By Cheryl Sacks
You do know the Lord wants to bring revival to your household, don’t you? It’s not just happening in churches and university chapel services—He is knocking on the door of your home. He wants to come in and visit you!
“I am coming with revival fire to visit families across America,” I heard the Lord say to me in my spirit. “All you need to do is make room for Me!” I believe He’s saying the same thing to each one of us. He’s simply asking us to put out the welcome mat and say, “Come, Holy Spirit. I want to spend time with You!”
This is just what happened recently at Asbury University in Kentucky when a handful of students lingered in God’s presence after a chapel service on February 8, 2023. Soon other students started to gather with them to worship and pray. President Kevin Brown sent out a two-sentence email: “There’s worship happening in Hughes. You are welcome to join.” This resulted in a groundswell of students overflowing the chapel as the spontaneous worship continued, and hours turned into days.
Students were focused on Jesus: they prayed, repented of their sins, and gave glory to God. The atmosphere was filled with kindness and love. Many were set free of hardness of heart, bitterness, anxiety, and fear. When asked to read Scripture in the call to worship, many students got up and, through tears, read God’s Word aloud. The leaders would then declare, “This is God’s Word!”
The crowd would respond, “We believe it!”
News of the phenomenon quickly spread by social media as participants were mainly members of Generation Z. This outpouring, which lasted until February 24, was attended by 50,000-70,000 people, including students from at least 200 other campuses. It all started because a few students stopped in the chapel before going to class to spend a few extra minutes in God’s presence, praising and worshiping Him.
What might happen if you and your family paused your busy schedule to linger in God’s presence?
What if you made time and place for Him to move with power in your household?
What if you opened the door to His knock on the door of your home and you let Him come in?
I believe that—just like at Asbury—you would see hardened hearts softened, depression and anxiety healed, relationships reconciled, and a fiery revival of love for the Lord and one another in your household.
In fact, just a few years ago, the Lord showed me a powerful vision of how He is coming to ignite families with revival fire. I will never forget the moment when He opened up the heavens, in my mind’s eye, to show me what He was about to do. I froze in awe and wonder as I stared into the deep darkness covering the nation. Then, suddenly, I saw homes across America light up as families passionately prayed and fervently praised God.
Instantly, homes everywhere across the nation exploded with light as families were magnifying the Lord. The light spilled from these homes into the streets and through the neighborhoods—spreading like wildfire until the entire nation was ablaze with the presence and power of God.
Were this to happen, it would not be the first time God used family prayer to ignite transforming revival. A similar phenomenon happened in the Hebrides Revival in Scotland in 1949-1953, starting in the small cottage of two elderly sisters who gave themselves to prayer for revival to come to their village.
At that time, churches in the region were spiritually dead. Not one young person was in church. Yet Peggy and Christine Smith spent hours in prayer daily, sometimes from 10:00 p.m. to 4:00 a.m. As their intercession intensified, others began to pray alongside them from homes across the island.
Soon the fear of the Lord gripped almost everyone who lived there. Witnesses reported that one morning at 3:00 a.m., they found men and women kneeling along the road, crying out for mercy. Every home had its lights on—no one could sleep! The awareness of God was overwhelming!
Churches began to fill up as people returned to God. Those approaching the church would fall silent, in awe of the Lord. As they were seated, they would begin weeping— some from an overwhelming love of God, others from conviction.
No one wanted to go home when the services were over; they would linger at church or go into nearby homes for more worship. This would often go until 4:00 or 5:00 a.m. People were supernaturally able to function with little to no sleep.
The Hebrides Revival, sometimes called “The Cottage Revival,” lasted four years, and 90 percent of the island was saved in its wake. It was a young-person phenomenon. Many teenagers and those under 40 were converted.
In the times in which we are living, God is calling His people once again to light the family altar—to establish our homes as places to meet with and encounter Him. As God’s people respond to this invitation, I believe it will usher in an unprecedented move of the Holy Spirit, filling households with healing, reconciliation, and restoration.
The fire of God is coming to purge sin—everything that separates us from God and one another. He will ignite righteousness and passion for the Kingdom! This will awaken the nation spiritually like nothing before it, lighting a fire that burns deep in the hearts of families and throughout the family of God.
The Holy Spirit will bring a deep work as believers repent of their wrong attitudes toward God and one another. This will provoke tangible demonstrations of love, unity, and honor among God’s people. Offenses will be laid down as believers repent of jealousy, unforgiveness, bitterness, and competition. This holy fire will burn up everything that had been built on impure motives and misplaced priorities (see Rom. 14:10-12; 1 Cor. 3:11-15).
It is interesting to note that one definition of revival is “to return to its original intent, condition, or purpose.” That is what the Lord will do in this next great move of the Holy Spirit. He will restore our homes and fill them with His presence—the same way the first family, Adam and Eve, lived and communed with God in their garden home.
I know you may feel, as many people do, that your life, family, nation, or “_________” (fill in the blank) is too broken to be restored. But this simply is not true! The Bible speaks of this hope through the many stories of broken lives and a nation (Israel) seemingly too far from God to be restored. Yet, when His people called to Him, seeking Him with all their hearts, the Lord always answered. He restored.
Maybe you feel hopeless about a spouse, child, or grandchild. This is not the time to give up! God hasn’t given up on our families, and neither should we. Neither is this a time to give up on your nation. This is the time to cry out to God, to make your home an altar of prayer and worship to Him, and watch how He releases His power from Heaven to Earth.
Get Ready!
I believe there are things the Lord wants to say to our families and us during these extraordinary times. I hear His urgent call to all of us today, “Get ready! Get your house in order and make room for My Spirit to move with power.”
I also feel a strong, weighty urgency from God to draw near to Him—to get off the proverbial hamster wheel of our everyday lives, to get quiet long enough to hear His voice. If we are running ahead too quickly and not listening to the Lord’s voice, if we are holding on too tightly to “what was” or what is comfortable, we will miss what He is saying and what He wants to do in and through our households. We must pay attention!
This is not the time for the Church to hide in our homes; it is a time for the Church to arise and shine, as the prophet Isaiah proclaimed: “Arise, shine, for your light has come, and the glory of the Lord has risen upon you” (Isa. 60:1 ESV).
The Lord is sounding a clarion call for us to get ready for an outpouring of His Holy Spirit that will fill and overflow our homes, bringing in a great harvest of souls. In these times of cultural crisis, it is possible to make our homes storehouses of His glory. In fact, that is just what God is calling us to do. People will be looking for those who know how to touch God on their behalf. As the revival spreads, new believers will need more of God’s Good News—the “basics” of the Bible. This is why the Lord is calling us to be prayerful and prepare our homes to be a habitation for Him, filled with His glory. Nothing is more effective at drawing people into the Kingdom and discipling them than nurturing friendships in a warm, home environment.
As we respond to the Lord’s call, let’s also reach out to our friends and neighbors—to invite them into our homes for times of Spirit-filled worship, prayer, and sharing testimonies of God’s faithfulness. When we do, His Holy Spirit will be like a fire burning in our homes so that everyone who walks through our front door will encounter His tangible presence. As our families become saturated with God’s heart and filled with His hope, joy, and love, we can ignite in others that which was reignited in us.
I feel this is what the Lord is asking of all of us: “Are you willing to make the changes needed? To change and shift as I lead? To speed up when I say, ‘Go quickly’? Will you welcome Me to make the changes when I say, ‘Behold, I am doing a new thing’? Will you slow down and wait patiently when I impress upon you, ‘Be still and know that I am God’?”
We all must be willing to change, to allow Him to put things in right order—to give our families a divine reset. We need a corporate call to action to dedicate our families and homes to the Lord, to sanctify our homes, make room for Him, make time to pray, and worship and hear from the Lord.
If we do, I believe we will experience a family revival in living rooms all across America. And the revival won’t stop there: it will not be contained! It will burst out of our homes, into the streets, and throughout our nation, with healing and transformation in its wake.
Let’s Pray:
Father, we ask You to ignite revival fire on the family altars of homes across America. Help families prioritize their relationship with You and make You the center of their home life—creating a foundation that can bring true transformation to our nation. And, Lord, we pray that this would not end with our generation but that our children and our children’s children would keep the fire on the family altar burning— that the generations to come would put their trust in You and not forget Your faithfulness (Psalm 78:6-7).
Portions of the message were taken from Cheryl Sacks’ new book, Fire on the Family Altar: Experience the Holy Spirit’s Power in Your Home, (Destiny Image) available at PrayerShop.org.
You can learn more about Cheryl and her husband Hal’s work at bridgebuilders.net.
