Picturing Theology

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P i c t u r i n g T h e o l o g y

Let God Arise! (continued)

While history does not record another widespread period of renewal in the English-speaking world until the 1770’s (followed by another in the 1790’s), Edwards’s little tract has been consulted and studied by many a disciple and congregation longing to see a fresh and powerful visitation from God on the Church and in the world. As I write this morning, I realize that we are presently a long way and time from the 18 th century English and Scottish societies wherein Edwards wrote his essay on “revival of religion.” As I pen my musings on this subject from my home here in urban America, I am aware that with the turn of a new millennium and the beginning of a new year, we have inherited a world decidedly more dangerous, complex, and frightening than that of Edwards and his contemporaries in Scotland and England. More than six billion people inhabit a planet reeling from pollution and overpopulation. We stand on the brink of war, with reports of terrorist threats and ethnic conflicts shrieking through our airwaves. Millions live with malnourishment and squalor, and vast numbers live in despair and hopelessness in a world that is fundamentally unjust and ungodly. If there ever were a time to renew a humble and sober call for “extraordinary prayer” on behalf of a people, a time, and an hour, it is now. Of all the hardest and most difficult to reach fields on earth today, America’s inner cities are arguably one of the toughest. The levels of poverty, violence, despair, and hopelessness make ordinary efforts fall short and seem completely futile. I am convinced that only if God visits, if the Lord arises and scatters his enemies, as spoken in Psalms 68, will freedom, wholeness, and justice prevail, both within God’s people of the city and through them to those who are in desperate need for God’s grace and provision. This tract, like that of Edwards, represents another humble attempt to mobilize believers to cry out day and night to God on behalf of a slumbering Church and those suffering and dying without Christ. The heart cry here, however, is focused on the inner cities of America. This represents an earnest plea to call out a nucleus, an army of godly and available intercessors who will pledge themselves to lay hold of God in prevailing prayer for a breakthrough of God’s divine power, for spiritual awakening for his people and advancement of his Kingdom in the city.