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CHAPTER ONE With All Thy Getting, Get Unction
The Cinderella of the church of today is the prayer meeting. This handmaid of the Lord is unloved and unwooed because she is not dripping with the pearls of intellectualism, nor glamorous with the silks of philosophy; neither is she enchanting with the tiara of psychology. She wears the homespuns of sincerity and humility and so is not afraid to kneel!
One does not need to be spiritual to preach, that is, to make and deliver sermons of homiletical perfection and exegetical exactitude. By a combination of memory, knowledge, ambition, personality, plus well-lined bookshelves, self-confidence, and a sense of having arrived—brother, the pulpit is yours almost anywhere these days.
Preaching of the type mentioned affects men; prayer affects God. Preaching affects time; prayer affects eternity. The pulpit can be a shopwindow to display our talents; the closet speaks death to display.
A sermon born in the head reaches the head; a sermon born in the heart reaches the heart. Under God, a spiritual preacher will produce spiritually minded people.
Unction cannot be learned, only earned—by prayer.
Victory is not won in the pulpit by firing intellectual bullets or wisecracks, but in the prayer closet; it is won or lost before the preacher’s foot enters the pulpit. Unction is like dynamite. Unction comes not by the medium of the bishop’s hands, neither does it mildew when the preacher is cast into prison. Unction will pierce and percolate; it will sweeten and soften. When the hammer of logic and the fire of human zeal fail to open the stony heart, unction will succeed.
Yet thousands of churches see empty altars week after week and year after year, and cover this sterile situation by misapplying the Scripture, ‘‘My word . . . shall not return unto me void.’’
By our attitude to prayer we tell God that what was begun in the Spirit we can finish in the flesh.
Yet ministers who do not spend two hours a day in prayer are not worth a dime a dozen, degrees or no degrees.
Preachers who should be fishing for men are now too often fishing for compliments from men.
CHAPTER TWO Prayer Grasps Eternity
No man is greater than his prayer life. The pastor who is not praying is playing; the people who are not praying are straying.
The ministry of preaching is open to few; the ministry of prayer—the highest ministry of all human offices—is open to all.
The secret of praying is praying in secret. A sinning man will stop praying, and a praying man will stop sinning.
Prayer is to the believer what capital is to the business man.
CHAPTER THREE A Call for Unction in the Pulpit—Action in the Pew!
The brutal, soul-shaking truth is that we are so earthly minded we are of no heavenly use.
Friend, if you were as good at soul-cultivation as you are in developing your business, you would be a menace to the devil; but if you were as poor in business matters as you are in soul, you would be begging for bread.
There are no reduced rates for revolution of soul. If you only want to be saved, sanctified, and satisfied, then the Lord’s battle hath no need of thee.
My reader, because the Church has lost Holy Ghost fire, men go to hell-fire! We need a vision of a holy God. God is essentially holy. The cherubim and seraphim were not crying, ‘‘Omnipotent! Omnipotent is the Lord!’’ nor ‘‘Omnipresent! and Omniscient! is the Lord,’’ but ‘‘Holy! Holy Holy!’’
He who fears God fears no man. He who kneels before God will stand in any situation.
There are three persons living in each of us: the one we think we are, the one other people think we are, and the one God knows we are.
Then like Isaiah, as we look upward, we will see the Lord in all His holiness; as we look inward, we will see ourselves and our need for cleansing and power; and as we look outward, we will see a world that is perishing and in need of a Saviour! ‘‘Search me, O God, and know my heart: try me, and know my thoughts: and see if there be any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting’’ (Psalm 139:23-24). Then only will there be unction in the pulpit and action in the pew!
CHAPTER FOUR Where Are the Elijahs of God?
One praying man stands as a majority with God! Today God is bypassing men—not because they are too ignorant, but because they are too self-sufficient. Brethren, our abilities are our handicaps, and our talents our stumbling blocks!
As Abraham, so now Elijah ‘‘stood before the Lord.’’ Therefore the blessed Holy Spirit could write the life of Elijah in two words: ‘‘He prayed.’’ No man can do more than that for God or for men. If the Church today had as many agonizers as she has advisers, we would have a revival in a year!
E. M. Bounds is right in saying that short, powerful public prayers are the outcome of long secret intercession.
Does God ever need more patience with His people than when they are ‘‘praying’’? We tell Him what to do and how to do it. We pass judgments and make appreciations in our prayers. In short, we do everything except pray. No Bible School can teach us this art. What Bible School has ‘‘Prayer’’ on its curriculum? The most important thing a man can study is the prayer part of the Book. But where is this taught? Let us strip off the last bandage and declare that many of our presidents and teachers do not pray, shed no tears, know no travail. Can they teach what they do not know?
God’s problem today is not Communism, nor yet Romanism, nor Liberalism, nor Modernism. God’s problem is—dead fundamentalism!
CHAPTER FIVE Revival in a Bone Yard
The world is not waiting for a new definition of the Gospel, but for a new demonstration of the power of the Gospel. In these days of acute political helplessness, moral lawlessness, and spiritual helplessness, where are the men not of doctrine, but of faith?
Yearly we use mountains of paper and rivers of ink reprinting dead men’s brains, while the living Holy Ghost is seeking for men to trample underfoot their own learning, deflate their inflated ego, and confess that with all their seeing they are blind.
Years ago a minister put this sign outside of his church, ‘‘This church will have either a revival or a funeral!’’ With such despair God is well pleased, though hell is despondent. Madness, you say? Exactly! A sober church never does any good. At this hour we need men drunk with the Holy Ghost.
First, ‘‘a broken and a contrite heart God will not despise’’; in fact, God only uses broken things. For example, Jesus took the lad’s bread and brake it; then, and only then, could it feed the crowd. The alabaster box was broken; only then could its fragrance escape and fill the house—and the world. Jesus said, ‘‘This is My body which was broken for you.’’ If such was the way the Master went, should not the servant tread it still?
Dear brethren, our eyes are dry because our hearts are dry. We live in a day when we can have piety without pity. It is passing strange. When a couple of struggling Salvation Army officers wrote to William Booth telling him they tried every way to get a move and failed, he sent this terse reply, ‘‘Try tears!’’ They did. And they had revival.
CHAPTER SIX Revival Tarries—Because
Almost every Bible conference majors on today’s Church being like the Ephesian Church. We are told that, despite our sin and carnality, we are seated with Him. Alas, what a lie! We are Ephesians all right; but, as the Ephesian Church in the Revelation, we have ‘‘left our first love!’’ We appease sin—but do not oppose it. To such a cold, carnal, critical, care-cowed Church, this lax, loose, lustful, licentious age will never capitulate. Let us stop looking for scapegoats. The fault in declining morality is not radio or television. The whole blame for the present international degeneration and
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Why does revival tarry? The answer is simple enough—because evangelism is so highly commercialized. The tithes of widows and of the poor are spent in luxury-living by many evangelists.
Preachers who have homes and cottages by the lake, a boat on that lake, and a big bank balance, still beg for more. With such extortioners and unjust men, can God entrust Holy Ghost revival?
Revival tarries because of cheapening the Gospel. We now have church hymns played strictly to dance tempo on our sacred records and over the radio, as well as in the churches. We have the precious blood of Jesus set to ‘‘boogie woogie’’ time. Imagine!
Revival tarries because of carelessness. At the altar, too little time is spent with those souls who come to do eternal business. The evangelist is happy seeing his friends; and while sinners groan at the altar, he is drinking in the rich cream of men’s praises.
Revival tarries because of fear. As evangelists, we are tight-lipped about the spurious religions of the day, as if there were more than one name whereby men must be saved.
We are not Protestants any more—just ‘‘non-Catholics’’! Of what and of whom do we protest?
Revival tarries because we lack urgency in prayer. A famed preacher entered a conference the other day with these words, ‘‘I have come to this conference with a great burden for prayer on my heart. Will those who will share this with me, please raise their hands; and let none of us be hypocrites.’’ There was a good response. But later in the week when a half night of prayer was called, the big preacher went to bed.
We will write about prayer-power, but not fight while in prayer. A title, undeniably true of the Church today, would be ‘‘We Wrestle Not!’’
CHAPTER SEVEN Is Soul-Hot Preaching a Lost Art?
We may have an all-time high in church attendance with a corresponding all-time low in spirituality.
Has great preaching died? is soul-hot preaching a lost art? have we conceded to the impatient modern’s snack-bar sermons (spiced with humor!) the task of edging men’s jaded spiritual appetites?
Pentecost meant pain, yet we have so much pleasure. Pentecost meant burden, yet we love ease. Pentecost meant prison, yet most of us would do anything rather than, for Christ’s dear sake, get into prison.
