The book of John, first chapter, verses 21
and 22-23, they ask him, that is
the Levites and priests, Are thou a life?
And he said, I'm not.
Are thou that prophet?
And he answered, no.
Then said they unto him, What art thou?
That we may give an answer to them
that send us.
What sayest thou of thyself?
And he said, I am the voice of
one crying in the wilderness, May it scrape
the way of the Lord, as said the
prophet Isaiah.
As you know, in the original languages, Hebrew
and Greek, there are no punctuation marks.
You have to punctuate as you are able.
Fortunately in our English, we can punctuate so
that we're not forced to take a whole
sentence at once.
We can break it up and know where
the emphasis lies.
So when we come to this, make scrape
the way of the Lord, the voice of
one crying in the wilderness, make scrape the
way of the Lord, there isn't any punctuation
to assure us whether John said, I am
the voice of one crying in the wilderness,
make scrape the way of the Lord.
Or, I am the voice of one crying
in the wilderness, make scrape the way of
the Lord.
Then we read a little more on this
story from Luke, the third chapter.
He, that is, John, came into all the
country about Jordan, preaching the baptism of repentance
for the remission of sins.
As it is written in the book of
the words of Isaiah the prophet, saying, The
voice of one crying in the wilderness, prepare
ye the way of the Lord, make his
paths straight.
Every valley shall be filled, and every mountain
and hill shall be brought low, and the
crooked shall be made straight, and the rough
ways shall be made smooth.
And all flesh shall see the salvation of
God.
You will notice in that wondrous number, and
the glory of the Lord, which the choir
sang tonight, they incorporate these words.
All flesh shall see the salvation of God.
And then go on to the part of
the verse not found here, for the mouth
of the Lord has spoken it.
Now, the Messiah has come to be sung
at Christmas time, and it leaves the impression
that it is all most exclusively, if not
altogether exclusively, a Christmas cantata, oratorio.
But the fact is that it was sung
at Easter more than Christmas was originally sung
for the first time at Easter.
And the text here of the glory of
the Lord has nothing to do with the
baby manger aspect of our Lord's coming.
It has to do with his coming again,
if we are to be prophetically accurate.
But now, with these words, the voice of
one crying in the wilderness, prepare ye the
way of the Lord, let us go on
briefly.
Now, John was called the forerunner because he
ran before.
When old kings in those old days used
to travel, they sent a man before them.
Now you can telegraph ahead and say the
President will arrive at such a station at
a certain hour, and there will be a
band to meet him and crowd gather.
But in those times they had no telegraph,
no radio, no telephone, so they sent a
man, a swift-footed runner, who ran before
the king, not too far ahead, but just
far enough to alert the populace that the
king was coming.
That was the forerunner, the herald, they called
him.
Now, John was the herald of the coming
king, the forerunner of the king.
He ran before to alert the populace and
to say that he is coming.
And John is not to be understood simply
as a herald, as an ancient and religious
Paul Revere.
He did more than that, he was a
preacher.
He was a preacher of truth, and the
nature of his preaching was to alert the
people to the coming of Christ.
Now, his preaching is of age-long and
universal significance.
There are some things, and when once they
are said, that is all there is to
it, you can put them down as history,
but they have no meaning for anybody following.
But the preaching of John the Baptist was
of age-long significance, because until Christ comes
back and the glory of the Lord is
revealed in all places, see it together, and
the millennium is set up, John's preaching had
moral, binding application to us all.
And then it's of universal significance in that
it's for everyone.
Now, John's message was that the kingdom of
the Lord was coming, the kingdom of God,
that the king, the Lord himself, was coming.
And that he was coming to fulfill the
ancient prophecies, the prophecies made by Moses and
all the holy prophets since the world began.
And John said he is coming, and in
announcing his coming, just behind him on the
way, he reached out and gathered up all
of the ancient prophecies, and those prophecies presented
him as being everything that the human race
could want and everything the human heart could
want.
It presented him as the sun, and said
he will come as the sun shining in
his strength, the sun to light the way
for the traveler, the sun to warm the
earth and brighten the landscape, and he was
to come as the star of the morning
as we sing, the landscape adorning, the horizon
adorning.
He was to be the star that should
rise and lead his people on their long
way, and he was coming as the shepherd
to lead his sheep in the desert and
to lead them by green pastures and where
the waters were still and sweet.
And he was coming as a physician to
heal, for the hearts of men were lacerated
and sick, and they needed healing, and he
came to be the physician that could heal
men, and he came as the priest to
forgive and to give complete freedom and to
offer the sacrifice, and he was all that,
and he was so much more that I
can't hope to explain all that Jesus Christ
is.
You can read your Bible, and every page,
almost every verse, if you turn it over,
you will find some bit of gold there,
you will find some new wonderful thing that
our Lord Jesus Christ is, and he was
to come riding upon his chariot.
Now, John was a great user of figures
of speech, and John quoted Isaiah, another great
user of figures of speech.
Metaphors and similes burst out of Isaiah like
water out of a fountain, and when John
came, he gathered, he picked up these similes
and used them, and he said, I am
the voice of one crying in the wilderness.
And by a simile he characterized the moral
state of Israel as being a wilderness, wild
and disorganized and overgrown and pathless.
Now, that was the figure that described the
moral condition of the people of Israel.
It was not overstated.
A figure of speech never overstates the truth.
It may modestly understate it, but it never
overstates it if it is used by a
master.
And Bible writers were masters of metaphor, so
that John did not overstate it.
When they said, your moral state is that
of a wilderness, and they were a farming
people, and they understood that instantly.
It was wild and disordered and overgrown and
pathless.
And there must be a highway for the
coming King.
Now, John was the herald of the coming
King.
He said, he is coming.
And then he raced into the wilderness and
said, get away ready for him.
You can't expect him to drive his chariot
over these fallen logs and over these jagged
rocks and through the tangled wealth of wild
stuff.
You will have to have a highway for
him.
Now, here is the startling fact, my friends,
that the Lord would not come to a
wilderness unless there was a satisfactory way prepared.
And God will not prepare that way.
Now, that was John's message.
He said, there is one coming after me,
and he will not come unless you prepare.
He will not come to you unless you
prepare the way.
He will not come into the wilderness of
your life.
He will be riding his shining chariot, and
from that chariot he will be dispensing light
like the sun and beauty like the star
and healing like the physician and guidance like
the shepherd.
And sweet, wholesome health like the rain.
He will be all this.
And he will dispense it from his shining
chariot, but he will not drive his chariot
into the muddled, tangled wilderness of your immoral
lives.
And then he said to you, he will
not come and build a road.
God is not a builder of roads.
He drives his shining chariot through, but he
will not build a road.
That's the business of the people who invite
him in.
Now, God will not himself, I say, prepare
such a way.
It would be morally and psychologically impossible for
God to prepare the way of the Lord.
He said, you prepare the way of the
Lord.
I am coming, you get ready for me.
I'm driving my chariot through, you build the
highway.
That was the burden of John's message, the
voice of one kind to the wilderness, prepare
the way of the Lord.
It would be, if God himself were to
get out of his chariot and build the
way, it would be to violate his own
nature, and it would be to violate the
nature of man, so that man himself must
prepare the way for the incoming of the
Lord.
Now, what were the results in Israel?
The results were very plain.
Some prepared the way for him, and to
them he came, bringing his life and his
health and his healing, and saying, Son, thy
sins be forgiven thee, saying, Daughter, go and
sin no more, saying, Wake and rise and
get up, Daughter, to the little dead girl,
turning the water into wine, stilling the waves,
forgiving sin, giving life to the little dead
girl, and giving life to the little dead
girl, and giving hope and encouragement, bestowing eternal
life.
He did all that to them who believed,
because they had prepared the way of the
Lord.
But there were others who rejected the exhortation
of John, and they remained blind and hard,
and refused to receive Christ.
The result was they opposed him, they blasphemed,
and finally they crucified him, for they did
not all receive Jesus when he came.
They did not all obey the voice of
John.
It is written in one place that certain
ones had rejected the preaching of John, and
so they had frustrated the will of God
for them.
That's what happened to those who would not
prepare the way.
I suppose they wanted God to do everything.
And we are living in the time when
God is supposed to do everything.
What a peculiar and confused theology buzzes in
and out of the heads of the people
today, that God has been reduced to the
size of a good-sized man, and we
become offensively personal and intimate in our dealings
with God, and joke about him, and call
him our business partner and our pilot and
what-have-you, and our left hand, or
our quarterback.
And we make out of the High King
and Prince of Light and Glory, we make
someone who is scarcely worthy of more honor
than Churchill or I.
Eisenhower might get.
And yet at the same time we expect
him to do everything.
At the same time we fully expect he
will prepare the way, he'll do our repenting
for us, he'll straighten out our lives, he'll
undo our evil deeds, he'll get right with
our neighbor for us, he'll pay our debts
for us, and he'll do everything.
John didn't teach that.
John said he is moving in, but he's
moving in on a prepared way.
And he's not preparing that way, you're preparing
that way.
Therefore, prepare ye the way of the Lord,
and make your paths straight.
Now, that's the teaching of the Bible, and
that's the teaching of the historic Church as
well.
Now, today and tonight, and right here, the
Lord is ready to move in to the
lives of every last one of us, and
to be to us the sun and the
star and the rain and the dew and
the shepherd and the priest and the light
and the healing.
He's ready to move in and be all
that to us.
But our lives are a wilderness.
That's why we're not getting more than we're
getting.
Our lives are a wilderness.
That is why even believers are not getting
what we ought to get, and are not
progressing in our spiritual lives as we should,
and are not living the kind of lives
we should live.
Because we've allowed our lives to become a
wilderness, and even the old paths in some
instances over which the Lord moved in the
day when we first believed on him have
grown over somewhat, and some have left their
first love and need to repent again.
And the way of the Lord is not
smooth, and God can't move in as he
wants to move in.
But we say, he'll do something about it.
No, he said, Prepare ye the way of
the Lord, and that ye is the subject
of the sentence, and it means the one
who performs the verb, performs the act, and
that act is prepared.
So that we are told that if we
are to see the glory of the Lord
revealed, we're going to have to prepare our
way to the Lord.
Now, in the book of Luke, from which
I got companion scripture for my text from
John, I find that there are four things
required there, and everybody who's ever thought a
bit about it will recognize this figure.
And every engineer will know what it means,
and every road builder will know what it
means, and every man who's even scraped his
own driveway to get his car out will
know what it means, because it's so simple.
It says that there are four things wrong
with the wilderness, and four things you have
to do before the chariot of God will
move in.
Make his path straight.
You've got to straighten out the path.
God is not going to run around spirals
or corkscrews.
Make his path straight, that's one.
Second is, fill up every valley.
And in the modern language they call that
making fills.
You know how they go across, they find
a valley, they don't run down into that
valley, fill it up.
And then the mountains and hills shall be
brought low, they call those cuts.
In making a railroad, instead of going up
over the bump and down into the hollow,
they just cut the bump off and fill
the hollow up, which is very good road
building.
And then they are to make the rough
way smooth, to take out the rough things
and smooth up the road so that the
chariot can run over it.
Those are the four things.
Now it lies with you and me whether
we are to do this or not.
We can sing about Christmas until we get
calluses on our vocal cords, and we can
sing heart the herald angels sing until we
never want to hear it again, and we
can celebrate Christmas just as long and loud
as we will when it's all over.
You may be just as barren as you
are tonight, and the wilderness and the green
fires may grow over your soul, and God
may be unable to get where you are,
and he may terminate his victorious progression toward
your inner life somewhere out on the borders
because he comes to the crooked ways that
are grown over and while where there is
no smooth way.
Now make his path straight.
Simply all crooked ways shall be corrected.
If any of you, I say again tonight,
if any of you like to do something
really helpful to your mind, a little more
helpful than to work the crossword puzzle, I
recommend that you make a little private study
of analogies.
That is, comparing one thing with another thing.
They're so wonderfully beautiful.
All poetry is built around it, and all
fluency of speech is built around it.
The comparing of one thing with another thing.
For instance, we say that the man is
upright, and we compare him to a tree
that stands straight up and down.
Yet we don't mean that he stands straight
up and down.
He may be fat, or he may be
crippled, but yet you can say about the
man that he's upright because we're talking about
a moral quality in the man.
And then we talk about a deal that
is crooked, and we don't mean really that
it's crooked in the sense that a crooked
stick would be crooked or some other physical
thing, but we're drawing a sharp and quick
analogy between something crooked in nature and something
crooked in the heart.
So a man who is crooked is a
man who is living a life that is
not morally upright, not morally straight.
That's the beauty of an analogy.
You can say so much without going into
all the details.
You want to know the difference between a
well-used analogy and a laborious and headachey
description, read Isaiah and then read a lawyer's
statement.
What a lawyer has to say.
They won't use analogy in their figurative speech
because somebody would get up in court and
prove it wasn't so.
So in order to save themselves in court
before judges and juries, they make the party
the first part here and after to be
said and so on, and it's just horrible
gobbledygook.
It's awful to listen to, and I suppose
it's one of those necessary evils, but it
never lifts your soul.
Nobody ever handed a contract to another man
and said, read that brother, that'll brighten your
day.
You never brighten your day by reading anything
a lawyer wrote.
You get a headache in trying to figure
out the fine print because he's not going
to be caught in a metaphor.
He's going to have it so that everybody
knows exactly what he's talking about, and yet
he's talking about infinitely less than the man
who daringly said, the crooked way shall be
made straight.
Give that to a lawyer, what'll he do
with it?
Why, he'll prove that the whole thing is
antiquated and out of order and null and
void and move to squash the indictment.
But give that to the man who thinks
more of his inner life, and he'll know
what it means.
The crooked shall be made straight.
Straighten up your life, man.
Everybody knows what that means, and you don't
need a Philadelphia lawyer to help you.
Straighten up your life, man.
You want God to bless you?
Straighten up your life.
You want to have the joy of God?
Straighten up your life.
And you don't need two courses in Moody
Bible Institute to know what that means.
Straighten up your life, you know what's wrong
with you.
Oh, the chariot of the Lord shines as
it moves forward toward your heart's door, and
finds there only a wilderness, finds there no
path for the wheels to move over.
John simply says the crooked shall be made
straight.
Straighten it up, and God will move in.
And all the burden of the evangelist, from
Stephen to this hour, from Philip to this
hour, all the burden of the evangelist has
simply been straighten up your lives.
You say, it's an analogy.
What does it mean?
It means straighten up your lives, and don't
tell me you don't know what it means.
People that are running a business, and they're
running an under-the-table business, or under
-the-counter business, straighten it up!
The man who has a real estate business,
and he's learned how to turn a pretty
dollar, straighten it up!
And those who are playing foolishly with the
truth, stop it, and straighten up that life.
You know what it means, and I know
what it means, and before the judgment bar,
God will know what it means.
So if the Lord is going to move
in on us in blessing and revival power,
there must be a straightening up of the
life.
And then every valley shall be filled, that
is, making the fills, so that there are
not ruts and hollows in the way of
the chariot.
And that means the sin of omission, where
it's too low.
Sin of omission must be filled up.
And what does that mean?
It means the things that we don't do,
the no sin.
No prayer, no study, no giving, no witnessing,
no communion, no seeking God, no pursuing of
God, things we don't do.
And the things we don't do, we've got
to get some, we've got to begin to
do them and fill up the hollows.
The chariot of God can't move in where
there are hollows and ruts.
John says, the voice of one crying in
the wilderness, fill up the ruts, fill up
the hollows, the things we don't do.
No prayer, no study.
You know, my friends, we have the notion
that if there's something wrong with your life,
buy a book.
If you're studious, buy a book.
I know just lots of people whose lives
are all wilderness, and they say, what book
would you recommend?
Books can't make a highway for you, friends.
I don't recommend any book except the book
of God.
But that we still have the fallacious idea
in our heads that when we're backslidden and
cold and dry and barren, buy a book.
And then there are others who, when they
find themselves barren and cold, and God seems
a million eons away, they take a course.
Before I go, somebody says, I'd like to
take a course.
Do you recommend anybody to give me a
course?
I told somebody in New York last week,
I'd like to take a course.
Well, they said, Moody has a nice course.
You can get one at Nyack if you'd
like a course.
You can also buy a book.
But then I don't know what good it
would do you.
It'd do you as much good as taking
a course.
What we need is not taking a course.
We need to stop the things we're doing
that are wrong and begin to do the
things that we're neglecting to do.
People of God, we insist upon putting religion
up on a plane where it helps to
be a bit off.
We do insist upon putting it up there.
If you were to go to a doctor
and he would say you're a victim of
malnutrition, you wouldn't take a course.
You'd say, doctor, give me a diet.
I'll eat better from now on.
But we won't take a course in something
or buy a book.
I say you might as well buy a
book because it'll do you no more good
to take a course in something when you're
not obedient and you're not doing the will
of God and you're not straightening your life
out and you've got your bullhead set to
have your way and you're stubbornly going your
own carnal, abdominal way and then you hope
to get around it by going to hear
a big evangelist.
That's another way people are getting straightened out.
Oh, so-and-so will only come to
this town.
In the meantime, I'll let the briars grow.
In the meantime, I'll let the rocks remain
there.
In the meantime, I'll leave the hollows unfilled
and the bumps untouched.
In the meantime, I'll lie like a red
lizard in the sun and let the green
briars grow all over me, and I'll wait
for the evangelist to come.
And if I could just hear him once,
what a policy it all is!
How foolish it'll be in the day of
Christ when the eyes of Jesus, like burning
flames, go into our motives and discover our
hypocrisy there!
How terrible to think that we have fooled
ourselves and said, I'll wait for an evangelist,
or I'll go to hear this wonderful praying
man.
How many people have come to hear our
friend and gone to hear our friend Tom,
I don't see.
But how many people have thought that Tom
could give them a pill and would do
their praying for them.
And they've come from everywhere to hear the
man talk about prayer, thinking he could give
them a little secret, a little pill they
could take with a glass of water.
And after that, they'd be praying saints, forgetting
that the only kind of teaching Tom can
give is hard work and sacrifice and long
hours on your knees.
People are disappointed when the great Saint of
God moves into a neighborhood.
They expect him to have some trick pill
or some capsule filled with amazing power.
Take this, sister, goodbye.
Sister takes that, but it doesn't do her
any good.
The things of God aren't gotten that way.
God doesn't give his stuff to trick pills.
It's like that lesson that you see in
the cheap magazines.
Ten easy lessons to become a concert violinist.
Ten easy lessons on how to sing like
Gellert Kirche in ten lessons.
Well, a lot of foolish people buy that
stuff, and they put those ads in for
foolish people.
People who need a keeper with a visor
on his cap.
And they get rich off of fellows who
don't know you can learn to sing in
ten lessons and you can't play a violin
in ten lessons.
But we imagine in religion, just take a
course, some carnal goat from the plains of
Texas, just converted, will come up, and he'll
say, if I can take a course at
Moody's or Guignan or Nyack or St. Paul,
oh, this will be wonderful.
But he's never died and he's never surrendered,
and he's as stubborn as a mule and
as pay-strong as Hitler.
What he needs to do is not take
a course, at least not at first, he
can take that afterwards.
But what he needs is to just begin
to undo some things he's doing, and do
some things that he's not doing, and straighten
out his crooked life.
And it's amazing what one or two texts
will do for you if you'll straighten up.
And it's amazing and shocking how little the
whole Bible will do for you if you
insist upon being crooked.
Know what I mean?
Oh, I've met some dear Saints of God
who didn't know very much scripture.
They didn't know very much, but what they
did know, they really knew it well.
They lived it.
They'd gone through it.
It was in them.
It was in their bloodstream.
They didn't know many texts, and they thought
God inspired the original scriptures when he gave
to King James.
And they wouldn't think God reading anything else.
But God knows their hearts, and so he's
blessed what little they know marvelously to their
hearts.
But you can run on to men who
are walking by bosom, and yet they'll shock
you with their carnality and worldliness and frivolity.
Then he says, we're to cut down the
high places.
I've already touched that.
That's the sins of commission.
Then we're to make the rough ways smooth
by humility and obedience.
And then we shall see the salvation of
God.
Do you believe we can have revival before
Christ comes?
Well, it lies with us.
It lies with us whether we do or
not.
I've said before and repeat now that on
the larger subject of universal revival, I am
not able to pronounce, I do not know
quite yet, whether I believe that it's possible
or within the will of God to have
a universal revival around the whole world.
I don't know about that before Christ comes.
But I do know it's entirely possible to
have a personal revival.
I know you can have that.
And if enough people have personal revivals, that
would mean a universal revival finally.
Now, it's possible for you to have a
personal revival.
I want to ask you, are you satisfied
with the way you lived last week?
Now, really, are you satisfied?
Are you satisfied with the degree of light
you had and the degree of power, the
degree of fellowship, the purity of your life,
the power in your life?
Are you satisfied?
Well, if not, you can have a personal
revival and have just four little things to
do, straighten up, begin to do the things
that you're not doing and should.
Stop doing the things that clump up here,
that you tear that down, and then take
the rocks out and smooth up the highway.
And in moves God, the shining chariot of
God moves into a human life.
And not only do I believe in personal
revivals, but I believe in church revivals.
I believe it's entirely possible to have a
church revival.
I believe it's entirely possible, and I don't
think it's as hard as some preachers make
it out to be.
I've heard preaching that made out a revival
to mean that there must be a unanimity
that was one hundred percent.
I don't believe it.
I don't think it's absolutely required that there
be one hundred percent unanimity.
If it were so, I don't think any
revival could ever come to a church.
But if we approximate unity, if we approximate
oneness of accord, if we get happily near
to oneness of accord, God will let some
people sulk around the edges.
Sure, there will always be some sulkers around
the edges.
When the Holy Ghost came at Pentecost, there
were sulkers that were not with that 120.
They were sulking around the edges, criticizing and
finding fault and saying it shouldn't be done
this way.
They had no suggestions of their own, but
they just found fault with the way things
were done.
They were there, always they were there, in
the days of thinness.
And in the great days of revival, there
are always the sulkers around the edges.
But we can afford not to overlook them
if we can get a nucleus, an inner
core of people that are united in one
thing.
God will send the Holy Ghost upon us,
and we'll have a church revival, a personal
revival anybody can have.
You can have that before you go to
bed tonight.
I recommend, go home, get on your knees
somewhere with a pad and pencil, put down
the things that have grieved God and forsake
them forever.
Take forgiveness for them.
Promise him to do the things you've been
neglecting to do.
Straighten out that crooked thing in your life,
and by humility smooth the highway for God.
And you shall see the salvation of God
certainly before the morning sun rises.
And the same is true of this Church,
of its board, its young people, its prayer
band, and its membership, if we'll take this
seriously and expect to see the salvation of
God without any cost to us, without any
big advertising, and without any drama.
For just the Holy Chariot of God moving
in over the highway prepared by repentance and
faith and obedience, it will revive us again
and perpetuate true Christianity for another generation of
Jesus-terrors.
Some will say, I don't see anything.
God moves through, dispenses blessings, and there are
happy hearts and healed bodies and blessed souls
every place, and a sour old scrooge says,
I don't see anything.
What's good about it?
I don't see anything.
Well, I know what's good about it, and
the man with the opened eyes knows what's
good about it.
He's seen.
You know that when Jesus came and went,
I suppose there were lots of people in
Jerusalem that never admitted a thing.
They'd never admitted anything had happened at all.
They said, I didn't see nothing.
You talk about healing, I never saw anybody.
You talk about stilling the waves, I never
saw anybody still the waves.
The old scrooge was busy somewhere, and he
never saw a thing.
And you could bring a revival to the
Church of Christ, bring a revival to this
Church, and I have no doubt that there
are grouches and frustrated fellows around the edges
that would never believe a thing had happened.
They look at a miracle and say it's
thunder.
But you don't have to be one of
them.
You can come in where the fountain is
flowing.
You can come in where his grace runs
free.
You can come in, or to change the
figure back around to where we started, you
can straighten up the highway, and the Lord
will move in.
You don't have to coax him.
You don't have to send a messenger to
plead with him.
He's coming in, and he's just waiting to
get a chance to move into your life
and change everything.
Are you ready to have him come into
your personal life now, to have him move
in on you with health and life and
warmth and peace and what you want and
don't have?
Are you ready to have him move in?
Do you want him to move in?
You don't have to coax him.
Prepare ye the way of the Lord.
Straighten up.
Smooth out.
Get humble.
Begin to obey.
God will move in.
Every road you build, he'll move in that
much further.
Let him come clean all the way in,
won't you?
Won't you?
Let's bow our heads in a moment of
prayer.
Oh Lord Jesus, I know his prophetic teachers
are not agreed, and we don't claim tonight,
and we're not even going to pray tonight
for the moment for universal revival, although we
think it's theoretically possible.
But Father, we think everybody's agreed on personal
revival, that it's entirely possible for the coldest,
most barren, gloomiest, most defeated Christian, to, within
a few hours' time, move into a place
of victory and fruitfulness and power and optimism
and happiness such as they've never dreamed could
be theirs.
We believe it's entirely possible for a Church
that has dragged for years to suddenly come
alive, as though thou had said, Let there
be light, and there is light, as though
thou had said, Let the Church bring forth.
And, lo, it was so.
We believe this, Lord, and we want it
for ourselves and we want it for this
Church.
We want it for these who will listen
tonight.
We want a personal revival in each heart.
We want a Church revival that will melt
us all in one who have had the
individual revival.
O God, we beseech thee, give us tonight
vision to see it, courage to take advantage
of it, faith to believe it.
Now that thou wilt revive thy work, thou
wilt move in and the eyes of men
shall see the glory of the Lord.
O Lord Jesus, thou glory-bringer, thou joy
-dispenser, thou physician of souls, thou son of
righteousness with healing in thy wings, thou star
of the east, the horizon adorning, thou bringer
of good tidings.
O Lord Jesus, we've shut thee out so
long.
Thou hast knocked at our doors so long,
and we've been asleep or we've been preoccupied.
Forgive, Lord, forgive.
Forgive those who listen.
Forgive tonight.
Forgive us for failing thee there.
And give us a strong and courageous purpose
that beginning now we will straighten up.
Beginning now we will fill up the hollow
places and begin to do the things we
stopped doing or never did.
And we'll smooth down the bumps, those ugly
humps that indicate the presence of things committed
and done without not to be done.
Father, we'll stop doing.
We'll smooth away by repentance and humility and
meekness.
Pray God.