Dear brothers and sisters,
Today as I was praying, I felt convicted of something that I felt compelled to share. It is not by any means meant to be a put-down of any of you, just something that convicted my heart. I have so appreciated all the sermons, videos, written messages available at this site, and yet it is so often the case that the listening and reading can take the place of practice.
Many times I have started listening to one of the messages of Leonard Ravenhill or of Art Katz or of Gerhard Du Toit and before I could finish listening have been moved to my knees in prayer. Certainly that is the point of the messages in the first place: to move us to emulate the kind of prayer that brings such conviction.
I have read many of the forums here (probably more than I should have) and some of them have been inspiring and refreshing, and some of course have proved our need to put into practice far more of what we have the privilege of hearing on this site. But the one thing that convicted my heart today was the fact that we here (in this country especially) have not only far more than others do materially but such an abundance spiritually. I think of so many of those of whom we read about in countries all around the world for whom the scraps that fall from our table (as far as what we can hear and read) would be most eagerly consumed, and yet we are so prone to take it all for granted. We can write it and discuss it all so cavalierly taking such time and effort to get across some particular point… and yet that hungering and thirsting that the Lord spoke of with the promised filling that ought to drive us to the hours of weeping and travailing and mourning between the porch and the altar is taken up in sometimes some of the most light and trite and blithe debate.
The tears and sweat and travail of soul that brought forth such heartfelt messages that have poured forth from so many of these is so much like how those kinds of messages have been treated century after century. It is like what Ezekiel said
Ezekiel 33:30 - 32 (NASB) 30“But as for you, son of man, your fellow citizens who talk about you by the walls and in the doorways of the houses, speak to one another, each to his brother, saying, ‘Come now and hear what the message is which comes forth from the LORD.’ 31“They come to you as people come, and sit before you as My people and hear your words, but they do not do them, for they do the lustful desires expressed by their mouth, and their heart goes after their gain. 32“Behold, you are to them like a sensual song by one who has a beautiful voice and plays well on an instrument; for they hear your words but they do not practice them.”
So often (God forgive me, far too often) we listen to the stirring messages and ARE stirred for the moment, but then instead of going our way forever changed and forever challenged enough to become the Ravenhill’s, Tozier’s, Katz’s or the Evan Robert’s or one of those precious sisters that prayed so fervently for the revival in the Hebrides, we get our fix for the moment…we have heard and that is our catharsis for the moment…we have been touched, just as dear Brother Currin said during the Convention, but since we are spoiled Americans and have not yet experienced the famines that so many other cultures have experienced, we eat the meal prepared by some else’s diligent sacrifice, wipe our mouth’s, talk about how good it was, hardly willing to consider the fellowship of suffering that has brought about such blessed communion with God that they have shared with us.
HIS Sacrifice deserves far more than this!
Again, please do not take this confession as accusation unless you are equally guilty, but Oh GOD how I long to see not just these forums, but churches or homes or whatever, wherever…turn into not just talk ABOUT revival, and about doctrine and all the finer points about election vs. free will, and when HE is coming back, and the multitudes of other subjects that can interest us without changing us, but TESTIMONIES that pop up like pop-corn all over the wicked web of How while we were praying… while we were pouring our hearts out before God, GOD has come down in MY TOWN.
I have read and downloaded and thank God for it all, but I will only be literally “popping in”… because I don’t want to just read about it and talk about it, I want to see, and thank God I have seen on a small scale enough in the past, to know that God can and will do maybe not “it” again, but WHATEVER HE WILLS TO SEND again, in ANSWER TO PRAYER before it is too late, and we see what HE HAS TO SEND when we play at prayer.
Please pray for me… I am praying for names I don’t know but hearts that God knows.
Clint
