I've just had a new book published, and
it's the culmination of my four decades of
study on the subject of revival, and I
wrote it as an aid for pastors and
church leaders to prepare your church for revival,
as well as anyone who has a serious
interest in learning more about revival.
The title of the book is Lectures on
Revival for a Laodicean Church, and I wanted
to read us an excerpt today, friends, so
we can perhaps get our own hearts stirred
for revival in our day.
I know we desperately need it.
This excerpt is from chapter eight, which is
entitled, The Man God Uses.
God's eyes are continually searching the earth for
those rare individuals of whom the world was
not worthy.
Men like Moses and John the Baptist, Luther
and Calvin, Whitefield and Wesley, Finney and Moody,
men who live in a different atmosphere than
other mortals, men who have annihilated self with
the cross, and whose lives are broken alabaster
boxes from which fragrances arise to the heavens
from the broken pieces of selflessness, self-sacrifice,
and self-crucifixion.
God is always on the lookout for such
men.
When one studies the history of revival and
reads biographies on men that God has used
in seasons of revival, it is truly remarkable
that God seems pleased to use men, not
for their learning and education, not for their
talents and winning personality, but because they were
simple men who were single-eyed and were
entirely surrendered to God.
God took an uneducated, rough man who could
not even properly spell the word bad, and
used him to shake Great Britain in revival
for God, D.L. Moody.
God took a broken alcoholic lawyer and used
him to transform the moral and spiritual life
of entire cities in powerful revivals, Sam Jones.
God took a youth of divorced parents who
was raised in a tavern with a physical
deformity of a noticeable squint in his eye
and used him to shake two continents for
God in powerful revival and spiritual awakening, George
Whitefield.
God took a broken-down pastor in his
fifties and placed him in the midst of
a four-year-long revival from 1949 to
1952 on the Isle of Lewis in the
Scottish Hebrides, to where it was said the
entire island was saturated with the presence of
God, Duncan Campbell.
God took an asthmatic, sickly old man of
53 who, against all orders of his doctors
and against the pleas of his wife and
family, took a one-way trip into the
heart of Africa to preach the gospel of
the Son of God to the Edens and
sparked fires of revival in missionary enterprise, C
.T. Studd.
God took the president of the Atheist Club
on a college campus to Canvas America in
an evangelistic preaching ministry that would transform entire
towns in revival after revival, Rolf Barnard.
God took a man out of China, sent
him to America to be educated, and then
placed him against his will in an insane
asylum for 193 days, during which he read
through his Bible over 40 times and then
sent him back to China to shake China
for God in ground-shaking, miracle-working revival,
John Sung.
God took an obstinate lawyer with no theological
training and thrust him into an itinerant ministry
in western New York during the Second Great
Awakening and used him in powerful revivals that
had his hearers fall out of their chairs,
crying out to God for mercy quicker than
if he had a sword in two hands,
he could not have cut them down fast
enough, Charles Finney.
God took a man and used him for
his glory.
This could be your story, friend.
I once asked a minister on the Isle
of Lewis who knew Duncan Campbell personally to
describe to me one sentence, Duncan Campbell.
He said, Duncan Campbell was an ordinary man
who had had an extraordinary experience of God.
I believe the same can be said of
Moses, David, Abraham, Jacob, and Joseph.
God took a murderer and a fugitive who
became a lowly sheepherder.
On the backside of the desert to work
miracles and deliver a nation, Moses.
God took a shepherd boy and made him
a king, David.
God took an ordinary man in whom he
built faith and made him the father of
a nation, Abraham.
God took a man so crooked he could
hide behind a corkscrew and used him time
and time again to bring him glory, Jacob.
God took a youth whose brothers turned against
him and was sold into slavery to lead
an entire nation, Joseph.
The man God uses is a man willing
to go out on a limb for him
and risk his reputation and his skin to
do something great for God in eternity.
What cost counts and what counts cost.
The man God uses is a man willing
to take risks for God and to risk
his very life if necessary for Christ and
the gospel.
God is looking for the Peters who are
willing to step out of the boat on
faith and walk on the water with him.
The man God uses is a man who,
once he gets a taste of the supernatural,
no longer desires the safety of the boat.
The man God uses is a man of
prayer, a man empty of self and ambition,
a man full of the Holy Ghost, a
man entirely surrendered to the lordship of Jesus
Christ.
The man God uses is a man willing
to face fierce persecution for Christ and the
souls of men.
Mordecai Ham was such a man, used to
God mighty in revivals all over 20th century
America.
He faced hot persecution in every city he
preached in, and in every city preached in,
he saw powerful revivals that transformed the moral
life of the community.
Mordecai Ham set up a tent in the
red light district of a town and preached
every day for four weeks straight until the
brothels had to close their doors and go
out of business because all the girls had
been saved.
Mordecai Ham was once pistol whipped.
One time he was captured by a gang
of men, dragged out of town to be
tarred, feathered, and hung from a tree, and
he was only rescued when the mayor of
that Texas city called in the Calvary to
save him.
Mordecai Ham one time was run over by
a car, hired by the liquor trade, and
he spent the next six months trying not
to die for he was in a hospital
in a coma.
Upon leaving his hotel one other time on
the way to a meeting, he was attacked
in the hotel lobby from behind by a
man with a quirk.
But besides all this, Mordecai Ham was preaching
one night when a teenage church member, in
good standing, came to hear him and became
mad at the preacher for pointing him out
as a big sinner.
That young man was brought to Christ that
night and saved, Billy Graham.
The man God uses is a man who
wants to be used to God more than
he wants to use his life for his
own pleasure, comforts, and gain.
Well, friends, that's my little excerpt from my
book on revival entitled Lectures on Revival for
a Laodicean Church.
It's a book that will teach you how
to have a better understanding of revival, teach
you how to pray better, and prepare your
own heart for personal revival and corporate revival
and national revival.
It can be purchased at barnesandnoble.com or
on Amazon.
Get your copy today and start getting fired
up for revival.