How to Pray for Your Children

It is very evident from Scripture that intercessory prayer is a great and necessary part of the Christian life. The first followers of Christ demonstrated their love for each other by their mutual prayers. When St. Paul wrote to churches and individuals, he mentioned to them that they were the constant subject of his prayers.

This was the ancient friendship of Christians. It united and cemented their hearts, not by worldly considerations or human passions, but by the mutual communication of spiritual blessings through prayers and thanksgivings to God for one another.

It was this holy intercession that raised Christians to such a high state of mutual love. They lived in a state that far exceeded all that previously had been praised and admired in human friendship. And when that same spirit of intercession is restored throughout the world—when Christianity has the same power over the hearts of people today that it originally had—this holy friendship will be again in fashion. Christians will again be the wonder of the world because of that exceeding love which they bear to one another.

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Superficial Revival

1790-1875

I recently came across a small, scarce collection of letters written by Charles Finney toward the end of his life. They are exhortations concerning his perspective of the growing superficiality of church life and revival meetings around the year 1870. As I read, I could not help but mourn over the state of the church as we now experience it 130 years later. It takes little imagination to figure what his response would be to the rock bands, comedy routines, T-shirt sales and empty conversions that typify “revival meetings” of our day.

It is my prayer that this timeless reprimand will spur us in returning not only to the revival fire of the 1830’s, but further still, until the Book of Acts becomes our reality in this day. Below is an excerpt from this collection. --Dean Taylor

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Revivals That Stay

Revivals are among the charter rights of the church. They are the evidences of its divinity, the tokens of God’s presence, the witness of his power. The frequency and power of these extraordinary seasons of grace are the tests and preservers of the vital force in the church.

The church which is not visited by these seasons is as sterile in all spiritual products as a desert, and is not and cannot meet the designs of God’s church. Such churches may have all the show and parade of life, but it is only a painted life.

The revival element belongs to the individual, as well as to the church, life. The preacher whose experience is not marked by these inflows of great grace may question with anxious scrutiny whether he is in grace.

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