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A Report from the 40 Days: Sustaining Revival of the Heart
Transcribed from a sermon preached Thurs Mar 4, Ruggles Baptist Church, Boston MA--By Bethany Temple
Actually, I'm going to start with a little bit of the journey we've been on the last four years. For those of you who don't know, four years ago we did 40 Days, March 1 through April 9 in Boston. Lou [Engle] came with the JHOP DC group, I think there was about 60 of them, for the planting of the house of prayer. All I can say to you is that it was a four year supernatural journey. The fact that the House of Prayer exists today doesn't have anything to do with the strength of wisdom of any man. Every step of the way the Lord has provided supernaturally.
From a very young age I was ruined with a vision for New England and to see New England awakened once again. As I studies revival history in my teenage years, I was envisioned and emboldened and I never wanted to leave here. Other people despised the barrenness of this place, but I had a prophetic vision of what the Lord would do.
The extraordinary thing is that throughout this four year journey I've over and over and over and it's built such confidence. It has not been an easy road, but it has built such confidence inside of me that the vision that the Lord has given me, that it's truly of Him and from Him; and more than that, we're going to study the revival of Jonathan Edwards tonight, they spoke prophetically of the generation that we now live in.
I don't know how many of you know the writing of Jonathan Edwards. He wrote a piece called "A Humble Attempt". He prophesied of the latter days, he prophesied from Zechariah, that in the last days there will be a global prayer movement, that would bring the Gospel to the nations of the earth, that would see the salvation of all the nations of the earth, and that it would usher in the Return. He even prophesied about the Jews coming to salvation, that they would be provoked to jealousy, this was Jonathan Edwards, that what we are now living, that this prophet of old saw and he prophesied.
What he saw was an extraordinary move of prayer that would bring the Gospel to the nations of the earth. We'll make copies of "A Humble Attempt" for any of you IHOP students so you'll have it when you're in Northampton tomorrow.
That vision is what I've been living for. He actually addressed it to the church of Boston. He spoke to the church in Boston and he said that out of Boston this is what would be released. What blows my mind is that when Edwards was walking the streets of Boston there were not college campuses all around. He had no idea what would one day lie in Boston. The nations of the earth are coming to this city. Do you realize that if salvation comes to Boston, if revival comes to Boston, if awakening comes to Boston, then the nations of the earth are touched and impacted?
We have the finest and the best in education. We have other nations sending their young into Boston to be trained for government, law, business, the areas that influence society; they're coming to Boston to be trained.
But this is a divine and supernatural setup. They are not coming for a degree. They are coming for the fire of God. The redemptive purpose of Boston is that they would come to get the impartation of fire and then all across the globe the fire would encompass the globe.
Derek Prince, this is the vision that he had in the Spirit. Derek Prince was a prophet to our generation. The reason he wanted to become a U.S. citizen is that when he was still living in the U.K. he saw a map of the United States of America, and he said that out of Boston he saw a fire erupt. It spread from East to West and it circled the globe. He saw it circling the globe.
Dave Hill has been a pastor in the city for 20 years. This is Pastor Dave Hill. He's one of our greatest heroes. You're joining him tomorrow at the State House. He labors faithfully in intercession for Massachusetts. If you ask Pastor Dave, he will tell you that over 20 years he has seen ministries come and he has see ministries go. He has seen those that say that they are called to Boston. I know we have some older and some younger here. One thing that I believe about our generation is that we have seen things so immediately, there is an element that we do not understand about the process. There is an element that we don't really understand about really wrestling and struggling through the difficulty.
That's even at the place of the beginning of an outpouring. What's happening in Kansas City is glorious. But even going the distance, even in the midst of outpouring, even in the midst of awakening, it's messy. We still live in the earthen body. That's why it's so important to have the vision and continuing in the process through hardship and difficulty.
The extraordinary thing is when you study Jonathan Edwards, when you study the revivalists, when you even study Daniel. That man lived in the place of unanswered prayer and delayed prayer until the fullness. We think of Daniel as some young buck. He was eighty years old, people. Eighty years old! Some many of these men and women, and they have started in their younger years, but whenfullness came, it was in latter years. That's not really a fun thing to trumpet, is it?
I guess why I'm saying that is because so many of us look at what was released upon Jonathan Edwards' life, what was released upon George Whitfield and Finney, what they did was extraordinary; and let's even look at who we have nowadays: Mike Bickle. We look at the authority, the strength and even the fruitfulness of the ministry that they are walking in; but there is such a secret history with God. There's a place of struggle. They had to wrestle through their disillusionment. They had to wrestle through times of unanswered prayer. They had to wrestle through those things before they stepped into the rewards of years of faithfulness.
We have to consider the process. I want to look at Jonathan Edwards briefly tonight and look at how this man lived his life. He was a man of extraordinary character. I want to spend some time tonight praying for the mantle of an awakener like Jonathan Edwards had. I want us to even cry out for awakening for the church in New England. But when we move into that, I want us to move into it in light of - Lord, give us the grace to walk as these men walked. Lord, give us the grace for consecration. Give us the grace for fasting and prayer. Release upon us truly that place of travail and intercession, so that we cry out, so we could see the release of the fulfillment of those things.
I started in youth ministry when I was nine. I've been working with youth and youth ministries for so long, and I've seen so many stop the race. So many burn for, you know, a year, two years, three years, four years; and when there's delays - this is so weird to say this, because I know that we're seeing a beginning of the outpouring, but there is a place of having a heart that is steady.
When you graduate, you might be released into a place that does not have the same fruitfulness, the same extraordinary wealth that IHOP has, and that's where there has to be a heart that is committed to the process, like John the Baptists. He was singular. He was alone in the place of the wilderness.
I can't tell you how many times I've looked at that and said, "The Holy Spirit was enough for John the Baptist." We in the young generation have to come to the place, listen, just ask my husband, I am a reader, a reader, a reader, I love my books, I love the resources that are available to us. But this is what I firmly believe: until we have a people that are solely dependent upon the Holy Spirit, the rest is extra. When you go to service on Sunday morning, it's the very thing you were praying the day before. When you're listening to your teacher, your pastor, your instructor, it is the overflow of what you know from the Holy Spirit.
I was listening to Lou. This is like 2002. There was a revival meeting at Mott Auditorium - is that where you guys have your meetings? I said to Lou, I'm going to stay back and clean your wife's house for you, because there was a big group of us and we had messed it all up. And so he said, "You'll miss the revival meeting!" I told him, "You don't miss the revival meeting when revival's inside of you!" And he just looked up.
When you're living in a place of fullness - don't get me wrong, I like them. I want to be in the midst of them. This was my testimony at the time, of letting him know, "I am not missing anything. There is nothing over there that I want to be a part of, because there is a well that is springing up inside of me. There is a source that I have tapped into." Being in the midst of it is great and wonderful. But that is not my source and that is not my supply.
In order for us to become revivalists, like we see in Jonathan Edwards, in order for us to become lke Whitfield and Finney, wehave to be those where our source comes from the Holy Spirit. He have to dig that well in the secret place. We have learn to come away and say, "God I want to meet you in private. I want to hear Your voice from heaven. That needs to be the cry of a generation. I tell you, I was reading a letter from Raymond Hill, and there are so many of us who receive in a hereditary way. We receive from a godly parent or a godly pastor, or the ministry that we are associated with
We stand before God. It comes to the place of who I am before you in the secret place. What is my vocation before you when the crowd has gone away, when I am in solitude, when I am in loneliness, when I have been called to a journey that no one else has been called to, what is my response? Do you think John the Baptist had to run to the multitudes? He found a place where the Holy Spirit was his sufficiency. In found a place that, in the place of isolation, that he could draw upon the Spirit of God, and he lacked nothing.
Instead of him going to find the crowd, the crowd came to him. He was living in heavenly places. This is the problem. We are looking for someone else to get us into heavenly places.... we're looking for someone else to get us into heavenly places.
We have to get to a place where we know we are communing with God inwardly regardless of what is going on outwardly.
And see that's the beauty of what these students were doing on campus. These campuses are some of the most dark, vile places. But when you are drawing from an inward source, the outward circumstances do not dictate your inward life, your communion, and fellowship and abiding in strength.
And that's the place of authority, that place of John 15, that when you abide in Me, ask anything that you desire and it's given to you. It's that place where our desires have so become one, that place of union and fellowship, that whatever we ask, ultimately what we're asking is His desire. So we are just uttering the desires of God. We have come into that place of union.
And that where the Student Volunteer Missions movement, we can send these young people that have been founded and grounded in the place of prayer. And then when they go they never depart from the place of prayer. Wherever they are sent they have shot like an arrow, straight like fire. There is nothing that can quench the Spirit of God inside of them because their vocation is a place of prayer. Their vocation is not a public ministry. Their vocation is a place of prayer.
See, this is the deal. Prior to these 40 Days, three times there was the word about the Sons of John in Boston. There's been a burden on our hearts. If you go into our House of Prayer, there's a little prayer-whatever-words that the Lord has given us -it's Jonathan Edwards' A Humble Attempt . And it's also John R. Mott. He was the founder of the students' volunteer missions movement.
And this is what five years ago I started sharing. And I believe this with all my heart. I started sharing five years ago that we need to see another missions movement, that I have a heart for missions; but it cannot be done the way it's been done in years past, because basically what it produced was fatigue and weariness and very limited results. It was people operating in their own strength and wisdom and ability.
But if this missions movement is birthed out of the place of prayer, it's operating in the place of the supernatural, so that when people go into regions and into cities, that they don't even first necessarily go with an assignment. They seek the face of God and the strategy of Heaven for that people. What is the strategy and the will of God for that people and that region? And then there's the releasing of signs and wonders, it's done from the place of prayer, and ultimately the dependency on the power of the Holy Spirit. I believe that that is what is coming out of Boston.
I believe that Jonathan Edwards prophesied the day that we are now living in. Basically the First Great Awakening, it touched the thirteen colonies. And America was birthed out of the thirteen colonies. That is the righteous root of America, the First Great Awakening. The extraordinary thing about the First Great Awakening is that it actually affected the world around. It was sustained-not necessarily here in America-but worldwide, 50 years.
So what you have to understand that is the heritage, that is the well and that is the foundation of New England.
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