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The devil wants us to major on minors. Many of us in the ‘‘Deeper Life’’ bracket are hunting mice—while lions devour the land!
How shall I feel at the judgment, if multitudes of missed opportunities pass before me in full review, and all my excuses prove to be disguises of my cowardice and pride? —DR. W. E. SANGSTER
CHAPTER EIGHT Unbelieving Believers
We have adopted the convenient theory that the Bible is a Book to be explained, whereas first and foremost it is a Book to be believed (and after that to be obeyed).
The fact beats ceaselessly into my brain these days that there is a world of difference between knowing the Word of God and knowing the God of the Word.
God honors not wisdom nor personality but faith.
Much of the barrier to believers’ translating the promises of God into fact before the eyes of men is that wretched thing called self.
And before we can be clean and ready for Him to control, self-seeking, self-glory, self-interest, self-pity, self-righteousness, self-importance, self-promotion, self-satisfaction—and whatsoever else there be of self—must die.
CHAPTER NINE Wanted— Prophets for a Day of Doom!
This was the iniquity of thy sister Sodom,’’ says Ezekiel 16:49—‘‘pride, fulness of bread, and abundance of idleness.’’
When God-given, heaven-sent revival does come, it will undo in weeks the damage that blasphemous Modernism has taken years to build. By the gale of the Spirit, the deceptive doctors of divinity will see swept away ‘‘the house which they built upon the sand’’ of human interpretations of the Bible.
We need to rediscover the secret of those blessed men of whom the Word says, ‘‘They subdued kingdoms, [and] stopped the mouths of lions’’—(that ‘‘lion’’ who goeth about today ‘‘seeking whom he may devour’’). For this day of doom our pale, pathetic, paralyzed protestantism needs God-filled and God-guided men. Wanted—prophets of God!
CHAPTER TEN Fire Begets Fire
Men of prayer must be men of steel, for they will be assaulted by Satan even before they attempt to assault his kingdom. Praying which is merely putting in a request sheet to the Ruler of the Universe is but the smallest side of this many-faced truth. Like everything else in the Christian’s life, prayer can become lopsided. Prayer is no substitute for work; equally true is it that work is no substitute for prayer.
Surely revival delays because prayer decays.
Fire can never make ice, the devil certainly cannot make saints; neither can prayerless pastors produce warriors of intercession;
With every possible guile that he knows, the devil would snatch us from the closet of prayer. For in prayer man is linked with God, and in that union Satan is baffled and beaten.
Another useful way to offset wandering thoughts and to help concentration is to pray audibly or to give some utterance at least, though it need not be loud.
True prayer is a time-eater. In the elementary stages, the clock seems to drag; later, as the soul gets used to the holy exercise, time flies when we pray. Prayer makes the soul tender.
Satan would have us increase even in Bible knowledge, I believe, as long as we keep from prayer, which is the exercise of the instruction we have received through the Word. What use is deeper knowledge if we have shallower hearts? What use is greater standing with men if we have less standing with God? What use is personal physical hygiene if we have filthiness of the mind and of the spirit? What use is religious piety if we have soul carnality? Why strut with physical strength if we have spiritual weakness? Of what use is worldly wealth if we have spiritual poverty? Who can take comfort in
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Could a mariner sit idle if he heard the drowning cry? Could a doctor sit in comfort and just let his patients die? Could a fireman sit idle, let men burn and give no hand? Can you sit at ease in Zion with the world around you DAMNED? —LEONARD RAVENHILL
CHAPTER ELEVEN Why Don’t They Stir Themselves?
Here are men paying for shadows at the price of their immortal souls, men who not only reject the Substance, but who openly sneer at and caricature it.
One crowded hour of glorious ‘‘life’’—so they argue—is worth a gamble on the speculation of the theologians’ so-called ‘‘eternity.’’
If we wept as much in the prayer closet as devout Jews have done at the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem, we would now be enjoying a prevailing, purging revival! If we would return to apostolic practice—waiting upon the Lord for apostolic power—we could then go forth to apostolic possibilities!
The Church that is man-managed instead of God-governed is doomed to failure. A ministry that is college-trained but not Spirit-filled works no miracles. —SAMUEL CHADWICK
CHAPTER TWELVE The Prodigal Church in a Prodigal World
If there are degrees in death, then the deadest I know of is to preach about the Holy Ghost without the anointing of the Holy Ghost.
Oh, we bankrupt, blind, boasting believers! We are naked and don’t know it. We are rich (never had we more equipment), but we are poor (never had we less enduement)! We have need of nothing (and yet we lack almost everything the Apostolic Church had). Can He stand ‘‘in the midst’’ while we sport unashamedly in our spiritual nakedness?
John the Baptist ‘‘did no miracles’’—that is, no rivers of derelict humanity swept down on him for his healing touch. But he raised a spiritually dead nation!
Brethren, in the light of the ‘‘bema seat,’’ we had better live six months with a volcanic heart, denouncing sin in places high and low and turning the nation from the power of Satan unto God (as John the Baptist did) rather than die loaded with ecclesiastical honours and theological degrees and be the laughing stock of hell and of spiritual nonentities.
Oh in comparison with the New Testament Church we are so sub-apostolic, so substandard! Sound doctrine has put most believers sound asleep, for the letter is not enough. It must be kindled! It is the letter plus the Spirit which ‘‘giveth life.’’ A sound sermon in faultless English and flawless interpretation can be as tasteless as a mouthful of sand.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN Wanted—A Prophet to Preach to the Preachers!
Holy Ghost fire both destroys, purifies, warms, attracts, and empowers.
We have a cold church in a cold world because the preachers are cold. Therefore, ‘‘Lord, send the Fire!’’
CHAPTER FOURTEEN An Empire Builder for God
Had Saul met only a preacher and heard only a sermon on the Damascus road, he might never have been heard of again. But he met Christ! (Sermons and preachers can be avoided—they often are—but Christ can never be avoided.)
If more were strong in prayer, more would be suited to suffer. Prayer develops bone as well as groan, sinew as well as saintliness, fortitude as well as fire.
The law of prayer is the law of harvest: sow sparingly in prayer, reap sparingly; sow bountifully in prayer, reap bountifully. The trouble is we are trying to get from our efforts what we never put into them.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN Branded—For Christ!
The old Welsh divine said that if you know Hebrew, Greek, and Latin, do not put them where Pilate did at the head of Christ—but put them at His feet.
O brother, pray; in spite of Satan, pray; spend hours in prayer; rather neglect friends than not pray; rather fast, and lose breakfast, dinner, tea, and supper—and sleep too—than not pray. And we must not talk about prayer, we must pray in right earnest. The Lord is near. He comes softly while the virgins slumber. —ANDREW A. BONAR
CHAPTER SIXTEEN ‘‘Give Me Children or I Die’’
Preacher, if your soul is barren, if tears are absent from your eyes, if converts are absent from your altar, then take no comfort in your popularity; refuse the consolation of your degrees or of the books you have written! Sincerely but passionately invite the Holy Ghost to plague your heart with grief because you are spiritually unable to bring to birth. Oh, the reproach of our barren altars! Has the Holy Ghost delight in our electric organs, carpeted aisles, and new decorations if the crib is empty? Never!
We do well to ponder the fact that revival comes as a result of a cleansed section of the Church, bent and bowed in supplication and intercession.
Zinzendorf, chagrined and shamed at the loveless, fruitless state of the Moravians, was melted and motivated by the Holy Ghost until—suddenly revival came at about eleven o’clock on the Wednesday morning of August 13, 1727. Then began the Moravian revival, in which a prayer meeting was born that we are told lasted one hundred years. From that meeting came a missionary movement that reached the ends of the earth.
At God’s counter there are no ‘‘sale days,’’ for the price of revival is ever the same—travail.
Quote part of a text and you can make the Bible say anything. For instance, ‘‘God is able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think.’’ Stop the verse there, and it means ‘‘God is able to do it, but as yet He is not bothered so to do.’’ This verse, misquoted, leaves the lack of revival on the steps of God’s throne. But finish the text . . . ‘‘able to do—according to the power that worketh in us,’’ and it means that the channel is blocked; it means God cannot get through to this age because of lack of power in the Church. So lack of revival is our fault.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN ‘‘The Filth of the World’’
The contentious, carnal, critical, Corinthian crowd. This Church was split by carnality—and cash! Some had rocketted to fame and become the merchant princes of the city. So Paul says, ‘‘Ye have reigned as kings without us.’’ Ponder the glaring contrasts in I Cor. 4:8: ‘‘Ye are full, ye are rich, ye have reigned as kings without us.’’ ‘‘We are fools; we are despised; we both hunger and thirst and are naked’’ (verse 10). The blessed compensation is in verse 9, ‘‘We [apostles] are made a spectacle unto the world, and to angels, and to men.’’
