SENIOR ADULTS AND SPIRITUAL AWAKENING
WHAT SHOULD SENIOR ADULTS ENVISION HAPPENING IF GOD SENDS REVIVAL AND AWAKENING?
While earlier Revivals and Awakenings were spearheaded by young people praying for revival, it is a magnificent challenge for Senior Adults today to be the ones used to spark the next Great Awakening.
If we genuinely connect with God in the interest of revival and awakening, what kind of expectation should the pray-ers have? It would be easy for Senior Adults to simply be praying for a return to the “Golden Age” of our denomination when numerical summaries were gratifying instead of painful. It is doubtful that God would want to get on that sentimental bandwagon to restore the “good old days” for us. In truth, they were never as good as we tend to envision them The revivals in the Old Testament were vast and extensive in their impact.
Kings and Kingdoms stood or fell on the basis of the revivals. Nations were delivered at the hand of God when His people “cried unto the Lord.” Senior Adults who are alive today may have seen effective crusades, some individual church revivals where large numbers came to Christ, but Revival that Ushers in an Awakening they have not seen. This is the reason it is difficult for us to envision what we are asking God to do.
If God is able to do “according to his power that is at work within us,” (Eph. 3:20, 21) we should expect that we are asking for more than His blessing on a series of meetings or a few special events. Real revival in the church will transform us from religious formalities to dynamic, life-changing realities. No part of society will remain untouched by God when His people experience real revival.
What cannot be accomplished through slick marketing, mass media, political reform,legal maneuvers, and hyper-management will be accomplished by God by His sovereign intervention. The moral and spiritual free-fall of this nation can be broken in a short time. The lapse in spiritual attention and power being experienced by most churches and denominations can be reversed when real revival comes. Such action on God’s part will usher in the Awakening for which our hearts yearn immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine.
For that to happen, such praying will have to be a primary focus of our lives. It cannot be an incidental side-issue in our walk with God. It cannot be a “side-bar” as a little newsclip on the side of a newspaper. Such praying will have to be front-page, bold, headline, attention getting action in our deepest heart of hearts. If God should call us to that kind of prayer, we need to be prepared to pay the price. The price of not praying and seeing revival is greater than the price of praying.
Our thanks to Don Moore and the Arkansas Task Force on Prayer, Revival and Awakening
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