Revival in the Heart

I found this the other day while Lizzie and I were reading Baptist History and I thought it was really good. It’s part of a journal entry of Absalom Waller, pastor of Lower Spotsylvania Baptist Church in Virginia in 1817. His church had become cold to spiritual things and he longed to see revival and records when revival broke out, starting in his own life first.
This scene takes place in a grove of trees where he regularly went to pray, it was also a graveyard where several of his relatives lay.

“While I was thus engaged (praying in the grove) the thought struck me with great force indeed, that the souls of my dear departed children near whose graves I was then kneeling were at that moment in glory, singing the praises of the Lamb of God, who died for the redemption of lost sinners! And that I was surely a most ungrateful wretch, to feel unwilling to spend and be spent in the cause of Christ! I am unable to describe my feelings at that moment; I wept, under a sense of God’s goodness and my own ingratitude – nay more, I fell on my face and cried out, O Lord! Send me, and I will go; I will forsake all for Christ, and try to spend my last breath in exhorting sinners to repent and turn to God.”

What a powerful statement and oh, how we need to see ourselves! I am praying that revival would come to our churches but more specifically to me. I hope maybe this was an encouragement to someone.

Times of Old

We wonder why our churches aren’t experiencing revivals and God’s power like times of old but the answer is so clear. Prayer is power, we little power because we pray so little. What is wrong with us that we think because we are a “different” generation that we should do things as they were done before? Cottage prayer meeting and prayer partners are things of the past, hardly ever heard of, but look how God used that to move the church and transform it into the image of His Son. There used to be prayer meetings before every church service where the members would come and pray that God would speak to them and God answered. Yet today we can’t even find a man to volunteer to pray and close the service. God help us as we’ve drifted so far from the simple, tried and true ways of knowing God! I’m not harping on everyone around me, I’m “preaching” at myself. I propose we get back to the way things were and they way need to be. I want to see God change me and those around me, and conform us into the image of Christ. Let’s get back to the methods that God blessed, praying and seeing His power.