Revival – The Great Need Of Today

By Andrew Murray

    What we need to pray and labor for, first of all, is that the church of true believers may be revived. What the world needs above everything is not more men of the ordinary type of Christians – but better men, stronger in faith and holier in life, men intensely devoted to Christ and His service, and ready to sacrifice all for the salvation of souls.

    When God's Spirit is poured out upon the church and men and women who are now struggling on in feebleness are clothed with the garments of praise and the power of the Spirit – the world will soon share the blessing. They will be ready to give themselves to God's work at home or abroad. Their word and witness will be in power. Nominal Christians will be judged by the power of their example, and will confess that God is with them. And the heathen world will, in the increased numbers and the burning fervor of the messengers of a quickened church, share in the blessing.

    A revival among believers is the great need of our day. A revived church is the only hope of a dying world. A true revival means nothing less than a revolution – casting out the spirit of worldliness and selfishness, and making God and His love triumph in the heart and life.

    As every birth has its travails and its pangs, so this entrance of a new Divine life in power into a church must needs be preceded and accompanied by the pains of conviction and confession, by the earnest searching of heart in which sin is discovered, is held up to shame, and condemned. In such a work of grace many will learn how little of truth or power there has been either in their conversion or their spiritual life. They will see things that they tolerated to be vile sin, that nothing but the blood can wash away and the power of Christ can overcome.

    They will no longer wonder at some speaking of the need of a second conversion: the experience of many will teach them that the change is even greater. They will see that now for the first time they truly know what the power of grace is, what the blessedness of God's love, and what the joy of a heart given to His service. And work for Christ will be the spontaneous fruit of God's Spirit coming on them.

    As one here and another there – this is ordinarily God's way – begins to see what really is God's will concerning His church, and what the cause of the failure, and what the path of restoration, and what the certainty of the visitation of His grace – prayer will become more urgent and believing, and the blessing will come.