A BIG WORD WITH ONLY TWO LETTERS

The word “if” has only two letters but it’s a big, big word. The word establishes the condition by which God says He will send revival. If there is no humility; if there is no prayer; if there is no seeking the face of God; if there is no repentance and turning from sin—then there will be no awakening (see 2 Chronicles 7:14).

America is in great need of a revival but there is no national revival or awakening taking place! The hard fact is that most of the pastors and churches in America give lip service to the need for a national spiritual awakening. It is my personal opinion that the majority of contemporary evangelical churches embody the spirit of the church at Laodicea that Jesus described in Revelation 3:17: “I am rich, I have prospered and I need nothing.” The feelings of self-sufficiency and arrogance are, to me, dumbfounding. Our nation is on the edge of collapse and our world is reeling under the threats of terrorism, war and economic disaster, yet the church is blithely ignoring the reality of it all.

Here’s a powerful story of what happened in the little town of Manchester, Kentucky, when the pastors and churches had had enough and desperation set in.

In July 1989, USA Today reported that more than 40 percent of Clay County’s [Kentucky] population was growing marijuana and the nearby Daniel Boone National Forest had been effectively transformed into a pot field. By the year 2000 the area had moved on to a new drug. In January 2003 The Lexington Herald-Leader dubbed Manchester, Kentucky, "The Painkiller Capital of America," as Oxycontin was being sold on nearly every street corner. After that, "cooks" rose up to manufacture methamphetamine, a highly addictive crystalline drug that can be snorted, smoked or injected.

Political officials and police were being paid to look the other way. The drug lords bought the elections every four years. More than 90 percent of the county's high school students were using drugs. Overdoses became a common occurrence in the area, with memorial crosses strewn along the city streets like a picket fence. Meanwhile, the pastors were polarized based on doctrinal differences and felt hopeless to help members whose families were drug-addicted and dying.

"Our kids started dying. Out of desperation, we started praying in the fall of 2003. We started crying out to the Lord. A Southern Baptist preacher named Ken Bolin had a dream," says Doug Abner, who was pastoring a church in Manchester at the time. "Ken wanted to have a march against drugs and corruption on May 2, 2004. We received threats on our lives, our homes and our churches, but we knew it was God."

The morning of May 2, in the pouring rain, 4,000 people turned out for the march. That's especially significant considering Manchester is home to only 2,000 people. The rally ended at a park. There the pastors and church leaders repented for being more concerned about their own denominations, their own congregations, and their own programs than the lost souls in Clay County. When they asked the people to forgive them and vowed to work together, Abner says the manifest presence of the Lord fell in the park to the degree that people could hardly breathe.

"The fear of the Lord gripped the community. Drug dealers and corrupt politicians began to tell on each other," Abner says. "A few months later, the FBI came to town and started arresting people. Eventually, they arrested the mayor and the assistant police chief, the fire chief, the 911 director, several local judges and city council members, a circuit judge, school board members and the superintendent and lots of others. They also arrested the drug dealers, who were selling drugs to the nation from Manchester."

Today, Manchester is known as the City of Hope. God even healed the land. For years, the water tasted foul without the use of a water filter. But in 2008, Clay County's water won first place in Kentucky's municipal water system for its taste. Churches and local businesses banded together with the court system to develop second-chance employment programs for Clay County's population of recovering drug addicts. As the economy improved, new businesses started opening to provide those jobs.

Doug Abner says, “I asked the Lord, 'Why Manchester?' And He said, 'Because I want the world to see what can happen when people get desperate and begin to come together,'" Abner continues. "As bad as the darkness was, our biggest problem was not the darkness. Our biggest problem was the lack of light—the church not being what it is supposed to be. When we came together in desperation, He healed the land. He changed the fabric of our society."

(This article is adapted from a story in the July 2015 issue of Charisma magazine.)

The pastors and churches of Manchester, Kentucky reached a point of desperation and when they did and in desperation reached out to God, in desperation they repented of their sin then the promise of God was released and by His Spirit God began to work in that city.