Praying Down Revival

Hello everyone.  Praise the Lord!

PRAYING DOWN REVIVALS 

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While most people thought of revivals only as moves of God, who, in His sovereignty, poured out His Spirit (another instance where the ministers of the day used God’s sovereignty as an excuse for their lack of effective ministry), Charles Finney believed that human beings could set the stage for revival through prayer, fasting, and holding God accountable to His promises in the Bible. 

Charles wrote about this spirit of prayer as it affected him during the revival at De Kalb in upstate New York:  I found myself so much exercised, and so borne down with the weight of immortal souls, that I was constrained to pray without ceasing. Some of my experiences, indeed, alarmed me. A spirit of importunity sometimes came upon me so that I would say to God that He had made a promise to answer prayer, and I could not, and would not, be denied.

 I felt so certain that He would hear me, and that faithfulness to his promises, and to himself, rendered it impossible that he should not hear and answer, that frequently I found myself saying to him, “I hope thou dost not think that I can be denied. I come with thy faithful promises in my hand, and I cannot be denied.”

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I cannot tell how absurd unbelief looked to me, and how certain it was, in my mind, that God would answer prayer—those prayers that, from day to day, and from hour to hour, I found myself offering in such agony and faith. I had no idea of the shape the answer would take, the locality in which the prayers would be answered, or the exact time of the answer. 

My impression was that the answer was near, even at the door; and I felt myself strengthened in the divine life, put on the harness for a mighty conflict with the powers of darkness, and expected soon to see a far more powerful outpouring of the Spirit of God, in that new country where I had been laboring.

Oswald J. Smith explained why this kind of prayer was so important to Charles’s ministry:

He always preached with the expectation of seeing the Holy Spirit suddenly outpoured. Until this happened little or nothing was accomplished. But the moment the Spirit fell upon the people, Finney had nothing else to do but point them to the Lamb of God. Thus he lived and wrought for years in an atmosphere of revival.

- God’s Generals ( The Revivalists ) 

Roberts Liardon

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William James Roop

Hospice Care and Dying

The Trucking Tango

Brother Roop teaches the Bible

The Life Of Prayer

THE LIFE OF PRAYER

I decided years ago that we could not take the revival we are now experiencing in Korea for granted. Having studied church history, I realize that revivals must not only be prayed for to begin, but they must also be prayed for so that they may be maintained. 

Throughout the revivals the Western world has experienced, after several years, people begin to take the revival for granted. The way this happens is that they forget about the very thing that birthed the revival: prayer. Once continuous and fervent prayer is forgotten, the impetus of the revival is lost, and all that is left is the momentum of the past.

What do I mean by the impetus and momentum of a revival? Driving an automobile is a perfect example of how these two principles work. Impetus is the force that is generated in a car when you step on the gas pedal. By applying this force, the car will stay in motion. However, if you take your foot off the gas pedal, the impetus, or the force, will no longer operate; yet, the car still keeps moving. What causes the movement of the auto without the force? The movement is generated by momentum. The movement of a car under momentum is different than under impetus. The momentum of the car does not maintain movement, so eventually the car will come to a halt.

When the Holy Spirit brings revival as an answer to prayer, the impetus of the revival must be maintained for there to be a continuation of that revival. If prayer is ever forgotten, the revival will move from impetus to momentum. Eventually, the special visitation of God will end up as a monument to the past.

- Dr David Yonggi Cho ( Prayer That Brings Revival)

William James Roop

Hospice Care and Dying

The Trucking Tango

Brother Roop teaches the Bible

The Prayer Revival

Hello everyone. Praise the Lord!

 In 1857 there was a forty-six 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 come to the 3rd floor of the Old North Dutch Reformed Church on Fulton Street in New York City, from noon to 1 on Wednesday to pray. He passed out hundreds and hundreds of fliers and put up posters everywhere he could.

Wednesday 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, he was the President of the United States from 1853-1857. By 1859 some 15,000 cities in America were having downtown prayer meetings everyday at noon, and a million were brought to Christ just in the United States. and many more hundred-of-thousands around the world!

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. People have been seeking God, and seeking a relationship with God through Jesus Christ for centuries. Let the spark of revival begin with your prayers too!

William James Roop, M.A.B.S.

Roop-Crappell Ministries

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Hospice Care and Dying

The Trucking Tango