Pentecost At Any Cost # 2

Pentecost At Any Cost # 2

The Price of Waiting

We need this waiting to get it clear in our minds that Holy Spirit visitation would not have to fit into our preconceived theological orbit. We need the waiting:

for humiliation and for time for a confession of our too-long-a-time satisfaction with our own works.
to set our spiritual eyes refocused on the holiness of God and the lostness of men.
to linger until we have a broken and contrite spirit.
to prove we can master the claims of this materialistic age in which we live.
to hear again the living voice of the living God.
to show our disregard for our own efforts and our complete dependence upon the living God for deliverance in this sin-dominated age.
to convince our skeptical friends that we love the will of God, that we long for the favor of God, and that we seek the power of God with more zeal than we put into our business lives and with greater hunger than we have for food.
for a sorrowful confession of sin and pleading for cleansing through the blood of Christ. In the divine presence, vows would be made to put wrongs right and to remain submissive to God's revealed will. I believe that then the Holy Spirit would fall.

Is the fire and fervor of the early church as revealed in the Acts of the Apostles the norm for the church? We believe it is. Jesus came that we might have life "more abundantly," life with glow and with flow and with overflow.

The Spirit does not discriminate as to a man's position in a church. The Spirit falls on a Saul and makes him a Paul and an apostle. The Spirit endues a Philip, and he turns the city of Samaria upside down and ransacks the devil's kingdom!

Supernatural evidence has accompanied every revival. The external miracles have been greater in some operations than in others. But - and this is the core of the thing - signs and wonders were done; the rationalists and materialists were stirred, and at times silenced.

To revival there is peril and pain - pain for the birth of revival, pain from the scorn of others while revival is in progress, and pain when the fire of revival dies down.

Repeatedly the question has been asked, "Why does revival come in a blaze, but to the delight of the critics soon sputter and die out?" The answer to that question could be one or two of these things (at times maybe both): First, ignorance could quench the Spirit - an inability to hear the voice of the Lord for the next move. Second: Disobedience - this seems the most likely thing to douse the flame that seeks to consume all the dross. There might be other causes such as laziness to follow the close schedule that the Spirit demands, or there might be smug satisfaction that there is now some "life."

Let us remind ourselves again that the early church "moved." In moving, something or somebody must be left behind. The modern Ananias and Sapphira will find the pace too hot and the price too high. To keep the fire of revival burning, we would have to meet together daily for prayer and praise. This is what the church in Acts did (Acts 2:42-46). We would have to meet daily for breaking of bread. This the early church did. We would have to meet daily for prayer. This was the pattern in the early church. And we would have to meet daily in the harmony of the Spirit. This was the glow of the first church.

This stringent schedule would be the death of many of our flimsy and unproductive patterns of life. How easily we Christians move along in the light of the lostness of men and their gambling with the certainty of eternal destruction unless they hear and believe. Sloth has seeped into our endeavors. The mesmerism of materialism has almost completely clogged the channel of blessing. We stand condemned.

Almost every Christian without exception knows better than to live at his present standard of spirituality. "My brethren, these things ought not so to be." There is only one way for the church to operate - God's way. The Bible is the blueprint of this way.

Here, then, is the way back to Pentecost and on to glory!

Quick, in a moment, infinite for ever
Send an arousal better than I pray;
Give me a grace upon the faint endeavor,
Souls for my hire and
Pentecost today!

~Leonard Ravenhill~

(The End)