Revival Prayer Requests
 
"If I shut up heaven that there be no rain, or if I command the locusts to devour the land, or if I send pestilence among My people; If my people, which are called by My name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land."
2 Chronicles 7:14
 
By Philip A. Matthews (August 2005)
 
When God's people get together to pray, repent, seek God's face, and turn from their wicked ways, here are some suggestions for what to pray about. The scripture references can be helpful and convicting. Great things will happen if the whole church will UNIFY IN REVIVAL PRAYER.
 
  1. Pray that we would fall passionately in love with God Himself, and would become addicted to seeking His face, ministering unto Him in worship, craving His presence daily (Psalm 27; 42; 2 Chronicles 7:14; Job 23:12). Pray that God would talk to us, reveal His secrets to us, show us the direction to take, the visions to pursue (Psalm 32:8; John 16:3).
  2. Repent for our personal sins and shortcomings (James 4:6-10). If we don't think we have any, pray for conviction and insight (1 John 1:8-10; 1 Pet. 4:8). Revival begins with personal cleansing.
  3. Pray, as Jesus taught, "Your Kingdom come, Your will be done in earth as it is in heaven" (Matthew 6:10). In other words, pray that the Kingdom of heaven would extend itself right here into our little worlds and begin dispensing blessings to every hungry soul (Matt. 5:6).
  4. Pray for the anointing of God, i.e., His Spirit's power, to rest on us in a greater degree (Acts 1:8).
  5. Pray that the church would be empowered and gifted to actually do the ministry of Jesus Christ (Luke 4:18-19; Acts 4:29-30). Repent for our gross neglect of evangelism, when Jesus plainly stated that He Himself had come to "seek and save the lost," then charged His disciples forever with the same purpose, commission, and reason for living (Luke 19:10; Matt. 28:19; John 4:34).
  6. Jesus said that believers would do greater works than He had done (John 14:12). Pray, because we seldom or no longer do or see this happening, and repent because we are satisfied to just go on in weakness.
  7. Pray and repent for limiting God to do and be only what we could conceive of, for putting Him in a "box." We have not kept pace with His paradigms, but our own (1 Corinthians 2:9; Rev. 3:22).
  8. Repent for being more loyal to our religious traditions, history, and church connections than we have been to Christ, God's Word, and the Holy Spirit's convictions (John 5:44; 12:43). This is a form of idolatry, which is not good-actually the ultimate sin but in a "good," religious format.
  9. Repent for being basically fruitless. For the last 15 years, the proportion of Christians in America has remained the same-even though we have spent billions of dollars on religious stuff during that time. Pray that this sterile condition be reversed. It's not about having and maintaining church. It's only about souls and eternity (John 15:16), and if we fail here, we have failed God (John 15:8, 16).
  10. Pray that the spirit of lethargy, self-satisfaction, and apathy would be utterly rebuked and rejected (Matt. 25:5). Pray that a desperate thirst and openness for God would prevail everywhere (Psalm 42:1-3).
  11. Repent for making ourselves satisfied with our weakened spiritual environment. It is sinful and hypocritical to act like nothing is amiss. Repent for accepting this mediocre "things are good enough or not so bad" condition for so long. Repent for being willing to keep going indefinitely without the Spirit's full power. Leonard Ravenhill once said, "The only reason revival tarries is because we are willing to keep going on without it." Here is the truth: A church that truly follows the Spirit never gets weak, ineffectual, and irrelevant. We have deviated somewhere. God is greatly offended when His people are content to go on with business as usual without His manifest presence and power, making excuses for a religion that is far less than what He has in mind for His church (Rev. 3:14-22; 2 Tim. 3:5).
  12. Pray that God would sanctify His people to live lives that are truly selfless and holy, purified by His Cross, increasingly more Christlike and untainted by the various systems of ungodliness and humanness that have taken over the world-and religion (Hebrews 12:14; James 1:27; 2 Corinthians 7:1; Ephesians 4:13; 2 Peter 1:3-4; John 17:14-17; 1 John 2:15-17; 2 Corinthians 4:4).   
  13. Repent for causing many to be offended at God and the church because of (a) our many failures among the ministry (1 Tim. 3:7; 2 Sam. 12:14); (b) continual picking on each other through gossip (Gal. 5:15; James 4:10); (c) emphasizing non-essential teachings that are sometimes scripturally debatable and therefore potentially divisive (Rom. 16:17); (d) allowing a judgmental atmosphere to prevail in much of Christianity (Rom. 14:4); and (e) maintaining an atmosphere of exclusiveness and "holier-than-thou-ism" (Isaiah 65:5).
  14. Pray that we re-learn how to die to this world, how to give our lives to God, how to "take up our Cross," how to truly "count all things but loss," how to "fellowship...His sufferings," so that we might experience the fullness of the "power of His resurrection" (Matt. 16:24-26; Phil. 3:7-14). Fruitlessness is caused by a failure to die (John 12:24-25).
  15. Repent for not really giving ourselves to prayer and to the ministry of the Word-for being basically prayer-less (Acts 6:4). Too many of us Christians no longer tend to reject having power in this earthly realm in order to obtain power in the spiritual realm (Acts 3:6; Phil. 3:7-11).
  16. Pray that the church become greatly effective and influential in the lives of its communities, transforming them from the inside out (Acts 17:6; Matt. 5:13-16).  
  17. Pray that as we yield more completely to Him, He will bless more of us with miraculous giftings and cause more of us to dedicate our lives to His work (Luke 10:2).
  18. Pray that each of us would get to know the full depths of the love of Christ by experience, and would "be filled with all the fullness of God" (Ephesians 3:14-21).
  19. Pray that in a world filled with growing unbelief and cynicism our "faith would fail not" (Luke 22:32; 18:1-8; 21:36).
  20. Repent because, in general, we have failed to give/tithe our money and time, thus forcing many of our ministers to work at secular jobs while trying to do the Lord's work-the most important and only eternal work in the world-only part-time. This has also left little money to finance outreach and other ministries (Acts 6:2; 1 Corinthians 9:11-14).
  21. Pray that the people of God throughout the world become more unified through love, humility, selflessness, and single-mindedness for Christ (John 17:20-21; Matthew 6:19-34; Mark 9:38-40; Philippians 1:15-18).
 
Actually, this list is endless. The thing to do is just start praying, and the Holy Spirit will convict us as we go and pray through us. So the key is to be open and listen carefully to His voice as we pray, as He speaks to and through each person, as He inspires, and as we respond in humility and obedience.
 
The Critical Question to Ask (from Jim Cymbala): "Is the church so anointed and making such a godly impact on the world that we cannot humble ourselves in earnest prayer and admit that something about us needs to change?" It is time to start calling meetings that publicly acknowledge, discuss, desperately pray about, repent for, and remedy our real problem-a lack of Holy Ghost fire among us. All of our other problems are mere symptoms of this larger condition.
 
Brothers, Sisters, What shall we do?
 

© 2005 Philip A Matthews