needs alone. Which of these are you guilty of? Turn to God for a change of heart now by crying to Him in genuine repentance, for mercy, and pray for determination to start praying immediately and henceforth for revival in the Church and salvation of sinners in your community, nation, and the world at large.
The Bible says, ” And Jesus went about all the cities and villages, teaching, preaching, healing… but when he saw the multitudes, he was moved with compassion (empathy, mercy, love, tenderheartedness) on them. Then said he unto his disciples, The harvest truly is plenteous, but the labourers are few; *Pray…*( Luke 9:35-38).
John Abiola
Revive Us Again series 74.
Revive Us Again series: is a global prayer movement; An online publication for revival in Nigeria and the world with the aim of giving Christians the knowledge and understanding of biblical revivals and prayers, (how they started and how to replicate this revivals) inspired by historical accounts of the Holy Spirit move in revival power.
To help us seek God in genuine repentance and fervent prayer for fresh outpouring of the Holy Spirit. For revival in our personal lives, churches, communities, and nations. For a great awakening and unprecedented harvest of the remaining lost souls of the world into the Kingdom of God in readiness for the rapture of His Church-bride by the power of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Revive Us Again series has stirred up in the hearts of many people the need for repentance, revival and prayer for the lost world.
prophetjohnabiola97@gmail.com.
1 comment
Help us Lord Jesus
Use us for your glory.
Help us desire the revival of our souls, our friends, family and nation.
What an inspiring piece.
More grace to the author.