Last week I met with twenty influential spiritual leaders from the state of Kentucky. We gathered for two days in Stanford, Kentucky to discuss how we could encourage spiritual revival in our state. We prayed, we studied revivals in Scripture and in history and we shared our individual ideas as we earnestly sought God’s will.
There seemed to be a common consensus concerning the following:
1. Our nation is in very serious trouble. The current troubling mood that hangs like a dark cloud over our nation is not just a temporary malaise, we are approaching the kind of moral collapse that has been the undoing of numerous major civilizations in the past.
2. Our most pressing need is for a spiritual revival within the church. We don’t need to spend much more time trying to redeem the culture. Apart from Divine intervention, the culture is beyond reclaiming. The primary problem is an apostate, lukewarm church.
3. The best way to initiate a revival is for us to start with repentance within our own hearts and then to pray for an outpouring of God’s Spirit. Our prayer cannot be a formal exercise but a cry of desperation. Like Simon Peter sinking in the turbulent sea we must cry out, “Lord save us!”
4. The Commonwealth of Kentucky has a rich history of revival and may be used of God once again to initiate a national renewal. The Asbury Revival in Wilmore, Kentucky in 1970 received national attention and sparked spiritual transformation all across the nation. The Cane Ridge Revival in 1801 has been described as the largest and most famous camp meeting of the Second Great Awakening. As many as 20,000 attended during the week – about 1/10th of the total population of the state at the time. It birthed the Restoration Movement and impacted the nation for years to come.
5. The biggest barrier to renewal in the church is distraction. Christ isn’t really our first love. In most cases sporting events are. Basketball has become a false idol in many lives. Satan is like a roaring lion seeking to devour and he has used what should be temporary diversions to become our consuming passion.
6. Each of us in attendance made a covenant to pray for the next forty days, leading up to Pentecost Sunday, asking God to bring revival to the church. We intend to begin with ourselves, praying with King David, “Search me, God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts. See if there is any offensive way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting” (Psalm 139:23-24).
7. We also agreed to petition the Governor of Kentucky to make the week of May 15 a state-wide call to spiritual renewal and encourage churches across the Commonwealth to have a time of prayer in their morning service on Sunday May 15 asking God to send a dramatic revival and heal our land.
8. We would each do what we could to encourage revival and share encouraging results with one another. We urge every concerned believer in our state to become intense in claiming God’s promise, “If my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and I will forgive their sin and will heal their land” (2 Chronicles 7:14).
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