by H. Robb French
Jonathan Goforth prayed so fervently for a revival in China that some feared he was going insane.
“Praying Hyde” and two others prayed for twenty-one days and nights, eating and sleeping but little, and God answered by sending that great Sialkot convention and the subsequent revival.
A number of instances might be referred to in our own day when groups of people have banded together to pray till revival came, whether it took ten hours, ten days or ten years, and God has graciously answered prayer. The Lord made good unto them the words of the promise: “And shall not God avenge his own elect, which cry day and night unto him?”
We must make the necessary confessions and adjustments, to clear the channel.
But such instances are all too infrequent and too far between. Evidently we like to eat and sleep too well, or we are just too lazy! It is so much easier and quicker to precipitate a human stir by human methods than to pay the price for a Holy Ghost revival. In the next place, it is vitally important to note another fulfilled condition of these far-reaching revivals, namely: a spirit of deep humility and penitence on the part of God’s people. In the Welsh Revival the general cry was, “Lord, bend me!”
John Hyde was sorely distressed because the great outpourings of the Holy Ghost were not occurring on his field of labor. He came to the inevitable conclusion that only one thing could prevent it, and that was sin in the church.” “Since I am a part of the church,” he reasoned, “there must be sin in me.” He arose and humbly confessed in his life some point of defeat, of long standing. A spirit of contrition seized a number of others, who proceeded to make confessions and adjustments, and the great outpouring of the Holy Spirit that followed is now a well-known matter of history.
There is no cheap and easy substitute for the price to be paid for a true spiritual awakening.
All these revivals came as the result of the church and church leaders humbling themselves in the dust of humility and making the necessary confessions and adjustments, to clear the channel.