Pray KNCSB

The need for revival in the our nation is evident to those who are sensitive to our shortcomings. Evident in the facts of our poorly attended worship centers, our moral ambiguities as Christ’s people, and our monstrously muddled confusion regarding what used to be debauchery not too long ago: Homosexuality, cohabitation, public violence and anger, greed, and arrogance.

Prayer is situated here: We need to respond to our apathy, our sin, and our apostasy.

With prayer comes fasting, another way to respond to this sorrow-generating condition. We fast to respond to what we see: brokenness all around, to what we feel: compassion for the broken, hurt, sorrowing among us; to what we must do: enter into the messed enabled by God’s, supplication, and intercession.

We must also hope. Many churches do not have a narrative of hope. Full-bodied hope, unadulterated hope. Not optimism, which will never do. There is a difference between the two. Optimism and hope, this oft confused duet, exist in different galaxies. Both optimism and hope entail positive expectation  with regard to the future. But when it comes to seeing reality, galactic distance applies. Optimism works this way: a past happening is likely again in the future. An event caused an effect in the past. If that same event were to happen again we ought to expect the same effect in the future. Based on this thinking we can extrapolate what to expect. Dark clouds spell rain. Next time dark clouds move in, expect rain. That’s optimism.

Hope in contrast, is no repecter of people’s circumstances. Hope is radically rooted in the faithfulness of God. The song hope sings is God is the same yesterday, today, and tomorrow. God is faithful, merciful and is daily present. His love endures for ever. Hope is in God. Optimism is based on circumstances.

Hope points us in the direction of a positive future, a future full of God’s actions; not simply the future that inevitably comes wrapped with the potential of the past and present. It’s a different future, future in the sense of advent, which comes not from the past or the present potential but from the realm of what is not yet, from outside, from God (Miroslav Volf).

What then should our response be? Prayer of course. But desperate, ardent prayer that waits or hopes expectantly for the coming of the Holy Spirit in a way that transforms our churches, and rocks our world. We can’t be simplistic or optimistic. Our circumstances are dire and our only hope is in the advent of God.

I have a desire: That every time churches in KNCSB get together, they would cry out in hope for God to revive us again, to visit us in our confusion and sinfulness and make us whole and holy again.