Jack Hayford Shared Key Prophetic Insights on Revival Before Passing Away

This message is a confronting message of Love for—and a humbling appeal to—the Church.

The whole Church. Its timing is right, because we are all “near midnight.”

Ironically, though written in love, this message is sorely at risk of being judged as negative and critical; as a splash of cold water in your face, rather than being handed to you like a Starbucks latte to ease you into another day.

I urge you—read it anyway.

It may agitate you before it comforts, or irritate before it personally concerns you. I join myself with that you, because we are all inclined to perceive this message as one “for someone else,” or as “not my style.”

Upon careful reflection, there are three reasons why you should engage this timely offering from Dr. Michael Brown, Pastor John Kilpatrick, and Larry Sparks, The Fire That Never Sleeps:

1. Renewal

It serves as a personal call to renewal in both passion and repentance. There is a great need for next-generation leaders to consider the ministry call they are being served. While methods may change, the message is timeless. Reader, you will truly be summoned to reconsider what a New Testament discipleship lifestyle looks like and how it impacts the course of everyday living.

Discipleship demands discipline, and such discipline is not an open door into a lifestyle of legalism or joylessness. Quite the contrary, The Fire That Never Sleeps paints a vivid picture of how revival is nothing short of New Testament discipleship. To be a disciple of Jesus, you are, by default, reviving what was considered normal during the first century. You will learn how to engage powerful practices such as:

■ Prayer that enters into the Veil and intercedes with steadfastness.

■ Worship that breaks with the shallowness of mere “entertainment” and draws believers into life-changing encounters with God; a readiness to receive the Word; and a heart to live, love, and serve as “agents of the Kingdom” in their homes, neighborhoods, or workplaces—not to mention their local congregations.

■ Surrender to the Holy Spirit’s fullness—poured out to be received as a “River,” overflowing with power, purity, and the pungency of “Christ in you!”

2. Remembrance

This work brings to my remembrance the dynamic work that God performed on a global scale during the Brownsville Revival. It brought to mind my meeting and awareness of Pastor John Kilpatrick’s experience (and his sensitive and sensible pastoral leadership alongside Steve Hill). Truly, he was a pastor of revival, as he maintained a solid, scripturally wise balance amid the drama, dynamic, and demands of such a victorious advance of the Kingdom.

John and Steve, along with Michael Brown, were a “trinity” of sorts that banded the distinct giftings of each and not only cut a swath of Kingdom ministry (people saved, healed, delivered, and then many, many entered), grew, and became established as disciples—people following Jesus in their walk, not simply “Getting their needs met and becoming excitable, though hardly teachable.”

3. Response

This message is not merely a memorial of what “once was,” but offers scriptural strategies on how to personally respond to the call of revival. The Brownsville Revival cannot be measured by how long services continued uninterrupted at Brownsville Assembly of God in Pensacola, Florida. I know some measure revival by this standard. Rather, we evaluate the full effect of revival by examining the lives of pastors, leaders, and believers who were touched by the fire and have been living on fire ever since.

This is where I must urge you, dear reader—respond correctly. There are a host of pastors across the nation who were either passé or critical toward Brownsville. They resisted the “witness” of God’s great work and instead sought His presence, power, and purpose in their own congregations, believing it unnecessary to “go elsewhere to experience God.” While I would agree that location is irrelevant to receiving a touch from God, humility is essential.

Many excused their passivity and criticism as their effort to “avoid extremism.” In turn, they assumed an extreme posture of either suspicion or scorn concerning such a move of God—never bothering to look into the actualities of the revival or their own need as leaders to give a larger place to the Holy Spirit’s move being welcomed in their own lives and their congregations.

Response is everything, as it directly impacts what we receive from God.

It was nearly fifty years ago—in reading a book that probed my soul in ways similar to this message—that I learned this “sensible thing”: It is absolutely essential to remain aware of my vulnerability to becoming a Pharisee. They were a breed of religious leaders, doubtlessly sincere, but also had become so fixated on their presumed “absolute correctness and purity,” in understanding and style of dutifully “doing” service for God, that they never really understood God in Person. Consequently, when God showed up personally, in His Son Jesus Christ, His confrontation with their “style”— however dedicated—was rejection, and God Himself was thereby unable to influence, help, or shape these “righteous experts” beyond the “patterns of their perfection.”

To my view, the spirit prompting The Fire That Never Sleeps is the same spirit, and with the same spiritual passion as earlier voices to the Church like Leonard Ravenhill, Vance Havner, David Wilkerson, and, presently, Jim Cymbala. Such voices—though often boldly and forthrightly calling out those who know Christ yet linger behind Him unwittingly or with known indifference—are essential to us all.

Such messengers, as well as the message here, are not given to lash, but to lead us—to point freshly to our Savior, to a kneeling again to honor Him as Lord, and as the soon-to-return Bridegroom of the Church. The objective is benevolent—the directness of speech targeted only to seek the fruitfulness of those who love Him and our readiness to meet Him without shame at His appearing. Accordingly, I perceive nothing in this message intending self-righteous criticism or condescension. However, there is a forthright candor that cuts at our flesh with a trumpet-like alert that will disallow casual hearing and prohibit drowsiness or sleep.

However, the issues addressed here are needed by us all. Nothing has become more commonly blurred or lost, in the culture at large as well as in the Church, as a clear-eyed, discerning perspective on the difference between style and substance. This is no insult to anyone’s intelligence; it’s a liability that often takes a “shock treatment” to call us back to “Go!” To the “Go” in Jesus’s Commission, which is richer and deeper in scope and substance than commonly seen today.

And as needful as the “comfort” of God’s Spirit is—as “the Comforter” is preferred—He is just as adept at convicting as He is at consoling us…and we need both.

As for this message, at age 28—early in my pastoral/teaching ministry—it was one very much like this one that became pivotal to my life to this very day. It ignited a passion, but it also instructed toward a pathway. I learned that I needed to be slow to dismiss speakers or writers who were not to my taste or style. If their words or ways irritated me (or “burned me up”) I need to “tune in before I turned them off.”

I learned that the heat of a flame that burns your fingers can’t be held, but it will get your full attention; and, however unpleasant the burn, the outcome may very well cause you to handle things more cautiously and wisely than you did before. Such “temporary burns” can awaken a sensitivity that can shape a lifetime of deeper sensibility.

This message strongly brought the following four scriptural statements to mind, riveting my personal sense of renewed accountability and sensitivity to take heed with faithfulness, humility, and dependency on God to keep the fire burning:

You have been weighed in the balances, and found wanting (Daniel 5:27).

And to the angel of the church in Sardis write, “These things says He who has the seven Spirits of God and the seven stars: ‘I know your works, that you have a name that you are alive, but you are dead. Be watchful, and strengthen the things which remain, that are ready to die, for I have not found your works perfect before God. Remember therefore how you have received and heard; hold fast and repent. Therefore if you will not watch, I will come upon you as a thief, and you will not know what hour I will come upon you.” (Revelation 3:1-3 NKJV).

And do this, knowing the time, that now it is high time to awake out of sleep; for now our salvation is nearer than when we first believed (Romans 13:11 NKJV).

But you, beloved, building yourselves up on your most holy faith, praying in the Holy Spirit, keep yourselves in the love of God, looking for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ unto eternal life. And on some have compassion, making a distinction; but others save with fear, pulling them out of the fire, hating even the garment defiled by the flesh.

Now to Him who is able to keep you from stumbling, and to present you faultless before the presence of His glory with exceeding joy, To God our Savior, Who alone is wise, be glory and majesty, dominion and power, both now and forever. Amen (Jude 20-25 NKJV).

So, as I learned at 28, it remains as I have stepped into my 80s. I have read, and here, once more, urge you to do the same. I believe you’ll be bettered for having read The Fire That Never Sleeps.

Yes, there is a Fire that never sleeps…and I believe you’ll become more deeply aware, fully alert and adequately assisted to live in its warmth, light, and energy for having read the pages before you.

Let us go on!