Today on Living on the Edge, Chip welcomes guest pastor John Dickerson. Moses prayed and it changed his nation. Nehemiah wept and prayed and it brought revival to his nation. During the Third Great Awakening, one of the leaders of it said, "This there has never been a spiritual awakening in any location that did not begin in united prayer." I'm Dave Drui, and this is Living on the Edge with Chip Ingram. We're in a series called Hearts on Fire: How God Sparks Revival with Chip's friend and guest teacher, Pastor John Dickerson.
So far, John has shown us that revival starts by reviving our love for God. And that there's no lasting revival without repentance. Today, he turns to what comes next: prayer—not polite, going through the motions prayer, but the kind of earnest, persistent prayer that has marked every great awakening in history. If your prayer life has felt more like routine than relationship lately, this message is for you. Here's John with a message titled "Prayer That Brings Revival." In our lifetimes, we are witnessing a supernatural battle for the minds and the souls of our neighbors and our nation.
The stakes are incredibly high, and and the biggest thing Satan wants in your life is for you to be distracted from that. He wants you to not be in the battle. Will you step into the spiritual battlefield? Where the football analogy falls short is that we are not in a game. Not even a high-stakes game.
We're in a battle of life or death. Where people will either have eternal life or eternal death, and in this life, people will either be freed from the lies of the enemy or they'll be held captive. And we've seen throughout world history when nations do not have Christianity, the amount of genocide, abuse, slavery, so many things that we take for granted that we call human rights disappear when Christianity disappears.
Now I'll just admit something personal. Maybe it's a guy thing. I don't know what it is. It's not a guy thing because my wife Mel loves these movies too. I love stories and movies about the struggle between good and evil, and I love watching them and enjoying the story, but also kind of viewing it through the lens of the spiritual struggle of good and evil.
One of my favorite movies in that category is called The Book of Eli. And now, if you're not into action, adventure, or violence, you might not like it. But if you're, if that stuff, you know, doesn't bother you, you might enjoy it. This is a scene in the movie where the protagonist has been surrounded. It's one of these post-apocalyptic movies.
You know, there's no electricity, and modern civilization has gone away, and humans kind of revert. To these gangs, these tribes that roam around, killing people, destroying, and there are some people that don't just kill and steal for their sustenance. There's others who actually just take pleasure in killing. I tell you that because in Exodus chapter seventeen, God's people encountered essentially the ancient version of this. It was a tribe called the Amalekites, descendants of a guy named Amalek.
They were a fierce nomadic tribe that lived in the desert region there of the Dead Sea. They made it their livelihood to conduct frequent raids on anyone who was traveling through or settling in the area. They would plunder the goods, they would kill for pleasure, and it was one of the greatest insults in Israelite culture to be called a friend of Amalek. Because these people were just so violent, so cruel.
Well, when the Israelites entered that region after God led them through the Red Sea and they escaped slavery in Egypt, the warriors of Amalek see this huge group of over a million people, unarmed, and they realize this is the perfect opportunity to raid this group, both for profit and for pleasure. And we're told in Exodus 17, verse 8, that the Amalekites came and attacked the Israelites at Rephidim.
Now, here's what I want to ask you: as you imagine, you know you've run from your home, you have kind of what you can hold, and you've got your family, and you're trying to live in the desert. And now, all of a sudden, here come these these murderers who want to kill you and take all your stuff. When you see evil advancing, what can you do? What can you do when forces bigger than you threaten your loved ones, threaten your life? Or in the case of the Israelites here, the Amalekites wanted to wipe out their entire race and their entire civilization.
We asked this on week one when David faced off with Goliath. Have you ever felt that way? You ever feel like there's just forces of evil against you? What can you do?
Well, the story continues. Moses, the leader of God's people at the time, said to Joshua, "Choose some of our men and go out to fight the Amalekites. I'll stand on top of the hill with the staff of God in my hands." So Joshua fought the Amalekites as Moses had ordered. Moses, Aaron, and Her—that's a guy's name—went to the top of the hill. As long as Moses held up his hands, what was he doing with his hands up?
He was in prayer. As long as Moses held up his hands in prayer, the Israelite army would be winning. But whenever he would lower his hands, shoulders are very weak muscles. If you actually try to hold something over your head for a long time, and so Moses' arms start getting tired, and as they would come down, the Amalekites would start winning. The fate of the nation.
Hung on Moses' prayers, on Moses' persistence in prayer, on Moses' choice to pray when he didn't feel like it, on Moses' choice to pray through pain and through sacrifice. Verse twelve: When Moses' hands grew tired, they took a stone and they put it under him so he could sit down. Then Aaron and her held his hands up, one on one side, one on the other, so that Moses' hands remained steady until sunset. As a result, Joshua overcame the Amalekite army with the sword. What can you do when forces bigger than you threaten your loved ones, your life, even your civilization?
Here's the answer. Prayer can deliver your loved ones from disaster. Prayer can even deliver your nation from disaster. It's a remarkable story. This hostile tribe of Amalekites—they moved in on the wrong people group.
They thought, "Oh, it's payday. We're just going to go kill these unarmed people." Little did they know, these were the people of God. Little did they know that though it looked like an easy human victory, it was an impossible victory because God was on their side, and God's power was accessed through prayer. During the third Great Awakening, one of the leaders of it said, "This there has never been a spiritual awakening in any country or any location that did not begin in united prayer." You get a faithful remnant of believers who are praying spiritual prayers. People who move beyond praying for physical needs—that's okay.
You can pray for those, but who spend the majority of their time wrestling in prayer for spiritual needs, claiming the territory of Hendricks County and Hamilton County and Boone County, claiming that territory for Christ. Praying against demonic forces, praying for leaders in churches, praying for political leaders, praying for school teachers, praying for the population, doing everything we can like Joshua did with the sword, but also praying as if it all depends on God. At the end of this whole thing, we're told this: Moses built an altar. To give all the glory to God for the victory, he called the altar, "The Lord is my banner." If there were a banner over your life, what would it be? Flags and banners, incredibly significant.
What's the flag or the banner over your life? The Lord is my banner. I live my life under Him and His blessing and His way. And Moses said, "Because hands were lifted up." To the throne of the Lord, or as some translations say, against the throne of the Lord, the Lord will be at war against the Amalekites from generation to generation. Great Awakening leaders in the first and second Great Awakening they loved this passage, and they would talk about violence in prayer.
And their idea was this: that that we should be praying. They don't mean physical violence. Don't misunderstand me. But what they meant is there should be an agonizing spiritually of how desperate we are for God's victory. I mean, do we really believe that there's no hope for our neighbors and nation other than Jesus?
God forgive us that we think a political party could deliver us from the lies of the enemy. Forgive us for thinking that science or human progress could deliver us. Christ is the only hope, and when we really get that, then we pray with an an urgency. And the Great Awakening leaders would would preach and write about violence in prayer, meaning God, I'm not going to leave your throne. Until you deliver my nation, I'm not going to leave your throne until you open the eyes of this person who needs salvation.
I'm going to agonize. I'm going to be like Moses, who was there all day. And if I need a couple other people to hold my arms up and keep me praying for that person I love who doesn't yet know Christ, then I'm going to find those friends and I'm going to say, "Pray with me every day for his salvation." There was a vigor and a passion to the Great Awakening leaders. You're listening to Living on the Edge with Chip Ingram and guest teacher John Dickerson. We'll get back to the message in just a moment, but first, did you know that you can take Living on the Edge with you wherever you go?
Download the free Chip Ingram app from your app store, and you'll have today's program, video messages, and daily discipleship tools right in your pocket, ready whenever you are.
Well, now here's John continuing today's message. John Wesley is known in theologian circles for you know being this kind of buttoned up, very formal theologian. But here's the deal: if you read about the Great Awakening, where John Wesley went, people prayed with such emotion and such passion that he actually faced a ton of criticism from the churches, from from the apathetic Christians who would say, "Oh, why would you guys be weeping in prayer?" Why would someone fall down after praying for three hours for the salvation of their coworker or their child? And it was one of the biggest criticisms that they faced. There were times when people would actually faint from having prayed with so much urgency and so much passion.
Now the point is not emotionalism. The point is not to glorify you know who's being the most dramatic while they're praying. But the point is to be So absorbed, your whole being in the work of God in the unseen realm that your emotions get involved. I mean, we saw this with football, right? We care about it, so our emotions get involved.
If we care about a football game that much, shouldn't our emotions get involved? And so, revival is not emotionalism, and it's not glorifying emotions. But when your love for God is truly revived, and when you really start to see the world through Jesus' eyes of darkness and light, death and life, evil and good, souls that are enslaved by demons, and that Christ is the only path to freedom and life, it. Will affect your emotions. Three observations about revival prayer: First, is that revival prayer is passionate.
You see this all throughout Scripture. Nehemiah, when he brings revival to the city of Jerusalem, it begins with him weeping in prayer. Nehemiah chapter one. Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane, as he's agonizing and he's wrestling through the capital R greatest revival of all human history to restore life back to humans, to restore us back to God. What does he say to the other disciples?
He says, "My soul is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death." You will feel deep things if you start to get God's heart about what's happening in the world and in your life.
So again, this is not glorifying emotion. This is glorifying God. But it's willing. You know, David writes about this. If people call me foolish because I'm so passionate about God, I'm willing for people to call me foolish.
I will throw away my dignity. Because what I care about more is having the heart of God, and through God as a Father, saying boldly, "Enter the throne." I'm going to attack the throne with prayers. There's going to be an urgency and a unconditionally loved, childlike insistence on God. You've got to do this for our nation. There's no other hope.
You've got to do this in my family. There's no other hope. You've got to do this in me. There's no other hope. Most of us are not currently praying the kinds of prayer that change nations.
Most of us are not currently praying the kinds of prayer that shake the gates of hell. Most of us are not currently living lives that really threaten the enemy and what he's doing. It's not because we're incapable. The moment you believed in Jesus, you were filled with the Holy Spirit. In Christ, Peter says, "You have everything necessary for life and godliness.
You've been given everything you need to shake the gates of hell. You've been given everything you need to pray prayers that move hearts and change nations." But the reason we're not praying that way is because we haven't made an effort. We haven't really learned how. You can learn this week to pray with power that shakes the gates of hell and advances Christ's kingdom in your school, in your family, in your workplace, in your city. Spiritual prayers, prayers that prevail over Satan and his schemes, prayers that prevail over sin, prayers that see Christ's kingdom triumph.
Christ's ministry, you realize, was based on prayers like this. He was always praying, always getting a way to pray. Why? Because that's where he drew his power from. And if you set out to be part of revival and you don't have a spiritual discipline of prayer, you will get really discouraged because you're on a supernatural battlefield fighting.
With human strategy and energy, you need the power that God provides to you through prayer, and such prayer is God's desire for you. If you think prevailing prayer was only for the super Christians or the heroes of the Bible, well, Scripture says otherwise. Scripture says that prayers that moved nations were prayed by people just like you and me. I want to show you a passage of scripture that was written by James, James the disciple, those inner three—Peter, who we talked about last week, James, and John. James describes Elijah the prophet in the Old Testament praying to change the climate of his nation.
Elijah actually prayed for a drought. Elijah had an insight that the only way there would be revival was that the people would have to hurt a little bit. I am not suggesting you pray this way, unless God leads you to. But look at James five sixteen. It says this: the prayer of a righteous person is powerful and effective.
How would you like for your prayers to be powerful? How would you like for your prayers to be effective? Think about this: What if God said yes to everything you prayed these next seven days? How different would the world be? How many people who you know and you're not sure if they're Christians would become Christians because this week you pray for them by name?
How many institutions where you just realize like, wow, a demonic ideology has overtaken that university or that place or that. Group or that party or that city, how many a week from now would be set free because you prayed powerfully and effectively?
Now, I am not guaranteeing that God's going to do it in a week or on our timeline, but He tells us this is a promise breathed by the Holy Spirit, inspired into Scripture. A promise we can claim that the effective and fervent prayer. Of the righteous person availeth much or accomplishes much. Who's the righteous person?
Well, the righteous person, very simply, first, it's the person who's believed in Christ's death for the forgiveness of their sins, salvation by faith. That makes you positionally righteous in God's eyes. After you place your faith in Jesus, He looks at you and He sees the righteousness of Jesus. But secondly, just like we learned last week. It's a believer who has confessed the sins that you're aware of in your life.
That gives you practical righteousness or relational righteousness. And this is backed up right in the text. If you study James five sixteen, says we need to confess our sins. The Lord's prayer begins with "Forgive us our trespasses." Our prayer becomes powerful when we've confessed our sins. That's why in the revival sequence we get urgent and dependent.
We repent.
Now we can pray. As you're practicing repentance for relationship, you're now qualified to pray powerful prayers because the flow between you and God is not blocked. His power is going to surge into your life. And then James, inspired by the Holy Spirit, perhaps knew that we would read a verse like this and say, "Well, maybe that was true for heroes in the Bible, but what about me?" And so he continues and he says, "Elijah was a human being." Just like you, even as we are, Elijah prayed earnestly that it would not rain, and as a result of his prayers, it did not rain on the land for three and a half years. This is called climate change.
Elijah changed the climate with prayer, earnest prayer. But Elijah's heart was this: he knew that the nation was headed into judgment. They weren't repenting, and he knew they were so comfortable, they were so complacent that they almost needed an economic downturn to shake them awake. Here is the reality: our choice as the remnant of God's people in this nation, we can choose to turn to God while things are still good, or we can wait for things to get worse. And I'm not suggesting like Elijah that we need to pray that things get worse.
That was how God led him to pray. But then get this: three years later, it had worked, and the people of God repented and they turned to God. Today's message, prayer that brings revival, comes from guest teacher John Dickerson here on Living on the Edge. And to learn more about what John just shared, including a small group video study and more, go to therevivalproject dot org slash Living on the Edge. And if you'd like every message delivered the moment it's released, subscribe to the Living on the Edge podcast wherever you listen, or to hear Chip's sermons in their full original format, subscribe to the Chip Ingram Sermon podcast.
Moses needed Aaron and her to help hold up his arms, and most of us could use a little help building a prayer life that lasts too. Chip Ingram's "Growing Deeper in Christ: A Three Hundred Sixty Five Day Journey to True Discipleship" was created to help you build a walk with God that keeps growing deeper, one day and one reading at a time. New this November, there's also a handsome leather bound edition.
So as you start your Christmas list, think of someone. Pray for often, and give them a gift that could spark a fresh fire all year long. And just so you know, when you purchase books from Living on the Edge, you're helping make resources like this available for someone else. Get your copies of Growing Deeper in Christ today at Living on the Edge dot org slash offers. John reminded us that revival has always started with a faithful few who refuse to stop praying.
In a way, our ministry. Partners are a lot like Aaron and her, holding up this work so God's word can keep advancing. Would you stand with us today? Give at livingontheedge.org or call us at triple eight three three three six zero zero three. To mail your gift, write to Living on the Edge, P.O.
Box three thousand seven, Suwanee, Georgia three zero zero two four.
Well, now let's join Chip Ingram to close out today's message. Thanks, Dave. You know, John hit on something that I've been around a lot of Christian leaders in my life, and if I want to start a conversation where even the most committed Christians and leaders I know start to squirm a little bit, it's like, hey, let's talk about our prayer life. You know, I don't mean this lightly. I just mean to tell you, I don't think there's anything that's more difficult or more challenging than to keep a heart that.
Tender to discipline yourself to where when you're praying you're not going through the motions you're not just reciting a list. Given over time, it's one of the greatest evidences I found when I'm slipping away from real intimacy and dependency. It shows up first and foremost in my prayer life, and I love the picture that John gave us. You know Moses with his arms up, and he's got you know his two buddies holding the arms up, and when the arms Were up, the battle's winning. When the arms came down, they were losing.
I've learned this from theology. I've learned it from books, but I will tell you, the most I've learned about the power. I'm not talking about saying words. The power of intercessory prayer that transforms things is from my wife. I have watched her and learned from her a believing prayer of a righteous woman of a righteous man that literally God uses to break through strongholds and lost people and addictions.
And I've seen more amazing things happen through her prayers and learning from her.
So here's the word for. You. Let's get back to praying honestly. You get honest. You get raw, and then believe.
He told you, if you ask anything in my name, I'll do it according to God's will.
So you know it's God's will for people in your family to come to Christ. You know it's God's will for you to live a holy life. You know it's God's will for you to be generous with your life, your time, and your money. And here's the promise. He said, draw near to God, and He'll draw near to you.
So your assignment: set your watch for five minutes and pray with intensity that you haven't prayed in years. And as you take that step toward God, He will take steps toward you. Join us next time when we continue our series "Hearts on Fire: How God Sparks Revival" right here on Living on the Edge. Today's program is produced and sponsored by Living on the Edge.
