How To Pray For Revival

0:00:00 – (Steve Gray): Today I want to start off talking about the book Revival or Ruin. You may have it, you may not have it. I need to confess. I get books sent to me by people and they want me to read them. Sometimes they want me to endorse them, but they just want me to read them and share em with me. And they think it’s a good book or they wrote. Usually it’s. The author sends it to me and I have to confess, I usually don’t read them.

0:00:27 – (Steve Gray): I’m busy. I do like most of you, I get information off my phone and I sometimes read articles, lots of articles on the phone. But a book, I do read the back of it, I usually skim through it. And there are some great authors I really do like, particularly more scholarly guys and gals. And so I’ll look through and find a chapter, one, two chapters and decide I’m going to read that because it really hits it. But most of the books that I get are not in that scholarly realm.

0:00:58 – (Steve Gray): Most of them, they, they are just repeats of stuff that everybody’s written. And they, they talk about, first of all, that some of them are more like validating. You’re, you’re, you’re valuable. God loves you, get over it, Forgive, move on. Those kind of books or, or trying to give. Like they have the secret of the kingdom. We, we. I know stuff that nobody else knows. You need to get that. So it’s just the same old, same old mostly.

0:01:29 – (Steve Gray): But this book is different. I know, cause I’ve written other books and I read other books too sometimes. Revival or Ruin: The Choice Before America. This is, listen, this is a prophetic book that never says thus saith the Lord, right? We have a lot of people that go around prophesying at different services, churches and people, and they basically say the same thing. They give a promise, you know, everything’s coming up roses, your future is great. Just trust God.

0:01:58 – (Steve Gray): And you know, they’re pretty weak because most people will never get there unless they change their behavior or they change their attitude or they change what they love. And so those are. But that’s not this, okay? Neither is it a prophetic book that’s going to talk about the future and there’s going to be monsters coming out of the sea and planes crashing and people flying away and others left behind. And that stuff is over and over and outdated. It’s outdated.

0:02:27 – (Steve Gray): And so it is a prophetic book of what is happening now and what the cost will be if we do not turn wholeheartedly to the Lord. And that means God’s people Need to turn. And right now, I don’t see much of an interest in God’s people, church folks, if you want to call it that. I don’t see much interest in them doing anything different than they’re doing right now. Pretty satisfied. They have a nice, balanced life between church life and then they have home groups and fellowship and fun and friends.

0:03:00 – (Steve Gray): And then they do other things too. They go to the movies, they watch movies, they go play games or whatever. So it’s a very balanced life between God and world and just being a good. You know, going to be a good person. Well, good people aren’t going to escape. Nobody’s going to escape. If what happens if what I say in here happens. And I don’t just say it based on my opinion or what God’s told me or whatever, I also base it on history, that history’s repeating itself and we can learn from history of what other people thought would happen and it didn’t. And terrible things happen. So revival or ruin.

0:03:38 – (Steve Gray): I would get it. I would send it. I’d give it to a friend. And if you have parents that live in another city, I would give it to them. So that’s all I got to say about that. Get the book the Choice Before America and go to Steve GrayMinistries.com and get it. Or you can go to revival or ruin.com and get it. I’m not trying to sell books. I don’t make any money off of this, by the way. I make no money. Zero.

0:04:04 – (Steve Gray): Okay? So it’s not a money maker for me. I give a lot of books away. It is. You just need to understand where we are in history right now and the danger that faces America at this time. All right, so I’ll set this aside. That’s my speech on the book. I hope you pay attention to it. And I want to talk about prayer today. Revival, praying. And the way this came about is someone is writing a book. How about that? They’re writing a book and they’re writing a chapter on prayer that affected them in the Smithton

Outpouring and the Kansas City Revival.

0:04:39 – (Steve Gray): How they prayed, what it affected had just things about prayer. And so I got interviewed yesterday for the book. Not to be in the book, but the person wanted to interview me to write things that I learn and grow. And so they interviewed me about it. So now they’re going to write this chapter on prayer in this book. Okay? So anyway, I want to start with a scripture. Let’s start with Philippians 4. Do not be anxious about anything. But in every situation, by Prayer petition, Thanksgiving. Prayer petition.

0:05:15 – (Steve Gray): Petition is one of the translations. Probably King James prayer uses, you know, a fancy word and it means to. It means to, let’s see, I wrote it down to really plead for help, for mercy, for intervention of God’s. Supplication is the word. And so I don’t say supplication, do you? This one says petition. Prayer petition, Thanksgiving, present your request to God. Okay, so prayer. If you read about any revivals, any of the historical revivals, prayer has always played a major part ahead of the revival.

0:05:56 – (Steve Gray): You don’t wait for revival to come and then start, you know, praying. You have to get ahead of it if you want to see a true revival. So they interview me and they ask, well, how did, in Smithton or Kansas City, how did the revival come about when, when prayer was brought into it. And, and so in Smithton, in the country church, I, I thought that I was seeing rumblings of revival in churches and places around the world.

0:06:25 – (Steve Gray): And so we decided and made a decision as a church that we were going to have prayer, we were going to begin to pray and we would have a prayer night. Now get this. Imagine at today’s church. So we set aside Tuesday night for prayer. All right? That’s all we’re going to do. Tuesday night was prayer. Wednesday night was regular church. I preached an hour, we worshiped just like Sunday morning, Sunday morning was Sunday morning. And then we came back Sunday night and another service that started at 6 o’ clock and we worshiped and prayed and I preached another hour.

0:06:58 – (Steve Gray): So we had four services a week even before revival hit. All right? So we were already pushing the limit for most people, not in our church, but most other churches. And so we chose this night to say, this is going to be prayer. We, we decide we are going to increase in prayer. And so when we started getting together to prayer, we did not pray about the missionaries, we did not pray about our finances, we did not pray about our relationships. Maybe all those things needed prayer, but we got other services, we can do that. This is a prayer meeting just to pray for revival.

0:07:34 – (Steve Gray): The kingdom of God to manifest itself, the presence of God, the glory of God, to come down and be among us and strengthen us. Whatever revival is, we didn’t know. I’d never seen one in real life. I’d read about em, but I’d never experienced anything like it. And so we decided that revival, the presence of God, the power of God is valuable enough to set aside and invest our time in on a Tuesday night. And the prayer meeting, as it got going, would Last start at 7, usually 8:30, 9 o’ clock we would be out.

0:08:11 – (Steve Gray): That’s a couple hours worth. And so we had to learn how to do this. All right? Revival, praying. So I’m going to reveal some of that to you. I hope it helps your church. Or just privately, if you have to do it yourself, just do it. All right. Well, as we began to pray, we had to make a decision. Revival. Not sure what it is. Know the word, had not experienced it, but knew that we wanted to. From what we’d read and studied, we want to have it in our day, okay?

0:08:41 – (Steve Gray): And so we had to make a decision. Is God willing. Is revival held up because God doesn’t want to do it. God doesn’t want to increase himself. God doesn’t want to show himself on that level that I read about in other places in history, okay? Or even in the Book of Acts. Does God want to do that again? Does God want to be that again? And we came up with the answer and said, yes, he does. He does want to do it again.

0:09:14 – (Steve Gray): So now we had to put the pieces together. Then why not? All right. So we had to do two things. First of all, we had to decide, is now the time? Could it happen now? And I don’t mean that night, but soon? Could we have revival in this time period we’re in this generation, could we have it? So is it time? Or is God saying, no, it’s not time. Is it time? And then we had to do a very big decision. And that is, you’ve heard real estate, go location, location, location.

0:09:52 – (Steve Gray): We had to decide then where are we able to be the location? So our prayer was, now is the time, right? And we want to be the location. A lot of people just pray for revival. Revival, come to America, whatever. Okay, that’s great. But we didn’t want it to be over there, over there. We decided time is now. We want to start moving that direction now by our prayer. And we want the location to be here. Us, location.

0:10:24 – (Steve Gray): We weren’t going to be satisfied. So I came up with a phrase. This is the place. We are the people. And now is the time. This is the place that’s important because it’s not just generic, just holy spirit, fly across our country, right? Somewhere. This is the place. And guess what? Not going to be somebody else. We’re going to pay the price. We are the people. Now is the time. So we put all that together, and that just encourages so much.

0:10:58 – (Steve Gray): Then we had to learn to pray. Okay, you think people know how to pray, but they didn’t know how to pray. Cause I would say let’s pray for. I don’t know, let’s pray for the glory of God to come down, whatever we wanted to say. Let’s pray for the presence of God to increase. And I would get maybe a minute or two and they’d start off and they’d pray. And it wasn’t like individual prayers. Like, we’re going to pray. Everybody pray about the same thing at the same time. But we’re not going to say the same thing at the same time. You’re going to express your desire and I’m going to express my desire.

0:11:34 – (Steve Gray): But. But we’re going to say it in our own words. But everybody’s praying about the same subject, okay? So let’s just say the glory of God, that the glory of God come down where we are and bring revival. And so I would say, let’s go. Let’s pray for it. And one minute or two minutes later, it was over. They started and then it drifted off. And they. We found out that the people, they ran out of words.

0:12:00 – (Steve Gray): They ran out of words. So what I had to do was get them to pray longer, but longer was not the goal. The goal was to get them to have such a desire that length represented their passion, desire, or their want to. To see this happen. And when you don’t have that desire, you don’t have a true passion. You run out of words. You just say what you can think of off the top of your head and it’s gone. But when it’s your desire and your.

0:12:33 – (Steve Gray): Your passion and desire to really, really have the kingdom of God express itself in your church, in your day, in your family, in our world, then you don’t run out of words. When you need a miracle and you’re sick and you want a miracle, you keep praying. You keep praying. You don’t run out of words because it’s such a passion and such a desire to have this in our time. So we had to learn to pray. So it wasn’t more length.

0:13:02 – (Steve Gray): It was. We had to practice more desire, and we had to practice length to expose our desire. Okay? So I would. Oftentimes I would realize they couldn’t pray very long. And so I’d say, okay, we’re going to pray for the presence of God to come into our church with might and power. And we’re going to pray two minutes nonstop. And I’d say, go. And I’d time it. Now, the length was not the problem. It was the exposure that I don’t have the passion to keep myself going for two minutes.

0:13:37 – (Steve Gray): I ran out of words, I run out of passion. So then we’d expand it to three minutes and then we would get up to, let’s see if we as a group, not as an individual, as a group, everybody pick your own words, pick your own phrases, right? Pick your own heart. Get your heart out in there. But we’re going to pray five minutes nonstop. Five minutes, for one thing, the glory of God. We might switch. Glory of God, presence of God, oh God, bring revival.

0:14:08 – (Steve Gray): That part’s not important. But. And then we had to realize, okay, so do we just pray non stop speaking? Because the Bible says that pagans babble on with many words. So we don’t want to just babble on with a bunch of words. So we began then to insert. As a leader, I would insert worship. We would pray and then we’d start worshiping. I said, let’s worship now, let’s worship. And people would speak in tongues, they would speak in English and then we would sing a song together.

0:14:41 – (Steve Gray): We’d sing a song of worship, you know, lord, we need your presence, or something like that. We’d sing together and then we’d go back to prayer together and, and then we. Prayer, you know, and once in a while I would jump in and lead, actually lead a prayer. So they’d just, they’d pray, but they were in a prayer agreement. All this was going on. So pretty soon we began to develop a passion and a knowledge and a skill of presenting our request to God. So it says by prayer, petition and thanksgiving, pray, present your requests to God.

0:15:18 – (Steve Gray): And so all those things, prayer, petition, thanksgiving, that’s three things that can be added to prayer to make it lively, living and present it to God in a way that we really wanted to do it. So we did that. Now you can understand. Then as things went on then we would pray for the presence of God. And we didn’t go into a song. Maybe I’d lead a prayer, but then we’d sing a little bit more. Then everybody would spontaneous, just prayer. But we’re all praying about the same thing. We’re not praying about, oh, God, bless me financially, right?

0:15:51 – (Steve Gray): We want the glory, we want the presence, we want the things of God to appear in our service and in our church and God to come down. And so pretty soon we could pray and we could keep it going and we could really present it to God. It was not a, a two minute prayer. We really were presenting our request and it was now being able to be presented as a real living request before the Lord. And that is revival, presence the glory, everything we could think of.

0:16:26 – (Steve Gray): Honor him, reverence, all those things to be presented to him. Okay? So we began to get some length to it. And the lengths were. Remember, the length was not long in itself important. It was. The length represented our passion, our petition, right. Our thanksgiving and our prayer. Okay? So then a new thing had to happen, and this is where it turns. We had the basics down, but then we had to do something mighty important that is so important to all of us, and that is we had corporate prayer. Now, here it goes.

0:17:04 – (Steve Gray): We sing the same song, we pray a little differently, but we’re all praying about the same thing. We’re worshiping together, the sound is going up, everybody’s praying, everybody’s petitioning God. And then we had to do something. We had to present ourselves and we had to decrease. The one thing that you very rarely see. Most pastors leaders, when they want a miracle or they’re praying for a miracle, they push, they push and they push. And that’s okay.

0:17:37 – (Steve Gray): I like that. I like it. I like. I like a pushy prayer. But they have not spent any time practicing decrease. So most people pray and they pray then for revival. And what do they pray? So they would pray for God to increase. And that’s important, right? God increase, increase among us, increase in power, increase in presence, increase in miracles, whatever. We would pray the increase of God, but we spent very little time in how the Bible teaches us to get there.

0:18:11 – (Steve Gray): The Bible talks about Jesus humbled himself. The Bible teaches us that John the Baptist had to decrease. He said, you’re going to have to decrease. Jesus will increase, you will decrease. And I found out that no one that I knew of spent any time learning how to decrease in the presence of God. And so we had to learn to do that. And slowly God began to help us decrease by not just revealing himself, but by revealing us.

0:18:43 – (Steve Gray): We began to see ourselves in the presence of God. And. And it caused us to be humble. It caused us to shrink, if you don’t mind me saying that, and shrink in our presence. We were so tall, we’re so big, we stand so strong. And here we’re praying for revival, praying for revival. And that’s good. But now we need to learn to decrease. And so the way I described it then, and it worked for us, and it still works for me personally, as I said, let’s see, let’s put. Let’s put a big candle right here.

0:19:17 – (Steve Gray): When I grew up in the Methodist church, I was. I think they call it accolade, whatever. And you carried one of Those sticks. And I walked with a robe on and lit candles in front. Big old candles. Well, let’s think of a big candle right here. And it’s lit and it’s going strong. And all of a sudden, then if it continues to burn, what happens? The flame begins to overtake the wax first. The wax is strong.

0:19:43 – (Steve Gray): The wax can stand up to it a long time. Depending on the size of the candle. Maybe we’ll make it a little smaller candle and the wax can stand up to it for only so long. And eventually the wax begins to melt and there is no more candle. And that’s how I see the presence of God. We get it. We light that flame. We glorify him. We go. But now we want to be like a candle that melts like wax to the. So that in a little bit I have.

0:20:13 – (Steve Gray): The flame is there, but it’s now a pool of wax where there’s a flame. But there’s no me anymore. I just melted in the presence of God. It takes practice, if I can use that word. It takes revelation. It takes practice. It takes trying to shrink yourself. Trying to get smaller. Trying to get smaller. When I’ve had. I don’t want to go there now, really, but when I’ve had some experience. I was going to say appearance. Let me say when I’ve had some experience with the presence of God increasing.

0:20:50 – (Steve Gray): I saw myself and I always felt I just am too big. I am too big. I need to shrink. I cannot get more of Jesus because I’m too full of myself. Try to take something full and put something more in it. You can’t. The only way to get more into it, of something else is to empty what’s in there so that you can fill it with something else. And so I had to decrease. And I remember one time a reporter came to me after a service.

0:21:23 – (Steve Gray): We had a lot of reporters come from all over and report and films and all that. And a reporter came to me and was asking me questions. And we happened to have. The crowd was huge. Prayer time was huge. The sermon went well. People responded. Worship was great. You know, everything was great. And it was just a great night. People got help. People were splattered all over the floor. People were crying.

0:21:49 – (Steve Gray): Some were rejoicing, some were crying. It was just a great demonstration of revival. And so the reporter, who I don’t think was probably a believer, at least on my level of commitment, asked me a question. He said, well, looks great. You must feel pretty good about yourself. And I said, no, I don’t feel good about myself. I said, I don’t feel good about myself. And so he kind of scratched his head a little bit and said, well, okay, but you don’t feel bad about yourself. Do you feel bad about yourself?

0:22:23 – (Steve Gray): Surely not. And I said, no, I don’t feel bad about myself. And he’d say, what is it? I said, I don’t feel myself at all. Ah. I don’t feel good about myself. Cause a lot of preachers, they preach or church service or somebody sings a song, and afterwards they feel good about themselves. Well, that’s okay. That’s okay. But you get my point is I didn’t feel good about myself. And I didn’t feel bad about myself.

0:22:50 – (Steve Gray): Guess what? Because what just happened wasn’t myself, right? I don’t feel anything about myself because I want myself to decrease, right? I want to decrease. I don’t want to have feelings about myself afterwards. I don’t want to be in the middle of it. I don’t want it to be myself. So I don’t feel anything about myself. I just serve. I just do. I just am. And so lastly, I want to mention that one thing that people miss for revival is a true revival needs leadership.

0:23:23 – (Steve Gray): And during those days of revival, both in 2008, when revivals were popping up, but mostly in the late 90s, when revivals were popping up in churches all over the world and all over America, people would get together and they’d try to have the big mistake. They try to have ecumenical citywide revival. And so they would get together and they’d have. Sunday night, the choir would. Their choir would sing. Monday night, they’d meet and the choir at another church would sing. And then somebody else would sing a solo on Tuesday night. And each night then a different preacher would preach Monday night, the local pastor the next night, the other pastor would preach next night, another pat. And they would try to have a move of God. It never worked. Never worked. It never happened.

0:24:07 – (Steve Gray): They got. Maybe had good services and they were trying hard, but they did not have genuine revival. Because in order to have it, you. You have to have one leader, one person who’s the coach. One person that coaches the congregation, even if it’s ecumenical. Several congregations together, you’re going to have to pick somebody that God has chosen. And usually you’ll know who it is, like an Evan Roberts or Charles Finney.

0:24:34 – (Steve Gray): These names that pop up that led revivals, right? Azusa street had a leader, right? And. And so we hear these names. Well, we have to get rid of our ego and find out who has God chosen to be the person that he will speak through and guide us through it. Because revivals need to be pastored. Someone’s have to guide them. It’s not just a free for all spirit. Just do whatever you want. Have your way. Oh, spirit. Well, everybody’s going to do what is right in their own eyes.

0:25:08 – (Steve Gray): We need to have unity, right? Unity of the spirit, powerful. We need to have all of us in one accord, Right? Unity in one accord. We’re all doing the same thing. We’re not saying the same thing. But we’re all going to praise at the same time. It’s time to praise. It’s time to pray. It’s time to hear the word of God. It’s time to let the spirit break out now and deliver us from evil. Okay? So keep that in mind. And then last, one of the best things I know to tell you about why revival doesn’t come to most places, and here’s the number one reason is God said, you should love me with all your heart.

0:25:50 – (Steve Gray): From the book of Mark. Heart, soul, mind and strength. Okay, we are okay with the heart. You’re not going to have anything. Love God with all your heart. Love God with all your soul. Your mind, will, motions. Love God with all your heart, soul and your mind. You’re not going to have anybody argue or back off. I’m not going to love God with my mind. That’s just too much. No, be okay. But then when you put the strength in, you see, that’s when people back away.

0:26:20 – (Steve Gray): Because strength is what you add that can be seen, felt and demonstrated. But God desires our strength. And our strength is more than our muscle. It is our muscle. It is our hands. It’s our hands, it’s our arms, it’s our mouth, it’s everything we do. But it’s also everything that represents us. It’s our much meaning, all that we are. Our money, our family, our kids, our tribe, so to speak. Back then, back then, it would have been their cattle, everything, our muchness, and bring it all before the Lord.

0:26:54 – (Steve Gray): But when we bring all that we are before the Lord, most people will never get revival because they will never have any strength. They’ll say, let’s pray. And it’s a limp traditional, no energy, no strength, prayer, worship. They just sing some quiet songs. Worse, the worship leader, they want revival. And there’s the worship leader up there playing guitar with his eyes closed. The whole song, eyes closed, just. And when you do that, that is. That is not even Christianity. Because that’s looking inward.

0:27:26 – (Steve Gray): They go, we’re looking inward. We think we’re looking upward. Well, if you’re looking upward, then open your eyes and look upward. But actually we’re looking inward, trying to just visualize, Visualize God. Visualize. It’s that visualization, see, of the kingdom of God and what Jesus looks like and all that kind of stuff. And so. So if you want revival in your church, you want it in your life, you want it in your home, you want it in yourself, you’ve got to add your strength.

0:27:55 – (Steve Gray): And most of all, we need leaders who add strength because if the congregation starts doing it, the leader may shun them and want them to leave. You’re disrupting, all right, but you must add strength. And so when the Smith and outpouring broke out, strength was already there from those Tuesday night prayer meetings. But oftentimes people would say, these. These people are crazy. They pray with their fists.

0:28:20 – (Steve Gray): Most people pray with their mouths. Well, we did, but we prayed with our fists. People just gave. They were like this. They were swinging their swing. They put their strength. Paul said, I don’t just box the air. I’m a boxer. He said, I box purposely. I don’t just swing my arms like I’m boxing the air. Well, if you have your eyes closed, you can box the air. But I taught our prayer people, I said, keep your eyes open.

0:28:44 – (Steve Gray): Open your eyes and pray. Open your eyes and lift up your eyes and pray. Add your strength. And I found out this is a huge, huge battle, that people want to be just lazy and that religious, they think it’s reverent to not add their strength to it. And so if you want revival, start adding your strength. If your church won’t do it, do it at home. When you pray, pray with strength. Put your mouth to it, raise your voice, raise your hands, put some fist into it.

0:29:16 – (Steve Gray): Be emphatic, right? Let your request be known unto God. All right? So that’s some of the things that we did that helped to bring revival to the location of Smith in Missouri and then in Kansas City in 2008. If you want to have revival, do these things. Get this book, Revival or Ruin, at stevegrayministries.com, but do these things that I told you today—privately if you have to. But if you can emphasize a prayer meeting and get a prayer meeting going at your church at a separate night, then pick a leader, even if it’s not the pastor, pick a leader and then leader. You need to lead and remind them how we do this.

0:29:54 – (Steve Gray): Take these things that I’ve said and build them each week or each two weeks, whatever it takes, and build upon it. Until you have a revival praying group of people that know how to bring down the glory of God. How about that today? Good stuff. I hope so. I hope you get it. It’s time to do some revival praying, as they said. Will you revive us again, O God, that your people may rejoice in you? Revival brings rejoicing, and we need it in our day. Till next time, bye-bye.