We can be ready is the message. When, how, why, we don’t the answers to and probably a good thing. However, with a growing sense of God’s heart for a fresh outpouring of the Holy Spirit, across our nation, this will be an all too brief look at intensified prayer, as one of the elements consistently present whenever researchers going searching for the answer ‘how’?
The briefest of surveys of the historical accounts of breakouts of revival, always reveals what I’m simply calling intensified prayer as a significant factor. Prayer is the constant factor, which precedes any fresh outpouring of the Holy Spirit on a scale, which attracts the later recognition of ‘revival’. Typically, there’s an increase in both the frequency and intensity of collective and individual prayer, although one usually leads to the other.
My favourite story relates to two sisters Peggy and Christine Smith and the stirrings of The Lewis Awakening, which is also referred to as The Hebridean Revival 1949-1952. Peggy was completely blind, Christine was bent over with arthritis and they were both burdened due to the depressed spiritual state of the church in their village of Barvas. Wherever your starting point is, if you want to research the revival, which subsequently broke out, the evidence will take you back to these two sisters, just the two of them, who started to pray in their small cottage. If you want to know more, I’ve written a brief account around (LINK HERE) as well as noted a few other sources (LINK HERE)
Opening Our Doors To God is our own prayer initiative, which began in 2022. This followed my visit to the Isle of Lewis.
“Hello I’m looking for a Donald John Smith. I don’t know if you can help me, as he’ll be quite elderly now and may not even still be alive, but I understand he lived here in Shader.”
“Do you mind me asking why you’d like to meet him?”
“It’s in connection with the revival, which took place on the Isle of Lewis.”
“In that case you’d better come in, Donald John Smith was my father.”
That was how I met Sandra Smith.
I came away from that meeting, with a very clear sense the Lord had been ahead of me all along and I had a part to play in calling people to pray, having only recently started Opening Our Doors To God. On her wall she had a photograph of her dad standing alongside Gerald Coates taken at Wembley Stadium in 1997. I since looked up this interesting little clip of him being interviewed by Gerald Coates on that occasion: Youtube Link here you’ll hear him, talking about revival where he says ‘in a revival there’s a price to pay, in revival there must be prayer and there must be tears, tears of repentance’.
Sandra shared with me a vision she had received in 2004: of many lights, beginning again from Lewis, but coming on across the UK. The lights were identified as different groups of people joining together to pray. As they did so they burst into flame, they came on fire. I’m not pretending we’ve added a great deal since 2022, but I see it as adding more fuel to the fire. As it happens we have been massively encouraged by the significant increase of people giving their lives to follow Jesus, across the country.
Three years is not long for this and with Sandra we reflected on the vision Jean Darnall shared in a visit to the UK back in 1997, the summary of which is here:
The British Isles were covered in mist (a green haze), and Jean saw lots of pinpoints of light piercing through. As she looked, they turned out to be fires breaking out all over the nation, from Scotland in the North, to Lands End in the South. As these God-lit fires were joined together they burned brighter. As she continued to pray, she saw lightning and explosions of fire and then rivers of fire flowing from North to South; from Scotland, Ireland, and Wales into England and some of the streams of fires crossed the channel into Europe, whilst others stopped.
These fires were pockets of people who had been made intensely hungry for the word of God and for New Testament Christianity, those who read the book of Acts and wondered ‘where is this church?’ These people would come together to pray and extra meetings would have to be laid on to accommodate all the people. Groups would be formed, prayer groups, Bible study groups – some would meet in churches, others would be in homes: some converted, others unconverted who were searching and seeking.
Jean asked the Lord about the vision and had the distinct impression that there would be two moves of God.
- Renewal In the Church
The first would be the renewal of Christian faith and fullness of the Holy Spirit within the church.
- National Awakening and World Vision
This renewal of life in the church would spread outside resulting in a public awakening. The second part of the vision was the lightning striking around the nation. This move of God would be a national spiritual awakening, which would move into every level of the nation’s life; on the campuses, universities, colleges, schools etc., into the media and in the government. There would be so many conversions that it would actually change the character of the nation of Britain and determine the future move of God in Europe. Jean continued that there would not be a part of the nation’s life that will not feel the impact of the spiritual awakening when God releases it to the country.
You may already have a heart to see a fresh outpouring of the Holy Spirit, but for whatever reason have not begun to intentionally start praying to see this take place. My observation is people come to the place of recognising we need God to do what we cannot do ourselves from various places, so here’s a few to consider and whilst you read through them, ask the Lord if this is where you are right now and this needs to be your gateway?
Acknowledging your own desperation: Jesus tells us ‘without me you can do nothing’ (John 15:5) so recognise this, take him at his word and ask him to do more.
Seeking God’s face: ‘If my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and I will forgive their sin and I will heal their land.’ (2 Chronicles 7:14)
Thirsty for more of God: Jon Tyson states it as it is: ‘God comes to those who want him’. The God of grace and mercy doesn’t barge his way in where he’s not wanted. It’s obvious, isn’t it? Jesus gives us this promise: Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.’ (Matthew 5:6)
Recognising your need for repentance: ‘Here I am! I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with that person, and they with me.’ (Rev 3:20)
So many of the anecdotes, which connect the prayers of God’s people with the outbreak of revival start with us – individuals recognising our own need of God.
Have you tried God? That was the challenging question Peggy and Christine Smith put to their Minister on the Isle of Lewis in 1949 and the response is still rippling out to this day. Of course, I hear many Ministers even (tragically) rationalising such questions into the sidelines, but when we do this we are skating on thin ice, as John Owen states: ‘to neglect prayer is sufficient evidence of practical atheism (for he that does not pray says in his heart, “There is no God“)’. So let me repeat the question: Have you tried God?
