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Self-centeredness is the greatest enemy of spiritual life. All is not well so long as the center of your personality is occupied by that little god. It’s too little to be your god. It can’t occupy the throne. The throne is for him who died in love for you–I mean God in Jesus Christ. when self is on the throne, it is conspicuously out of place. It is too weak to meet your needs, too small to satisfy your hunger, too dry to quench your thirst. Revival begins by putting a line through the I which at the center and turning it into a cross. (Festo Kivengere, When God Moves in Revival, 11).
by Ray Ortlund
You can stand any test
“The cross is practical, it is God moving in love to meet violent men and women, facing violence and suffering for us. Your faith was born in violence. The Christian is not scared when the whole world is shaking. Your faith was born on Calvary. It can stand anything. It is an all-weather faith.
Don’t imagine you can only be a Christian when everything is smooth. Christians shine better when everything is just the opposite. Your faith was born in blood and sweat in the loneliness of Calvary. You can stand any test.”
Bishop Festo Kivengere, When God Moves in Revival (Wheaton, 1973), page 16
Where Is Our Zeal?
By Aaron Armstrong on April 19, 2012 in Vintage Saints
Converted in a most singular way, by a direct interposition from heaven, Paul, from that time forward became an earnest man. He had always been earnest, in his sin and in his persecutions; but after he heard that voice from heaven, “Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me?” and had received the mighty office of an apostle, and had been sent forth a chosen vessel to the Gentiles, you can scarce conceive the deep, the awful earnestness which he manifested. Whether he did eat, or drink, or whatsoever he did, he did all for the glory of his God. . . . His zeal was so earnest, and so burning, that he could not (as we unfortunately do) restrain himself within a little sphere; but he preached the Word everywhere. It was not enough for him to have it handed down that he was the Apostle of Pisidia, but he must go also to Pamphylia; it was not enough that he should be the great preacher of Pamphylia and Pisidia, but he must go also to Attalia; and when he had preached throughout all Asia, he must needs take ship to Greece, and preach there also.
I believe not once only did Paul hear in his dream the men of Macedonia saying, “Come over and help us,” but every day and hour he heard the cry in his ears from multitudes of souls, “Paul, Paul, come over and help us.” He could not restrain himself from preaching. ”Woe is unto me” he said “if I preach not the gospel. God forbid that I should glory save in the cross of Christ.”
Oh! if you could have seen Paul preach, you would not have gone away as you do from some of us, with half a conviction, that we do not mean what we say. His eyes preached a sermon without his lips, and his lips preached it, not in a cold and frigid manner, but every word fell with an overwhelming power upon the hearts of his hearers. He preached with power, because he was in downright earnest. You had a conviction, when you saw him, that he was a man who felt he had a work to do and must do it, and could not contain himself unless he did do it. He was the kind of preacher whom you would expect to see walk down the pulpit stairs straight into his coffin, and then stand before his God, ready for his last account.
Where are the men like that man? I confess I cannot claim that privilege, and I seldom hear a solitary sermon which comes up to the mark in earnest, deep, passionate longing for the souls of men.
Adapted from “Gospel Missions,” as published in The Sermons of Charles Spurgeon: Sermons 201-400 (Vol 2 of 4) (Kindle Edition)
Good Jesus, Fountain of Love
Good Jesus, Fountain of Love,
Fill us with thy love.
Absorb us into thy love;
Compass us with thy love,
That we may see all things in the light of thy love,
Receive all things as the token of thy love,
Speak of all things in words breathing of thy love,
Win through thy love others for thy love,
Be kindled day by day with a new glow of thy love,
Until we be fitted to enter into thine everlasting love,
To adore thy love and love to adore thee, our God and all.
Even so come, O Lord Jesus.
- E.B. Pusey, 1800-1882
| How Strong Is Our Desire? |
By T.M. Moore|Published Date: February 01, 2012
Revival
“Immediately the father of the child cried out and said, ‘I believe; help my unbelief!’”
Mark 9:24
Ministers of Scotland: Lectures on Revival VI
The Rev. Alexander Cumming, Minister of Dunbarney Parish
“If benefits of vast magnitude are to be bestowed, they must therefore be preceded by prayers of fervid pathos; and God often delays an answer to supplication, not that he despises the anxious voice of our humble entreaty, but because he waits till our desires gain an accession of strength, and are somewhat commensurate to the vastness of the mercy that is stored up for us; and for this purpose he sometimes circles us with an array of troubles, that they may enhance the frequency and earnestness of our addresses to the throne of grace.”
“How bad do you want it?!” If I’ve heard one coach shout that in my face while he was working me to a near-death experience, I’ve heard two dozen. But there’s something to that: He wants me to play, wants me to play really well, and wants to see that I’m really devoted to the team. So more sprints or whatever, to prove my zeal for good old alma mater! Is it so unthinkable that the Lord might look at our prayers in a similar way? How bad(ly) do we want revival, and how strong is our desire for Him to do what only He can do?
How badly do you want to see the Lord bring revival to your church and community?
To learn more about revival, order the book, A God-Sized Vision: Revival Stories that Stretch and Stir, by Collin Hansen and John Woodbridge, from our online store.
Pastor to Pastor brings the insights of great servants of God from the past to pastors in our own day, to link our ministries with theirs in the grand tradition of building the Church of our Lord Jesus Christ.
The most notable feature of David Brainerd‘s life was his praying. His journal is permeated with accounts of prayer, fasting and meditation…
“I love to be alone in my cottage, where I can spend much time in prayer.”
“I set part this day for secret fasting and prayer to God.”
“When I return home and give myself to meditation, prayer and fasting…”
(The Celebration of Discipline by Richard J. Foster, 31).
by Ray Ortlund
“. . . not afraid to die”
John Wesley came to realize how little he really knew of Jesus in the middle of the Atlantic, on board the Simmonds, when a storm broke out. A group of Moravian missionaries happened to be having a worship service on deck at the time. Wesley records that, when the storm became intense, “a terrible screaming began among the English.” But “the Germans looked up, and without intermission calmly sang on. I asked one of them afterwards, ‘Were you not afraid?’ He answered, ‘I thank God, no.’ I asked, ‘But were not your women and children afraid?’ He replied mildly, ‘No; our women and children are not afraid to die.’” Wesley then saw that something was missing from his life. He found it in Christ.
E. M. Bounds said that when our devotion is gone, prayer is essentially gone as well…
“When the angel of devotion is gone, the angel of prayer has lost its wings and it becomes a deformed and loveless thing”
(The Essentials of Prayer, 93)
“Now may the God of peace who brought again from the dead our Lord Jesus, the great shepherd of the sheep, by the blood of the eternal covenant, equip you with everything good that you may do his will, working in us that which is pleasing in his sight, through Jesus Christ, to whom be glory forever and ever. Amen.”
All glory and praise to Jesus!
Putting Prayer First—E. M. Bounds (1835 – 1913)
Edward McKendree Bounds was a noted American clergyman of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South. He served as a chaplain to the Confederate army during the Civil War and pastored churches throughout the South. Yet Bounds’ most famous work was his writing on prayer. Noted for his personal devotion to Christ, he prayed each morning from four until seven.
This selection, taken from his 1906 book Power through Prayer, argues that beginning the day with prayer reflects passion for God and a willingness to mortify the flesh, and it follows the pattern of eminent saints in Scripture. Of course, Bounds lived in a different time with different scheduling conventions. Today ready access to electricity and telecommunications makes late-night work unavoidable at times, and early appointments have become a reality of life. Plus, many people simply do not feel mentally alert in the pre-dawn hours. Such circumstances combine to make lengthy prayer sessions immediately upon waking impractical for some. Thus, Bounds’ comments should not be received as legalistic prescriptions for when a believer must pray.
Still, whenever Christians choose to pray, they would do well to emulate the zeal for God and the self-discipline that drove Bounds to give his mornings to the Lord.
The men who have done the most for God in this world have been early on their knees. He who fritters away the early morning, its opportunity and freshness, in other pursuits than seeking God will make poor headway seeking him the rest of the day. If God is not first in our thoughts and efforts in the morning, he will be in the last place the remainder of the day…
A desire for God which cannot break the chains of sleep is a weak thing and will do but little good for God after it has indulged itself fully. The desire for God that keeps so far behind the devil and the world at the beginning of the day will never catch up.
It is not simply the getting up that puts men to the front and makes them captain generals in God’s hosts, but it is the ardent desire which stirs and breaks all self-indulgent chains. But the getting up gives vent, increase, and strength to the desire. If they had lain in bed and indulged themselves, the desire would have been quenched.1
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| 1 | E. M. Bounds, Power through Prayer (1906), available at Christian Classics Etheral Library Website, http://www.ccel.org/ccel/bounds/power.IX.html (accessed March 23, 2010) |
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