I recently quoted a story that I believe comes from the legend of Smith Wigglesworth – that extraordinary 20th century preacher, revivalist, and evangelist. He once told his hearers to get down, draw a circle around themselves and refuse to move until God revives everything inside that circle.
I haven’t exactly done the circle thing, but I’ve been in a season of crying out for more of Him. More power, more presence, more of Jesus, more prayer, more worship, more of his voice. More joy, more peace, more of His Spirit. More holiness, deeper consecration, more of his word, more passion for mission. I’m not greedy, but he totally deserves more glory, and the spiritually dead can’t give him much glory, so I am pleading his promises to all His people that I will be dead to me and alive to Christ in ever increasing ways.
God has increasingly been responding to that desire for him and it has been a joy to sense his presence in new and familiar ways, with reawakened passions. I don’t testify to boast because this is far from anything I deserve, but all about his gracious, covenant faithfulness to give the Spirit to those who ask Him, like any good Father.
It was Andrew Murray (or was it Robert Murray M’Cheyne?) who said that ‘his congregations greatest need was his own personal holiness.’ Arran Baptist deserve no less that a pastor who seeks after God with wholehearted devotion.
It was the Rev Duncan Campbell of Lewis Awakening fame who said that lack of corporate revival is no excuse for not living in personal revival. I take that right on the chin, speak to my soul like the psalmist and say, ‘Awake, my soul!’
“One thing I ask from the Lord, this only do I seek: that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to gaze on the beauty of the Lord and to seek him in his temple.”
Psalms 27:4
“Better is one day in your courts than a thousand elsewhere; I would rather be a doorkeeper in the house of my God than dwell in the tents of the wicked.”
Psalms 84:10
It was my hero, William Booth, who said
“Let others whose blood is fired and whose hearts are melted after the same fashion join hands with you. Make a Mount Carmel of some ante-room, or barracks, or kitchen and offer yourself up as a sacrifice, body, soul and spirit, and believe and wait until you receive the Holy Fire”
General William Booth, THE GENERAL’S LETTERS
For the sake of Christ, the gospel, and the lost, we must. The stakes are too high: we’re talking about eternity.
Andrew S M Clark 