Praying Together by Megan Hill

Author:Megan Hill
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Crossway

He Establishes Jerusalem

Having defined revival, we will now consider the two primary characteristics of revival (“reinvigorating” and “propagating” Christian piety) with the specific incentives that the Bible gives us to pray for each of them. In the first place, revival is God reinvigorating his people, the church. The freshly revived church will have right affections—rejecting sin, eagerly attending the preaching of the Word, and being constant in prayer—and she will abound in good works to those in her midst and also outside.13 This is something God promises to do, and it is something he commands us to pray for:

On your walls, O Jerusalem,

I have set watchmen;

all the day and all the night

they shall never be silent.

You who put the LORD in remembrance,

take no rest,

and give him no rest

until he establishes Jerusalem

and makes it a praise in the earth. (Isa. 62:6–7)

In Isaiah 62 God tells us he is going to make his church, here called Jerusalem,14 righteous (v. 1), beautiful (v. 3), and an object of divine rejoicing (v. 5). She will be nourished without threat from her enemies (vv. 8–9), will be firmly established, and will be “a praise in the earth” (v. 7).

On the strength of his promise, God commands all “who put the LORD in remembrance” (v. 6) to pray for this. Everyone who loves Christ’s church must ask him for her establishment.15 Moreover, we are to pray not just once or twice but without ceasing. We are to take no rest for ourselves. And, in an invitation to divinely sanctioned audacity, God tells us not to give him any rest either. We are to be like the persistent widow who returned again and again with her request (Luke 18:1–8). We are to be like the prophetess Anna who never left the place of prayer and fasting (Luke 2:37). We are to imitate Paul who prayed for the church at all hours (1 Thess. 3:10). And we are to pray in opposition to the relentless Enemy of the church who accuses her night and day (Rev. 12:10). By divine command, we must pray for the reinvigorating of God’s people—morning and evening, today and tomorrow, this year and next year, and in all the years until Christ’s return.

One day, when we are beyond time, when Christ returns and we enter into eternity with him, when the new Jerusalem comes down (Rev. 21:2) and is fully and finally established, we will join the cherubim and seraphim and the company of the saints whose praises never cease night and day (Rev. 4:8–11; 7:15). We who gave God no rest on earth, asking for his blessing, will give him no rest in eternity, thanking him for his answer.

Earlier in this chapter, I described the New York revival that started at a prayer meeting begun by a man named Jeremiah Lamphier. Lamphier wrote in his diary: “One day, as I was walking along the streets, the idea was suggested to my mind that an hour of prayer, from twelve to one o’clock would be beneficial to business men, who usually in great numbers take that hour for rest and refreshment.

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