ISAIAH 61-62
There is a “Travailing Cry” that is coming forth from the people of God in the Nations! This cry is going to shift hearts!
Andrew Murray is quoted saying, “The man who mobilizes the Christian Church to pray will make the greatest contribution to world evangelization in history!”
-Sarah Maynard writes in her book “Canadian Mantles of Revival”, “Faith Filled prayer is a prayer that wrestles the resources of Heaven into our time and space. It knows exactly what it’s asking for and is locked on to it, believing that it will be obtained. It’s not vague or merely hopeful. It is aware of what the Lord desires, and it is determined that it will be realized. Faith is not just trying to stretch your imagination as big as you can, it’s discerning what God is doing, as well as what He’s poised to doand agreeing with Him.
I believe God is calling the church into Prevailing Prayer, and like Sarah said, “Wrestle the resources of Heaven into our time & space.” There are people and places and situations that need you and I to surrender to the call of travail, so the shift can take place!
On my drive to Ontario I kept hearing the word “Shift!” God wants to shift the hearts of people into truth and righteousness and justice! God can and will bring the SPIRITUAL SHIFT through people like you and I!
Think of loved ones, people in your life that need to be shifted!
Sarah Maynard writes: The marking features of historic revivals have been Humility, Hunger, Awakening, but above all Prayer, not just casual prayer, but deep groaning, travailing, persevering prayer, as Charles Finney calls it, “Prevailing Prayer.” D. L.. Moody said it simply: “Every great Move of God can be traced to a kneeling figure.” Although Canada has had some amazing and glorious revivals in our nations history, national revival still has not yet swept across our land to light up the whole nation with God’s glory coast to coast. This is one of the great visions we press into in prayer: a nation fully engulfed with the fire of God’s presence.
Allow the Lord to fill your thoughts with what it would look like if hundreds of thousands, even millions, of Canadians came to Christ!
Travailing Prayer….
Essentially, if it can be defined, is the cry and manifestation of the heart and desire of Holy God felt in the soul of a person during prayer. I believe travailing prayer is very powerful, it is a heavy lifter so to speak, much like fasting. There is prevailing power that comes in travail. Often times in scripture you will find that fasting and travailing prayer will go hand in hand as seen in the life of Christ, Hannah, Daniel and others.
Travailing Prayer is a work of the Holy Spirit.
We know this scripture in Rom 8:26-27
So too the [Holy] Spirit comes to our aid and bears us up in our weakness; for we do not know what prayer to offer nor how to offer it worthily as we ought, but the Spirit Himself goes to meet our supplication and pleads in our behalf with unspeakable yearnings and groanings too deep for utterance. And He Who searches the hearts of men knows what is in the mind of the [Holy] Spirit [what His intent is], because the Spirit intercedes and pleads [before God] in behalf of the saints according to and in harmony with God’s will.
Partnering with the Holy Spirit in prayer releases the heart of God upon us, giving us harmony with God’s will. Sometimes in travailing prayer, there are no words, only a deep cry of sorrow and emotion that will be experienced.
Travailing prayer speaks of endurance.
Jesus refers to great emotion & travail in John 16:20-21 and follows up in verse 24 admonishing his disciples in prevailing prayer.
I assure you, most solemnly I tell you, that you shall weep and grieve, but the world will rejoice. You will be sorrowful, but your sorrow will be turned into joy. A woman, when she gives birth to a child, has grief (anguish, agony) because her time has come. BUT… WHEN SHE HAS DELIVERED THE CHILD, she no longer remembers her pain (trouble, anguish) because she is so glad that a man (a child, a human being) has been born into the world.
ANGUISH, TRAVAIL, SORROW & AGONY BRINGS TO THE BIRTH!
Up to this time you have not asked a [single] thing in My Name; but now ask and keep on asking and you will receive, so that your joy may be full and complete.
Prevailing Prayer!
You can see the posture of travail in Jesus when He came to the tomb of Lazarus in John 11:33-38.
When Jesus saw her sobbing, and the Jews who came with her [also] sobbing, He was deeply moved in spirit and troubled.[He was chafed in spirit and sighed and was disturbed.] And He said, Where have you laid him? They said to Him, Lord, come and see. Jesus wept. (The shortest verse in the Bible, and embodies huge implications for us to understand!) The Jews said, See how [tenderly] He loved him! But some of them said, Could not He Who opened a blind man’s eyes have prevented this man from dying? Now Jesus, again sighing repeatedly and deeply disquieted, approached the tomb. (We know the rest of the story…)
Jesus wept in travail for Lazarus, he loved deeply, He allowed his soul to be moved with sorrow, with sighing, He was chafed in spirit. His deep love and travail brought Lazarus forth from the dead! He travailed first and then spoke!
Have you ever sat with someone and held them and cried with them? Have you ever been moved by the Spirit with compassion and loved so deeply? The Spirit and Anointing of God will move in you to feel God’s heartbeat for one another when you quiet yourself and yield to it. King David said, “You have kept all my tears in your bottle.” Travail and a Voice that will Cry out is precious to God!
Jesus’s sorrow and travail at the Garden of Gethsemane yielded Him to the Cross.
King David in no way eluded travail! As he penned many of the Psalms you can see the breakthrough power that David experienced as He learned to press into the heights of the presence of God in worship, but not before experiencing the travail of much grief, sorrow, and tears, longing for the presence of God!
Hannah in 1st Samuel 1: had postured herself to travail with much fasting, weeping and crying out to God.
Verse 8: Then Elkanah her husband said to her, Hannah, why do you cry? And why do you not eat? And why are you grieving? Am I not more to you than ten sons? Verses 10-11 And [Hannah] was in distress of soul, praying to the Lord and weeping bitterly. She vowed, saying, O Lord of hosts, if You will indeed look on the affliction of Your handmaid and [earnestly] remember, and not forget Your handmaid but will give me a son, I will give him to the Lord all his life; no razor shall touch his head.
Hannah’s travail came up before the Lord. The scripture says, “And the Lord remembered Hannah!” Hannah gave birth to a son, the prophet Samuel. His name means, “The Lord has heard.” He was one of the greatest prophets of the Old Testament!
Apostle Paul wrote to the Galations
My little children, of whom I travail in birth again until Christ be formed in you. Gal 4:19
We must travail over our children and our grandchildren until Christ be formed in them!
Paul Travailed in prevailing prayer and power over his flock. He called them his children. He loved deeply, UNTIL Christ be FORMED IN YOU!!! This doesn’t sound like light prayers, but deep intercession and realization of great responsibility. He said I travail AGAIN… He didn’t just do it once, but he was doing it yet AGAIN.
Prevailing Prayer is connected to the heart of God, it imposes the Love of God, and it will bring to the birth a National scale revival if we will yield to it! The Spirit of God is poised to shift the hearts of our loved ones, He is poised to shift the nations into truth and righteousness as we call upon the name of our God!!!!!
Here’s the thing about the Spirit of God - He is willing - Are we willing???
I want to close a little history of Canadian Revivals that began with a praying, passionate people, or as D.L. Moody coined it, “A kneeling figure.” Their stories are worthy of remembering, of telling, and of inspiring!
Henry Alline:
Henry Alline & the New Light Revival was perhaps Canada’s first revivalist. He was compared to John the Baptist, his tombstone reads: “Henry Alline, 1748-1784, died at the age of 35. Like a flame of fire, he swept through the land. He was a burning and shining light. After zealous travels in the cause of Christ, he languished on the way and cheerfully resigned his life. He was vastly esteemed as the Apostle of Nova Scotia.”
Henry Alline was aflame with fasting, prayer, and the spirit of revival! At the age of 27, Alline was powerfully converted through an intense encounter with the love of God. He recorded in his journal, “Redeeming love broke into my soul with repeated scriptures of such power that my whole soul seemed melted down with love.” Alline became known as the “Whitfield of Nova Scotia” rejected by the traditional church he gathered crowds in barns and open fields, relentless in his preaching and travel. His journal reads, “Rode 30 miles and although I was so fatigued by riding in heavy rain that I could scarcely walk when I got from my horse, yet when I began to preach, I had such a sense of the redeemer’s cause, that I almost forgot my bodily infirmities. I preached so often and rode so much that sometimes I would seem almost worn out and yet in a few hours would be so refreshed that I could labour again for 12 hrs. in discoursing, praying, preaching, and exhorting and feel strong in my lungs.”
In his wake, 8 “New Light Churches” were planted and 500 hymns penned. Many say, all of Nova Scotia, New Brunswick as well as parts of PEI and New England was awakened through his short, intense ministry. It birthed the Baptist movement in the Maritimes!
Hamilton Revival of 1857:
A methodist minister gathered 3 downtown Methodist churches in Hamilton, ON, he hosted a prayer meeting with 65 in attendance. He invited the fire brand evangelist Phoebe Palmer of New York City, she spoke and challenged the people to pray for revival. Some 30 people raised their hands indicating they would earnestly give themselves to engage in prayer for revival, and they would not only engage in personal, fervent prayer, but also seek to take fellow Hamiltonians with them to church. As a result, after 10 days of meetings, 400 had been won into the kingdom and the revival was stirring in the city of Hamilton.
The Newspapers even reported on the revival and read, “A revival After Apostolic Times!” “We are happy to report to our lovers of Zion, that a most glorious revival is now going on in Hamilton!” The Christian Advocate of New York City also reported on the revival on Oct 28, 1857, “The work is taking with its range, persons of all classes. Men from a low degree and men of high estate for wealth and position, all men and maidens, and even little children are seen humbly kneeling together, pleading for grace. The Mayor of the city with other persons of like position is not ashamed to be seen bowed at the altar of prayer beside their humble servant.”
In fact Mayor John Moore was one of the ones most deeply touched by the power of God as the Lord poured out revival on the city. The churches grew in attendance by a thousand percent. Humility became the hallmark of this revival as the altars filled with men and women of all social classes, shoulder to shoulder, equally in conviction and need of a Saviour.
New York City soon afterward also experienced the same spirit that was released in Hamilton when the Laymen’s Revival erupted out of the Noon Hour Fulton Street Prayer Meeting. In six months 96,000 new believers had encountered Christ. This became known as the 3rd great Awakening that circled the globe and took the nations by storm. It all began in Hamilton, ON
Samuel Logan Brengle wrote: “All great soul winners have been men of much and mighty prayer, and all great revivals have been preceded and carried out by persevering, prevailing knee work in the closet.”
Winnipeg Fire - 1916
Frank Small was born into a methodist home with a fervently praying mother. Before he was born, she covenanted with God that if He would give her a son, she would dedicate him to the Lord’s service for the ministry of the gospel. He arrived a twin, born Sept 12, 1873. Along with his praying mother, Frank was baptized in the Spirit in a home meeting in April 1907. With revival in Winnipeg his goal, he heard Maria Woodworth Etter was holding camp meetings in California. He attended and received a life changing experience. Small arrived back in Winnipeg now consumed with a burden for revival. The next few years Small’s main occupation was what he called, “Altar building and intercessory prayer” He sought out a building to hold meetings, and found a delapitated former Jewish synagogue. The first Sunday meeting as the makeshift sanctuary was being dedicated, he rose to read the Scriptures, and the Spirit fell upon him, knocking him prostrate on the platform. Everyone began to fall out as the glory of God filled the new sanctuary. Shortly after this dramatic dedication service, the revival began December 1916.
Frank is quoted, “At the altars, all that seemed necessary by way of instruction was to tell the seeker to lift their hands to heaven and immediately the power of God would fall upon them. The flood gates of Heaven were opened and what a sight to behold, night after night, week after week, month after month.” The history of miracles and great outpouring are too numerous to mention now, but the revival lasted 10 years. Through this time God established a large vibrant congregation, ten’s of thousands of souls encountered the love of Christ, most were filled with the Spirit and many thousands received healings.
One last excerpt from Sarah Maynard’s book: “2 fundamental areas that need to be established in a church to foster a culture of prayerfulness is a change in perspective, and a change of action.”
#1. Prayer and Intercession is for everyone, not just an elite few. There is no gift of intercession, everyone has a calling in some measure to be exercised in prayer for others. One of the most powerful ways we can love on each other is by praying.
#2. There is a pervasive weakness in prayer because we haven’t been discipled to persevere. We’ve allowed immature self centred prayer to become the standard prayer. So few are robust and mature in prayer. Intercessory prayer is hard work. Growing in prayer requires a commitment to faithfulness.”
When asked the secret of his spiritual success, David Yonggi Cho, pastor of the world’s largest church in Seoul, Korea said, “I pray and I obey.” He attributed obedience to the second half of his success.
Who will commit to engage in Personal Fervant Prayer?” Will you be a “Kneeling Figure”?
(many quotes compiled from Sarah Maynard)