In ten days, my Presbytery will meet in Columbia, SC. As we come up on our meeting, the need for special prayer seems more and more imperative. Do we really believe prayer can make a difference, or don't we?
What else can we do? Programs haven't helped. I get the impression that we are becoming increasingly irrelevant to the society we inhabit.
I have never seen a great awakening of the Spirit myself, though I have often prayed for the privilege. But it did come close once, though. In 1971 I attended Asbury College in Wilmore, Kentucky. The year before, on February 4, 1970, the Spirit of God sent revival to that institution.
It began at a chapel service at nine in the morning. The Dean felt led to open the pulpit for testimony. The service ended 184 hours later. For eight days, twenty-four hours a day, student after student testified, wept, and rededicated their lives to Christ. By the end of the week, revival spread from the college to churches and colleges across the country The revival at Asbury has been credited as a major spiritual influence in the Jesus Movement of the 1970's.
I wasn't there, but I came the next year. It was real--in fact, it had not really stopped when I arrived on campus a little over a year later. Here are some of the comments made by people who were there.
“The emphasis was never upon the gifts of the spirit. The emphasis was upon..sin. The need for repentance, need for restitution, the need for repairing relationships, human being to human being and the need for bringing alive into obedience the need for the highest and the best.”
“The amazing thing was a person would tell what had happened, it would be recapitulated, as a person would go somewhere and tell what God had done in his auditorium … it would
take place in the church where the person was telling it!”
“The less impressive the student was the more effective an instrument he was”
Sounds exciting--yes?
This revival--like all revivals--came as a sovereign move of God. No one can make revival come. Only God can bring it. However, this doesn't mean he brings it without us playing a part. Revivals usually comes because Christians seek it--not just casually, but desperately and deeply. In other words, revivals come in response to our passionate seeking after God.
This was true of the Asbury Revival. Robert Coleman in his account of it in One Divine Moment referred to the prayer that was going up before the revival broke.
Before the revival there had been a sense of general spiritual laxity at the college. Professors had been accused of teaching false doctrine. Financial scandals had rocked the administration. More than that, some among the faculty and student body had felt the only solution to their problems was to get serious with God.
So they reached back into their historical roots , all the way back to the early Methodist tradition. The Methodists began with prayer meetings on Oxford campus, where people came together for regular prayer, confession, and the practice of spiritual disciplines. A small group of people influenced the world through seeking the Spirit.
A few on the Asbury campus sought to emulate that early Methodist example. Here are the words from someone who was there:
“How did it come? What called it?…Our need.”
“We had some students interested in prayer. In October before the Spirit came in February six students came together, banded together in what they called ‘the great experiment.’”
“They covenanted for 30 days to take 30 minutes every morning and spend in prayer with the Word, writing down what truth they got from the Word. They were to obey that day, sharing their faith somewhere in the course of the day, and meeting once a week for those 30 days and checking up on each other to see that each one had done his disciplines that week. So for 30 days they met that way and they worked that way.”*
As these students met, a sense of anticipation filled them. And in time, God answered them with revival.
I am not sure that a sudden revival in itself is the best answer to our problems==but then I am not the Holy Spirit. It may be that such an outpouring of the Spirit is exactly what we need. I am sure, however that the flame of the Spirit must be sought, nurtured, and fanned by the practice of spiritual disciplines and mutual support. I truly believe that the shallow, passionless, listless, cheap grace which marks most of our attempts at revival will make little difference in the end. If we do not sense our need, we will not welcome the cure when offered.
It seems to me that the only way we will transform the world is through a faith that has more resolution and passion than the world has for sin. If the world around us stubbornly persists in godlessness, then we must persevere even more in godliness. It the world has passion for violence, sex, and power, then we must have even more passion for devotion, obedience, and prayer. That requires the Holy Spirit, and a genuine effort to be seek His face.
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