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Praying For Revival Cannot Be Ordinary Praying

"When God intends great mercy for his people, he, first of all, sets them praying." ~ Matthew Henry

"There has never been a spiritual awakening in any country or locality that did not begin in united prayer." ~ A. T. Pierson

If there is revival, there is prayer, but what kind of prayer?

God is always at work in the lives of His people, sanctifying, teaching, encouraging, and transforming them into the image of Christ. Jonathon Edwards and others have distinguished between the ordinary and the extraordinary work of God. Revival is an extraordinary work. It is extraordinary in the number of people affected and the work's speed and depth.  

The Bible makes a distinction between ordinary and extraordinary prayer. Jesus had an ordinary pattern of prayer. He prayed with others, but He tended to pray by himself, away from others, late at night or early in the morning (Mk. 1:35; Lk. 5:16; 6:12). On the night He was betrayed, He did what He ordinarily did. He went to a place He often went to pray, but that night His prayer was recorded. As far as we know from Scripture, His prayer that night was not ordinary.  

I've prayed often with others and led churches to pray. I've taught what Scripture says about prayer and how to pray in various ways. When we gather, we pray. I consider all of this ordinary. It is not insignificant, but it is what we ordinarily do.  We ask for requests and pray for their needs. Each Sunday, we pray for worship, for the sick, for the offering, for the pastor and the people during the sermon, and for our response at the end of the service. It is our ordinary habit of prayer. When we pray for revival, we pray differently. 

Prayer for revival is a focused prayer time, asking God to do the extraordinary. It is fervent. It is prolonged. As the church prays for revival, a sense of desperation becomes married to a sense of hope. We are praying for an extraordinary need with eternal consequences. We pray with fervor, with tears, and with others because God has caused us to recognize the need for Him to act as only He can. 

Praying for revival is extraordinary.

It is not praying for the worship service, the church prayer list, the sick, or any other things we pray for when we ordinarily pray. Every time we pray in church, we pray for the sick. Rarely do we pray for the lost. Rarely do we pray for the spread of the Gospel. Rarely do we pray for revival. 

Our ordinary prayer should be fervent. When we regularly pray for healing, "The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much" (Jms. 5:16b). It's not that our ordinary prayer should not be fervent or that the ordinary work of God in our lives is not significant. It is that praying for revival cannot be ordinary. When we pray for revival, we're facing extraordinary circumstances. We are asking for an extraordinary work of God. So praying for revival must be extraordinary. 

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