I remember when, as the pastor of a local congregation, I asked the church to come together for corporate prayer at the start of a new year. We spent time in confession of sin. We committed the ministries of the church to the Lord. We prayed for our nation. We prayed for missionaries around the world. We prayed for unity and love to prevail in our congregational life.
We knelt. There are many postures associated with prayer in the Bible. One of them is kneeling. “For this reason I kneel before the Father,” Paul said in Ephesians 3:14.
Over 100 years ago in Wales a revival movement was begun through prayer. Thousands of people were brought to faith in Christ. The influence of the revival led to moral reform in towns and cities all over the country. Christians who had grown cold and indifferent in their faith became fervent again. They confessed sin and began to seek to please God by living holy lives. Churches were filled with eager worshippers. Newspapers published stories about the progress of the revival.
A young preacher named Evan Roberts had limited education, but he knew how to pray and to lead others to pray. God used him in a significant way to further the spiritual awakening. But chroniclers of the movement are careful to point out that it was not Roberts but the Lord Jesus who was the center of attraction. He knew, and the people knew, that he was not the secret of the success of the revival, but only one of the Lord’s chosen instruments.
If Roberts was invited to preach in a church or town, he said he would come on only one condition: that no announcement would be made as to where he would be speaking. He wanted the people to come to the meetings to meet the Lord Jesus, not just to hear him. And thousands came. Surely it was this kind of humble dependence on the Lord that made room for the Spirit to move. The spiritual awakening spread from Wales throughout England and to other parts of the world.
From this we learn that genuine revival is a supernatural intervention of God in the lives of Christians. It cannot be programmed or scheduled by humans. It produces repentance and confession of sin. It results in instant obedience to the known will of God. It produces changes (uncomfortable corrections) in the lives of God’s people. Revival is not the same thing as evangelism, but when God’s people are revived, many people are converted to Christ.
We cannot, by human means, produce a revival. But we may certainly pray for revival. No nation on earth is in greater need of a spiritual awaking than our own in 2026. What if individual believers began to pray for revival in their own lives? What if these believers gathered a few friends to pray specifically for God to revive them, and their churches? What would happen?
Jesus said he would be present when two or three gathered in his name. Believers would be built up by the “one another” encouragement of others. We would discover there is more than one way to look at an issue and to pray about it. We would benefit from the faith of others as we pray together. United prayer pleases God, especially when it is the prayer, “your will be done.”
Is it God’s will to send a revival in 2026? We may pray for it. The Welsh revival was a revival of prayer. God listens when his children pray.
Pastor Randy Faulkner