Before the Hebridean revival began, two elderly sisters were led to pray. They were into their seventies and one was blind. They lived in a little stone croft (cottage) on a windy Scottish island and purposed to set aside one night a week to pray for revival in their land.
The United States of America had a man in the eighteen hundreds called ‘Praying Payson of Portland’. It is said that there were two grooves worn in the floor at the side of his bed where he wrestled in prayer. How that man must have prayed!
Are you and I able to imagine having a prayer life like that? Surely, we need an intervention from the Holy Spirit to give us a heart for prayer.
David Brainard was another example of a life given to prayer. This came through a great working and calling from our Heavenly Father on his life and the Holy
Spirit enabling him so. He would go out into the snow, sometimes deep drifts of snow, and wrestle in prayer from sunrise to sunset, despite suffering from tuberculosis. I had to ask myself, “Would I sacrifice like that?” I can only cry out and ask the Lord to give me a desire and heart to pray and to intercede. I pray this for the church too.
In one of his sermons, Ravenhill said: “No man, I don’t care how colossal his intellect, no man is greater than his prayer life. To stand before men on behalf of God is one thing. To stand before God on behalf of men is something entirely different.
We’ve urged people to tithe, haven’t we? But we only mean their money. You see, we want a “revival” which is a painless Pentecost. We want something that won’t disturb our status quo. It’s easy street everywhere else so why not here? There never has been a revival that I can trace, that hasn’t been birthed back there with true, true intercession.”
Oh Lord, we cry out to You for this. We cry out for You, by Your Spirit, to bring a revelation and desire for true intercession to Your church. This is our cry; this is our prayer for Your church.
Post published in: Faith