Pray for Revival

Reformation Day reflections from a land of Reformers

When I sat down for a cup of coffee with a missionary living in Edinburgh last week, a brief conversation made the church in Scotland’s struggle real. He works for the denomination of the church I go to here in St Andrews. Through him, I found that I attended the largest Free Church congregation in the country, what would easily qualify as a small church in the US, and the only one with the luxury of an assistant pastor. There are 100 and change Free Churches in the country. He told me that a “strong” congregation has 30 members. They struggle to fill pews, but even more to fill pulpits. About a third of those congregations lack a pastor. This leaves pastors, lay elders, and missionaries stretched thin, leading Bible studies, Sunday schools, student ministry, counseling, and preaching. All over the country, pastors and elders are perpetually pushed past burnout.

The struggle is not unique to the Free Church. Evangelical churches faithful to Scripture are few and far between in Scotland.

These churches need our prayers.

As I left the meeting, I found myself on the streets of Edinburgh, walking in the footsteps of the Reformers. I thought not only of the big names, like John Knox who walked this very street, but of the hundreds and thousands of people, forgotten to history, who made the Reformation happen. On this very “royal mile,” hordes of zealous people started a Revolution, forever changing their country.

When looking at the trends of time, the ups and downs of progress and regression, revival and falling away, we should look to the account of history God provided to us in the Old Testament. God’s account does not tell a linear story of history. The people of Israel went through the “sin cycle,” as it was taught in Sunday school, a repeated pattern of falling away, crying out, and of return, God raising up people to do his work. That is the cycle of history told in Scripture.

As I reflect, this Reformation Day, I cannot help but be in awe of the miracle that God wrought during that time. The stories of the people’s zeal are staggering, how a sermon could light such fire in their souls to go out and immediately act, how God brought them out of darkness into the light of Revival. It is nothing less than a miracle.

In these dark times, it would help us to remember what God has done, and what God can do again. We are not doomed to the linear directions of progress and decline.

The current struggle of the church in Scotland is not an isolated issue. It is not contained by an ocean. It is not an issue associated with a faceless “them” out in the culture. But it speaks as a lesson for us all.

A spiritual war rages in the heart of all of us. We must gird ourselves for action. We must fight against apathy, fleshly sin, ignorance, and infatuation with a world that is at enmity with God.

Just like the cycles of the Old Testament of exile and deliverance, of judges and prophets, we too are in a chapter of the grand story of good and evil. We must recognize our Act in this great Drama of human history and play our part.

We must act. Not just speak our lines, not just critique, but play our part. The key is in our own minds, hearts, spirits and hands. We must give of our whole selves to Christ and his work. The fate of fall and revival sits in our own chests.

A simple act, these Old Testament stories teach us, is to pray. And pray. Fast and pray. Pray for deliverance and revival.

God bless those who hold fast in Scotland! Those small and brave congregations.

History is the LORD’s. All of time and space, all nations, peoples, and rulers are his to do as he pleases.

LORD, bring Revival!!

A Deplorable.