This is the Truth Network. Welcome to If Not Forgot. Stories of hopelessness that turn to hope. Here is your host, Mike Zwick. All right, if not for God with Mike Zwick.
I've got my friend Jeff Hoover here today. And Jeff, you just came over, but man, you actually went on the mission field. You were in Israel for what, 18 years? Yes. Yes, I love it.
My goodness. Uh Actually, I don't remember. Let's see. Uh Yeah, I don't remember exactly.
Sorry. Are you 20, 30? I mean, 30s. You were in your 30s. And so there's a lot of people who are afraid to go overseas, or there's a lot of people who are afraid to do it.
But like I talked with Jason in the last show, like Nike says, just do it. And so I was telling him, I said, on Saturday mornings, a lot of times we'll go out over to Walmart or whatever it is. And when we go to Walmart, the hardest part for me to go out and share the gospel or share my faith is the part where I'm thinking about doing it before I actually go out and do it. And I said, the easiest thing to do is once I just start talking to people, and I realize that people are receptive to hearing some good news because, Jeff, there's a lot of bad news in the world right now. Yeah, that's for sure.
Yeah. All kinds of good news, you know, for people. The thing is that we just have to. Try to build a quick relationship with them and try to find out where they are. You know, unless God gives you a word.
uh you know dealing with uh you know them Uh but uh if God doesn't give you a word Then you just uh you know Are trying to build a relationship with them and find out where they are and. uh find out how um what good news what is good news to them I mean, we know the gospel is good news, but You know, how can God touch them? touch their heart. How does God want to touch their heart? Today.
Yeah, and you know, I think if you go out there trying to share the gospel, Jeff, a lot of times you've got to have the right... Mental attitude, and that's what I always try to do when I go out and share the gospel. And one of my go-to passages is Hebrews chapter 11, starting in verse 1. It says, Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. It says, For by it the elders obtained a good report.
Through faith, we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God so that things which are seen were not made of things which do appear. By faith, Abel offered unto God a more excellent sacrifice than Cain. And it goes on to say in verse 6 of Hebrews 11, it says, But without faith, It is impossible to please him, for he that cometh to God must believe that he is, and that he is a rewarder of them that diligently seek him.
So, in other words, if you're going out to share the gospel, if you're going to do a mission trip, as you did for multiple years, and you don't believe that you're going to make an impact, or you don't believe that anybody's going to wanna listen to you, you might not be surprised when you go out and nobody wants to listen to you, Jeff.
Well, that's true. That's why you, you know, you. have to believe God. You know, people would tell you tell me, you know, uh How other people had been in the Middle East for like forty years and only had. A couple of converts, and I'm not judging them, that's between them and God.
But I just talked to the Lord, and personally, I just said, Lord, I just believe you are bigger than that. Not that me, not that nothing with me, but you are bigger than that. And if I'm going to spend. uh forty years in the Middle East. That I believe that we're going to make a great difference in the Middle East for the glory of God.
Yeah, that's right. And when I've looked at it, I've studied some revivals that have actually happened. One of the revivals that I've studied is the Hebrides revival or the Hebrides revival, depending on who you ask. But it began in November of 1949, Jeff, with two sisters. And it was Peggy and Christine Smith.
Have you heard of this? And Peggy was 84, and Christine was 82, and Peggy was completely blind, and Christine was bent over with arthritis. And so they couldn't really do a lot. They couldn't go out and run marathons or share the gospel by running around in the streets or anything like that. They were burdened due to the depressed spiritual state.
In their Barvis Village church, and they sensed that the Lord was speaking to them. And the Lord gave them a verse, and it was Isaiah 44, verse 3, and it says, I will pour water on the thirsty land and streams on the dry ground from Isaiah 44, 3. And then this actually led them to pray. And they had a small cottage and they prayed there two to three nights a week from 10 p.m. to 3 a.m.
Well, most people, Jeff, would say, no, that's the time that I want to sleep.
Well, if the Lord is telling you to pray from 10 p.m. until 3 a.m., you need to pray during that time. After several weeks of praying like this, Peggy, the blind one, had a vision of her church being crowded with young people and an unknown minister preaching from the pulpit. Peggy then sent for the minister, for their minister, Reverend James Murray McKay, and she told him that they sensed that the Lord. Lord was going to send a revival, and that he must get his church leaders.
And spend every Tuesday and Friday night in prayer. And that they would pray simultaneously in their cottage. McKay respected the sisters' spiritual judgment, and the call to pray was made. There was also a group of pastors in the region that met to discuss the spiritual. Uh uh dissension on their island.
and together they composed a resolution to be read on a certain Sunday in all the free churches of Scotland. It was an appeal for all believers to view with concern the barrenness of the parishes, so that they would turn again unto the Lord, whom we have so grieved with our waywardness and iniquities. It also involved asking the people to pray that the villages would be visited with a spirit of repentance. And repentance is a part of revival. People want to talk about grace and the goodness of God, and I do too.
Thank God for His grace, thank God for His goodness, but repentance. Is a part of revival as well. And so many of the believers in the Hebrides and the Hebrides immediately went to their knees petitioning God to visit their islands. The announcement was also placed in two newspapers. On December 9th, 1949, and following the proclamation, two times per week, Peggy and Christine Smith.
Prayed in their cottage from 10 p.m. to 3 a.m.
while the ministers and the others prayed in a barn, in a barn-like structure and in other locations. They prayed this way for weeks. Prayer was concluded in unheated buildings in the middle of winter. That was a sign of desperation. And I think, Jeff, sometimes people think: you know what?
I'm going to pray. As long as things are going my way, as long as it's nice and cool in the area that I'm praying in, as long as I don't have any distractions, I'm going to pray and I'm going to call on the Lord. But I can tell you this: anytime that I've ever wanted to do something big for the Lord, immediately the devil has come in and tried to throw a wrench in the whole thing. Have you seen that as well? Yes.
Well, I mean, the Bible says that the God of this world has blinded people's eyes so they can't see the truth. And uh So when we go in to uh an area. If you want to see God move, The first thing that we need to do is ask God what He wants to do. We know that He wants. uh to uh you know t for people to come to know him.
but how what is going on in the spirit realm is what we need to be able to find out how the devil is blinding people. You know, and what we can do, or how we need to move. according to what God says. God is the one who's in charge, not us. When we go into an area, we talk to God, and that's prayer.
We have to talk to God about what is going on in the area. We don't know what Has what the devil, or how the devil is using other people in the past or other spirits. uh are working there. And the thing is that God will let us know through prayer how to battle that those things so that when we do go out, That the um Ground has been Prepared for For the gospel. The hearts.
Have been prepared so that now those blinders have been taken off people's eyes. And when we go forth, Then we will see the harvest that we want to see and that God wants to see.
So the thing is, that's what we're trying to do. And so it always starts with prayer, with talking to God and finding out how God wants to do it in that particular place at that particular time. That's right. And so going back to the Hebrides revival, revival began one night in a barn, and this was after the prayer. See, people are looking for the revival before they actually start to pray.
And they just think Lord is going to just show up and do it all.
Well, we've got our part. We've got our part in this as well, but every revival has proceeded with prayer.
So the revival in the Hebrides revival began one night in a barn after a young deacon read from Psalm 24, 3 through 5. When he closed his Bible, he looked at the minister and the others and said, It seems to me to be so much humbug to be praying as we are praying, to be waiting as we are waiting, if we ourselves are rightly related to God. He then prayed, God, are my hands clean? Is my heart pure? You know, the Bible says in the book of Isaiah, I believe it says that if I have regarded or if I have kept iniquity in my own heart, then the Lord won't even hear my prayers.
And so, in other words, we could sit in here, we could fast all day, we can pray all day, but as long as we're living like the devil, as long as we're not treating people the same way that we want to be treated, and then we wonder why the Lord isn't showing up, it's because we need to turn away from our iniquity. And 2 Chronicles 7:14 says this: If my people who are called by my name shall humble themselves and pray and turn from their wicked ways, people like all the other parts, they like to pray, they like to do this, they like to do that, but they don't want to turn from their wicked ways. He says, Then will I hear from heaven, and then will I heal their land.
So, you can pray, you can fast, you can do all that other stuff, but if you're still living wickedly and living in sin, the Bible says that he will not even hear your prayers. And so, after this, The revival. It says that group of intercessors left the barn at that early hour and found men and women kneeling along the roads, crying out to God for mercy. Every home had lights on it, as no one could sleep with the awareness of God being so overwhelming. Peggy Smith then sent for her minister, Reverend McKay, and told him that he was supposed to invite someone to come and preach during the revival, but she didn't know who he was.
She only saw an unfamiliar face in a vision. And so it's interesting. At that moment, the preacher could have said, well, this is my church. I'm the one who's over this place. I'm not going to get anybody else to preach.
I want to do it myself because I'm the man at this church. But thank God he didn't do this. He listened to the woman of God who had spent time in prayer, and they ended up calling on a man named Duncan Campbell. He had another contact and he contacted Duncan Campbell and he asked him to come. Campbell was at that time in the midst of an evangelical campaign on the island of Psych with conversations taking place.
When he received the letter inviting him to Barvis, a free church on the island of Lewis for 10 days, he replied that he couldn't make it because he was scheduled to be a speaker at another island. Upon receiving Campbell's return letter informing him that he couldn't come, Reverend McKay regretfully told Peggy Smith the news. Peggy responded, Mr. McKay, that is what man is saying. She said, But God has said something else, and he will be here within a fortnight of 14 days.
And due to a change of events, the convention on psych that Duncan Campbell was supposed to preach at was canceled, and Campbell arrived. And the rest is history. The Lord moved in a mighty way in the Hebrides revival. And Duncan did receive the call, but it started off with prayer and it started off with faith. And I'm thinking about this as well as we talk about this.
The preacher, McShane, said, Sorry, he's not going to come, but Peggy said, I knew that I heard from the Lord. And I'm going to stand on the Word of God. Jeff, there's times in our life where everything looks array. It looks like it's gone crazy. But if we say, no, I know that I've heard from the Lord and I'm standing on the word of God, then the Lord can do big and abundant things.
Yes, of course. We can go out, you know, uh and Plant seed, and we can Throw uh the seed of the gospel all on On hard ground. Uh and Praise the Lord some people. There will be Uh a few who do come to know the Lord, and we praise God for those.
However, If we talk to the Lord and find out God one time told when I was riding on a bus in Turkey. God spoke to me about. I was looking at the fields and seeing the fields not like our fields that have been all Prepared with different machines and stuff like this, and all, but they. Um Their fields had a lot of rocks and weeds in it, even though it also was planted. And God asked me, He said, Jeff, what kind of farmer do you think I am?
And I said, Well, you'd be the best farmer, Lord. And so the Lord said, Okay. then how would I prepare my field? And I said, well, you would first take out the rocks and you would first take out the weeds and then you would prepare the ground before you would plant the seed. That way you would always have a harvest, a great harvest, everywhere you would start planting the seed.
And that's what the prayer And listening to God does is we go out through prayer first, we can take up the weeds and the stones. That the devil has put out there in those areas to blind people's eyes, to. to hurt to keep the word from going in deep in their hearts. And all, we can prepare the ground. And then, when we go out, as God has said, that the ground has been prepared now.
It is time to go out and to Plant the seed. And when you go out and plant the seed at that particular time, You can expect That God is going to move greatly. And there's going to be a great harvest for the Lord Jesus Christ.
So, prayer is very important to start with. Repentance is also important. If uh if you individually or the uh the group, the country. Uh needs repentance, Then, there again, we see many times in the Old Testament where repentance. made uh had to be done as well where people were praying for a nation and They repented.
Sometimes even at times they were not even part of the sin, but they repented of the sin of the nation.
So, yeah, because you're living in that nation. And so, and there also comes a time where if you're living in an area. And it's absolutely gone down the tubes or gone downhill, then what you can see is you can actually see what's happened in that area. And there's people who have felt led to leave California, to leave California, just to say, look, I don't want to be around all of the wickedness anymore. I'm not saying that's everybody.
There's people who are called to go to California so that they can preach and share the good news of Jesus Christ. But I do believe, you know, I'll give you an example. It's like with me and my kids. You know, where I can say, well, they can go to public school and they're going to have an impact on all of the kids at the public school and this, that, and the other. Or I can sit here and say, no, no, no, no, no.
I don't want them to be around the garbage that they're teaching. And I've heard people say, if you leave your kids with the Romans, don't be surprised if they become Romans themselves. And so, yes, we put them in a Christian school.
Some people do homeschooling.
Well, that's not convenient.
Well, I never saw in the Bible where Jesus said something had to be convenient, Jeff, but we've got to do what we're called to do. Maybe the Lord has you called to take your kids and put them in public school, and they're going to be an impact. I've seen that. I'm not telling you what to do or what not to do, but the point is, is that you've got to hear from the Lord. Is that right?
Yes, you gotta hear from the Lord for uh for everything. you know, and uh you know that's uh And then move what God, the way God tells you to do. And then you expect what uh you expect God to move as He has told you. Um as he has guided you and told you That he would move if you Moved. Exactly.
I mean, James chapter 5, verse 14, it says, Is any sick among you? Let him call for the elders of the church and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord. And the prayer of faith shall save the sick, and the Lord shall raise him up. And if he have committed sins, they shall be forgiven him. Confess your faults one to another, and pray for one another, that ye may be healed.
The effectual, fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much. Elias was a man subject to like passions as we are, and he prayed earnestly It didn't say he threw a little prayer up there, Lord. Thank you for another day. I'm not saying that's bad. I'm just saying that when I pray and.
Excuse me, when I notice a difference in my prayers, it's when I'm serious about this thing. I'm commanding something to go. If I'm praying for somebody, I say, I command that your knee is healed in Jesus' name. I command that this sickness go in Jesus' name. I command that the headache is healed.
You know, and it's like the devil doesn't think, the devil doesn't think, hey, this is just a joke or this is a game. It says that in the Bible, it says, Don't you know that your adversary is like a roaring lion? Prowling around seeking whom he may devour. There is a battle for your soul, Jeff. There is a battle for my soul, and the devil is there, and Jesus is there, and we've got to fight to win.
And I think sometimes people feel like, Hey, I'm just going to kind of sit here and I'm going to kind of do my thing, and it's going to be okay. It's not going to be a big deal. But I was reminded, I took my family to the beach yesterday, and we went to Wrightsbow Beach, and I realized all of a sudden we were just kind of standing in the water hanging out. And all of a sudden, by just hanging out and not going against the grain, not going against the resistance, all of a sudden we started to go away from where we were supposed to be. And I saw, I said, guys, talk to my kids, keep your eyes on mama.
Wherever mama is, you've got to keep your eyes on her. And they didn't do it. And eventually they started to kind of float away. And I think people think, well, I'm just going to kind of sit here and I'm going to be okay with the Lord. You know, maybe read my Bible a little bit, may go to church once a week, but you've got to realize.
that you're in a battle. You're in a battle, and just by kind of being where you are and staying there and not fighting the good fight of faith, you're going to end up drifting away. There's no such thing as just kind of being in the middle. You know, I heard somebody say one time, Jeff, they said, the only thing I see in the middle of the road is dead and it stinks. Right?
We talk about politics, being on the right or the left. Choose, choose a side. If you're going to follow the devil, follow the devil. As we go into our house, and you came over for my birthday party, there's a mat on the front, and it says, Choose you this day whom you will serve. But it says, As for me and my house, we're going to serve the Lord.
And so, and I know every day you wake up, Jeff, and you spend time in prayer and the word as well, right?
Okay. Yeah, where we we just have to talk to the Lord. I mean And uh you know I would put on the whole armor of God. And uh you know The belt of truth. And uh the Bible says that the Holy Spirit will lead us into all truth.
And not just some truth, but all the truth. And I believe that's all the truth going on around us: not just what we can see and feel and everything, but also what is going on in the spirit realm around us and that we need to know to see or to know so that we can. Battle the way that God wants us to and to win Uh in the right way. The Bible says that we put on the whole armor of God for the truth. We put on the breastplate of righteousness.
The devil will try to tell you and remind you of all past sins and stuff. You know, he's gonna try to pull you down by reminding you of your past. But the thing is that We put on the breastplate of righteousness. That means that we believe that we know we have Christ's righteousness. It's not our righteousness, but all our past has been taken away and been because we now hold on.
We now have Christ's righteousness that's been imputed to our account.
So the thing is that we're righteous because of Christ. We're not righteous because of any works that we've done. But we can tell the devil to go because those sins are as far away as the East is from the West.
So we are righteous, and we can walk that way in Christ's righteousness. in the authority that God has given us. We walk We put on the gospel armor shoes. They are. uh like cleats, but they're the the spikes there w in those shoes of the of the uh gospel helps us to stand firm wherever we are.
in the gospel.
So, we have to fight the good fight of faith. And it looks like today, Jeff, our time is about done.
So, if you don't do anything else, if you don't hear anything else that we've done today, Spend time in prayer with God. And one of the biggest distractions that we all have is our cell phone. And there's a lot of good things that we can do on our cell phone. We can share the gospel, we can share a video sharing the good news about Jesus, but we can also use it as just kind of an excuse to goof off and not do anything big. And so, Jeff, I want to thank you for coming on today and keep fighting the good fight of faith, if not for God.
All right, for my YouTube channel. If not for God with mighty's wick Just like, subscribe, and hit that notification bell. Mm-hmm.
So you'll be alerted when we have our next video.
