The Key to Revival

Ever since I surrendered to the call to preach, the Spirit of God has placed in my heart a continual burden and desire for revival.  I think we all understand by now that all children of God will be given burdens from the Lord to carry.  He gives them to His servants so that we bear them to Him in prayer, pray the burden with a holy passion and trust Him to carry out that burden.  Some burdens we receive of the Lord are small and short, while others are long term. I have also noticed that burdens and visions (or revelation) come together.  The burdens I have been given of the Lord have many times preceded visions or dreams.  My burden for revival has been an enduring burden.  In this modern generation, the church world has watered down the true meaning of revival.  When I speak of “Revival”, I’m not referring to a week’s worth of mechanical church meetings where a body of believers come to church every night and have church.  I’m talking about a spiritual invasion where the Almighty God of Heaven rends the Heaven’s and comes down.  Isaiah 64:1.

It was around 2004 and I hadn’t been preaching very long.  I was working for a contractor and had no clue I was about to start traveling out of town to work in Blue Ridge Georgia.  Revival was burning like a fire in my soul in those days.  I had a dream during those days and it was so strange.  It seemed like it had no significance at all!  The dream was unveiled to me like this:

The Dream

I was driving through an unfamiliar old town and came upon the town square.  You know, one of these town squares that forces you to merge and keep right and you can drive around the square in a circular motion all day if you want to.  Anyways, as I slowly made my way around the town square, I noticed to my right, on the outside of the square stood a building which was connected to many buildings adjacent to it.  What drew my attention to the building was the fact that the building front seemed to be held up or supported by pieces of metal; angle that was bolted to the sidewalk in front of the building on one end, and the other end was bolted to the front of the building about halfway up.  Also, the angled supports were painted yellow.  I was so captivated by the sight of that store front with yellow metal braces that even after I woke up from the dream, I pondered what and even why I had seen such a strange sight.

I woke up from the dream and was so puzzled as to what kind of dream I had.  Although at the time my understanding of what this should mean was unclear or even why I dreamed it was unclear, one thing was certain, I woke up knowing full-well that the Lord had given this dream to me.

A few months went by, I’m guessing.  You really don’t mark your calendar for things especially like these types of dreams you have that don’t really make sense at the time.  Not long after, I went from working in Chattanooga, TN to Blue Ridge, GA.  In those days I remember coming back to the motel room, praying and seeking the Lord; just bearing this burden and pouring out my soul to the Lord.  It was in these days the Lord really started opening me up to deeper things of His Holy Spirit and teaching me how to pray led by the Holy Spirit with burden and fervency.  I’ll never forget the week my wife and oldest daughter came to stay with me.  My oldest daughter was 4 years old.  We knelt beside the motel room bed and prayed.  The Holy Ghost fell in that little humble motel room so wonderfully that we knew we had touched Heaven.  I believe it is these types of experiences that we all need as children of God.  Not just to pray, but pray with the Spirit of God.  Not just to speak words to God, but to pray from the very depths of our hearts; pouring out our souls to the Lord and bearing our very beings before our Almighty God.

I was working for the L.E. Myers Company; a substation construction company and was sent down to work in a brand new substation being built below Blue Ridge Dam.  The Toccoa River 161Kv substation.  During this time, the burden was so intense in my soul that it was like a fire burning inside me.  Whether I was awake or asleep, this burden fire for revival was unquenchable.  I would wake up with it burning in me.  I would go to work and it would be burning in my soul during the day.  The vehement passion of revival was unescapable!  It was insatiable!  I was beside myself.  I could hardly function for it.  I could barely carry on a conversation because of it.  I knew full-well that God had placed it in me.  I had been asking God repeatedly; “Lord what does it take to see revival in America?”  Agonizing with God, I felt within my heart that, if God’s people knew what it took to see revival in a church or their nation, I truly believed that the church would do whatever it took.  So I was standing in the switchyard one day with a few other men where we had been laying the ground mat for the substation.  The Spirit of God spoke so plainly to my heart and let me know what it took; what God required to send revival to a land.  God had answered my hearts cry.  Finally I knew the key to revival! 

“IF MY PEOPLE!”  This is what the Spirit of God said so plainly to me.  I had heard this verse quoted, taught, expounded upon, preached in revivals, and prayed aloud my entire life but never got the full understanding of what it really meant.  When the Spirit spoke to me these three words, there was so much more understanding that came than just the understanding of the three words.  God can speak one word to you and when He does, you can write a book on it because there is so much life and understanding in one word from God. 

So for a nation come back to God and God heal the land is not contingent upon what the entire population of a nation does, but what God’s people do.  The Spirit of God said to me, “If My People.”  This of course is an echo from II Chronicles 7:14 where God spoke to Solomon these words:

If I shut up heaven that there be no rain, or if I command the locust to devour the land, or if I send pestilence among my people; If my people, which are called by my name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land.  Now mine eyes shall be open, and mine ears attend unto the prayer that is made in this place.

II Chronicles 7:13-15

My Job Promotion

After a few months of working in the Toccoa River substation and seeing many people come and go, the construction finally came to an end with my supervisor leaving the testing and support to myself.  But not long before this, my supervisor came to me and said “Bruce our company has a lot of work coming up in an area and we need someone to run the work for us.  It will be telecommunications work.  Fiberoptics, station managers, SCADA system upgrades, etc.  Would you be interested in running that work for us?”  I was immediately surprised and honored at the same time.  However, I told him I would need to pray about it and talk to my wife about it as well.  I immediately went to prayer and the Lord spoke so clearly to me these words “Take the job.  This job is going to prepare you for a spiritual job.”  I called my wife and told her it was the Lord’s will and we both agreed to go with God’s will although it was going to be a challenge for our family with me continuing to work out of town.

I found myself in the next month working in the Montgomery 500KV substation in Clarksville, TN.  While I was there, my boss informed me that I would be responsible for 4 small telecommunications projects that were very similar in nature.  The projects were located at Russellville, Ky 161kv substation, Russellville, Ky, 6.9Kv substation,  Franklin, Ky, 161Kv substation and Cadiz, Ky 161Kv substation.  At some point during the Montgomery 500KV Substation project, I got away for a while to travel up to Russellville, Ky to prepare for the next project.  As I was driving along Highway 79 and not really knowing exactly where I was, I drove into this old country town which had an old town square.  As you would suspect, my directions required me to drive around the town square and back out in order to get to the 161Kv Substation.  As I drove around the town square, I saw a building, that building!  The building in my dream?  Yes!  That building in my dream!  It was exactly in reality the way that I saw it in my dream.  I had never been to Russellville, Ky before!  I had never seen pictures of the town.  I had never even heard of Russellville, Ky before.  But here I was beholding in the flesh, in reality, the building I had previously seen in visions of the night when sleep cometh upon man!  It was exactly what the Lord had previously revealed to me.  I saw the store front.  I saw the yellow metal angel brackets holding up the storefront.  It was even in the exact location in the town square as it was in my dream.  As soon as I saw the building, I just about lost all awareness of my surroundings!  By this time, the dream I had was nowhere in my memory.  I stopped thinking about it, but all of a sudden, the dream came back to my remembrance as soon as I saw the building in real life.  How could it not, right?  Since I was on the clock, I went on to the substation and met up with my boss to go over the project there.  As soon as my shift was over I could not wait to go back to the town square.

Enquiring Minds Wanna Know

After work, I made a B-line to the square.  I parked far enough away from the “Yellow Braced” building so I could take photos of it.  I walked into the building and just wanted to look around and pray.  A sweet lady greeted me when I walked through the front door.  She said something like “Good evening, can I help you?”  I started to decline because I wasn’t really sure how to put into words why in the world I was in there to begin with.  So I managed to process my thoughts enough to say something like “Yes mam.  I am curious about this building.  Can you tell me about this building; what it is what it was, what is has been, what is started out to be?”  This whole time I thought the Lord was drawing attention to the building and that the building itself was the subject of importance.  She said “Well, it is our Chamber of Commerce now but it has been many things down through the years.  It has been a grocery store, a gas station, and even a funeral home at one time.”  None of that made any sense at all to me.  I was starting to question my sanity.  Did I just make all of this up in my mind?  Was my mind playing tricks on me?  I’m I even losing my mind for that matter?  I’m sure I looked at her with a look of confusion.  She pointed at a brochure rack behind me and said “why don’t you take one of those brochures right there.  It goes into detail about the history of Russellville, Ky.  I reluctantly took the brochure and said thank you and then walked out.  I sat in my company truck excited, confused, but determined I was going to get to the bottom of this thing that I knew down deep in my soul God was trying to show me.

I drove to my motel room, got down on my knees and cried out once again for the Lord to help me understand what You are trying to show me.  After I got up from praying, I sat down and started reading that brochure on the History of Russellville, Ky.  I didn’t no more get 2 paragraphs into the brochure and there it was…the answer to what God was trying to show me slapped me right in the mouth.  My jaw dropped and I felt the Holy Ghost come upon me as I read the words…Russellville is known for many things, a Historic Confederate monument, bank robbery of Jesse James, Rogues Harbor, and the site of the “Great Revival of 1800.”  

Russellville, Ky suffered from an unlawfulness that few other Kentucky Towns suffered from.  You see, the reason why Russellville was nicknamed “Rogue’s Harbor” was due to the fact that many of it’s citizens moved there to flee the law from other towns.  Russellville was not what you would call a prestigious town.  It was a town of outlaws!  Because of this, there was much spiritual darkness in the area. 

However, there was a Cumberland Presbyterian Church just outside of town called the “Red River Meeting house” pastored by a country preacher named James McGready who saw the spiritual decline of their town and refused to accept it.  They decided to come boldly before the throne of God to ask for something special; REVIVAL.  You can research it for yourself but this little country church with just a handful of members continually fasted and prayed; they sought the Lord to send revival to their little town.  They sought the Lord for well over a year for revival.  After a year of prayer and seeking God for revival, God did just that.  He sent revival to their town.  Not only to their town, but like a fire, it spread far beyond where it first ignited!  As a matter of fact, the first documented campmeeting in all of Christianity is attributed to Russellville, Ky the Great Revival of 1800.  It has been called the 2^nd great awakening which is the cause and reason why Kentucky, Tennessee, Alabama and other surrounding states are called the “Bible Belt” of America.

My Visit to the Red River Meeting House

There was only one thing on my mind from that point and that was; I must go to the Red River Meeting House!  I drove to the old church and was amazed at how humble of a site it was!  I walked into the church building and saw hardwood pews, a very modest pulpit, and a unremarkable altar.  But my goodness if that altar could talk!  What would it say!

On a placard near the side entrance, I read how the church covenanted in prayer for a change in their town.  They sacrificed their time, meals, everything!  There was nothing more important to this little church than revival.  Their people were perishing.  Their loved ones were much worse than not living for God, they were going to Hell!  It was unthinkable to them!  They were Heaven-bent on God doing something in their generation.  I wonder church, do we have that same resolve today?  When the Lord did send revival to the Red River Meeting House, it was so intense that it drew the attention of all churches in the area.  People were being saved, delivered, set free, healed, you name it.  God’s presence had come down on Russellville and dwelled there.  The Spirit of God was so pronounced that people came from other areas and attended the meetings.  They lived so far away that they pitched camp in the church yard.  There was so much going on that no one would dare miss what the Lord was doing!  It was reported that other preachers came to the revival meetings, got filled with the Holy Spirit of God, and took revival back to their churches and communities.  Just like one lit candle can light another, this church at the Red River labored in the Spirit for revival so much that their revival fire caught the entire southeast region of America on fire for God.  This is exactly what God is wanting to do in our generation.  There’s no other reason why God revealed it to me!  This is why I cannot be content with church as usual!  I don’t have time for games in the house of God.  I don’t have a tolerance for fighting, backbiting, contention, strife, divisions, and any and all other forms of foolishness that many churches are entangled in.  People are going to Hell!  They will face the torments of Hellfire and as a preacher once said, “The only answer to Hellfire is Holy Ghost Fire!”

The Key to Revival Revealed

What I finally understood is that God was giving me the answer to the question I had asked.  The Key to Revival is prayer.  Seeking God in prayer.  Desperate Prayer!  Continual prayer!  Purging Prayer!  Sanctifying Prayer!  Prayer that causes the Lord to search and purge out any darkness in the heart of man!  Prayer that desires God to search out any and all darkness in our hearts.  Any motivation: and intention of the heart that is not pure and set it on the fire altar of repentance!  Praying Until God Answers!  If my People!  God has promised in 2 Chronicles 7:14 a promise to all generations He would “Heal our Land.”  Healing our land is Revival.  Not only did He give me the answer, but He revealed how this small church came together in unity, sought the Lord until revival came.  And once revival came, God demonstrated how the fires of Revival can start in a singular place and spread like wildfire throughout the Southeast of our Country.  Revival is not waiting on the unsaved to come to Christ, but for God’s people, the church, to seek His face, turn from our wicked ways.  Once the church gets our priorities in order, the fire will fall! 

Now that God has shown me the Key to Revival, I am now accountable.  God winks at those who are ignorant (without knowledge) of His ways, but once knowledge comes, accountability comes!  We are now responsible!  We are now accountable!  Let the church seek God for revival.  What churches need to return to is the prayer meeting.  We must return to being people of prayer.  Not just saying “lay me down to sleep prayers” but prayer that will echo through the caverns of Hell!  Pastors must call their congregations back to seeking God.  We must realize that the decline of our generation is not just a result of God not wanting to save our people, but it is a sign of the lack of concern in the church.  Let us lay aside every weight!  Let the Priests of the Lord weep between the porch and the altar.  Blow the trumpet in Zion!  Sanctify a Fast, and let us seek the Lord!  Instead of us looking up at the sky waiting on God to do something, we must understand that God has given us His word; His promise for Revival, and He’s looking down at the church waiting for us to seek Him for Revival.  When we meet the conditions of 2 Chronicles 7:14, God will Heal Our Land!