The true man of God is heartsick, grieved at the worldliness of the Church…grieved at the toleration of sin in the Church, grieved at the prayerlessness in the Church. He is disturbed that the corporate prayer of the Church no longer pulls down the strongholds of the devil.
– Leonard Ravenhill –
In the Irish Revival of 1859, people became so weak that they could not get back to their homes. Men and women would fall by the wayside and would be found hours later pleading with God to save their souls. They felt that they were slipping into hell and that nothing else in life mattered but to get right with God… To them eternity meant everything. Nothing else was of any consequence. They felt that if God did not have mercy on them and save them, they were doomed for all time to come.
– Oswald J. Smith –
Revivals begin with God’s own people; the Holy Spirit touches their heart anew, and gives them new fervor and compassion, and zeal, new light and life, and when He has thus come to you, He next goes forth to the valley of dry bones… Oh, what responsibility this lays on the Church of God! If you grieve Him away from yourselves, or hinder His visit, then the poor perishing world suffers sorely!
– Andrew Bonar –
The invasion of the Church by the world is a menace to the extension of Christ’s Kingdom. In all ages conformity to the world by Christians has resulted in lack of spiritual life and a consequent lack of spiritual vision and enterprise. A secularized or self-centered Church can never evangelize the world.
– John R. Mott –
The main reason we should be praying about revival is that we are anxious to see God’s name vindicated and His glory manifested. We should be anxious to see something happening that will arrest the nations, all the peoples, and cause them to stop and think again.
– Martyn Lloyd-Jones –
It is a want of a revived godliness in our church at home which prevents our hoping for any great success abroad. Ah brethren we must till our own vineyards better, or else God will not make us successful in driving the plow across the broad acres of the continents….Just as the anointing oil was first poured on Aaron’s head, and then went to the skirts of the garment, so must the Holy Spirit be poured on us, and then shall it go to the utmost borders of the habitable earth.
– Charles Spurgeon –
The Church today needs a revival…There is plenty of missionary sentiment; but little of that practical self-denial and burning zeal which impelled the Moravians to go forth without script or purse, to carry the banner of the Cross to the dark places of the earth.
– Edwin Hodder –
The Conquest of the Cross, A Record of Missionary Work throughout the World
There is need of a great revival of spiritual life, of truly fervent devotion to our Lord Jesus, of entire consecration to His service. It is only in a church in which this spirit of revival has at least begun, that there is any hope of radical change in the relation of the majority of our Christian people to mission work.
– Andrew Murray –
Water cannot rise any higher than its source, nor can the mission overseas be any stronger than the supporting church at home. A sick church can never save a dying world…Throughout history, revival at home and missions abroad have always gone together.
– J. Herbert Kane –