Contending for Renewal & Revival | Isaiah 40:21-31 | Greg Jackson

It is so good to be back with y'all.

I always look forward to being at C3.

I'm very encouraged when I hear Colton talk about what's going on here and what the Lord is doing in this place.

And to be a small part of it now, every now and then is an honor for me.

Now, as Colton shared, I've shared with you guys before.

Colton and I have have been friends for a while and really we connected over prayer, over our desire for deeper prayer in our own lives, and to see the church brought in to more prayer for our church and for our city.

But if you didn't know, this guy prays for you a lot.

He prays for you a lot.

We just did it before the service started with a handful of folks.

And primarily it's those prayers and not he and Rainey's gifts and personalities, even though they've got that in spades and they have a lot to bring to the table.

But it's primarily their fervent prayers for you and for the church that have led to what you're now experiencing of the Lord's presence here.

So just know that, that it's the prayer, the regular, persistent prayer for you guys that is the is resulting in what you're seeing happen here at C3 Now.

And so in our time together this morning, I'd like to call us, or you as a church, to a specific type of prayer.

A regular, fervent prayer for more of what God's already been doing, and know that He's already doing this among you, but I'm gonna talk about prayer for renewal and revival in your church.

Now, as we are still at the start of 2025, just one month in, I'd like to call us all to pursue and to contend for renewal and revival this year.

So in the next few minutes, what we're gonna do is define what renewal and revival are.

And when you hear terms like that, especially revival, you may be drawn to it or repelled from it.

And we'll talk about why that is as we go through it this morning.

But biblically, we're gonna see what those terms mean, and then I'm gonna lead us through the how and why of pursuing these things as individuals, as families, and as a church.

So let me pray for us before we start.

Father, um Lord, it's just an honor to be amongst these people.

Um to be in another local church that you call your body.

It's held together by your spirit.

It's held together by your gospel, by the good news of what Christ has done.

So, Lord, I pray for your spirit to move, for you to speak and work.

I pray for your power and presence, for you to do things that only you can do this morning in Christ's name.

Amen.

So, um, we're gonna talk about what these things are.

Um, what is renewal and revival?

But before we do that, I want to be clear: renewal and revival are not the end.

Okay?

They must not be the goal or the north star of our spiritual lives.

Uh, We Would See Jesus is a book that counselor recommended to me last year, and I'm a very slow reader, and I've actually read it twice this year, if that tells you how impactful it was for me.

Um, it's written by Roy and Revel Hessian.

So her name is Reville, is his wife, so you know they're they're older.

Um this was written in the 1950s, and this book is is older, but and it's a really simple, straightforward book, but it feels incredibly real and present for me every time I read some of it.

Pretty much on every page of something that really connects with me.

And um, this quote sums up the theme of the book pretty well.

They write, Our end is to be the Lord Jesus Himself.

The reason for getting right with God should not be that we might have revival or power or be used of God or have this or that blessing, but that we might have Him.

Our sin has caused us to let go of His hand, a cloud has come between His lovely face and ourselves, and at all costs we want to find Him and His fellowship again.

Jesus says to us, make me your desired end, and you will surely have that end, and you shall be satisfied, lacking nothing that is in the will of God for you.

So for everything we talk about this morning, with all that we seek, pray for, and hope for this year, the end goal must be, must always be more fellowship with Jesus, resulting in more glory for Jesus.

That is the end of everything that we pursue.

In Psalm 85, 6 and 7, the psalmist asks the Lord this Will you not revive us again, that your people may rejoice in you?

Show us your steadfast love, O Lord, and grant us your salvation.

So, why do we want our hearts revived?

It's so that we can find joy in the Lord again, so that we can rejoice in the fact that He has saved us, that He loves us, that He loves us with a steadfast, never failing love.

So being revived means living in and responding to God's love that is found in Jesus.

We want our hearts revived so that we can have more of Jesus.

We don't use Jesus so that we can have some sort of experience that we call revival.

And that's an important distinction.

Our end is to be the Lord Jesus Himself.

Okay, but first let's back up exactly what are biblical renewal and revival.

Because some of you may have grown up with the concept of revival like this.

You know, for me it was once a year we would go to church every night for a week.

A guest preacher would talk about hell a lot, or can I say shout about hell a lot, and urge us to come down the aisle to make sure that we were saved.

And there were usually many, many verses of the hymn, just as I am.

So that might be some of your experiences of revival.

And I'm being a little too harsh.

Um, there were some good things about these revival meetings, and some churches, uh, lots of churches still have them periodically throughout the year.

But that is probably not what the psalmist had in mind when he cried out to the Lord, Will you not revive us again?

Now, renewal and revival in Memphis is something that I've been gathering with folks to pray for on and off for over the last like five years or so, and many of those times have been with Colton.

But that started for me with a podcast called This Cultural Moment, which led me to the books of an Australian pastor of all places.

His name is Mark Sayers.

And Sayers is really good at pointing out cultural trends and how they connect with the church and what God is doing throughout the world.

Um, but what he really loves to do is highlight where God seems to be answering prayers for renewal and revival around the world.

So, Sayers and others are part of a global movement of Christians and churches who are longing for and asking God to bring renewal and revival.

And believe it or not, as we will see, God seems to be answering these prayers.

But at the heart of these prayers, going up from God's people across the globe, is this it's the church coming to the end of itself.

To the end of all our good ideas, our programs, our technology, our celebrity pastors, and just crying out to God for more of his power and his presence.

It's the church realizing that what we can do with our resources and our ingenuity is simply not enough.

And that we must begin persistently asking God to do the things that only he can do.

And that includes bringing renewal and revival to his church and actually changing people's hearts and changing our culture.

So, let's back up, as I promised, do some defining first, because these words can mean lots of different things to different people.

So actually, there's not much separation between these two words or concepts in Scripture.

Both renewal and revival, biblically speaking, are used to describe when something new comes to God's people, particularly new spiritual strength and spiritual life.

So the words translated renewal and revival both come from words meaning to live or to live again.

In the Old Testament, the root is more connected to the idea of breathing, so like the dry bones in Ezekiel, having new life breathed into them.

While in the New Testament, it has more of a resurrection bent, like in the prodigal son story, where the father says the son was dead, but is now alive again.

Also in the New Testament, our spiritual renewal or revival is compared to a slowly dying fire being rekindled in 2 Timothy 1, or a plant growing new branches and flourishing again in Philippians 4.

Now, in recent generations, theologians have made what I think is a helpful distinction, with renewal used to describe what happens when God does something new within his church or among his people, while revival is used to describe what happens when renewal goes viral, if you will.

Or when God's power and presence spread beyond the church, into the culture and the world at large.

So this morning, let's use that distinction as we taught.

Renewal is what God does within believers inside his church, and revival is what happens when that spills out into the rest of the world.

And we'll use our passage from Isaiah 40 that Colton read.

That'll be the trellis where we hang everything this morning.

So you can see the first step toward renewal and revival in verse 30 that Colton read.

And that first step is being weary and exhausted.

It all begins with stopping long enough to recognize and admit that either physically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually, or maybe in all those ways, we're just done and desperately in need of new life.

And being willing to admit that.

Isaiah says, even youth shall faint and be weary, and young men shall fall exhausted.

So even the most vital, healthiest among us run out of steam.

Why is that?

Why does that happen?

It's because we are frail, limited humans in a world that is wearing down and falling apart.

That is our reality.

So let me go large scale for a minute.

I can really geek out on this stuff.

I took a lot of this out, by the way.

My wife told me to take some quotes out.

But we now know science tells us that our universe is constantly expanding.

And nobody really knows why or how that could be.

But at the same time, the universe is also wearing down.

Cosmologists have discovered that there's only a finite amount of energy in the universe.

And so one day, no new stars are going to be formed, and all the existing stars, including our sun, will burn out.

And that's the reality of the universe we live in.

On a smaller scale, all right, so that's big.

On the smaller scale, what we experience every day is the fact that nature, the third law of thermodynamics, is constantly working on all of our bodies, which means we are all falling apart.

And some of you know that better than others.

Just ask every dude in the room over 40 who periodically can't lift his arm above his head, which is me right now.

Okay, how many of you guys, right?

What happens to our shoulders when we get over 40?

I don't know.

But why is that happening?

Why is that happening to my shoulders, to the rest of my body?

It's because, as 2 Corinthians 4.16 says, outwardly we are wasting away.

All of us.

And all of this is a result of the fall and the presence of sin in the world.

So both physically and spiritually, all right, things don't naturally renew.

Instead, they fall apart and die.

That's what happens because of the presence of sin in the world.

But good news is that this state of affairs is temporary.

And in this time between Jesus' first and second coming, God is still at work.

What is he doing?

What's God doing?

He's constantly renewing life in order first to sustain the universe physically, but also to keep the church alive and to keep his people flourishing.

He's bringing renewal spiritually and physically all the time.

So, the point is only God brings new life.

Only God can bring new life.

Psalm 104 says that all animals, all creation looks to God for life.

Verses 30 and 31 of Psalm 104 say, When you sin your spirit, they are created, and you renew the face of the ground.

May the glory of the Lord endure forever, may the Lord rejoice in his works.

So, what's the picture here?

Is that any renewal or new life that happens now, while the world is under the curse of sin, that is all God's grace and mercy.

Okay?

Every new creature that's born, any bird that gets enough food to live, any field that is renewed by the seasons and grows new crops in the spring, that is all God's renewing power at work.

All of it.

And apart from God's renewing work, everything falls apart.

And that means everything the earth, our bodies, our spiritual lives, our relationships, our families, our churches, the nations, civilizations, our solar system, and as we've said, the universe.

Without God's renewing power, all that falls apart.

So, any sign of life you see, anywhere, it's all either God's common grace for everyone or his specific grace for his people, for his church.

And y'all, we can't even imagine life without God's renewing power.

And without his spirit at work in our world.

It would be too terrible to contemplate.

But there is a name for it, right?

We know that life devoid of God's life-giving presence is hell.

That's what it is.

So, the first step toward renewal is emitting our weariness and our exhaustion.

Right?

We're exhausted and weary from living in a fallen world.

The first step is acknowledging the gap between where we want to be and where we actually are.

As Mark Sayers says, renewal begins with what he calls holy discontent, which he defines as a deep dissatisfaction with the low state of our faith, the church and the culture, and a hunger for something better.

Now, how many of y'all feel that at times?

This hunger for something better, for something more.

That is a sign that God may bring, be bringing renewal and revival into your life and into the church.

So it means looking at the state of the world around us and realizing that the current strength of the church is just not up to the task.

Sayers also says that crisis is the gateway to renewal and revival, and the crisis is here.

First of all, within Western culture at large, including the U.S., where everyone seems to be panicking.

Do you feel this?

This sense of panic?

Well, why is that?

Well, it's because people are experiencing an existential crisis and they can't really put it into words.

They don't know why they're feeling it.

They can't explain what it is.

But I'm going to tell you what it is.

The root of the panic is this people are facing the reality that secular progress without God and without Christianity has not made things better.

People are realizing that.

In other words, the plan for life after God has not worked.

Mark Sayers again, I love this dude.

I'm going to quote him a lot, sorry.

But he says it like this it's kind of a long one, but it's good.

We see the rise of anxiety and mental health disorders, falling IQ levels, epidemic loneliness and social disconnection, widespread online bullying, the persistence of discrimination, bigotry, and hatred, addictions to drugs, food, technology, sex, gambling, and relationships are widespread.

Obesity is rising, becoming a full-blown health issue.

In the West, poor mental health is now normative among emerging generations.

Life expectancy in the West's two most powerful nations, the U.S.

and the UK, has fallen for the last three years running.

With all these factors in play, we can see how many are having their moment of doubt.

For the post-Christian revival seems to be running aground.

That is an opportunity for us, right?

So the idea was that if we got rid of God and the oppression of the church on our society, then things would exponentially get better.

And that has been emphatically disproven.

In other words, the secular utopia does not exist.

But here's the other side of the coin.

People are not crazy to be skeptical toward the church, are they?

I mean, it's undeniable that people are leaving the church behind.

One study by Jim Davis and Michael Graham says this.

Says we're currently living in the largest and fastest religious shift in U.S.

history right now.

Some 40 million adult Americans who used to go to church at least once per month now attend less than once per year.

This shift is larger than the number of conversions during the first Great Awakening, the Second Great Awakening, and the totality of the Billy Graham Crusades combined.

Why is that?

Well, that's the most surprising part of their findings.

You can read it in their book, The Great Dechurching.

But they say that yes, a lot of the things you would assume, the reasons why people are leaving the church, are true.

People are leaving because of pastoral abuse, racism, misogyny, division over politics.

That's a big one.

Clergy scandals.

But here's the surprising thing.

Around three-fourths, 75% of those leaving are doing so for more mundane reasons.

Things like moving, just the inconvenience of making time to attend, kids' sports activities, having another child, those kind of things.

And about this, Davis and Graham write this.

For an effective response, we must have an accurate picture of who's leaving and why.

Most leave casually and often unintentionally.

Most leave casually and often unintentionally.

So that last phrase continues to haunt me.

I read this the first time over a year ago, but I keep coming back to it because what does it indicate?

This mass casual drifting from the church says what?

Well, it reflects something like the indifference that Jesus diagnosed in the church at Laodicea.

And he called it being lukewarm.

Revelation 3, 15 and 16, Jesus said, I know your works.

You're neither cold nor hot.

I wish that you were either cold or hot.

So because you are lukewarm and neither hot nor cold, I will spit you out of my mouth.

And so the signs of this same lukewarm faith are everywhere, including in my own heart.

And that's really what makes this the epicenter of the American church crisis, is right here in my heart.

And you can look around our entire culture and see plenty of evidence that, as Isaiah said, the world is weary and exhausted.

People are done, but so is the church, it seems.

So are God's people.

I mean, if anyone would even think to look to Christians these days or to the church for help, we are often just as depleted or drained as everyone else.

So what do we do?

As David asks in Psalm 11:3, when the foundations are destroyed, what can the righteous do?

Psalms 11:3

Well, Nashville pastor Dave Clayton is crazy in our church.

We're in a small group, and it turns out a guy in our group knows this guy, and I've been reading his stuff for a couple years now.

It's crazy.

But it's Pastor Dave Clayton, he says this our current reality drives us to our knees in prayers, fasting, and seeking the Lord.

Or at least it should.

Recognizing our current reality drives us to our knees.

But it is the hope of God's future promises that keeps us there.

It's knowing God's promises is what keeps us on our knees in prayer.

So, what do we do in the face of a lukewarm crisis among God's people?

Well, we start by acknowledging the state of our hearts.

We own the fact that we need new life, and we confess and repent of having such cold, dead hearts sometimes toward the Lord.

We're willing to confess that to Him.

But why would we do that?

Why would we risk doing that?

It's because we embrace the promise of Isaiah 40.

Our Lord is the everlasting creator God who does not run out of steam.

Ever.

And He promises to give us power, to give power to the faint, to give strength to the one that has no might.

Not just those who are a little run down, but the powerless.

When we come to him like that, he gives us strength.

And he promises to renew even the faintest flame of love and faith in our hearts.

So you've probably heard this, but throughout the history of the church, renewal and revival has always begun with conviction of sin, confession, and repentance without fail.

You can check your church history, but we'll look at a couple of examples this morning.

Or you can just listen to the words of the Lord Himself in Ezekiel 18.

I love these verses.

It says, rid yourselves of all offenses you have committed.

So repent and get a new heart and a new spirit.

Why will you die, people of Israel?

For I take no pleasure in the death of anyone, declares the Lord.

Repent and live.

Turn from sin, turn back to me, and live and find new life.

Christ Community Church, the Lord means that.

Repent and you will find new life.

You will find spiritual strength.

And collectively, if his people across cities and nations will confess and repent of sin, there always comes a flood of new life into the church.

Run to Jesus and live.

Because whether it was Massachusetts in the 1730s, Azusa Street in Los Angeles in 1906, or Korea in the early 1900s, conviction, confession, and repentance of sin always marks the beginning of God pouring out his spirit in a profound way.

Why is that?

Well, this is incredible.

It's because our God runs to meet us at our point of greatest need.

And we are most completely helpless and at his mercy when we are in sin.

When we've turned our back on him, when we've rebelled against him and his love and his grace, right?

Jesus met us at that point on the cross.

Right?

While we were still sinners, Christ died for us, Romans 5.8.

Born his enemies, with our hearts turned against him in every way, as our sin was putting him to death, Jesus said, Father, forgive them.

And then he died to reconcile all of us to him.

So it's wild.

But when we are most deserving of his wrath is when he is most ready to meet us with his mercy.

That's our God.

If we will only confess and repent.

So here's an example of that from Asbury College in Wilmore, Kentucky.

Robert Coleman describes it like this.

Classes were forgotten.

Academic work came to a standstill.

In a way awesome to describe, God had taken over the school.

Caught up in the wonder of it, a thousand students remained for eight days and nights in the auditorium, not to make demands, but to confess their sin and to praise their Lord.

I've never seen anything like it, one veteran newscaster told his television audience.

Then he asked his viewers to put down their newspapers, stop whatever they were doing, and watch the revival scene that he had shot earlier in the day.

Though I've seen it, he concluded, I still can't believe it.

And it started at the end of an unremarkable chapel service.

One student confessed sin to a group of friends, and the rest is history.

The witness of these days was carried by spirit-filled students and faculty to hundreds of other schools and churches across the land.

Fires of faith were lighted that have since spread around the world.

Now, that may have sounded familiar to you with a few differences.

You see, this is a description of the Asbury College revival in 1970.

Not the one that you may have heard about from 2023.

In 1970, it was eight days and nights.

In 2023, it was 16 days and nights.

Robert Coleman said this about the move of God in 1970.

He said, what happened at Asbury could be duplicated in some way every time there's a revival.

And he was proven right in a way he never could have imagined in the exact same spot over 50 years later.

Only this time.

It had an even wider impact, attracting tens of thousands of people, including students from over 260 colleges and universities, and visitors from all over the world, including South Africa, the UK, Nigeria, Brazil, South Korea, Russia, Norway, Myanmar.

And among the visitors was a pastor from London named Al Gordon, who was invited by some friends.

He wasn't just coming to Sightsee.

He was invited by some friends that worked at the school to come and check it out.

So he came to witness what God was doing, and he described his experience like this.

First, I love this.

He said, deeply underwhelming musically.

Got that band?

Deeply underwhelming musically.

No celebrity Christians holding court, no excessive charismatic manifestations or you know, phenomena.

Just a deep, deep sense of the presence of Jesus.

And he goes on to describe what this felt like for him initially.

So he was a bit jet-lagged when he arrived, kind of out of it when he arrived on campus.

But here's what he says.

Says, I shut the door to the car, and I'm a few hundred feet away from the huge auditorium where the meeting was happening.

And in the parking lot, I just stopped.

I was like, oh wow, you can feel there's something going on.

And not a good feeling.

Not like I'm at Disneyland, let's go.

What I experienced in the parking lot in Wilmore, Kentucky was a sense of the awe and fear of the Lord.

And I immediately thought, this is not a drill.

I've got to get right with God.

So I didn't go into the main meeting right away.

Instead, I said, I've got to find a Bible, get on my face, and pray.

And I read Psalm 51 over and over.

And this should be on the screen here.

And I just sat in this sense of God's holiness and power.

And I didn't feel condemned, but I felt his loving conviction of my sin.

So that's it.

Loving conviction of sin.

Actually, just like the 1970 revival, reports say that this one in 2023 also began with a student feeling compelled to confess sin to a small group of friends.

It was also following a chapel service.

Also, Al Gordon from London experienced conviction of sin that day that's gone on to change the city of London across the ocean.

So while he was worshiping and praying at Asbury, he prayed at the altar with another pastor from London who just happened to be there.

And both men repented of, get this, competing against one another.

And then one of them asked God to start a revival in London at the other guy's church.

And that is a huge deal for pastors, right?

To pray something like that.

And since returning home, those two churches, as well as another London church, have started meeting and praying together for each other and their city.

And Gordon says it truly feels like they are one church now.

And he says that they're now seeing what he calls pre-revival in the city of London.

But London's not the only place that has seen the Spirit's work of renewal and revival spread out from Wilmore, Kentucky.

And if you start tracking it online, you'll be amazed.

Go home and do it.

You'll see college campuses and churches all over the world experiencing similar moves of God.

And y'all, this is just what happens.

It's how God operates.

His spirit, the power of the gospel, always spills over the banks and floods other places.

And these moves of God always follow a similar pattern.

Now they're not cookie cutter, I'm not saying that.

Because they're in different places among different people.

These works of God always have a different flavor.

But they will follow a general pattern.

First of all, as we've already seen, an admittance of weariness, exhaustion, and need.

Just being willing to admit that.

Confession of sin and repentance.

Followed by an overpowering sense of God's presence and a desire to stay together with believers and experience that presence together.

Praying, worshiping, soaking in his word together.

There's also a deep humility from those who experience it, with no single person or name getting any credit or notoriety from the event.

If you think about the Asbury Revival, that's true.

There's no name attached to it, it's just the place where God showed up.

People know that.

But they don't know any of the people involved.

Next, there's also a spilling over to other places, a viral nature to it, as the work stretches out to campuses and churches all over the nation and the world, with many new people coming to trust Jesus, receive his grace, and surrender their lives to him.

And lastly, and this effect is usually only seen years, even decades later, but there's also a noticeable change in the overall culture, in the actual fabric of society.

And this includes things like decreases in crime and increases in measures of overall human flourishing, physical, emotional, mental.

All of life gets better in these places.

Robert Coleman says it like this that in the wake of revival, as the gospel goes forth in word and deed, the world takes note that men and women have been with Jesus.

To the extent that this spirit of revival prevails, mercy, justice, and righteousness sweep over the land.

So again, the pattern of renewal and revival includes admitting our need, conviction of sin, confession and repentance, a desire to come together and stay together in God's presence, deep humility, an overflow beyond the church, with many new people coming to faith in Jesus, and even long-term changes in the culture at large.

But I saved one thing, one step that precedes confession and repentance.

And it's something that always comes before God's renewing work among his people.

It happened prior to both of the Asbury revivals we talked about.

So think about it.

When you hear about revivals like Asbury, you may stop and ask, why there?

Why Asbury, a college with a little over 1,500 students?

And why in such a nowhere place like Wilmore, Kentucky?

My apologies if you're from Wilmore, but I mean, but think about it, wouldn't a revival, the way we think about things, a revival in New York would have more impact.

Or Memphis even would have more impact.

Well, the truth is God chooses where and when he will pour out his spirit always.

Always.

There's no formula we can follow to make God do what we want.

He's not a vending machine.

He owes us nothing.

And he always works on his sovereign timetable according to his mercy and grace.

Not giving us what we deserve, thankfully, but instead lavishly giving us more than we could ever think to even ask for.

But historically, and in scripture, it confirms that God responds when people contend for renewal and revival.

God answers prayers for new life, to say it more simply.

To contend means to what?

To fight, to pursue something.

Asbury College is not some special anointed place.

It's not the promised land.

So why did the same thing happen again in the same place, 50 years apart?

Well, it's because both times a group of students have been contending for, continually asking for more of God's power and presence.

I mean, for months, out of love for their fellow students and a passion for spreading the flame of Jesus, a small group of students have been gathering weekly to pray for renewal and revival on their campus.

And then that morning, Pastor Zach Mirror Creeb prayed these simple words at the chapel meeting.

February 8th, 2023, he prayed, Lord, revive us by your love.

So, this is my call to us this morning.

In 2025, could we come together and contend for God to bring renewal and revival to Memphis?

Both in this church and across churches throughout Memphis.

Now, is that wrong?

Is that wrong to ask for such a thing and then expect that God would do it?

Is that overstepping?

Is that presumptuous?

Well, Mark Sayers asked that question, and he writes this.

He said, But can we call for God to break out revival?

Can we do that?

The wide-scale pouring out of his spirit in which churches, movements, regions, cities, countries, and continents are changed.

We can desire, hope for, cry out for such a move, but we cannot make it happen.

Only God can cause such a mighty move of his spirit.

But we can contend and wait.

That's what we can do.

We can contend and wait.

I think Psalm 105.4 sums up so well what this means for our lives.

When the psalmist tells us to simply seek the Lord in his strength, seek his presence continually.

Maybe this would be a good verse to commit to memory, reminding us of what we're fighting for as we hit our knees every day.

Seek the Lord in his strength, seek his presence continually.

Again, I told you I like this guy.

Sayers described it like this.

He said, it's the act of moving from a life posture of consumption and passivity to one of contending for God's presence to come with power.

And we commit to consistent, persistent prayer because we realize that our lives, our faith, our churches, and our culture cannot be changed by anything else but the presence of God.

We wish for nothing but his presence, and so we position and posture ourselves as contenders for his presence.

Following the words of God in Ezekiel, we choose to stand in the gap for our culture, crying out for God's mercy, asking him to come again.

Now, for some it may feel futile and hopeless to do this.

To commit yourself to this type of praying may seem futile.

Why?

Well, it's because it may seem like America is too far gone, that the church is on a downward slide, it can never come back from, and that certainly Memphis is far beyond what prayer could do.

Well, there's something that's been hugely encouraging to me, and it's just a bit of American history, really.

You see, I think many of us have adopted or accepted this common narrative of the history of the church in America.

It's basically America started as a Christian nation even pre, you know, during the colonial era, everybody was Christians, and it's been a downward slide ever since.

A lot of people have that mentality that this was a nation of all Christians where the church was flourishing, but the last 250 years has just been a steady decline in church attendance, faith in Christ, and the church's influence.

So basically the chart would look like this: down and to the to the right or down into the to your left.

And the church is stuck in this trajectory, and that's how people view the church in America.

So actually, this is not accurate at all.

You see, the history of the church in America has actually looked more like this, more like a heart monitor, right?

With times of decline followed by periods of renewal and revival.

Surprisingly, there's a higher percentage of people following Christ in our country today than in colonial America.

America in those days was actually a pretty lawless, godless place.

So, what did God do?

In the 1730s, God brought about what is now known as the first Great Awakening.

And what preceded that?

Well, one thing was a call that went out from Jonathan Edwards to his fellow New England pastors, and he called them to regular, fervent fasting and prayer, for them to gather together in their communities and pray for these things.

Why?

Because, and a quote from Edwards Call should be on the screen.

He said this when God has something to accomplish for his church, it is with his will that there should precede it the extraordinary prayer of his people.

So, what does that mean in modern English?

All right.

That's how they talked back in those days.

It means when God wants to do something big for his church, he first calls people to extraordinary prayer.

That's what he does.

And these pastors responded to Edward's call with extraordinary pray, along with their congregations, and America's first revival was born.

Roughly a five-year period in which tens of thousands of people came to faith in Christ.

And this was at a time where the population of the whole colonies was only like 600,000 people.

So it would be like tens of millions of people coming to faith in Christ over that period in America today.

But here's what's so encouraging about this more accurate view of our history as the church is that God has done it before and he can do it again.

We're not hopeless, right?

We're not stuck in some irreversible downward slide where somehow the gospel has lost all its power to save, and the Spirit of God has become impotent and unable to transform lives.

That's not the reality.

The inevitable death of the American church has been over-reported according to God's word.

So back to our passage in Isaiah 40.

So if we contend in prayer and wait for the Lord, what will he do?

Verse 31 is pretty clear.

They who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength.

So if the U.S.

Church is weak, then let's seek and wait for the Lord.

And as he tends to do, he's going to go way beyond even the things that we ask him for.

We will go from nomite, weary, exhausted, barely hanging on to faith and hope, to not only walking with him again, but to running in joy and mounting up with wings as eagles.

So, what does that actually look like?

What does it look like when God renews the church's strength?

I didn't bring my phone.

How much time do I have?

Am I okay?

Sorry, I didn't think to look.

Am I okay?

All right, you tell me.

Give me one of these, all right?

Um, so what does that look like when God renews the church's strength?

Well, here's some glimpses of it.

First, from pastor and author A.W.

Tozer, who wrote this in 1948.

And I think it really does describe what we're seeing God do in the church today.

He wrote, I see increasing numbers of persons whose religious lives are marked by a growing hunger for God Himself.

They are a thirst for God, and they will not be satisfied till they have drunk deep at the fountain of living water.

This is the only real evidence of revival which I have been able to detect anywhere on the religious horizon.

It may be a cloud the size of a man's hand, for which a few saints here and there have been looking, but it can result in a resurrection of life for many souls, and a recapture of that radiant wonder which should accompany faith in Christ.

That wonder which has all but fled the church of God in our day.

So, renewal of strength looks like, the renewal of spiritual strength looks like the recapture of radiant wonder about Christ, about his gospel, about life in him, his present and eternal promises for us.

Wonder about all of these things, including the final renewal of all things when he will make everything right.

So, with spiritual renewal comes a sense of wonder or a preoccupation with the things of God.

And a sense of wonder and preoccupation that we just cannot shake.

Robert Coleman describes the experience of renewal like this.

He said, When one responds fully to divine grace, there is a wonderful assurance of sins forgiven.

The heart is clean, the soul is free.

Faith does not stagger at the promises of God.

Prayer pulsates with the fragrance of heaven.

Love fills the heart with singing, and there is spontaneous praise.

There's still suffering and temptation, but amidst it all, get this is the light of God's face shining in the inner man.

Christ is real, his peace sweeps over the soul, his victory overcomes the world.

Wow.

Does that sound good?

And he goes on to say that it's mysterious, that much of what happens in revival is unexplainable.

But Coleman says one thing is clear.

In revival, men and women come alive to the life of God.

In the wake of revival comes life, life in its fullness, life overflowing with the love and power of God.

And what's the ultimate end?

Well, we talked about earlier.

Where should our hearts be set?

As we talked about to start, Jesus himself is the ultimate end.

More fellowship with him, resulting in more glory to Jesus.

More love for Christ, more praise, more hearts.

Changed and devoted to him.

And that is a work only God can do to aliven our heart with that love for Christ.

When Jesus Himself describes the end of it all in Matthew 19, he says, Matthew 19, 28, truly I tell you, at the renewal of all things, when the Son of Man sits on his glorious throne.

So the very first thing Jesus wants us to see about the end of time, when all things are finally and completely and gloriously renewed, he wants us to see that he is sitting on the throne where he belongs.

In Revelation 21, 5 says, And he who was seated on the throne said, Behold, I am making all things new.

So, yes, from our perspective, God is kind of slow rolling his renewal.

All right, we want it to happen now.

But as everything else is coming apart in our fallen world, his renewing power will become more and more evident.

And through Christ and the power of the gospel, he is inviting more and more people to experience that power.

Don't be fooled by what's happening right in front of us.

Because our world is undergoing a change.

God is working on a worldwide scale.

And he's holding back death and darkness until that final moment when everything collapses and then burst forth in glorious eternal new life.

That's the end for all of us.

But until then, when Jesus will be the center of all things forever, we pray that he will be the center of our lives today.

That's the prayer.

Until then, when there will be no need for the sun, because Jesus is the light, we pray that he will bring light to the darkness today.

And until then, when he will make all things new, we pray that he will bring new life to our church, our city, and our world today.

Could we contend and wait for that in 2025?

Could that be a part of our mission as the church in Memphis this year?

One more story, and I'm done.

I know Colton's happy.

One more story about contending and waiting.

You may have seen this, but do you know where the gospel is advancing and the church is growing faster than anywhere in the world right now?

It's in Iran.

In all places, the center of the Spirit's work right now seems to be in Iran, in the heart of Islam, in the face of severe persecution.

Before the Islamic Revolution of 1979, there were fewer than 500 Christians in the whole country.

So little more than in this room.

500 believers in all of Iran.

But way back in the 1950s, the small church in Iran was committed to praying for their country.

In fact, one group of believers met every night for four years to pray for the millions of Iranians that were outside of Christ.

And now today, there's estimated to be over one million Christians in Iran.

Despite Iran's hard-line government, countless Iranian hearts are now open to the gospel.

And where can this movement be traced back to?

To those nights spent in prayer with a small band of believers contending for the church, for their neighbors, and the glory of Jesus.

Night after night, for four years, over 70 years ago.

Now, it doesn't always take 70 years, but sometimes it does.

But it really wasn't 70 years before God started working, right?

All along that time, he was renewing the hearts of his people, drawing new people to himself, changing minds and lives, and adding to his church in Iran all along the way, he was doing that.

But even if it does take five, ten, twenty, seventy years.

That doesn't matter, does it?

Like, right?

In light of eternity, 70 years is like that.

It's a drop in the bucket.

Is it not worth it?

But you may say, well, it's impossible.

Right?

We say Memphis is too far gone.

America is too far gone.

Well, what's happening in Iran right now is impossible.

But God is doing it.

But God is doing it.

And the renewal of the church in Memphis and America is not on us, people.

Thank God it's not on us.

But it starts in each of our hearts.

And it starts with us not giving up and losing hope as a church.

You as C3 not giving up on what God wants to do.

But instead, holding on to these words from Paul and 2 Corinthians 4.

Therefore, we do not lose heart, though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day.

For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all.

And it's believing these words from the prophet Isaiah, Isaiah 40, 31, those who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength.

They really do.

Let's pray.

Father, as I pour sweat up here for some reason.

Lord, we know what your heart is.

And your heart is for us to know you and to walk with you.

And to know the joy that comes from being your children.

And to know the power of prayer.

To know the joy of seeing you answer prayer all around us.

To know the excitement of seeing people come to faith for the first time.

To see our neighbors coming to understand your mercy and grace and trusting you.

To seeing this church become a place where we love each other in a supernatural way that draws people to you.

Lord, you want to work among us.

You want to work here at C3.

And the church is all throughout our city.

God, I pray that we would persistently ask for more of you and more of your power and presence, and for our hearts to be changed, for us to have that radiant wonder as we think about who you are and what you've done for us.

In Christ's name, amen.