Praying For Revival!

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PRCUALife, protecting life through all its stages. Welcome to If Not For God, stories of hopelessness that turn to hope. Here is your host, Mike Zwick.

If not for God today, with my good friend Mike Zwick. And no doubt, if you're going to talk about revival, if not for God, I mean, you got nothing. That's right.

That's right. And we were looking it up, Robbie, and you said it was Psalm 85, verse 6, Wilt thou revive us again, that thy people will rejoice in thee? And we're praying for a revival. We're talking about a revival. We're hoping for a revival. And we have seen, I mean, there are people getting saved left and right.

And a lot of it's happening in small groups. It may not have happened yet the way we want to see it. It's not, you know, it hasn't been some huge thing like we saw in the, you know, the Great Awakening in America or the Second Great Awakening, or we were talking about the Welsh revival, but we certainly are hoping for and praying for, you know, people's salvation. And we, I'm hoping that people get revived in the church. And then I know you were talking about, Robbie, you said when people get revived in the church, then a lot of times there's an awakening outside of the church.

Is that right? Right. I think it's an interesting, you know, study in the words that actually we put around the word revival. So if somebody doesn't know Christ, they can't be revived because they're not, they got to get vived.

Right, right, right. So if the idea of revival is a bunch of people get saved, well, you know, that really is more the concept of an awakening. The revival part is the part of the people that are in the pews, like, you know, in Second Chronicles 7 14, if my people who are called by my name will humble themselves, seek my face and pray, you know, turn from their wicked ways, then he's going to heal their land. Well, part of healing the land is creating the awakening.

Right. But my people were the ones that, you know, hopefully will seek his face. And believe me, he'll bring it.

You know, he'll definitely bring it. And so for me personally, the way that God's revived me and I give him all the glory for it is about three weeks ago, he put it on my heart to memorize the 16th Psalm. And the reason why that was is I just really loved the last verse of the 16th Psalm is verse 11, where it says that you will show me the path of life in your presence is fullness of joy at your right hand or pleasures forevermore. And I'm like, well, man, that's really good.

How did he get there? Well, you want to get there, begin where David did at the beginning of the 16th Psalm. So the first verse of the 16th Psalm is preserve me, O Lord in whom I trust. So he's almost asking for revival right there, preserve me. In other words, I still need that fire burning. And the idea is actually to fan of fire, that word that he uses for preserve. And then the second thing he says, which is critical, I think, to the idea of reviving the church. He said, I have said to Yahweh Adonai, or I've said to the Lord, my goodness is nothing apart from you. In other words, you want revival?

You got nothing. God's got the whole deal. Like, my goodness is nothing apart from you. So, you know, really, really cool, you know, to be friends with Mike Zwick is just a joy because it's not unusual at all to get a text from him, just out of the blue, pray for this person, right? And so it's like a really great opportunity to say, okay, God, is this a view? Is this, you know, he says, yeah, Mike's on it, so pray. And time and again, Mike, I gotta be honest, you put me on something that God was clearly involved in and, you know, what an opportunity. Well, I thank you for praying. And you say you pray for the people. Matter of fact, I think you've called people before, and that's a big help.

And it's kind of cool when you have somebody, I know, as busy as you are, you have all these shows that you do, but you'll take the time out to do something like that, and I appreciate that. You know, it's interesting, when we started talking about revival this morning, there was something that came to my mind. It was a quote by Leonard Ravenhill, and it says, you never have to advertise a fire. Everyone comes running when there's a fire. Likewise, if your church is on fire, you will not have to advertise it.

The community will already know it. There was another quote, I believe it was attributed to John Wesley, he said, where I set myself on fire, and people come to watch me burn. And I think sometimes it's so cool when we talk about revival and we think about it, but a lot of times, I believe, when we think of revival, it may not come.

And as a matter of fact, it usually doesn't come in the way that we think it's going to come or the way that we may want it to come. As a matter of fact, I heard about a young man. He was going to marry a young woman, and he wanted her to meet his mother. And he said, you know what I'm going to do? He said, I'm going to take the woman I'm marrying, and I'm going to take two other women, and I'm going to let them all meet my mother, and I'm going to ask her what she thinks. So he brings the three women to his mother's house, and he said, here they are, and the mother starts talking to all three of the women. And he says, well, Mom, let me ask you something. Which one of the three women do you think I'm going to marry? And his mother said, the redhead in the middle. He said, you're right, how did you know that?

And the mother said, because I don't like her. And it kind of reminds me of many of the revivals that I've seen in the past, many of the revivals that I've studied, where people think it's going to start a certain way, and it ends up becoming completely different. As a matter of fact, many of the revivals that have happened, I think it was Cotton Mather in the United States, and Jonathan Edwards, and many of these other folks, I've heard some of their churches actually kick them out, or they wouldn't allow them to preach in their churches. So they did an open-air revival. They spoke to the people who weren't in the churches.

Well, isn't that exactly what we need? I think one of the big things with the revival that's coming now, and we've talked about this, is a lot of people for so long in churches, or like you said, the Billy Graham revivals, where everybody would say, hey, repeat this prayer after me. And then a thousand people would get saved, and then who knew whatever happened to those people afterwards? And that worked out really well, I think, for a lot of people.

Some of those people, I'm sure it stuck. Some of those people became disciples. But to become a real disciple, I think it involves following up with the people after they get saved, after they decide to give their life to Christ.

So you make sure, number one, not only that they stick with it, but that they can win other people to Christ as well. And I know you have a small group as well, Robbie, but one of the things that we were talking about last night is that in a small group setting, there may be something that you can get that you're not able to get from just listening to a preacher preach in church. And that's where you're able to have the interaction, and where you're able to say, hey, I'm dealing with this problem, maybe this sin problem, or I'm having a tough time with my marriage, or I'm having a tough time with my children, what do you guys think? And you're able to talk about it with other people.

But what do you think? Well, when you were commenting earlier about if you've got a fire going on at your church, you don't have to tell anybody, you know, that they come running. Well, it reminded me of, you know, when I got my leg crushed, and I think I've told this story on your show before, then when they brought me to Baptist Hospital in the middle of the night, they had gotten my word, my wife had called our Sunday school class. And so there was about 40 of them there waiting on me at like two in the morning, you know. And so the ambulance driver, the nurse that were attending me there were like, man, who are all these people out here? And I said, oh, that's my Sunday school class. And I go, you must go to, and I didn't say this, they said it to me.

They said, you must go to that Calvary Baptist Church, because when one of you guys show up, you bring a crowd. Right? And so there was the perfect example of what I think Cracker Barrel has come upon the secret ingredient.

If you go by, if you go down the highway these days, the secret ingredient is what? It's care. Care.

Right. Do you care? Like when I heard you talking about your friend just, you know, 15 minutes ago as we were setting up, you know, what the secret ingredient in Mike Zwick's Bible study is? You care about those people, right? You love those people, and you ask God to get involved in their lives.

And when I think back to the Welsh Revival or anybody, I would guarantee you that you could put a big billboard up. Here's the secret ingredient to revival. Right. Care. Right. Like, you care about other people, you care, you know, about what God wants for your community, that you really do care that things get the way that God wants them to be, not necessarily the way I want them to be. And that's why I love that line, and God, apart from you, I got nothing.

That's right. When you're saying that, one of the things that I've thought about is the power of the Holy Spirit, and I think different people probably think about this in different ways or whatever, but one of the things that I was actually listening to J.D. Greer, and one of the things that he said was, many times, listening to the Holy Spirit means saying something to somebody when it would be easier to say nothing at all.

I mean, I'll give you an example. Just recently, I was in my home a few nights ago, and I felt the Holy Spirit tell me, Mike, there's a situation that you dealt with yourself. It was back in 2015 in another situation in 2008, and it said that this situation that you dealt with is a similar situation that a young man that you've been trying to talk to may be dealing with as well, and here's the Bible verse. And so I took the Bible verse, and I said, yep, that's it, whatever, and I said, all right. I think it's helpful for the audience. You don't have to give names, but I think the Bible verse is very helpful, because when you hear this Bible verse, this isn't the one that you're just going to share with everybody.

Right, right. I mean, it would have been very awkward to share this Bible verse, but I felt like the Lord had laid it upon my heart. And it was 1 Corinthians 5.5, I believe, where somebody who was, I guess they were just living in sin, and basically what happened was it says to turn that person over to the devil, and basically, I guess, where the devil can kind of mess with them.

I guess it would lead that person to realize that they need to quit doing what they're doing, not only because it's the right thing to do, but because, man, this is tough. They're going through a tough time, and they want to return to the Lord, and I believe that's what had happened to me a couple of times, where I was doing some stuff that I shouldn't have been doing. And so when I realized that, and when I asked for repentance, and when I turned to the Lord, it was like, all of a sudden, the stuff that was kind of bothering me, and I'll give you a little bit of a detail where it was demonic. I mean, it was demonic oppression. It was stuff, you know, I remember laying in bed at night sometimes, and it felt like somebody was in my face all night. It was real stuff. It was, you know, I was in the house one time, and all of a sudden, the fireplace just started to open and close. I mean, you know, if you've ever seen The Exorcist, you know, I mean, it was some crazy stuff. Yeah, well, you know, the thing I think about getting back to Psalm 16, which God was just teaching me this in beautiful ways, and it says that you will multiply the sorrows, he says, of people that chase after other gods. And that sounds mean, or it may sound whatever, but it's actually phenomenally loving.

Yes. Okay, because I was at the same time reading this book called Undeliverable or something like, it was by Shelley Lance, who got put in a Turkish prison for a big drug bust, and she'd been a prostitute and all this stuff. Well, she had so much sin in her life that you can't even imagine the demonic oppression she had. You can't even imagine the sorrows that had multiplied, and if you read her book, it's like, oh my goodness. But while she's in prison, and while she's crying out for relief, right, Satan had got her right where he thought he wanted her. But then some soldiers there in Turkey smuggled a Bible into her. She started praying for a Bible.

They smuggled this Bible into her, and because of the oppression, right, she got to the place where she could hear from God. And God knows exactly what it's going to take for me to listen, you know? And sometimes it's just incredibly loving to allow the multiplying of sorrows.

Yeah, that's actually a really good point. And I think we've seen so many people over time, and I've seen this, where things are going really well, and when things are going really well, they're not really thinking much about God. As a matter of fact, there's a verse in the Old Testament where it says, give me neither poverty nor riches.

You know what I'm talking about? It says, because if I become rich, then I'll say, I did this on my own, and I'll feel like I won't know God. But it says, if I become too poor, then I may have to steal and profane the name of God.

But it says, just give me my daily bread so that I know I have you. And it's interesting, you know, everybody prays for financial blessings, and everybody prays for success. But so many times, we've seen people cry out to the Lord, not when things are going great, but a lot of times when they've fallen down and when things are rough, because when you're that far down, you only have one place to look, and that's up.

I'll give you an example of a story. Christopher Yuan. I've talked about him before. But his parents were both Christians, and they came to the United States—I believe they were from China or from somewhere in Asia—and they became born-again Christians on fire for God. And I think he was raised in a Christian household, and when he grew up, he became very successful. He actually was going to medical school, and when he was in medical school, he found out that if he sold drugs, he could make a lot more money. So he dropped out of medical school, and he was just making beaucoup of money, and he was a smart guy.

He figured it out. Well, during this time, Christopher Yuan decided, he said, well, I found out, Mom and Dad, that I'm gay. And he started to live the homosexual lifestyle, started sleeping around with all these men, all this other stuff. And his mother kept praying for him, praying for him, praying for him. And then one day, his mother said, God, I want you to save my son by whatever means necessary. Well, right after that, he actually got busted for drugs, got put away into federal prison.

And when he was in prison, right, he got saved. So it's interesting because the Bible says that the Lord rebukes those who he loves. Kind of going back to what you were saying, it's like, no, I want you to bless me, Lord.

I want you to whatever. But a lot of times when he's blessing you, you know, you're not looking to him. And maybe that's part of what's been going on in this past year in this country where, you know, if we've needed a doctor's care, we just went to a doctor. If we wanted to learn something, we went to the university.

If we wanted money, we just, you know, we went to work and everything was fine. And now all of a sudden that God is shaking things in America where things are tougher and tougher for us. And I think people are crying out to God. People are looking at God.

Matter of fact, I was looking at, and this was not a Christian newspaper or anything like that, but something came out and it said that the biggest age group of people who are looking for God or looking for purpose or looking for religion right now are in their 20s. And we would have thought, you know, two or three years ago, we never would have thought that would have happened. But last Saturday I had an opportunity to interview Alex McFarland. At the same time, these ladies, actually one of them, a friend of mine, had written a book on 9-11, Remembering 9-11. And so Alex, although he was touting another event, he goes, well, man, I'll never forget what happened to me on 9-11.

I was like, what? And he goes, well, the Billy Graham Association and I were in a relationship at that point in time. And they asked me to come to New York for 9-11. And they stationed me right outside Wall Street, like as the people were coming out of Wall Street that day on 9-11, or the day after, whatever. They're coming out of the trading place, whatever is on Wall Street.

It shows what I know. So anyway, he said, all of a sudden the Holy Spirit just came on me and he started saying, are you ready for what's going to happen? And he led an actual revival right there. He said every single person that came, they would come out in waves and then he would preach to them. And nobody would cross the crosswalk.

They would just stay there. And because God had gotten their complete attention, right, then all of a sudden here was this revival. You know, obviously an awakening, not a revival, but these people were coming to Christ right there, coming out of Wall Street that day.

He said there wasn't a hand that didn't go up around me. And so it's an interesting thing that God really knows what it's going to take. And it's one of the reasons I've always loved prison ministries that give Bibles for prisoners, CLI, Prison Alliance, that kind of stuff. Because, man, here's people that know they're at the bottom.

And I've often thought about it. There's the Winston-Salem Rescue Mission and it sits below the big Wachovia building. Those people that are all up there at the top of those buildings think they got it made and they think the poor guys that are sitting there down there in the Winston-Salem Rescue Mission.

Well, you know, I look at it as a completely different perspective. I mean, most of those guys in the Winston-Salem Rescue Mission know where bottom. They're there and they're trying to find their way to God.

That's right. And the poor people that are up there that are searching after those other gods, their sorrows will be multiplied. But God will find a way to get to them. But in the meantime, it gets back to what does Robbie need to do, right? And I think Robbie needs to care. Robbie needs to care for the people that are around me, that are put in front of me, and the people of opportunity that we have to share the words that God gives us. Yeah.

Yeah. I've heard this so many times that we think that the preacher is the person. We go to church and the preacher's preaching and then we leave and then that's kind of the end of our Christian experience.

And I believe that a lot of Christians, just laymen, men and women who have been at church their whole lives, whatever, but the ones who go out afterwards and go and volunteer their time or go and share the gospel with people, whatever, that they're the ones who really get some of the biggest blessings because it is a joy to give. As a matter of fact, there was a man we were just talking about, I'm not going to mention his name, but you said something had told you to call him last night. And something had told me to call him this morning on the way over here. And he said he was really upset, things were tough, whatever, and I believe the Holy Spirit told me to say this. I said, when I've been really upset, one of the things that I've learned that has helped me to become happier or to kind of get out of my depression has been to try to help other people. It seems counterintuitive. When you're depressed, you want to help yourself.

You want to do something for yourself that's going to make you feel better or whatever, but when you try to help others, it can actually make you happier. Oh, I got a story there, one that just got in my soul I'll never, ever forget. Well, Craig McConnell was with the Ransom Heart Ministries, John Eldridge and all at Wilden Hart.

Wonderful, wonderful speaker. Well, he had cancer that would eventually take his life. He had leukemia, I believe, and it got so bad that, of course, he was running these horrible fevers, whatever. And the way he described this experience is he was in this state, you know, sort of in intensive care. His fever was running way up there and he was just screaming to God for relief. Like, his fever was up so high, had no clothes on, he was still burning up. God, give me some relief.

God, you've got to help me, you've got to help me, you've got to help me. He's screaming for relief. And this man I knew had a phenomenal relationship with Jesus, so it was just really hard to hear him describe the pain that he was in in this time. And he said, the Holy Spirit said, right now is a really good time for you to begin to pray for others. And he was like, what? He said, excuse me, I'm dying here of cancer and you want me to pray for others? He said it was the most crazy concept, he said, but I went with it.

I was like, okay. And he goes, I've got to tell you that it was the most rich prayers I have ever prayed. There he was in phenomenal pain, phenomenal fever, literally dying of leukemia. And he's praying for John. Who knows who all he prayed for that day. But he said, within 20 minutes of his beginning to pray in this state, that not only did he feel the power of these prayers, but man, he was like, I'm good.

Wow. That God knew exactly what it is that you're describing. That there is something to us that can supersede. And I've always said that it's like one of the keys, you know, God says he's going to give you the keys to the kingdom. You know, I like the idea of getting the keys, being a car guy. Right, right. The keys to the Thunderbird, whatever.

Yeah. So what I discovered is you can't get stuff for yourself so easy, but you can really get stuff for other people. Here's another story real quick. I needed a wrecker for the Jesus labor love, a single mom that was broken down someplace in Lexington, Kentucky. And there was only one wrecker driver within 50 miles. And the place that was willing to fix it was a Christian guy. And he goes, man, I'll be happy to fix the car for you, but you've got to get it towed over here. And the only tow driver is the furthest thing from a Christian on the planet Earth.

So good luck with getting him to tow this car. Yeah. So I call this guy knowing it.

Right. But I got the keys to the Lincoln man. I mean, I said, sir, I've got this single mom. She's in desperate need.

She needs her car so she can get to work. And he goes, well, why in the world would I ever do that? You're out of your mind. Why would you even call me? And I was like, because we really need your help.

God needs your help in this situation, this lady's. And he showed me out for 10 minutes. Okay. He told me all the reasons he couldn't do it.

Okay. And then, you know, he says, because I didn't hang up, I just said, okay, well, I just feel like God's saying that you'll do this. He goes, if I told this lady's call, will you shut up and will you never call me again? So he told the lady's car, well, I tell the story on the air and I mentioned the name of the record driver. Well, this lady calls me on the air and says, you know, I know that guy and I got to tell you, man, you need to you need to tell him. I forget whatever it was, but she had me call him just to bless him that she was going to pay for the record or whatever.

And when I called the guy, he goes, oh no, not you again. I've never forgotten it. But we do. Speaking of which, I bet if you're listening, you know, you would like to know Jesus.

Yeah. Matter of fact, I've got a quote by Gypsy Smith and he said, if you want to see a revival, he said, go home, lock yourself in your room, kneel down in the middle of the floor. And with a piece of chalk, draw a circle around yourself there on your knees, pray fervently and brokenly that God would start a revival within that circle.

And that's what we need to do as far as the revival. And if if you've never cried out to Jesus, just cry out to Jesus. Ask Jesus to show himself to you.

We have we have Muslims all over the world. Jesus is coming to them in dreams and visions. We just just seek him, seek him out with all your heart. It says in the Old Testament, you will find me when you search for me with all of your heart. And we ask today that you just search for Jesus. Not for God.

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