When I was about sixteen, I would often walk across the street to the Nazarene church my dad was pastoring and put in two hours cleaning the church. On one Saturday I didn’t take a key because my dad was already over there preparing for Sunday. Before knocking on the door, I paused for a few moments because I could hear a voice. I couldn’t make out the words, but I knew Dad was praying. When he came to the door, he had tears in his eyes. I got a glimpse of his heart.
Years later, the summer before he died, he and I were talking about the things of God and he shared that one of the things he wanted to see before he died was a real revival—an outpouring of God’s Spirit. He said he had seen God move in a service, but hadn’t seen the kind of revival that changes whole communities. He really wanted to.
I too have been praying a while to see revival. I began praying for Myrtle Point in high school while helping run a Christian coffeehouse. The coffee house operated for about two years. The sign for it, “Fort Agape Coffee House” is still in the attic of my garage. After my first real job out of graduate school, I began going to prayer meetings where we prayed for real revival to come to Olathe, Kansas. After moving from Olathe to Kansas City, my prayers expanded to prayers for God to pour out his Holy Spirit on Kansas City. Twenty years ago we moved from Kansas City back to Myrtle Point and, coming full circle, I am still praying for community transforming revival here.
I will turn sixty next year. I haven’t seen real revival yet. It makes me sad. I worry that like my dad, I may die before seeing a real move of God in the places for which I have prayed. Yes. I know there have been revivals and visitations of God in other places. And I really do rejoice in all God has done elsewhere. I think it is okay that I’m still sad. But I am encouraged by Jeremiah.
Scholars aren’t sure where the prophet Jeremiah died. It was probably in Egypt where he was taken by the king and his court when they fled the Babylonians besieging Jerusalem. For long years Jeremiah had stood pretty much alone as a prophet calling Israel to repentance and warning of God’s coming judgment. They did not listen. Even after he was taken to Egypt, he prophesied the destruction of all those had sought refuge there. No one listened. He did not have a “successful” ministry in many ways.
Of course, Jeremiah also prophesied God’s saving of a remnant and their glorious restoration to the land of Israel. But Jeremiah never saw this. He died. Before Jeremiah was taken to Egypt, God told him to buy a field in Anathoth. As a prophetic testimony that God would someday return a remnant to Jerusalem, Jeremiah summoned witnesses, bought the land, and signed the deed.
I am not good at praying. I don’t have much faith, but try to use all I do have. Certainly I should pray more and harder, and fast more often. I actually have heard really good teaching on intercessory prayer. I have even taught on it (pretty well I think) myself. But it is easier to teach about it than do it. So I just keep asking, and every Christmas my heart is pierced a little because it hasn’t come yet.
But every time I drag myself to a prayer meeting and cry out for revival, I am buying a field in Anathoth. Like Jeremiah, I may not see the fulfillment of my vision, but I am signing a deed for revival in Myrtle Point. I also own land in Kansas and Missouri—and now that I think about it—Africa , China, and Israel. And of course, I have inherited vast holdings from my mother and father.
