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Revolutionary Prayer
by
Captain
Matt Clifton
matthew.clifton@salvationarmy.org.uk
That fiery
little book ‘Revolution’ dropped onto my doormat recently and
burned a hole in it. It fanned the flames of God in me,
because it struck such a pure resonance with the achings and
longings in my spirit. And I am not alone. I am seeing in life
after life a new dissatisfaction with the way things are. A
divine impulse to finally reject, and be liberated from, the
worldly methods that we almost cannot help falling back on. A
reckless, single-eyed determination to take hold of a promise
like Haggai 2:9 – ‘The glory of this present house will be
greater than the glory of the former house,' says the Lord
Almighty – and pull it into the present, igniting faith for a
work of God eclipsing even that which gave birth to The
Salvation Army. It brings steel to my soul to see one after
another around the globe determined to be neither satisfied
nor silenced. If I am talking about you, then this short essay
is for you, and may it reinforce your zeal.
The introduction to ‘Revolution’ rightly asks: where is the
desperate longing for prayer? I want to pick up on the spirit
of that question, and amplify it with some reflection on what
kind of prayer will usher in the revolution of God that more
and more among us are seeking with all our hearts. I want to
note in passing that I believe in a threefold key to
revolution: repentance, prayer and fasting. Lay aside
secondary issues like methods, style and adaptation to culture
until these three are given priority. The Salvation Army in
the Western world is evidently in exile, and God has clearly
taught us His conditions for restoration in the writings of
the Old Testament prophets. Our problem is that we prefer our
own wisdom and try everything else! Practices like wearing
sackcloth and ashes and the tearing of robes have passed away,
but repentance, prayer and fasting are consistent from the Old
Covenant to the New Covenant and may not be ignored.
This essay, then, gives particular attention to prayer as one
of the three biblical non-negotiables for revolution. If you
are stirred to pray like a revolutionary, you have several
role models in the Bible. The intercessors I always return to
are Nehemiah and Daniel, and I want to use the revolutionary
prayer in Daniel 9 as the foundation here. Soak in the spirit
of that prayer – let it search you and shape you. It is not
just a matter of understanding – it is vital that such a
prayer grips your heart.
At the beginning of this prayer, Daniel records for us the
spirit in which he entered into the presence of the Holy. If
the whole prayer is our foundation, let these words be the
cornerstone:
So I set my face towards the Lord God, praying and crying out…
(Daniel 9:3)
I am going to reflect on three aspects of revolutionary
prayer, taking a line from the songbook as my springboard each
time. But there in Daniel’s words you have the essence of
revolutionary prayer. All that follows proceeds from this.
When we reach the end of our hoarded resources (SASB 579)
ASPECT ONE: Our helplessness and his grace
There’s something about absolute helplessness that reaches
deep into the compassionate heart of God. Daniel tells us that
he ‘prayed and cried out.’ You find John Knox in the gardens
of the Kirk in Edinburgh, crying out in agony: “God, give me
Scotland or I die!” Evan Roberts hidden up on the hills of
South Wales groaning before the Almighty: “Bend the church and
save the people!” Missionaries in the Congo driven to despair,
ready to return home, until in their lowest hour Acts 2 is
re-enacted in their last meeting. Countless people have found
divine hands of grace lifting them when they’ve reached rock
bottom. One of the last century’s most passionate preachers on
intercession, Leonard Ravenhill, often said that God does not
answer prayer – he answers desperate prayer.
Helplessness is the outcome of crushed pride. Self-dependency,
self-justification and self-seeking have finally been broken.
Daniel’s prays from such a spirit. I think particularly of the
allusion to slavery in Egypt:
O Lord our God, who brought your people out of Egypt with a
mighty hand and who made for yourself a name that endures to
this day, we have sinned, we have done wrong. (9:15 NIV)
The picture is of a people bound in chains, unable to rescue
themselves. Such circumstances elicit desperate cries for
help. God hears from heaven and pours grace on the
undeserving.
I am touched by the helplessness of these words from Isaiah:
Yet, O Lord, you are our Father.
We are the clay, you are the potter;
we are all the work of your hand. (Isaiah 64:8 NIV)
Such a prayer makes the sovereignty of God a full reality,
instead of a mere belief in the background. The words you are
our Father remind us that whatever the sin, Father-child
kinship cannot be severed. What grace! Furthermore, these are
our words to God, not his to ours. The heart must say and mean
these things, and God loves to hear.
How many more decades of crushing decline will it take to get
it into our proud heads that we are helpless? If we are going
to get serious about seeking revolution, we are going to have
to shape our whole mission according to the reality of our
utter helplessness. That means a lot less frantic treadmill
running and more prayer and attention to purity - much, much
more. But I fear that what Ravenhill once wrote of the church
is surely true of us:
We have many organisers, but few agonisers; many players and
payers, few pray-ers; many singers, few clingers; lots of
pastors, few wrestlers; many fears, few tears; much fashion,
little passion; many interferers, few intercessors; many
writers, but few fighters.1
We are going to have to get a grip on our priorities, and
start to take Scriptures such as these deeply to heart:
This is the word of the Lord to Zerubbabel: ‘Not by might nor
by power, but by my Spirit,’ says the Lord Almighty.
(Zechariah 4:6 NIV)
All those gathered here will know that it is not by sword or
spear that the Lord saves; for the battle is the Lord’s, and
he will give all of you into our hands.
(1 Samuel 17:47 NIV)
Give us aid against the enemy,
for the help of man is worthless. (Psalm 108:12 NIV)
Shatter my own design, shaping a plan divine (SASB 605)
ASPECT TWO: Our humility and his honour
Pride is insidious and deep-rooted. If we want revolution, we
are going to have to lie on the operating table of God,
letting him take a scalpel to the tumour. The trouble is that
a revived Salvation Army is in our self-interest. How do we
pray for it with pure, unselfish motives? Let’s begin with
Daniel:
For your sake, O Lord, look with favour on your desolate
sanctuary. Give ear, O God, and hear; open your eyes and see
the desolation of the city that bears your Name. (Daniel
9:17-18 NIV)
For whose sake? For his sake! However stubborn self-interest
is, resolve to constantly seek his glory. Note the passion for
God’s Name - Daniel could bear it no longer that the Name was
defiled and dishonoured in pagan Babylon. The principle is
reinforced in Psalm 115:
Not to us, O Lord, not to us
but to your name be the glory,
because of your love and faithfulness. (Psalm 115:1 NIV)
This is an emphatic renunciation of self-interest. But given
how deep-rooted pride is, what can we do practically to
eliminate impure motives? The counsel of Arthur Wallis helped
me with this question, and a passage is well worth quoting in
full:
Among those who seek God for revival, there may be few who
are, from the outset, wholly free from the admixture of
selfish motives in their petitions. This need not deter or
discourage if this condition of prevailing prayer is kept
constantly in view. When we are aware of being moved by
anything less than a desire for the supreme glory of God, let
us avail ourselves of the cleansing blood by confession, and
look to God in faith that he may by the Spirit bring “every
thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ” (2
Corinthians 10:5). God uses the very activities and heart
exercises of prayer to effect this.2
That cry will bring thee down, my needy soul to fill (SASB
586)
ASPECT THREE: Our heart-cry and his compassion
There is a way of praying that can only be described as
intense. To grasp it, think firstly of normal, conversational
prayer with God. How much emotion is involved? Think now of
the early church earnestly praying for Peter in prison (Acts
12:5). Much was at stake and they felt deeply for their
leader. Imagine the emotion involved.
Now think finally of Jesus in Gethsemane:
And being in anguish, he prayed more earnestly, and his sweat
was like drops of blood falling to the ground. (Luke 22:44 NIV)
As far as you can, imagine the emotion. There is no greater
example of intense prayer. Soul agony describes this way of
prayer – surely the true experience of one who knows the
fellowship of sharing in Jesus’ sufferings (Philippians 3:10).
Such prayer comes from desperate helplessness. Daniel’s prayer
reaches a passionate climax - a heart cry of desperation:
O Lord, listen! O Lord, forgive! O Lord, hear and act! For
your sake, O my God, do not delay, because your city and your
people bear your Name. (9:19)
How many of us feel the need of the hour so deeply that such a
passion grips us? How many of us love to honour the Name of
Jesus so much that we can’t bear it that the people of his
Name are widely thought of merely as a quaint and quirky
charity? But many will feel that such prayer is simply not for
them. It’s a matter of personality. I understand this, but on
the other hand, none of us are emotional zombies. We all know
what it is to feel grief and delight. And such prayer is not
worked up. God places the burden on hearts ready for him, and
this is where repentance comes in. I believe that if there
were to be a widespread breaking up of unploughed ground
(Hosea 10:12), we would find many a passionate intercessor
raised up in the most unexpected places.
Rev. David Wilkerson is famous for his outreach to teenage
gang members in New York. It all began with a decision in 1958
to replace watching television with late evenings of prayer.
One evening while praying, he opened a copy of Life magazine.
As he puts it, ‘a moment later I was looking at a pen drawing
of seven boys, and tears were streaming down my face.’3 Such
is the spirit in which a renewing work of God is born.
I was profoundly affected by a sermon preached by Wilkerson
entitled ‘A Call to Anguish’4. Wilkerson leads us to the heart
of Nehemiah’s anguish for Jerusalem (Nehemiah 1), the anguish
vital to ministry, without which all our strategies and
methods become largely meaningless and futile. Times Square
Church in Manhattan, founded by Wilkerson, was itself born of
anguish. In the sermon, he describes walking the streets of
New York and breaking down in floods of tears. He touched the
pain and anguish of God for a community, and a glorious work
was born. How many of us know what this means?
Bramwell Booth quotes his Chief Officer in his definitive work
on officership, ‘Servants of All’:
“’Do not separate us,’ said a Field Captain of many year’s
service to me when I proposed to her to promote her Lieutenant
to the charge of a Corps.
“’But why?’ I asked.
“’Well, Commissioner,’ was the reply, ‘the Lieutenant has been
such a great blessing to me and to the Corps I have commanded
since I had her with me, through her tender love for sinners.
It is not merely on the platform I see it, but in our own
room. In fact, I often cannot get her to bed. She will stay up
to pray. Sometimes when I insist on her going to rest I awake
later to find her praying and weeping at the bedside, asking
the Lord to save the sinners and backsliders. And even then,
when I get her to rest, I often find in the morning that her
pillow was wet with the tears which would come! And her spirit
has spread to others besides myself.’”5
How many will enter into a place of anguish such as this? It
is worth making a devotional study of the place of tears in
the life of prayer. Look up words like ‘tears’, ‘weep’ and
‘cry’ in a concordance. You will find that the theme is rich
and significant in the spiritual life. A couple of examples
will suffice here. Joel’s call to desperate prayer has a
particular resonance for officers. I picture myself between
the lost, broken world and the mercy seat:
Let the priests, who minister before the Lord,
weep between the temple porch and the altar.
Let them say, "Spare your people, O Lord.
Do not make your inheritance an object of scorn,
a byword among the nations.
Why should they say among the peoples,
'Where is their God?' (Joel 2:17 NIV)
The words have such application to our day. An Army which once
forced my homeland to face up to its sin is now ‘a byword’
when it comes to the prophetic and the gospel. This ought to
induce anguish in us all.
Leonard Ravenhill frequently commented that he met many who
were interested in revival, but very few who carried a burden
for it. I recall him teach on Hannah’s anguish in 1 Samuel 1.
Her experience is also worth meditating on here:
She was deeply distressed, and she cried bitterly as she
prayed to the Lord.
(1 Samuel 1:10 GNB)
“I am desperate, and I have been praying, pouring out my
troubles to the Lord.” (1:15)
So it was that she became pregnant and gave birth to a son.
She named him Samuel, and explained, “I asked the Lord for
him.” (1:20)
There is a way of prayer characterised by distress and
desperation, epitomised by Hannah. Are we not desperately
barren in our mission? Are we not humiliated, as Hannah was?
Who will pray desperate prayers? Who will seek a baptism of
anguish? Who will seek the Lord’s favour as Hannah did:
conception, gestation and the giving birth to true revolution?
I have recently watched by Lynne, my wife, go through the
physical and emotional ordeal of giving birth to our son,
Elijah John. In pregnancy there is sickness and pain; there is
a change of priorities and preferences. There is a risk of
miscarrying. It is the same when a man or woman of prayer is
pregnant with vision for God. When the vision is born, there
is glory and joy!
Have you ever wondered why Salvationists have sung Send the
fire! hundreds and thousands of times while the altar remains
as wet and cold as ever? It is because the suffering of Christ
gave birth to Pentecost. Every time we plead for another
outpouring, few of us even hear his response: “Can you drink
the cup I am going to drink?” (Matthew 20:22). Fewer still are
willing to undergo the baptism of anguish that necessarily
precedes the revolution we are seeking.
Paul knew anguish of spirit when he wrote to the Galatians:
My dear children, for whom I am again in the pains of
childbirth until Christ is formed in you. (Galatians 4:19 NIV)
A recollection from the Lewis revival of 1949 will demonstrate
the reality of the experience:
“Oh yes, revival is wonderful – for some people. But for us –
there were a number of us, women, who weren’t in the meetings.
We didn’t have time to be in the meetings; we were in the
place of prayer. The breath of the Spirit would come, and it
was like women being in childbirth. We would fill up and fill
up and fill up with the breath of God, and we would be in
agony, and suddenly there would be a soul born into the
kingdom, and there would be relief as the new soul was born.
Then the weight would come again, and we would fill up again
and again, and others would be born into the kingdom.”8
Intense, anguished prayer is energised by remembering. When a
glorious past is vivid in the memory, a yearning is created to
see new glory in the present. Feel such yearning in Isaiah’s
cry:
Oh, that you would rend the heavens and come down,
that the mountains would tremble before you!
As when fire sets twigs to blaze
and causes water to boil,
come down and make your name known to your enemies
and cause the nations to quake before you!
For when you did awesome things that we did not expect,
you came down, and the mountains trembled before you.
(Isaiah 64:1-3 NIV)
Such intense prayer arises from a profound dissatisfaction
with the way things are. Such prayer is dangerous, because
perseverance is called for if the answer is delayed, and
perseverance is hard. A proverb explains why:
Hope deferred makes the heart sick,
but a longing fulfilled is a tree of life. (Proverbs 13:12 NIV)
Maintaining a full-bodied vision over a long period for all
that God can do is far from easy. It leaves a person
vulnerable to discouragement and despondency - sickness of
heart. Some of us in Forestdale, the corps in the UK that I
lead together with my wife, know this from personal
experience. We have been learning to balance dissatisfaction
with what God hasn’t given us yet with celebration of what he
has given us. If my Territory was to gain a spirit of intense
dissatisfaction, there remain many signs of hope to sustain us
in our heart-cries.
Even so, for the truly dissatisfied, the sheer quality of
perseverance is indispensable. God has graced us with the
example of Habakkuk:
I will wait patiently for the day of calamity
to come on the nation invading us.
Though the fig tree does not bud
and there are no grapes on the vines,
though the olive crop fails
and the fields produce no food,
though there are no sheep in the pen
and no cattle in the stalls,
yet I will rejoice in the Lord,
I will be joyful in God my Saviour.
The Sovereign Lord is my strength;
he makes my feet like the feet of a deer,
he enables me to go on to the heights. (Habakkuk 3:16-19 NIV)
I will, I will, I will! There is an iron determination about
this man. I think he knew that despondency can lay siege to a
person. A mental fight to survive was on. He made a fierce
decision of the will, cast himself on God, then went out and
danced upon despair.
If we were to follow through God’s biblical conditions for
restoration and revolution, we cannot then predict how long we
would have to wait for new glory. None of us can schedule an
outpouring of the Holy Spirit. Who knows how God wants to
prepare us, shape us and teach us? Unless a Jeremiah appears
in our midst with a word about the timing of restoration, the
day and hour will remain unknown. Habakkuk’s battle resolve
could become indispensable to us.
In conclusion
As I look back on the themes of these three sections, there is
a vital pre-requisite for revolutionary prayer that I feel
needs highlighting in conclusion. That is the need to see
clearly the contrast between our present reality and all that
God is willing to do in power. One of the great barriers to
revolution is the failure to see how wide the gap really is.
Expectation for a move of God is low, caused by decades of
decline. This combines with a natural refusal to acknowledge
the abject condition of our movement, because to do so is
depressing and humiliating.
I can only urge you from my own experience to insist on this
contrast. I maintain it in my own spirit by frequently reading
from the Acts of the Apostles, and by much reading about the
great revivals of church history. This contrast was essential
to the revolutionary prayers of the Old Testament, and it will
be essential if you are to gain an intense spirit of anguished
prayer.
Sovereign God, I ask you to impregnate the reader of this
essay with a gut-wrenching inner desperation for as much of
Your glory as can be physically withstood, in their lives, in
their place, at this time, saving, sanctifying, healing and
delivering left, right and centre – Mount Carmel and Pentecost
rolled up into one devastating cosmic blast of divinity!
Maranatha! Amen!
References
1. Ravenhill, Leonard, Why Revival Tarries, (Minneapolis, USA:
Bethany House Publishers) 1979
2. Wallis, Arthur, In the day of Thy Power, (London, UK:
Christian Literature
Crusade) 1956, p136.
3. Wilkerson, David, The Cross and the Switchblade,
(Basingstoke, UK: Lakeland Paperbacks) 1986, p13.
4. A recording of Rev. David Wilkerson’s sermon ‘A Call to
Anguish’ can be downloaded from:
http://www.sermonindex.net/modules/mydownloads/viewcat.php?cid=27
5. Booth, Bramwell, Servants of All (London, UK: The Salvation
Army) 1900, p69.
6. Black, Hugh B., Revival: Personal Encounters (Greenock, UK:
New Dawn Books) 1993, p77.
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