Genuine sorrow for sin and repentance: that will be the secret of blessing for any individual congregation or church, even today. Things have to be given up; things have to be turned away from. Is it possible that it could happen on a wide scale as it happened in Ezra's time, when great numbers of people, thousands of them, took this pledge and took this action to make a complete about turn and live according to the standards of the Lord? Could it happen? We pray for it to happen.
Martyn Lloyd Jones, used to say that there would never be a general revival in Britain – though it's something he looked for, and promoted, and prayed for. There would never be a revival in Britain, until all the confidence was gone out of the churches, the self-confidence, the self-reliance, the trusting in the gimmicks, the concessions, the compromises. ‘Aren't we clever to have adopted this, and adopted that, and changed this, and changed that? And there's no doubt he was absolutely right in that. These things are so important and so precious. May we live through our Christian lives, realising that the standards of God have to be held, have to be kept. Here is the root to instrumentality, and to blessing, and usefulness. There is no other way!