This particular video is about a fresh water project.  But can’t we see the possibilities if we enter into an Advent Conspiracy of many kinds, food, teaching, being a friend, sending gifts to those less fortunate than we?  What about the shoebox ministry or how about just asking your neighbor to church?  Wow, what a world we might create if we lived out the implications of our faith!

http://www.adventconspiracy.org/

I thought this was an interesting quote from the Evangelical Philosophical Society blog

In speaking of the fear of religion, I don’t mean to refer to the entirely reasonable hostility toward certain established religions and religious institutions, in virtue of their objectionable moral doctrines, social policies, and political influence. Nor am I referring to the association of many religious beliefs with superstition and the acceptance of evident empirical falsehoods. I am talking about something much deeper–namely, the fear of religion itself. I speak from experience, being strongly subject to this fear myself: I want atheism to be true and am made uneasy by the fact that some of the most intelligent and well-informed people I know are religious believers. It isn’t just that I don’t believe in God and, naturally, hope that I’m right in my belief. It’s that I hope there is no God! I don’t want there to be a God; I don’t want the universe to be like that (Oxford Univ. Press, 1997), 130-131.

Ben Witherington III

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Ben Witherington III

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William Lane Craig

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William Lane Craig

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Prayer is, perhaps, the most important element for those seeking a great awakening.  A lot of things happen when we spend time with God in prayer.  God has chosen that the mechanism of prayer to be his way of allowing us to participate in the ruling of his world.  God chooses to do something only when we pray and only when we pray according to his will.  This fact struck me some time back when I was doing a study in the Book of Revelation.  Notice what these verses say.

Revelation 8:1 When the Lamb broke the seventh seal, there was silence in heaven for about half an hour.
2 And I saw the seven angels who stand before God, and seven trumpets were given to them.
3 Another angel came and stood at the altar, holding a golden censer; and much incense was given to him, so that he might add it to the prayers of all the saints on the golden altar which was before the throne.
4 And the smoke of the incense, with the prayers of the saints, went up before God out of the angel’s hand.
5 Then the angel took the censer and filled it with the fire of the altar, and threw it to the earth; and there followed peals of thunder and sounds and flashes of lightning and an earthquake. (Rev 8:1-5 NASB)

The action of heaven stops for about an hour so that the angels could collect the prayers of the saints and add them to the smoke of the incense.  Then and only then did he cast it to the earth as an act of judgment.

If we do not pray, we do not hear God.  Even reading his Word will not penetrate our hearts if we do not practice the art of conversation with God.  We become like the fool of the book of Proverbs who refuses to listen to Wisdom:

22 “How long, O naive ones, will you love being simple-minded? And scoffers delight themselves in scoffing And fools hate knowledge?
23 “Turn to my reproof, Behold, I will pour out my spirit on you; I will make my words known to you.
24 “Because I called and you refused, I stretched out my hand and no one paid attention;
25 And you neglected all my counsel And did not want my reproof;
26 I will also laugh at your calamity; I will mock when your dread comes,
27 When your dread comes like a storm And your calamity comes like a whirlwind, When distress and anguish come upon you.
28 “Then they will call on me, but I will not answer; They will seek me diligently but they will not find me,
29 Because they hated knowledge And did not choose the fear of the LORD.
30 “They would not accept my counsel, They spurned all my reproof.
31 “So they shall eat of the fruit of their own way And be satiated with their own devices.
32 “For the waywardness of the naive will kill them, And the complacency of fools will destroy them.
33 “But he who listens to me shall live securely And will be at ease from the dread of evil.” (Pro 1:22-33 NASB)

God’s judgment on those who do not hear is to abandon them to themselves. Romans 1 confirms that this is the worst kind of judgment is this life.  But those who listen to God shall be secure.

How does one pray for revival?  One prays with brokenness and honesty.  We may not know how far from God we truly are until we make prayer for revival a regular part of our lives. Too often our prayer lives are just  slight glances at God with a few words that we really have not thought though.  When we finally become aware of our sin before God, it should shake us up.  And when we realize that God has not been listening to us because of our sin, then it should cause us to cry out for mercy.  There are several Psalms that serve as an example of when God stopped listening to the nation or to the one praying.  Psalm 51 is, of course, a Psalm of Contrition.  There David begs God to restore to him the joy of his salvation.  That sounds like revival to me.  Psalm 80 implores God to rescue his people.  But there is more than that.  He asks, “O LORD God of hosts, How long will You be angry with the prayer of Your people?”  The people have so sinned that God was angry even with their prayers. All one can do is ask God to forgive us and move beyond this impasse.  And only God can remove the barrier.  The Psalmist is persistent in his prayer to God.

Psalm 80:1 For the choir director; set to El Shoshannim; Eduth. A Psalm of Asaph. Oh, give ear, Shepherd of Israel, You who lead Joseph like a flock; You who are enthroned above the cherubim, shine forth!
2 Before Ephraim and Benjamin and Manasseh, stir up Your power And come to save us!
3 O God, restore us And cause Your face to shine upon us, and we will be saved.
4 O LORD God of hosts, How long will You be angry with the prayer of Your people?
5 You have fed them with the bread of tears, And You have made them to drink tears in large measure.
6 You make us an object of contention to our neighbors, And our enemies laugh among themselves.
7 O God of hosts, restore us And cause Your face to shine upon us, and we will be saved.
8 You removed a vine from Egypt; You drove out the nations and planted it.
9 You cleared the ground before it, And it took deep root and filled the land.
10 The mountains were covered with its shadow, And the cedars of God with its boughs.
11 It was sending out its branches to the sea And its shoots to the River.
12 Why have You broken down its hedges, So that all who pass that way pick its fruit?
13 A boar from the forest eats it away And whatever moves in the field feeds on it.
14 O God of hosts, turn again now, we beseech You; Look down from heaven and see, and take care of this vine,
15 Even the shoot which Your right hand has planted, And on the son whom You have strengthened for Yourself.
16 It is burned with fire, it is cut down; They perish at the rebuke of Your countenance.
17 Let Your hand be upon the man of Your right hand, Upon the son of man whom You made strong for Yourself.
18 Then we shall not turn back from You; Revive us, and we will call upon Your name.
19 O LORD God of hosts, restore us; Cause Your face to shine upon us, and we will be saved. (Psa 80:1-19 NASB)

Again this sounds like a request for revival, for a great awakening among the people.  If we want God’s face to shine on us, I think we too must become men and women of consistent prayer, asking, even begging if need be that God will cleanse us, make us holy and most of all, send a great revival upon us and upon the land.

I closing I recommend that the reader check these articles on prayer and revival.  The first is by the old Scotsman, Robert Murray M’Cheyne.  http://www.biblicalstudies.org.uk/pdf/ref-rev/01-4/1-4_mccheyne.pdf

The second article is by Roger Nicole  http://www.biblicalstudies.org.uk/pdf/ref-rev/01-3/1-3_nicole.pdf

The following are quotations on the meaning of Revival  from Iain H Murray, Revival and Revivalism: The Making and Marring of American Evangelicalism 1750-1858

There are eras, said (Samuel) Davies, when only a large communication or outpouring of the Spirit can produce a public general reformation. Thus, preaching on “The Happy Effect of the Pouring Out of the Spirit” from Isaiah 32:13-19, he argued that the outpouring of the Holy Spirit is the great and only remedy for a ruined country– the only effectual preventative of national calamities and desolation and the only sure cause of a lasting and well-established peace. (p 21)

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In speaking of the meaning of revival it is also essential to note that what Davies and his brethren believed about revival was not something separate from, or additional to, their main beliefs; it was rather a necessary consequence.  Such is a man’s state in sin that he cannot be saved without the immediate results from it, the gifts of God.  Therefore, wherever conversions are multiplied, the cause is to be found not in men, nor in favorable conditions, but in the abundance of influences of th Spirit of God that alone make the testimony of the Church effective. No other explanation of revival is in harmony with the truths that are “the essence of the Christian scheme– the utter depravity of man, the sovereignly-free grace of Jehovah, the divinity of Christ, the atonement in his blood, regeneration, and sanctification by the Holy Spirit.

This school of preachers held that the Holy Spirit has appointed means to be used for the advancement of the gospel,  pre-eminently the teaching of the Word of God accompanied by earnest prayer.  Yet no human endeavors can ensure or guarantee results.  There is a sovereignty in all God’s actions.  He has never promised to bless in proportion to the activity of his people.  Revivals are not brought about by the fulfillment of “conditions” any more than the conversion of a single individual is secured by any series of human actions.  The special “seasons of mercy”  are determined in heaven.  Thus for a modern biographer of Davies to say what Blair “began a revival of religion in 1740″ is to assert the opposite of what they believed.  For the same reason it would have been obnoxious to these preachers to hear themselves described as “revivalists” . . .(p 22)

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. . . It can be further noted that what happens in revivals is not to be seen as something miraculously different from the regular experience of the church.  The difference lies in degree, not in kind.  In an “outpouring of the Spirit” spiritual influence is more widespread, convictions are deeper, and feelings more intense, but all this is only a heightening of normal Christianity.  True revivals are “extraordinary,” yet what is experienced at such times is not different in essence from the spiritual experience that belongs to Christians at other times.  It is the larger “earnest” of the same Spirit who abides with all who believe.

Thus Davies and his brethren repudiated the idea that revivals restore miraculous gifts to the churches.  They regarded revivals as more wonderful than that: The Spirit magnifies Christ, and the more abundantly his influence is possessed by the believers the more they will live for his praise.  When we meet with lives such as those of Davies, Whitefield (he had such a sense of the incomparable excellence of the person of Christ), Aaron Burr, Sr (a perpetual holocaust [a sacrifice consumed by fire] of adoration and praise, and many others in the revival period, we are tempted to suppose that theirs was a different Christianity.  It was not so but rather, as Thomas Murphy wrote, it was “the baptism of the Holy Ghost which caused the infant Church [in America] to become animated by the most fervent piety.”  The same writer said of these preachers: “they believed in refreshings from on high, felt some of them in their own souls, and were ready for still more . . . these bright and cultured souls were stirred to their very depths, and blessings untold were involved therein.  They awoke to a life not new in kind, but new in degree, and in all truth and soberness a new prospect opened before our Church and country.”

If revival is a larger giving to the church of grace already possessed– a heightening of the normal– then it follows that the evidences by which revivals are to be judged are the same as those which form the permanent evidences of real Christianity.  Foremost in the New Testament list is the evidence of love to God and men.  At all times to all true believers Christ “is precious.”   Preaching on those words, Davies said:

Because he loves him he longs for the full enjoyment of him . . . Because Christ is precious to him, his interests are so too, and he longs to see his kingdom flourish, and all men fired with his love.  Because he loves him, he loves his ordinances; loves to hear, because it is the word of Jesus; loves to pray, because it is maintaining intercourse with Jesus; loves to sit at his table, because it is a memorial of Jesus; and loves his people because they love Jesus.”

For revivals to be judged to be true we are to look for no greater proof than the increase of this same grace.  Love is not uniform in its strength but it knows many degrees.  Although it is an “active principle” in all Christians, love can also blaze and burn.  Men filled with the Spirit are filled with love (Eph. 3:16-19) and “the sacred fire of love” (to use Davies’ words) will affect al that they do.  They cannot be to others than fervent in spirit as well as dissatisfied with their own coldness. (p 23-24)

Exodus 22:25 ¶ “If you lend money to My people, to the poor among you, you are not to act as a creditor to him; you shall not charge him interest.

Exodus 30:15 “The rich shall not pay more and the poor shall not pay less than the half shekel, when you give the contribution to the LORD to make atonement for yourselves.

Leviticus 14:21 ¶ “But if he is poor and his means are insufficient, then he is to take one male lamb for a guilt offering as a wave offering to make atonement for him, and one-tenth of an ephah of fine flour mixed with oil for a grain offering, and a log of oil,

Leviticus 19:15 ¶ ‘You shall do no injustice in judgment; you shall not be partial to the poor nor defer to the great, but you are to judge your neighbor fairly.

Leviticus 25:25 ¶ ‘If a fellow countryman of yours becomes so poor he has to sell part of his property, then his nearest kinsman is to come and buy back what his relative has sold.
Leviticus 25:35 ¶ ‘Now in case a countryman of yours becomes poor and his means with regard to you falter, then you are to sustain him, like a stranger or a sojourner, that he may live with you.

Leviticus 25:39 ¶ ‘If a countryman of yours becomes so poor with regard to you that he sells himself to you, you shall not subject him to a slave’s service.

Leviticus 25:47-50
47 ¶ ‘Now if the means of a stranger or of a sojourner with you becomes sufficient, and a countryman of yours becomes so poor with regard to him as to sell himself to a stranger who is sojourning with you, or to the descendants of a stranger’s family,
48 then he shall have redemption right after he has been sold. One of his brothers may redeem him,
49 or his uncle, or his uncle’s son, may redeem him, or one of his blood relatives from his family may redeem him; or if he prospers, he may redeem himself.
50 ‘He then with his purchaser shall calculate from the year when he sold himself to him up to the year of jubilee; and the price of his sale shall correspond to the number of years. It is like the days of a hired man that he shall be with him.

Deuteronomy 15:4-18
4 “However, there will be no poor among you, since the LORD will surely bless you in the land which the LORD your God is giving you as an inheritance to possess,
5 if only you listen obediently to the voice of the LORD your God, to observe carefully all this commandment which I am commanding you today.
6 “For the LORD your God will bless you as He has promised you, and you will lend to many nations, but you will not borrow; and you will rule over many nations, but they will not rule over you.
7 ¶ “If there is a poor man with you, one of your brothers, in any of your towns in your land which the LORD your God is giving you, you shall not harden your heart, nor close your hand from your poor brother;
8 but you shall freely open your hand to him, and shall generously lend him sufficient for his need in whatever he lacks.
9 “Beware that there is no base thought in your heart, saying, ‘The seventh year, the year of remission, is near,’ and your eye is hostile toward your poor brother, and you give him nothing; then he may cry to the LORD against you, and it will be a sin in you.
10 “You shall generously give to him, and your heart shall not be grieved when you give to him, because for this thing the LORD your God will bless you in all your work and in all your undertakings.
11 “For the poor will never cease to be in the land; therefore I command you, saying, ‘You shall freely open your hand to your brother, to your needy and poor in your land.’
12 ¶ “If your kinsman, a Hebrew man or woman, is sold to you, then he shall serve you six years, but in the seventh year you shall set him free.
13 “When you set him free, you shall not send him away empty-handed.
14 “You shall furnish him liberally from your flock and from your threshing floor and from your wine vat; you shall give to him as the LORD your God has blessed you.
15 “You shall remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt, and the LORD your God redeemed you; therefore I command you this today.
16 “It shall come about if he says to you, ‘I will not go out from you,’ because he loves you and your household, since he fares well with you;
17 then you shall take an awl and pierce it through his ear into the door, and he shall be your servant forever. Also you shall do likewise to your maidservant.
18 “It shall not seem hard to you when you set him free, for he has given you six years with double the service of a hired man; so the LORD your God will bless you in whatever you do.

Deuteronomy 24:10-15
10 ¶ “When you make your neighbor a loan of any sort, you shall not enter his house to take his pledge.
11 “You shall remain outside, and the man to whom you make the loan shall bring the pledge out to you.
12 “If he is a poor man, you shall not sleep with his pledge.
13 “When the sun goes down you shall surely return the pledge to him, that he may sleep in his cloak and bless you; and it will be righteousness for you before the LORD your God.
14 ¶ “You shall not oppress a hired servant who is poor and needy, whether he is one of your countrymen or one of your aliens who is in your land in your towns.
15 “You shall give him his wages on his day before the sun sets, for he is poor and sets his heart on it; so that he will not cry against you to the LORD and it become sin in you.

1 Samuel 2:7-8
7 “The LORD makes poor and rich; He brings low, He also exalts.
8 “He raises the poor from the dust, He lifts the needy from the ash heap To make them sit with nobles, And inherit a seat of honor; For the pillars of the earth are the LORD’S, And He set the world on them.

Isaiah 3:14-17
14 The LORD enters into judgment with the elders and princes of His people, “It is you who have devoured the vineyard; The plunder of the poor is in your houses.
15 “What do you mean by crushing My people And grinding the face of the poor?” Declares the Lord GOD of hosts.
16 Moreover, the LORD said, “Because the daughters of Zion are proud And walk with heads held high and seductive eyes, And go along with mincing steps And tinkle the bangles on their feet,
17 Therefore the Lord will afflict the scalp of the daughters of Zion with scabs, And the LORD will make their foreheads bare.”

Isaiah 10:1-4
Isaiah 10:1 ¶ Woe to those who enact evil statutes And to those who constantly record unjust decisions,
2 So as to deprive the needy of justice And rob the poor of My people of their rights, So that widows may be their spoil And that they may plunder the orphans.
3 Now what will you do in the day of punishment, And in the devastation which will come from afar? To whom will you flee for help? And where will you leave your wealth?
4 Nothing remains but to crouch among the captives Or fall among the slain. In spite of all this, His anger does not turn away And His hand is still stretched out.

Isaiah 11:4
4 But with righteousness He will judge the poor, And decide with fairness for the afflicted of the earth; And He will strike the earth with the rod of His mouth, And with the breath of His lips He will slay the wicked.

Isaiah 58:1-7
hold back; Raise your voice like a trumpet, And declare to My people their transgression And to the house of Jacob their sins.
2 “Yet they seek Me day by day and delight to know My ways, As a nation that has done righteousness And has not forsaken the ordinance of their God. They ask Me for just decisions, They delight in the nearness of God.
3 ‘Why have we fasted and You do not see? Why have we humbled ourselves and You do not notice?’ Behold, on the day of your fast you find your desire, And drive hard all your workers.
4 “Behold, you fast for contention and strife and to strike with a wicked fist. You do not fast like you do today to make your voice heard on high.
5 “Is it a fast like this which I choose, a day for a man to humble himself? Is it for bowing one’s head like a reed And for spreading out sackcloth and ashes as a bed? Will you call this a fast, even an acceptable day to the LORD?
6 “Is this not the fast which I choose, To loosen the bonds of wickedness, To undo the bands of the yoke, And to let the oppressed go free And break every yoke?
7 “Is it not to divide your bread with the hungry And bring the homeless poor into the house; When you see the naked, to cover him; And not to hide yourself from your own flesh?

Jeremiah 5:26-29
26 ‘For wicked men are found among My people, They watch like fowlers lying in wait; They set a trap, They catch men.
27 ‘Like a cage full of birds, So their houses are full of deceit; Therefore they have become great and rich.
28 ‘They are fat, they are sleek, They also excel in deeds of wickedness; They do not plead the cause, The cause of the orphan, that they may prosper; And they do not defend the rights of the poor.
29 ‘Shall I not punish these people?’ declares the LORD, ‘On a nation such as this Shall I not avenge Myself?’

Amos 4:1-3
Amos 4:1 Hear this word, you cows of Bashan who are on the mountain of Samaria, Who oppress the poor, who crush the needy, Who say to your husbands, “Bring now, that we may drink!”
2 The Lord GOD has sworn by His holiness, “Behold, the days are coming upon you When they will take you away with meat hooks, And the last of you with fish hooks.
3 “You will go out through breaches in the walls, Each one straight before her, And you will be cast to Harmon,” declares the LORD.

Amos 5:11-15
11 Therefore because you impose heavy rent on the poor And exact a tribute of grain from them, Though you have built houses of well-hewn stone, Yet you will not live in them; You have planted pleasant vineyards, yet you will not drink their wine.
12 For I know your transgressions are many and your sins are great, You who distress the righteous and accept bribes And turn aside the poor in the gate.
13 Therefore at such a time the prudent person keeps silent, for it is an evil time.
14 Seek good and not evil, that you may live; And thus may the LORD God of hosts be with you, Just as you have said!
15 Hate evil, love good, And establish justice in the gate! Perhaps the LORD God of hosts May be gracious to the remnant of Joseph.

Zechariah 7:9-14
9 “Thus has the LORD of hosts said, ‘Dispense true justice and practice kindness and compassion each to his brother;
10 and do not oppress the widow or the orphan, the stranger or the poor; and do not devise evil in your hearts against one another.’
11 “But they refused to pay attention and turned a stubborn shoulder and stopped their ears from hearing.
12 “They made their hearts like flint so that they could not hear the law and the words which the LORD of hosts had sent by His Spirit through the former prophets; therefore great wrath came from the LORD of hosts.
13 “And just as He called and they would not listen, so they called and I would not listen,” says the LORD of hosts;
14 “but I scattered them with a storm wind among all the nations whom they have not known. Thus the land is desolated behind them so that no one went back and forth, for they made the pleasant land desolate.”

Matthew 6:2-4
2 ¶ “So when you give to the poor, do not sound a trumpet before you, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, so that they may be honored by men. Truly I say to you, they have their reward in full.
3 “But when you give to the poor, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing,
4 so that your giving will be in secret; and your Father who sees what is done in secret will reward you.

Mark 12:41-44
41 ¶ And He sat down opposite the treasury, and began observing how the people were putting money into the treasury; and many rich people were putting in large sums.
42 A poor widow came and put in two small copper coins, which amount to a cent.
43 Calling His disciples to Him, He said to them, “Truly I say to you, this poor widow put in more than all the contributors to the treasury;
44 for they all put in out of their surplus, but she, out of her poverty, put in all she owned, all she had to live on.”

Luke 14:12-14
12 ¶ And He also went on to say to the one who had invited Him, “When you give a luncheon or a dinner, do not invite your friends or your brothers or your relatives or rich neighbors, otherwise they may also invite you in return and that will be your repayment.
13 “But when you give a reception, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind,
14 and you will be blessed, since they do not have the means to repay you; for you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous.”

2 Corinthians 8:8-9
8 ¶ I am not speaking this as a command, but as proving through the earnestness of others the sincerity of your love also.
9 For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though He was rich, yet for your sake He became poor, so that you through His poverty might become rich.