Seeking God for Revival

Nancy Leigh DeMoss: Psalm 82 describes a group of people who have "neither knowledge nor understanding, they walk about in darkness" (verse 5). As you look at friends and family members and co-workers around you who maybe are held captive by sinful behavior, I think you’ll find that description accurate.

The chapter goes on to say that "all the foundations of the earth are shaken" (verse 5). Doesn’t that sound like our world? So much has been shaken in the last few years. People no longer have faith in retirement funds or banks or corporations or the government. In so many areas of life, the foundations that people have tried to base their lives on have been shaken.

I want to base my life on the one thing that cannot be shaken, and that is the solid foundation of God’s character and the truth of His Word. I’m burdened that multitudes of individuals throughout this nation and around the world will learn to base their lives on that solid foundation and that we will soon see in this land a widespread movement of God’s Spirit that will draw people to Himself in revival.

I’m Nancy Leigh DeMoss with Revive Our Hearts. We take the "revive" portion of our name seriously, encouraging women to seek God for revival.

So when the National Religious Broadcasters issued a request not long ago, I immediately wanted to help. The NRB has encouraged Christian broadcasters to use their platform for the next 40 days to call listeners all across this country to seek God for the deep needs of our nation.

So throughout this month on Revive Our Hearts, you’ll be hearing reminders of this important emphasis.

Today is Labor Day, and you may be in a different schedule than normal. Maybe you’re taking the day off from work. But on this special broadcast, I want to invite you to spend some extended time with me and a variety of Christian leaders praying together and seeking God for revival.

This group of leaders connected by telephone, and I hope you’ll join us in asking God to visit His people.

To begin with, we’re going to be hearing from a pastor who will be joining us for the True Woman conference this month in Indianapolis. He’ll also be with us for the True Woman conference in Fort Worth in October. Here’s Pastor Crawford Loritts.

Crawford Loritts: I want to engage all of you who are listening to join us in prayer. We’re going to express our prayers to God in three areas. The first: we need to desperately seek the nearness of God, and then to plead with Him to show up and to listen to us and to demonstrate His glory. Revival is a season for God to demonstrate all of these things. Basically, revival is a call to repentance concerning root sins, to meet God’s requirements.

Let’s just pray focusing on us as individuals, responding accurately and adequately to God, and then also in our homes and in our families. Let’s pray together.

Kevin Adams: We don’t come to You as people who are worthy.

Nancy Leigh DeMoss: This is revival historian, Kevin Adams.

Kevin Adams: We don’t come to You as great pray-ers. We don’t come to You as people who have made it. But, Lord, we come to You as people who need to turn away from various things in our own lives. O God, we come to You confessing our inadequacy, confessing our sins, but confessing our sins to a great God who is able to work in us as individuals and families.

So hear us, O God. Come to us, we pray. Hear our pleadings, O God. We come and just call on You. Touch us, O Lord. Show us where You need us to turn to You and away from the things that so offend You.

Hear us and speak to us as we speak to You, our God. Amen, Lord.

Crawford Loritts: Holy Father, we pray that You will reveal to us the root sins that have been manifested in our own personal lives. Oh God, may we not run from them or camouflage them or make excuses for them or to sanitize them, but may we see our pride, our stubbornness, our self-centeredness through Your eyes.

Oh God, help us, we pray, to not be hypocritical or disingenuous in our walk with You. God, we want to live right so our lives carry with us the strength and the power and the honor and the glory of God.

Nancy Leigh DeMoss: And now here’s Tim St. Clair to lead us.

Tim St. Clair: Father, Your Word says that "the wicked strut about on every side when vileness is exalted among the sons of man" (Psalm 12:8, NASB). Father, I am wearying of seeing wicked men strut, and yet, Father, we know that there’s not a sin we’re seeing in the world that we’re not seeing in the church right now.

God, I just pray, as we just heard, Lord, that You would raise up holiness among Your people. Just some of those listening here today, Father, who would get a heart and a passion to walk in pureness and holiness so that when they go to their knees, when we go to our knees, we would have Your heart and we would have Your passion.

Father, raise up these kinds of warriors of prayer, Father, for Your name's sake, God, because You are worthy of the glory.

Kevin Adams: Lord, deliver us from insensitivity to the things that are happening around us and to the things we allow in our minds and hearts.

Tim St. Clair: God, would You forgive us for the arrogancy of our nation, America, that somehow thinks that You need us. God, would You root out the pride, the stubbornness, the rebellion, the immorality, the materialism that has choked out Your Word and drawn our hearts away from You.

Would You draw us back to a place, God, where we recognize our utter dependency on You?

Crawford Loritts: God, bring revival in our homes and in our families. May we not be hypocrites, Lord, preaching and proclaiming renewal and revival to others and yet living less than what we ought to live behind closed doors. Help us to be sincere and genuine, open-hearted, transparent before You and before others.

O God, do a work with our families we pray.

Nancy Leigh DeMoss: Now we’ll pray with a revival historian, Richard Owen Roberts.

Richard Owen Roberts: Lord, You have made it clear that You dwell in only two places: the high and the lofty, and the heart and the spirit of the broken and contrite. O God, grant that each of us might know more of true brokenness and contrition than ever before in our lives. Help us, Lord, to be able to lead others to true humility so that indeed You may again renew us through Your constant indwelling.

Nancy Leigh DeMoss: Here’s Byron Paulus, the executive director of Life Action Ministries, the parent organization of Revive Our Hearts.

Byron Paulus: Lord, as I was praying for the church this morning and yesterday, I pray that You would deal with the coldness and the callousness and the carnality and the comfort zones we find ourselves in in the midst of our buildings and budgets and plans and programs.

God, I pray that, as Mr. Roberts just prayed, that there would be an infusion of humility and honesty and a hunger after You and a thirsting after You. God, that You would give many in the church hope who are feeling defeated as if Your presence and Your power is no longer available. God, would You give us the hope and anticipation that You long to make Yourself known in Your church today. Through that, Lord, would You create an urgency and a unity because how blessed and good it is for brethren to dwell together in unity, and You command Your blessing there.

Give us a fresh understanding of Your ways, and, God, I pray:

• for repentance and brokenness and reconciliation, especially in churches
• that conflicts would be resolved and regeneration would be a reality
• that conversions by the many would take place
• that consciences would be cleared and conflicts resolved
• that the Great Commission would be embraced.

God, would Your Holy Spirit just descend and give Your church a heavenly mindedness today. God, I pray that Your church would swim in holiness, that You would be exalted because of holiness as demonstrated through the lives of Your church. Then, Lord, I pray for a great harvest of souls.

Kevin Adams: Father, I pray for the leaders of churches here in the States. O Heavenly Father, I pray that You might instill new hope, a new vision, a fresh faith in what You are able to do once again through Your church.

Lord, Your church is Your plan. Lord, forgive us, those of us who have led it, and may have put other plans in instead of Yours. Father, forgive us. Sometimes we get entangled in the organization and forget the very essence of what we’re called to do, to worship You, to be Your people, to be an expression of Your kingdom on this planet.

We ask You, Lord, infuse us again, deliver us from an average ministry. Touch us first Lord, even before our people. May we come to where we should be before our God.

Man: Father, I pray that You would afflict, not only the church, but these young men who are coming out of our seminaries. We pray that You will afflict them with a permanent sense of God neediness, and that their ministries will bear their signature. We pray that they will not give in to a surrogate revival, a substitute revival thinking that response is the same thing as deep, profound spiritual transformation.

O God, we pray that You’ll help us not to just think that outward success is spiritual substance. Lord, we need You to move in a very special way, and help us, O God, to not define ourselves based upon numbers and dollars and response, though that is part of the work of the Spirit, too. But help us to be clear, simple, profoundly simple in our attitude and approach to what You’ve called us to do, that it is God and God alone, and He’s the center of attention.

O God, do a deep work among those of us who are giving leadership to Your church.

Kevin Adams: We come to You, Lord, that the gates of hell will not prevail the gates of your church. We thank You that You love Your church. We praise You, Lord, for Your plan of the church. But O Lord, we ask You may we be a part of what You are doing now in Your church.

Lord, we thank You for the history of the church, for what You have done in the past, but help us not to just dwell on the history but to be history makers with You at this specific time.

O Lord, what do You want us to do? Show us, Lord, as individuals. As we pray here, Lord, there are hundreds of people praying. Show us now what You want us to do that we might fit into Your plan, that we wouldn’t just look back or just look forward, but Lord, that we would respond to Your Spirit even now. O God, speak to us; we ask You questions. Speak to us. We rest on You, our God.

Crawford Loritts: With that in mind, let’s turn our attention to the nation. God has placed His body in this world, and He has placed us here, and He wants us to make an impact on the nation. So let’s take a few minutes and pray for the nation, pray for this country, pray for the impact of revival and awakening on the land in which we live.

Nancy Leigh DeMoss: Lord, we see in our land the intensifying battle between good and evil, between heaven and hell. God, as we see the flood of evil coming in through the values and lifestyles and the anti-Christian efforts made on the part of a dedicated handful, we pray, O Lord, that You would raise up a standard of righteousness against the enemy. We pray that You would so move in and through Your people to raise up in this land a God-consciousness, a fear of the Lord.

Even as the ACLU and others are seeking to eradicate every reference to You throughout the land, O God, would You demonstrate Your power, demonstrate that You are God, that You are not silent, that You do exist, that You are on Your throne, that You are the Lord and the King and the Ruler of this universe.

Lord, if our nation cannot see it in us, how will they believe it? So may they see the risen, reigning Christ in His church. Then may there be, as Paul said in 1 Corinthians 14, that when the unbelievers would walk in and see us worshiping and exalting Christ, that they would fall on their faces and would say of a truth, "God is among you" (verse 25). 

We pray, Lord, for that awesome sense of Your presence to fall on this land, to overcome and overpower the forces of evil. Lord, may Your kingdom come, may Your will be done here on earth and in this nation as it is this day in heaven.

Richard Owen Roberts: Lord, the Psalmist cried out, turn us again, O God, and "cause thy face to shine." Our hope lies in Your turning us again. We understand that we are called upon to repent, and yet You’ve taught us that repentance and faith are both gifts that You give.

I pray that You will gift the peoples of this nation with incredible resources of repentance today.

Kevin Adams: Yes Lord, we pray that You might take away the blindness that seems so apparent with regards of righteousness in various parts of the nation. Lord God, I just pray that You might give a fresh vision of what is right. I pray that there might be a sense of righteousness as Christians begin to explain various truths, that absolutes would become something again which are desired.

Oh God, I pray as certain people push things to extremes, I pray that You might open the eyes of a nation to see this. Lord, that they would come back to the Living God who has the best intentions toward people and toward humanity. That they would see, Lord, that Your way is the best way, that a nation that loves righteousness, O Lord, is a better nation as a result, is a better part of this world as a result.

So Lord, I pray for a renewed feeling. Lord, that You would blow on this land. O God, that You would open minds to understand anew Yourself. O Lord, take away the blindness, please. Take it away, Lord, we pray again in Jesus’ name.

Man: Father, I pray that You will help us as Your body in this world, in this nation. When we have to denounce sin and when we have to speak up concerning the unrighteousness and evil and wickedness that’s in our culture, that we would not do it as if we’re not capable of the same sin and mess that the world is exhibiting. But may we do it with a tear in our hearts and a sense of compassion. Lord, may they see the reality of what Christ can do through people who are authentic and who demonstrate the love of Jesus.

Forgive us for our self-righteousness. Forgive us for our arrogant spiritual posturing that has resurrected barriers. We have so often come across as if we are better than. O God, help us, Lord Jesus. Help us to stand for truth and to be enveloped in the love of Jesus Christ. May that love, that compelling sense of compassion and holiness draw people to the Savior, we pray.

Nancy Leigh DeMoss: And Lord, we cry out to You for mercy, mercy on our own lives, mercy on Your church, mercy on this nation that has so shaken its fist in Your face after You have been so gracious and kind and generous to us.

O Lord, thank You that mercy triumphs over judgment, and yet we know that You are also a righteous and holy and righteous judging God. So Lord, we just pray. Thank You that You have given time, a space for repentance, that You are not willing that any should perish but that all should come to repentance. So Lord, as You look on this prodigal planet, thank You for extending mercy. Would You continue to grant a sense of our calling and giving opportunity for us to repent as a nation and as a people before it is eternally too late.

Tim St. Clair: Father, we thank You that there was a day, as the Psalmist said, when "You showed favor to Your land; [that] You restored the captivity of Jacob. You forgave the iniquity of Your people; You covered all of their sin" (85:1-2). Father, would You do it again? Would You put a hunger and a longing for us to see You do it again?

Byron Paulus: And Lord, with Isaiah we cry out, "O that you would rend the heavens [today]! That You would come down! That the mountains [those obstacles] might fall down at Your presence," so that, Lord, as Isaiah said, "the nations might tremble at your presence" (Isaiah 64:1-2, NASB). God, we need to see the nations of the world tremble at what You can do in other nations.

Lord, Isaiah said the "eye has not seen, nor ear heard, neither has it entered into our imagination what You could do on behalf of those who would steadfastly trust You" (64:4, paraphrased). God, we want to be a people that are trusting You, not our affluence or our military might or our government or our tradition, but God, we need to seek You and to trust You. And Lord, all of our imaginations together, we still could not have imagined what it is You could do on behalf of those whose hearts are perfect in trusting You.

Help us to walk by faith, enlarge our vision.

Man: Father, we ask that You would do something so great in this country that it would take our collective spiritual breath away. O God, do something unimaginable, beyond anything we’ve ever seen. We don’t seek for an experience but just the transformation of lives so that we’ll all stand back and say, “Look at God!”

Kevin Adams: Lord, we confess You are able to do this. You are able. Lord, You respond to the people’s faith. We come believing that You are able. O God, work again in this nation. Transform again as You did in the 18th century. Transform again as You did in the mid-19th century. Transform again as You did in the beginning of the 20th century. Transform again in the 21st century, Lord.

You are a contemporary God. You are a God not stuck in any historical work, but Lord, You’re living now, and we call on You, Living God. Come again, Living God, come again to Your world.

Man: Father, thank You for Your Word. I was moved this morning by Isaiah 44 that says in verse 3, "For I will pour water on the thirsty land, and streams on the dry ground. I will pour my Spirit upon your offspring, and my blessing on your descendants. They shall spring up among the grass like willows by flowing streams. This one will say, 'I am the LORD’s,' another will call on the name of Jacob, another will write on his hand, 'The LORD’s,” and name himself by the name of Israel" (verses 3-5).

O God, thank You that You know how to preserve Your people and impact our world. Thank You, Oh, God, for calling us to pray today, but we pray Lord Jesus that this prayer time will be a habit pattern, that we will continue to seek Your face. How we love You, Lord Jesus. Thank You for what You have done.

Nancy Leigh DeMoss: Aren’t you grateful that God hears the prayers of His people? We’ve been praying today with a group of Christian leaders, seeking God for revival in our nation.

The National Religious Broadcasters has issued a call for us to join together in praying for 40 days here in September and into October. I think you would agree that the issues our nation is facing right now are crucial, but more than any program, any bail out or policy, what we desperately need is God’s presence in revival.

I hope you’ll commit to pray with us and for others around you each day during this 40-day period.

Leslie Basham: That’s an important challenge from Nancy Leigh DeMoss, and to help you pray more effectively, we’d like to send you a booklet called “When Do We Need Revival?” We’ll send it to you when you support Revive Our Hearts with a donation of any amount.

We’re on the air in your area thanks to people like you who support the ministry, and your gift will help us continue. When you donate any amount, ask for “When Do We Need Revival?” Just call 1-800-569-5959, or donate online at ReviveOurHearts.com.

Well, what do a body, a building, a family and a bride all have in common? Nancy will tell you tomorrow. Please be back for Revive Our Hearts.

Revive Our Hearts with Nancy Leigh DeMoss is an outreach of Life Action Ministries.

All Scripture is taken from the English Standard Version unless otherwise noted. 

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