Running to Revival

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Hey, good morning, church.

How are you guys doing today?

Hey, I want to tell you, you may not know it, but when you stand up here and watch that video, this stage rattles and it's like an interactive experience.

It just brings it more to life a little bit.

I'm excited.

The cool weather gets me excited.

It gets a little spring in my step.

This morning at four, I sprung my step to the coffee pot.

And normally I'm a two-cup of coffee guy, but when Amanda got up just after six, I told her there was a fresh pot on the way.

So we're ready to go this morning.

Before we get started, though, it's Veterans Day weekend.

And if we have veterans here, guys who served in the military service, ladies who served in the military service, if you would please stand up so that we can honor you.

Also, if we have anybody that's active duty right now or reserves, stand so we can honor you.

Thank you guys so much for your service.

We appreciate what you've done to fight for our freedom.

Things I don't even know about and can't even fathom.

So just thank you so much for that.

So it's been August since I got the chance to preach, and I thought that I should probably give you like a little Roper family update.

It's been a few months.

So the Roper family update goes something like this: Since August, Luke has finished his first year of middle school football for the Chelsea Hornets.

Ella has finished her first year at the Hornet Pride marching band.

Amanda got a promotion at work.

And as for me, I'm proud to report that the Eli Agnes is all gone.

Now I don't know if you know what I'm talking about, but there's something called Eli Agnes.

Some people call it Silverberry.

And when we moved into our house, we had this huge bush in the backyard.

It was like a privacy fence, and it went up in the trees, vines all over the place.

And Amanda said, Don't cut that down.

Like we knew there was another house around the corner, but we weren't quite sure how close it was.

We had neighbors who lived there.

They never came out, so we didn't even know there was anybody over there.

And then they sold their house, and the new people had children.

And the children were in my yard, I thought.

But they weren't, they were in their yard, and in between our yard and their yard was this big, thick Eli Agnes.

I think we have a picture of it.

And so we met the neighbors this fall, and we decided that they were good and decent people, and they assured us that they weren't going to be leaving anytime soon.

So about October the 1st, we took to cutting out the Eliagnes.

And let me tell you, I have used my chainsaw, a yard rake, a pole saw, ladder, rope, chain, my truck, garbage can, not to mention the antibiotic ointment and the hydro peroxide, hydrogen peroxide and the bandages and gauze.

I got scraped, I got cut, I had a near miss with a ladder and a pole saw.

I got punched in the nose.

Like seriously thought that I was in a fight.

It hit me, and my nose is just now getting okay.

When you pull this stuff, it doesn't always let go, and it hit me in the face.

Now though, it looks like this.

I spent 25 to 30 hours fighting this stuff.

Not to mention the big briars that are in it.

One went in my wrist, and it was like they were starting an IV.

The neighbor's dog got one in the roof of his mouth, and they say it was very traumatic.

But the Eli Agnes is gone amidst everything else that's going on with our family.

And now that I've done that, we can get into Jonah chapter 3.

Jonah 3 · chapter mention

Jonah 3 tells us this.

Now the word of the Lord came to Jonah the second time, saying, Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and preach to it the message that I tell you.

So Jonah arose and went to Nineveh according to the word of the Lord.

Now Nineveh was an exceedingly great city, a three-day journey in extent.

And Jonah began to enter the city on the first day's walk.

Then he cried out and said, Yet forty days and Nineveh shall be overthrown.

So the people of Nineveh believed God, proclaimed a fast, and put on sackcloth from the greatest to the least of them.

Then word came to the king of Nineveh, and he arose from his throne, laid aside his robe, covered himself in sackcloth, and sat in ashes.

And he caused it to be proclaimed and published throughout Nineveh by the decree of the king and his nobles, saying, Let neither man nor beast, herd nor flock taste anything.

Do not let them eat or drink water, but let man and beast be covered with sackcloth and cry mightily to God.

Yes, let every one turn from his evil way and from the violence that is in his hands.

Who can tell if God will turn and relent and turn away from his fierce anger, so that we may not perish?

Then God saw their works, how they turned from their evil way, and God relented from the disaster he had said he would bring upon them, and he did not do it.

Let's pray.

Heavenly Father, I thank you for this message that you have given us through your prophet Jonah, and I thank you for the response that we see to that message in the people of Nineveh.

God, I ask that you will open our hearts, open our minds, tear down our defenses so that we can hear your word and so that we can respond.

Lord, I believe that you've got a word for somebody here today.

And God, my prayer is that if it's only one person who responds and their life has changed, God, that you'll just do that and make it clear and obvious.

Thank you for the privilege to preach your word in Jesus' name.

Amen.

I want to talk to you just a little bit today from the idea of running to revival.

That's the name of this message, running to revival.

In verse 1 of Jonah chapter 3, what we see is the word of the Lord comes to Jonah a second time.

Jonah 3 · chapter mention

Jonah goes to Nineveh on a second chance.

And I want to tell you guys, unless you've lived a perfect life and you're here today, breathing on the top side of the soil, you are an example of a second or third or 75th or thousand and fifth chance.

Everybody here, myself included, is not on their first chance.

God is a God who gives second chances.

It really seems to me that God knows that we're going to mess up sometime.

In fact, when I really think about it, I think God probably knows that we're going to get it right every now and then.

And the rest of the time we might mess up, depending on who you are.

But God is a God of second chances.

Jonah is an example of a second chance.

But I don't think he's the cornerstone second chance in the Bible.

When I think about somebody who really got a second chance, I think about Peter.

Matthew chapter 16, Jesus tells Peter, On this rock I will build my church, and Hades will not prevail against it.

Matthew 16 · chapter mention

Peter is the rock Jesus is going to build the church on.

It doesn't take long before Jesus tells Peter, You will deny me three times.

And Peter says, No, I won't, even if I have to die with you.

And then Peter immediately almost denies Jesus three times.

And in John 21, Jesus restores Peter.

Three times he restores him.

One time for each denial.

He asks him, Do you love me?

Do you love me?

Do you love me?

And Peter says, Yes, yes, yes.

And Jesus says, Feed my sheep, tend my lambs, feed my lambs.

He tells Peter three times what to do.

And then Jesus goes on and tells Peter this he says, You're going to be girded and carried a place you don't wish, and your death is going to glorify God.

Your death is going to glorify God.

Peter has this honor.

He's the rock the church is going to be built on, and his death is going to glorify God.

He's been restored by the resurrected Jesus Christ.

He's starting his second chance.

And what does he do?

He says, What about John?

Come on, Peter.

And Jesus says, if he stays till I come back, what is it to you?

You follow me.

So I'm not here to talk about chances that you may have missed in the past.

We can't guarantee you're going to have any chances in the future, but if you're here right now today, you have a chance.

What are you doing with this chance that you have right now?

Are you completely dedicated?

Are you running?

Because there's some things that can get in the way of you taking advantage of the chance that you have right now.

If you look at verse 2 in Jonah chapter 3, we see that Jesus, or not Jesus, we see that God tells Jonah, go and tell him the message that I will tell you.

Jonah 3 · chapter mention

Now, in chapter 1, God told Jonah to go and cry out against Nineveh.

This is a little small difference.

God tells him to go tell him the thing that I tell you.

What is it you want me to tell them?

I mean, if you got to go talk to somebody, especially if they may kill you, don't you want to know what God wants you to say to them?

I would.

Moses did.

God didn't tell him any of that stuff.

He had to go tell Pharaoh.

But God doesn't always tell you exactly what you're going to say.

In fact, when Jesus sent his disciples out on their missionary journey in Matthew chapter 10, he told them they're going to arrest you and bring you before kings and councils, and don't worry about what you're going to say when you get there.

Matthew 10 · chapter mention

It'll be your father who speaks through you at that time.

So I just got to wonder if maybe somebody in here, there's somebody that you know you're supposed to go talk to, and you never have gone to talk to them because you say, I don't know what I'm going to say when I get there.

It might just be that God wants to tell you when you go what you're supposed to say when you get there.

The Father can speak through.

Now, this isn't an excuse not to read your Bible and just say, I'm going to go wing it.

You're supposed to do that for your relationship with God.

But don't dodge a second chance just because you don't know all the details up front.

God gives us the details, but he doesn't always give them to us up front.

Can you imagine Abraham in Genesis chapter 12?

Genesis 12 · chapter mention

God said, Go to the place I'll show you.

Like, which way do I start?

Left, right, back?

I mean, we don't get those details up front.

God doesn't always give us the details.

Maybe he just wants us to take a step off in obedience before he gives us the details.

I tell you, when people ask me to preach, and it, I generally always say yes.

I don't check my calendar, it drives my wife crazy.

We have a calendar, everything's got to be on the calendar.

I say yes, and I don't ever know what I'm going to say.

But I trust that God is going to provide it for me.

And the way that He provides it for me is this it's Jeremiah 29.13.

Jeremiah 29.11 gets a whole lot of play about God knowing the future he has for you, not to harm you, give you hope in a future, his plans.

But in Jeremiah 29.13, God says this, you will seek me and find me when you search for me with all your heart.

And in my experience, when I commit to do something without all the details, and then I go start seeking God, I get closer to him and he equips me with the process.

So if you're here and you know that you got a second chance and you know there's something you're supposed to do, and you're just waiting on the details, you may not get them.

Verse 3.

We see that Jonah arose and went.

He gets it right this time.

And as I was thinking about verse 3 and thinking about what if this happened to Dave Roper, I had some questions.

First of all, we don't know exactly where Jonah got spit up by the fish.

In chapter 2, verse 10, he's spit up by the fish.

Maybe he was near Nineveh.

I don't know if he was near Nineveh or not.

Maybe he was far away.

What I do know is that this man has spent three days in a fish and he's about to go preach.

And if it's me, I might want to shower first.

I just might.

Right?

And that's another thing I think that can delay us on the chances that we have.

There's a lot of people who don't want to come to church because they feel like they got to clean up first.

And there's a lot of people at church who don't want to lead or don't want to teach or don't want to work with kids or don't want to sing or don't want to lead a group at their house because they feel like they got to clean up first.

Listen, guys, you can spend your whole life trying to get cleaned up.

We're all in this lifelong cleaning up process, and it's called sanctification.

God's still working on me to make me what I ought to be, is the way we used to sing it at All Saints Episcopal Day School.

And that means that he's not done yet, and if I wait on to get clean, or if I wait on the details, I'm gonna move on to another chance and move on to another chance, and move on to another chance.

And I just don't know if that's what God has for our life.

It might be that if you commit first to the work that God has given you, the cleaning up process just kind of starts.

Because as you get closer to Him, you get more and more clean, more and more sanctified.

So let's look at this message.

It's an eight-word message in verse 4.

It's not a very long message.

Yet 40 days and Nineveh shall be overthrown.

If you're taking notes, I think we're on number two.

It is a short and simple message.

I don't remember what number one was.

I think it was a second chance.

Alright, so yet 40 days and Nineveh shall be overthrown.

Short and simple.

Don't you just love a short, simple message?

No, you don't.

I don't love a short, simple message.

I like a short and sweet message, but sometimes the short and simple thing, I'm gonna be real, that's the hard way.

The short and simple thing.

It doesn't mean it's easy just because it's short and simple.

And a lot of times God gives us a short and simple message, and we're like, I don't know.

I'm gonna tell you, I think it's human nature to try to overcomplicate things, to try to find a little bit of an easier way.

And I'm about to say something that may be the second most controversial thing that I'm gonna say today, but that's okay.

I've ran it by some people.

I've got some people on my side.

And I want to say before I say this that I'm standing here 68 pounds over what the military says that I should weigh.

I have a body mass index that tells me that I am morbidly obese.

Right here, right now, and I've lost 50 pounds since I was a kid.

So I think I can speak a little bit into this, and you guys get ready to rush the stage.

But generally speaking, in broad terms, isn't losing weight about eating less and doing more?

I mean, kind of at the heart of the issue.

I know there are special circumstances, I know there are things that I don't understand, but I know this generally when I eat a little bit less and I do a little bit more, I tend to lose weight.

And we've got the South Beach diet and Jenny Craig and Dr.

Atkins and Pilates and I Don't Eat Weight Watchers, Tommy Lasorda, who used to coach the Los Angeles Dodgers when I was a kid, was telling me he drank one of these for breakfast, one for lunch, and then had a sensible dinner.

I don't even know what a sensible dinner is.

We've got keto and paleo and some people that eat all vegetables and some people that won't eat any vegetables, only meat.

We've got folks that work out in garages.

We've got the Gold's gym.

We've got the bicycle thing that we do right now.

What was Richard Simmons even doing in the 80s?

Do you guys remember the little cards and you move them from one side to the other, and when you get them on the right side, you're done eating for the day?

Unless you eat the cards.

I'm just gonna tell you that we overcomplicate a whole lot of things in our life as humans.

And if you've got a short, simple message from God, don't overcomplicate it.

Just go do the hard thing.

40 days.

We see 40 days here is how long the Ninevites have, and then they're going to be destroyed.

40 days in the Bible, we see that with Noah and the flood.

Moses was on Mount Sinai for 40 days.

Alright, the prophet Elijah, after the Mount Carmel victory, fasted for 40 days.

There's a story in Ezekiel, I think, chapter 34, where he was instructed to lay on his right side for 40 days for the sins of Israel.

Never knew that was there before.

Israel must not have been as bad as Judah because he had to lay on his left side 390 days for their sins.

Or it might be flip, I may have my story.

But he 40 days Jesus went into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil and to fast before he began his public ministry.

40 days after Jesus rose from the dead, that he was here on earth with us, there's gotta be something to these 40 days.

And I think in the Bible, when there's a new thing, when there's a cleansing, when there's a change that's gonna happen, a lot of times we see 40 days.

A 40-day period.

If you are working on your second or your 40th or your 175th chance, and you've got a word from the Lord right now, a short, simple message.

You've been demanding details, but you don't want to demand them anymore.

You've been needing to get clean, but you say, I'm gonna go ahead and do it without getting clean.

Take 40 days.

First of the year, right?

That's when we do all of our stuff on the first of the year.

Get ready to gasp.

In 42 days, we'll be in this building celebrating Christmas.

42 days.

You got time right now as we lead up to the birth of Christ to do whatever it is that God may have laid on your heart.

Don't waste your 40 days.

What's missing from this message to the people of Nineveh?

I think it's interesting what's not there.

God doesn't tell them what to do.

I think sometimes we wait around on God to tell us what to do.

And sometimes we need to wait for God to tell us what to do.

But if you're like me, obstinate and hard-headed, it's not that you are waiting on God to tell you what to do.

It's that God has told you what you need to do, and you're waiting for God to tell you something that you like a little bit better.

And I just think if I wait, if I can need to clean up, if I can demand some more details, if I can put some space in this, maybe God might change his mind.

That's just me.

I don't speak for everyone.

But we got 40 days.

God didn't tell them exactly what they were supposed to do, but as we leave, as we keep reading, it seems like they knew exactly what they were supposed to be doing.

They didn't seem to have any problem knowing what they were supposed to be doing.

In fact, verse 5, we move right into that.

The people's response.

And I think in the people's response, we see kind of what I call a maybe recipe for revival, possibly.

The first thing that verse five tells us the people did in Nineveh is these people, these evil people, believed God.

Why did they believe God?

I don't know.

Maybe they saw the fish fit Jonah up.

I've heard people talk about that.

Maybe they saw Jonah and he was pale white from the stomach acid of the fish.

I don't know.

Maybe they heard about what happened and that made them want to believe.

I don't know.

Maybe God was just working in their heart before Jonah got there.

We don't know that.

And if you've got a task or a mission or a thing to do that's doomed from the start, set up to fail, no way it's ever gonna happen, gonna do nothing but embarrass you, get you rejected.

You never know what God's doing in the hearts of the people that He may be telling you to go talk to.

You never know what God's doing in the place he may be telling you to go and serve or work.

The people believed God, and we don't know why, but they did.

Maybe the God was just working in their hearts.

The second thing that I see the people do, not only do they believe God, but they take action.

This isn't in your notes, but number one in my recipe for revival, believe God and took action.

The action they took, they started fasting and they started wearing sackcloth.

I'm not sure what sackcloth is.

I think the closest thing that can come to my mind is old burlap potato sacks that you used to jump in in the race.

Scratchy and uncomfortable, maybe especially in the desert.

So they believed God.

They fasted and put on their sackcloth.

It was a signal of mourning in the Bible.

All right, and the people did this, and it made me think of the verse in James where it says, You show me your faith without works, and I'll show you my faith by my works.

These people in Nineveh, you could see a change in them based on their belief.

They didn't just believe and talk about it.

They believed and went and did something.

They took action.

They changed their appearance, they changed their comfort, they changed their focus.

And also it says in verse 5, and this is number three, they were unified.

From the greatest to the least, the Bible says.

From the healthiest to the sickest, from the richest to the poorest, from the smartest to the not smartest, right?

From the most privileged to the least privileged, from the greatest to the least, all the people took this action.

They were unified.

You know, Jesus, on the night before he went to the cross, in John chapter 17, he prayed for himself, he prayed for his disciples, and he prayed for you and me.

John 17 · chapter mention

He prayed for us.

People who would come to know his word through the word of the disciples.

And the thing that he prayed for us is that we may be as one.

Unified.

He goes on to say that if we are as one with him in the Father now, I'm not saying that we should forsake truth for unity.

The world tells us sometimes that we should.

But if we are unified in the truth of Jesus Christ, the Bible tells us that people are going to know that God sent Jesus, and people are going to know that God loves them.

And if people know that God sent Jesus in droves and people know that God loves them and come to know the Lord, is that revival?

So maybe if we believe, we act on our belief, and we are unified amongst ourselves in the truth of Christ.

That might be a recipe.

It seems like it is in Nineveh.

So are we one?

There's over 20 churches just in Chelsea.

There's 66 Southern Baptist churches in our county.

Even in this room.

Are we one?

Or do we have things that separate us and tear apart that have nothing to do with doctrine?

More feelings and emotions.

When I think about being unified, I'm going to go back to the start and tell you, especially this last month, I think about Eliagnes.

Thin individual strands weaving together, knotting themselves together, spreading up, down, sideways, 20 feet in the air, bonded together, growing together, bearing fruit together.

And there's a lot of strength in that.

I got punched in the face.

The Bible tells us in Ecclesiastes chapter 4 that a threefold cord is not easily broken.

Ecclesiastes 4 · chapter mention

What about a 200-fold cord?

If we were all unified together.

And when I think of unity, I think of Eliagnes.

God's given me this illustration of the Eli Agnes, in which I am the devil in the illustration.

You know what I had to do to get rid of the Eli Agnes?

First of all, I had to separate it out.

And if I could get it into one piece, then I could beat it most of the time.

But I had to untwine some of that unity.

I had to get it unbonded.

And then I could beat one at a time.

And you know the easiest way to do that?

Cut it off at the root so that it couldn't get the nutrients that it needed.

Jesus tells us in John chapter 15, I'm the vine, you're the branches.

John 15 · chapter mention

If you abide in me, you will bear much fruit.

So what do we need to do to be unified?

We need to be intertwined together with the root of the truth of Jesus Christ, the vine that provides our life to us.

And I'm just going to tell you, I believe there's a lot of strength in that.

Is it even possible?

I mean, Jesus prayed for it.

The people of Nineveh found unity and they grew and spread and they called it revival.

Let's look at what the king did.

Verse 6.

The king's response.

The Bible tells us the word came to the king, and I'm going to come at this from the perspective that this is not the word of the Lord because it doesn't say the word of the Lord.

We see in chapter 3, verse 1, just a few verses before, the word of the Lord came to Jonah.

Alright, and we see also the word of the Lord came to the people of Nineveh.

He went down to Nineveh according to the word of the Lord.

But now the king gets word.

Okay?

So what I understand this to be is the king heard what the people were doing.

And look at what he does.

The Bible says when the king got word of the people's action, their unified efforts, he gets up off of his throne, he strips off his robe, he goes and puts himself on a potato sack, and he goes out and sits in ashes.

So the king humbles himself and he repents.

The ashes in the sackcloth is a symbol of repentance and mourning in the Bible.

And the king does that.

And when I think about what this says again, I want to read it again.

Verse 6, then the word came to the king of Nineveh, and he arose from his throne and he started doing the repentance signs.

It seems like that the word of the unified actions of the people, the word that the people had believed and repented uniformly, came to the king, and the actions of the people changed the heart of their leadership.

Is that even possible in our country?

That the actions of the people could change the heart of the leadership.

Probably not.

I bet that's what a lot of people in Nineveh said before Jonah got there.

The king's decree.

Verse 7.

You guys are gonna get out early today.

I told you lots of coffee.

The king repents first, and then he decrees.

So after the king repents, then he makes a decree, and his decree goes something like this.

All the people gotta fast.

Check.

I'm already fasting.

All the people gotta wear sackcloth.

Check.

Already doing that.

All the animals, too.

Um, to quote the great American cinematic character, Wayne Campbell, to his good buddy Garth, I must say, hey, squeezing, the animals got to fast, and we've got to put them in sackcloth.

Have you ever tried to put a sweater on your dog?

How about your cat?

I know there's one girl, she's not here today, but there's a girl in this church who made a sweater for a cat just a couple of weeks ago.

It's not easy.

And we're talking about domestic animals.

What about a wild cat or a coyote or whatever else may have been wandering around the desert?

It says all the animals have got to put on a sackcloth.

First of all, I mean, if that happened here, PETA would be all over this.

I mean, you can stuff, you may can starve the animals, but we're not going to take away their dignity and embarrass them by putting those potato sacks on them.

I mean, there would be an uproar.

The king's decree didn't make sense, but the people were already so unified and they had gotten a word from God, and the king had repented first, and they followed his lead and they did what he said, even though it didn't make sense.

Now, I don't know exactly where we need to relate that to what's going on today.

I guess you can work that out in your own mind.

But the king made a decree.

It wasn't an easy decree, but it was short and simple.

He didn't tell them a whole lot about what they had to do, but they did the thing that he said to do.

Verse 8.

The people cried mightily.

That's the word that stuck out to me.

The people cried mightily.

And I got to thinking as I was reading this and getting ready, when was the last time that Dave Roper cried mightily to God?

Hurricane Ivan in 2004, I remember it really well.

Amanda and I had bought our first house.

It was a little white house in Gardendale by the Gardendale Nursing Home.

If you've ever lived in Gardendale, you know right where this is.

It's on the dead end by the nursing home.

That was our first house.

We had a basement there.

We had three bedrooms there.

And not long, I mean, it was about a year after we bought it in September of 2004 that Hurricane Ivan came.

And they said that a hurricane was gonna come to Birmingham.

And I was convinced that it was the end times.

Because, I mean, hurricane came to Birmingham, and then Katrina was the next year, and I was like, oh, this is it.

I mean, you know.

So, Hurricane Ivan, I'm 24 years old, 25 years old, and so I'm gung-ho taking care of my business, doing all I can to take care of my family.

You guys just think I'm bad now about getting things done.

Let me tell you, it's amazing what Amanda used to put up with.

So I go over to Walmart and I go out to the outdoor section and I get myself a five-gallon water cooler, and then I get myself some mag flashlights, and I get some oil lamps and some extra oil, and I'm fighting people off because a hurricane is coming to Birmingham, and everybody's off in the camping section because we don't know what to do.

We got no frame of reference for this.

I go over and get some canned goods.

Nothing perishable, because I don't know.

It occurred to us that maybe we should call my grandmother Nana, is what I call her.

Some of you guys have eaten Nana's Delight.

It doesn't have bananas, it's something my grandmother used to make.

So she lived in a mobile home community down the road from us there in Gardendale.

And since we had a house and had a basement, we thought maybe she should come and stay with us since a hurricane, I can't get over this, was coming to Birmingham.

So we get Nana out to the house in the middle of the afternoon, and we get her all settled into her bedroom.

Now, this house we have is an L-shaped kind of.

You walk through the kitchen, you've got a bathroom here, the basement door.

There's a corner bedroom right here, you turn, and you go down, you've got another bedroom, a little smaller, and then you've got the master with a five foot by five ensuite.

I was something.

Five by five.

But I had two bathrooms and I had one in my bedroom, young kid.

We get Nana in there and we go to bed, and about midnight I heard what was a tree boom, crash.

And I jumped out of bed and went to see where the tree was.

And I went to the bedroom where Nana was to see if the tree fell on her.

And she wasn't there.

And then I saw the basement door was open.

She had stepped through the wrong door into the darkness, and she fell down ten wood steps around a landing, down three more steps, and she was laying on the concrete floor of our basement in her nightgown, and she was 82.

I ran down there to see what she was doing, and I remember her voice, David, David.

And I wanted to grab her up, but I knew I couldn't do that.

So I touched her on the head, told her I loved her, called for Amanda frantically.

I think she probably called 911.

When the ambulance got there, they started taking care of her.

And I went upstairs to the bed where she had been sleeping.

And I cried mightily to God.

God, please don't let her hip be broken.

God, please protect her head.

God, please don't let her be paralyzed.

Please don't let her back be broken.

God, please let her move again.

Please let her walk again.

Please let her drive again, be on her own again.

I cried mightily to God.

In James chapter 5, verse 16, the Bible tells us the effectual, fervent prayer of a righteous man avails much.

James 5:16

Fervent, I looked that up.

It means passionate, hot, glowing, burning.

The passionate, hot, glowing, burning prayer of a righteous man avails much.

So why don't we do it?

Why don't I do it?

And as I evaluated that night, some almost 18 years, 20 years ago, I came up with this idea for me, and I'm gonna confess, a lot of the times I got four things that I don't pray glowing hot and burning.

This is why.

One, if you're gonna do that, you gotta have a deep concern.

And if you have a deep concern and you're gonna pray fervently, then you gotta have a firm belief of impending danger.

And if you have a deep concern and a firm belief of impending danger, for me, you gotta have a little bit of strong conviction that it's your responsibility.

I could have locked that door.

And if you are deeply concerned, have a firm conviction that danger is imminent and some responsibility, you gotta be helpless to do anything about it.

And I think a lot of times we are concerned and convicted, and we do believe dangerous things are gonna happen, but we go do something.

I couldn't do anything that night.

And I cried mightily to God.

They put her in the ambulance.

We raced across town to go to her hospital.

I followed them, and the storm that had scared me so bad, it didn't even matter.

There was a new storm in my life.

At the hospital, I thought I was gonna have to fight a doctor.

They did blood work, they did x-rays, they did CAT scans.

And in four hours, did you hear me?

In four hours, they sent Nana home.

Not even a broken bone.

The effectual, fervent prayer of a righteous man, or even a 24-year-old punk kid, has tremendous power to avail much.

And the people of Nineveh cried mightily to God.

Do we do that today?

We have to get through those four barriers, I told you.

That might be part of the recipe for revival.

Verse 9.

We see who can tell if God will relent.

Who can tell if God will relent?

The Bible doesn't tell us that God heard the voice of the people and then he relented.

The Bible doesn't tell us that God discerned the intentions of the people and then he relented.

The Bible doesn't tell us that God knew the thoughts of the people and then he relented.

The Bible tells us in verse 10 that God saw their works and then he relented.

That was what sprung God into action.

So what I wonder today is do we believe that our nation needs to repent?

And the next question I have is, are we repenting?

I talk to a lot of people sometimes who tell me that our country is doomed, our future doesn't look bright, our youth are troubled, things look bad for us.

And I've kind of come to this belief.

I think that a lot of people in America believe that a lot of people in America need to repent.

We see it on the news: stealing, robbery, murder, kidnapping, drugs, rape, molestation, homosexuality, transgender, abortion.

It comes across our screen all the time, and we say, God help us, we need to repent.

But what about those just sins?

Those that don't make the news.

Just a little pride.

I have just a little greed.

I'm just a little envious.

I've got just a little bit of lust.

I'm just a little bit bitter.

I gossip just a little.

I'm just a little self-centered.

I'm just not ready to forgive just yet.

I know what I'm supposed to be doing.

But I just don't know if I want to do that right now.

Does that need repentance too?

The stuff that we don't see on the screen?

My sin, your sin.

The Bible tells us in Jonah that all the people in Nineveh decided that all the people in Nineveh needed to repent.

And I tried to get in my mind how that could happen.

And the only way that I see that it could happen is that each person in Nineveh came to believe that their sin was the biggest problem facing their city.

And from the greatest to the least, each repented.

They started looking at mirrors and not out the window at what everybody else was doing.

This is a hard verse for me to believe.

But Paul tells us this in 1 Timothy chapter 1, verse 15.

1 Timothy 1:15

He says, This is a faithful saying worthy of all acceptance.

Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am chief.

Do you believe you're the chief sinner?

Or is there some other people that need to repent more than you do?

I think in Nineveh, they got unified because everybody believed that their sin was the biggest thing going on.

And it's not that our a lot of our country needs to repent, it's that we all need to.

It's not that a lot of the world needs to repent, it's that everybody needs to.

That's where we can find unity, I believe.

And you know, my sin is the only thing I can do something about.

But I can do something about it.

Even if nobody else does.

Who can tell if God will relent?

The title of this message is running to revival.

I don't think that's what the people of Nineveh did.

The people of Nineveh didn't run to revival.

I don't even think you can run to revival.

What they did is run to repentance.

And if we will do that, we may be surprised where we end up.

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