Not long ago, it was my privilege to preach at a revival meeting in Winchester, VA. From the very first service, it was evident that God was at work in a special way. During the meeting, numbers of people came to faith in Christ. There was an unusual stirring in the church. We continue to hear of great victories being won and fruit that remains. The secret to the meeting was the prayer of preparation that was done in the weeks leading up to those few days. Pastor Steve Rebert led his people in 60 days of revival prayer. We are thrilled to share the steps that he followed and we encourage you to apply these principles in your own local church. 

“Every serious Christian knows the absolute importance of abiding in Christ and walking forward with the Lord in regular prayer. Very often though we struggle with boldness and vibrancy in prayer. Our prayer can become only “need” oriented. Revival praying changes all of that. It lifts our eyes to God in expectancy and drives us to grasp the Scripture with urgency. When desire is awoken, we must have God! That new zeal establishes a new framework before us that our gracious Lord responds to. From almost 50 years ago I found some basic principles on revival praying. I have taken those principles, changed them, tweaked them, and added to them for the following prayer pattern.” – Steve Rebert

Principles:

• I began to build a framework of prayer that I introduced to the church 60 days ahead of our meeting. On a Sunday morning, I announced a Saturday night prayer meeting for the men of the church. I did not push this meeting because I was looking for men who were burdened for a prayer ministry.
• On that Saturday night, I took the 6 men that attended and shared with them our prayer burden, our prayer direction, and our prayer expectations.

• I prepared a basic format of prayer from Jeremiah 33:3 that they could use through the following week as we began to pray every day for 60 days.

• In that framework, I shared the plan for them to pray with me for the next 60 days, every day until our revival meeting. I was pointed out that this was only prayer for the revival meeting: speakers, music, visitors, nursery, and weather, etc. We put a great focus on the power of the Holy Spirit of God and His speaking voice through the meetings. Each church could certainly add whatever specifics they desired here. I specifically directed them away from praying for anything else when they were praying for the meeting.

• I had each man pray publicly which was followed up by breaking up into groups of two spreading throughout the church facility and continuing to pray for the Hand of God. I asked the groups of two to pray through our list two times or more as God was leading. Again I emphasized this is not a time to pray for health needs, missionaries, etc. We are praying only and specifically for God‘s gracious Hand to come upon us in reviving power. I gave an explanation of the importance of the other prayer requests but for this time we were zeroing in on this particular area. I have found very often if this is not done that the prayer time evolves into a very general prayer session.

• I asked the men if they would meet with me every Saturday night at 6 pm for a time of encouragement and accountability for our weekly prayer time.

• In the oncoming Saturday nights, each man out of the group of six gives a five-minute testimony of their own salvation.

• I found great revival materials and spent another five minutes emphasizing confession and challenges to revival praying. Materials from Leonard Ravenhill, and in particular the message from Vance Havner, “It Is Time to Seek the Lord.” were used. The recent movements of God in mercy drops around the country were also shared.

• We broke up in different ways for prayer each Saturday night. The men began to share some minute-long testimonies about how God was reviving their life.

• On the third Saturday, we shared what we would do for the last 30 days. I asked each of those men to go find six people within our assembly that they could bring to the Saturday night prayer meeting that would be willing to pray every day for our church along with each of them. This was an exciting time because by now the men were not only under the burden of the revival meeting but they were building expectation from their own time with God.

• Two weeks later on a Saturday evening, we met with 36 men and women and shared with them what God had been doing in the 60 day plan. I challenged them with the same information given to the six men and encouraged their prayerful involvement for the next 30 as we headed toward the revival meeting.

• I cannot emphasize enough the building effect when we started with a smaller group and had them burdened by the Holy Spirit of God for revival then moved on to a larger group. It began to bring a sense of expectancy to the whole church. Of course, publicly we were asking everyone to pray for this time of revival also.

• The six men were instructed that once the 36 gathered, we would have one joint testimony meeting, and then each of them were responsible to take their six somewhere in the church and go through two times of prayer with them as we had been doing before. The spiritual responsibility of each man having his own group of six also heightened their prayer and preparation as they led their small group to pray and trust God for the meeting. It was time of growth for each of them for sure.

• They could keep up with their six through text, sharing verses, or words of encouragement. On the Saturday night before the revival meeting, it might be possible to have the evangelist address the prayer group. I kept the evangelist apprised of what we were doing which I also believe built a sense of expectation and preparation by him as he came.

– Pastor Steve Rebert pastors at Emmanuel Baptist Church in Winchester, VA.