Part 5 (1/2)
This is, indeed, true; it is not in proportion to our desperate efforts that we should see the results; but to our simple trust in the power of G.o.d, to honor His own Word, and work by His own Spirit in the hearts of men. The most of the great revival movements have thus begun.
A humble working man in the north of Ireland read the story of Geo. Muller's life, and immediately thought, why cannot I have the same answer to prayer in the salvation of souls? He immediately began to pray for a great outpouring of the Holy Spirit upon his city and country; soon he was joined by another, and then another, and before long a flood of fire was sweeping over all the land, and hundreds of thousands of souls were mightily converted to G.o.d. It was thus that Mr. Finney always prepared for his work. We can read in his biography how he used to retire with a friend, sometimes into the woods, and spend hours on his knees until he felt the blessing was claimed and the power was coming, and then he would go forth about his work with the tranquil certainty that G.o.d was there and would be revealed in all His power and glory, and the result always was the mighty working of the Holy Ghost.
Not always is it the preacher who exercises the effectual faith; sometimes it is a silent and obscure heart whom no one shall know until the day when all things shall be revealed.
A celebrated preacher of the middle ages was always accompanied by a quiet and insignificant man, without whom he would never preach. The man never opened his lips in public, and seemed to be a useless appendage. He afterwards explained that while he preached his companion prayed, and that he attributed all the marvelous results of his messages to his believing intercessions. There is no Christian but can thus claim and exercise the very power of G.o.d even in the most silent capacity, and it will be found in the great day that G.o.d has not failed to credit the recompense to the real instrument through whom the divine working came. It will very likely be found in that day that the voice that spake from the pulpit had but a fractional share in the real work which the Holy Ghost accomplished, but that some humble saint was the real channel through whom the fire of G.o.d fell upon convicted and converted souls.
But it is not only for the conversion of souls that G.o.d will give us His power, and faith to claim His working, but for everything connected with His cause, and our ministry shall touch every part of His work.
Faith is the true channel of effectiveness, simply because faith is merely the hand by which the forces of Omnipotence are brought to bear upon the work. The removing of obstacles, the influencing of human hearts and minds, the bringing together of workers, the obtaining of helpers, the supply of financial needs; all these are proper subjects for believing prayer, and proper lines for demonstrating the all-sufficiency of G.o.d. And if, instead of begging for help, and compromising the honor of Christ by despairing appeals to the church and the world, the people of G.o.d would more simply trust Him, they would be saved a thousand embarra.s.sments, and His name would be constantly glorified in the manifestation of His all-sufficiency before an unbelieving world.
A few stupendous examples of G.o.d's faithfulness in answering the prayers of His people in the supply of money and men, such as have been afforded by the story of George Muller's Orphanage, the China Inland Mission, and similar works by faith, were not intended to be isolated instances, but to prove to the world that Christ is able always to meet His people's needs, and to be but samples of a principle which should be the rule of Christian work; that G.o.d in all things might be glorified through Jesus Christ, not only in the spiritual, but in the temporal and practical needs of His kingdom.
4. Love.
Still more necessary is the spirit of love as the very element and character of every true Christian worker. ”Lovest thou me?” is the prime condition on which Christ's saints are to minister to His flock, and love for souls is the only bond that can win and hold them and can sustain our own heart amid the trials and discouragements of Christian work. Human love will make any task a delight. For the child of her affection the mother can toil and suffer without weariness, and count life itself a small sacrifice for her loved one.
And so the love of souls will inspire us and sustain us in the face of every discouragement and disagreeable surrounding, until the most loathsome and offensive scenes will be a delight to us, and the most coa.r.s.e and degraded souls will be dear to our hearts as our beloved friends, and it shall become the pa.s.sion of our life to win them for Christ.
A n.o.ble woman died lately in Indiana, who had a remarkable record of success in dealing with hardened women. She was the superintendent of a large inst.i.tution for this cla.s.s, and her influence over them was irresistible; it was the power of love. Often when met by stormy pa.s.sion and wild, coa.r.s.e, desperate wickedness, has she thrown her arms about some degraded woman, and by a kiss of unfeigned love and the hot tears of her tender compa.s.sion, melted the heart of stone. We must love people if we would do them good, but such love must be divine. Mere human sympathy does not go to the depths of their heart, but the love which is born of G.o.d and inbreathed of the Holy Ghost, always finds its way to every citadel of rebellion, and wins the soul for G.o.d.
At a railway station a brutal criminal was being conveyed to the penitentiary. Sitting on the benches with his keepers, he was awaiting the incoming train. A little girl sat watching him beside her father. Her heart was overwhelmed with the strange sight, and at length she stole up to him, unnoticed by her father, and looking earnestly in his face, she said, while the tears were in her eyes, ”Poor man, I am so sorry for you” The shock aroused him for a moment to realize his condition; his eye flashed, his frame shook with pa.s.sion, and he repelled her from his presence as though he had been insulted, and almost tried to strike her. She cowered back to her father's knee, the tears still in her eyes, and still watched him; but in a little while she managed to slip away again from the arms of her father, who supposed she had been frightened effectually away from approaching him, and stealing up to him again she looked once more in his hideous face and said very slowly, ”Poor man, Jesus Christ is so sorry for you.” Instantly he seemed utterly changed and subdued. That name had power to overcome the demon in his heart; his wild defiance broke quite down and he began to weep like a child. Years after he often told the story himself, when a happy, useful Christian man, and he said it was that message that broke his heart, and never left him till he found the Saviour. It was not the child's love merely, but the Saviour's love in the child that won.
There is much danger of turning the gospel of Christ and the power of G.o.d into human sentiment. Mere compa.s.sion for people, and even a costly show of interest and sympathy, will not save them, but the love born of the Holy Ghost will go as deep as the height from which it springs; and if we walk in the Spirit we shall find Him ever breathing upon us in our work that love which will brood over souls with a divine motherhood, loving them even before we know them, praying for them in the Spirit before we have singled them out of our audience; and then when we meet them recognizing them with a thrill of joy as the souls that we have been bearing on our hearts as a burden of prayer.
This love will strangely endear to us the most repulsive beings and make the most dreadful scenes more delightful than the surroundings of culture and affection, and a life of luxury and indulgence. This is the pa.s.sion that has drawn so many n.o.ble men and women to the wretched fields of sin, until their heavenly love has gathered, like the magnet to itself, the lost and wretched, and bound them forever to the heart of Christ.
This is the sweetest, highest gift of the Holy Ghost; the most tender, irresistible element of spiritual power. This was the force that drew souls to Jesus, who loved them to Himself. He was the Shepherd on the mountains, facing every privation and peril, to find the sheep that was lost; the weary wayfarer by Samaria's well, longing for the heart of that poor woman more than for meat and drink; the tender face that looked on Peter and broke his heart by a single glance of love, and that still says to each rescued, ransomed soul, ”I have loved thee with an everlasting love; therefore with loving-kindness have I drawn thee.”
This was the power of Paul's ministry. How he loved his flock! ”We were willing to have imparted unto you even our own souls; we exhorted every one of you even as a father doth his children; we were gentle with you, even as a nurse cherisheth her children. For I could wish that myself were accursed from Christ for my brethren, according to the flesh.” Men can make burning gla.s.ses of iron which will confront the solar rays, and kindle fires in polar seas. Not so can souls be set on fire; the medium must itself be glowing and burning, ”a burning as well as a s.h.i.+ning light.”
5. Tact.
This is difficult to describe. It expresses a kind of heavenly wisdom which is not low, cunning policy any more than coa.r.s.e inconsiderate abruptness, but a holy judiciousness and fitness of manner and method which nicely adapts itself by the teaching of the Spirit to diversities of character, and in a proper sense becomes all things to all men that it may win them. ”He that winneth souls,” the preacher says, ”is wise.” ”I will make you fishers of men,” said the Master. ”I caught you with guile,” says the apostle.
The word tact literally means touch. There are many kinds of touch. There is the touch of a mother which even the dying boy can recognize when unconscious of all else, and there is the touch of a blacksmith or a policeman. Not thus are we to touch the souls with which we are dealing for eternity. He that possesses the Holy Ghost will have a holy deference that will feel its way to their hearts, gently approaching them, dispelling their prejudices, tolerant of their faults, patient with their dullness or slowness, and pressing steadily and wisely to the goal of their hearts.
So the Lord drew to Him the woman at Jacob's well. First, He awakened her interest, next, disarming her prejudices, and winning her confidence; next, awakened the hunger in her heart; then venturing to arouse her conscience to the recollection of its sin, carefully avoiding any controversy about doctrines and religions, and at last bearing straight to her heart with the revelation of Himself as her Saviour.
Nothing can teach tact but the Holy Spirit and a heart so full of love for souls that it is vigilant from its very desire to win them. It is the very wisdom of the Holy Spirit and of the heart. There is only One that can make us fishers of men. This power is not always manifest in the public discourse, or the wholesale dealing with souls. He charges, himself, of every minister to reap, even as reapers gather their sheaves by hand and one by one. And he who is not willing thus to seek and find the lost by personal, patient, wise and loving ministry, shall never know the fullness of the Spirit of power.
We have to learn that no two hearts can be dealt with on general principles, and in the same way. The message that was blessed yesterday to a special a.s.sembly may not be the one for today. The promise, the incident, the ill.u.s.tration which helped that one to the Saviour cannot be applied as a cast-iron pattern to the next one. In each case we must be distinctly led by the Spirit of wisdom and grace, and if we trust Him ”it shall be given us, in the same hour, what we shall say.”
Thanks be to His name who has promised us something better than our poor, weak common sense, even that divine enduement, the Spirit of power and of love, and of a sound mind.
IV.
The Conditions of Spiritual Power.
1. Of course, the prime condition ever is that we ourselves are walking in holiness and obedience, and pleasing the Holy Spirit for our own life. We cannot expect to impart to others what we do not possess ourselves. There is nothing tells on human souls like reality, and men instinctively know whether we have experienced what we teach.
No man has a right to give to others what he has not tasted and tested himself. The mightiest force in all our work is to know and to have all men know that our life is back of our work.
2. The next condition is that we work on Scriptural lines.
We cannot expect the power of G.o.d to accompany a minister or a church, to any great extent, which allows itself to be compromised by entanglements with the world, or with methods which are contrary to the Scriptures. We cannot expect a lasting revival to follow a series of religious entertainments, or to be followed by a scene of dissipation or spiritual relaxation. The church and minister who may expect the most divine and abiding fruit are those who always work on strictly spiritual lines, and in simple accordance with the Word of G.o.d.
We must be careful of resorting too much to human attractions to draw people to Christ. There is a sense in which it is quite proper to use the legitimate power of consecrated music and the social element to promote a congenial and radiant spirit in the work and wors.h.i.+p of G.o.d, but a work which has to be sustained by the aid of social receptions, musical entertainments, and the operatic stage behind the pulpit, can never be sanctioned or crowned by the power of the Holy Ghost to any considerable extent.
In spite of these things, G.o.d does make the best He can of His own truth and the baffled efforts of His individual people even in such a work, but it is a sad, hopeless confusion, and always leads to ultimate disappointment, and impermanent results.
3. In order to enjoy the power of G.o.d we must use His own instrumentalities and weapons, His Holy Word, and a simple, pure, and full gospel. There are the weapons of our warfare, which are not carnal but mighty through G.o.d to the pulling down of strongholds; and if we would expect His power we must preach His truth in faithfulness and fullness, and it shall prevail, if proclaimed in the spirit of faith and love.
Many sermons do not possess enough of truth to give them converting power. The Holy Ghost cannot use fully a mere appeal to the sensibilities, or even to the fears of an audience. An inspired messenger should present Christ and Him crucified, and where this is done the Holy Ghost will make it the power of G.o.d unto salvation, if His working is rightly claimed and expected.
4. Finally, our motive must be pure.
The glory of Christ. Merely to desire power that we may be powerful preachers or successful workers, will bring bitter disappointment. G.o.d will not lend the Holy Ghost to any man to dishonor His own dear Son. He shall testify to Jesus, and not to any man. Self must be dead, and Christ alone exalted, if we are to have much of the power of G.o.d.
Some men cannot stand much usefulness, and G.o.d loves them too much to set them on the pinnacle of a temple, for there is no fall so great as that which falls from thence.
There is no sacrilege so dangerous and shameful as that which uses the gifts of G.o.d to glorify any man. Not only must every faithful minister fear for himself the faintest shadow of self-consciousness, but his people must ever guard him from the peril of their own idolatry; for, as surely as they recognize in him ought but G.o.d they shall do him cruel harm, and bring upon him humiliation and loss.
An old fisherman was asked how he was so successful. He gave the very sensible answer that he always kept himself out of sight of the fish; and many a minister and worker may find a hint of their failure in this simple ill.u.s.tration.
When Alexander the Great first met his famous war-horse, Bucephalous, he found that the animal became terrified whenever he turned his back to the sun, because his own shadow was thrown before him, and, like a spectre, haunted his vision and hindered his progress. The wise hero instantly leaped into the saddle, turned his face to the sun, threw his shadow behind, plunged his spurs in his steed, and galloped off in majestic style to the amazement of all beholders. From that hour the steed was his master's inseparable companion, and led many an invincible charge, and always to victory. So, let us throw our shadow behind us, set our faces toward Christ, and press on in the power of G.o.d to victorious service and at last to imperishable glory.
CHAPTER 10.
THE SPIRIT OF PRAYER.
”Likewise the Spirit also helpeth our infirmities; for we know not what we should pray for as we ought; but the Spirit itself maketh intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered.” Rom. viii: 26.
”Praying in the Holy Ghost.” Jude, verse 20.
The mystery of prayer! There is nothing like it in the natural universe. A higher and a lower being in perfect communion. A familiar intercourse, yet both as widely distinct as the finite is from the infinite. More wonderful even than that we should be able to hold converse with the insect that crawls beneath our feet, or the bird that flutters on the branches at our window! Marvelous bond of prayer which can span the gulf between the Creator and the creature, the infinite G.o.d and the humblest and most illiterate child!
How has this been accomplished? The three Divine persons have all co-operated in opening the gates of prayer. The Father waits at the throne of grace as the hearer of prayer; the Son has come to reveal the Father, and has returned to be our Advocate in His presence. And the Holy Spirit has come still nearer, as the other Advocate in the heart, to teach us the heavenly secret of prayer, and send up our pet.i.tions in the true spirit to the hands of our heavenly Intercessor. It is to this ministry we are to speak now.
The very name given to the Holy Ghost, literally means the Advocate, and the chief business of the one Advocate is to prepare our cause in the office, and the other to plead it before the Judge. We have the whole Trinity in our behalf. The Holy Spirit prepares our case, the Lord Jesus presents it, and the Judge is our Father. What an infinite light, and what an unspeakable comfort this sheds on the subject of prayer!
Our need of this Advocate is referred to in our text very impressively: ”We know not what to pray for as we ought.” We are often ignorant of the subjects for which we ought to pray; and often, when we know our needs, we know not how rightly to present them. There is much expressed in these words. We are often deeply ignorant of our truest needs, and the things we wish most for are not the things we most require. Our minds are blinded by prejudice and pa.s.sion; the things we would sometimes ask for we shall afterwards find would have been only an injury. Besides, we know not the future, and cannot, intelligently, antic.i.p.ate the needs and dangers against which we should pray, while a thousand unseen elements of peril continually surround us and need a wiser forethought and insight than our own to guard against.
And often ”we know not how to pray as we ought.” Prayer is a high art, and must be divinely taught. We would not rashly send a crude and unprepared case before an earthly tribunal, and he is greatly mistaken who thinks that the thoughtless and random dashes of human impulse, or even sincere earthly desires, are all accepted as prayer. Many ”receive not because they ask amiss.” If we regard iniquity in our hearts the Lord will not hear us. We must ask in faith, nothing doubting. These and other qualities must be taught and impelled by the Holy Spirit. ”We know not how to pray as we ought.”