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 Nancy DeMoss interviews Mary Peckham

I thought some of you might be interested in hearing Nancy Leigh DeMoss on Revive Our Hearts interview Mary Peckham concerning the Hebrides revival. Mrs. Peckham was saved during the revival and gives her testimony during the interview with Nancy.
[url=http://www.reviveourhearts.com/radio/roh/today.php]Here is the link[/url].

 2007/3/27 9:47
nadine
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Joined: 2004/1/17
Posts: 18


 Re: Nancy DeMoss interviews Mary Peckham

Excellent account! Well, worth listening to - more than once. If you are hungry for revival, this will cause you to yearn for it even more.

 2007/3/27 11:50Profile
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Online!
 Re:


[b]Resisting Revival[/b]


Series: When God Comes Down: An Eyewitness Account of Revival
Leslie Basham: As a teenager, Mary Peckham witnessed a great revival. But at first, she wasn’t interested in participating.

Mary Peckham: Oh, I knew that there were people converted. I knew they were children of God, and I believed that they were children of God. And I believed, furthermore, that I was going to Hell and that there were so many people going to Hell with me that it didn’t concern me too much.

Leslie: It’s Tuesday, March 27th, and you’re listening to Revive Our Hearts with Nancy Leigh DeMoss.

When you’re in God’s presence, it’s a place of great peace, right? Well, it depends. If you’re not right with God, a sense of His presence is terrifying. We’ll hear today about a teenager who has experienced both the fear and the peace of knowing God was present. Here’s Nancy to tell us why this woman’s testimony is so meaningful.

Nancy Leigh DeMoss: Someone has said that revival is a movement of God’s Spirit that brings extraordinary results. One such movement that did bring about extraordinary results in the hearts of many people took place in the early 1950s on the Isle of Lewis, just off the coast of Scotland.

This week, we’re going to have the privilege of hearing the testimony of a woman who was converted as a teenager during that revival. Her name is Mary Peckham, and as I listened to this testimony for the first time a few years ago, I was struck by how her story illustrates some of the marks of genuine revival.

Mary and her husband Colin served for many years with the Faith Mission Bible College in Edinburgh, Scotland. Now they are involved in full-time itinerant ministry, sharing with God’s people throughout Europe and in the United States and in other parts of the world the message of revival.

And what we’ll hear today, Mary tells us a little bit about her background and where God found her when that revival first began.

Mary: As has been said, I was born and brought up in the Hebrides Islands. I hope you’ve got your geography right and that you know exactly where that is. You know where Great Britain is, and if you take the most northwesterly point of Scotland, it’s called Capebroth, and forty miles into the sea west of that is a string of islands, and the top most island is called the Island of Lewis. Two miles from the lighthouse at the very top of the Island of Lewis, I was born and brought up in a fishing village.

I want to give you a little bit of background in as far as the church is concerned there. It was the normal thing in every home in the village, as far as I know, to have family worship. That doesn’t mean that all the people in the village were Christians, but they had promised in the church to bring up their children in the nurture and fear and admonition of the Lord, and they felt that this was part and portion of the fulfillment of that promise that they had made in public.

So my unconverted parents and other unconverted parents in the village felt it was right to read the Word of God to their family and to pray. The prayer was always the same amongst the unconverted. They probably had learned it from their parents and so on. I wasn’t at all attentive to what was happening. It was just part of life.

Then in the curriculum of the day school, we started the day with the Lord’s Prayer, and then we went on to Bible stories. Then the hymn book of the church was the Psalms, the metrical version of the Psalms, as we sing them in Scotland. So we had to learn them in school, and most days we came home from primary school, we came home to learn another verse of the Psalms.

So you can see, we were well-versed in the Scripture. We knew the Ten Commandments. We could recite them off by heart. We knew Isaiah 53 in two languages. We could recite them off by heart, and the Beatitudes and Corinthians 13 and so on. So you could find unconverted people who could quote the Scripture.

Now, the reason I’m telling you that is because when the Spirit of God fell upon the Island, there was fuel there to burn. The people knew the Word of God. They weren’t strangers to it.

Something else that would be of interest to you is the fact that there were those among the people of God who were still dissatisfied, and they were craving and longing for a movement of the Spirit of God in the Islands. Before that time, it was about every 10 years there was an outpouring of the Spirit of God. In 1939, there was an outpouring of the Spirit of God greater than in 1949, and so there were people who had lived through not only one revival, but two revivals.

It’s a healthy sign when a child or an adult is hungry, and the people of God were hungry. I was on the mainland of Scotland when the revival broke out, and I wasn’t particularly interested in church. I only went once to Sunday school, and the elder prayed too long a prayer for me, and I didn’t go back again.

But, I was in the mainland when the revival broke out, and my immediate reaction was, “I’m not going back to Lewis until this revival is over. They were religious enough already, and I don’t want to become involved. I have my own life, my own ambitions.”

My world was full of pleasure, and it didn’t include the church. I saw nothing in it. Oh, I knew that there were people converted. I knew they were children of God, and I believed that they were children of God. I believed, furthermore, that I was going to Hell and that there were so many people going to Hell with me that it didn’t concern me too much.

That was my attitude. Okay, if God would come at some time or other in my life and save me, well, that was His business. But as far as I was concerned, I had no desire for the things of God. A phone call changed all that. A phone call to say that my parents were ill, and I must come immediately to Lewis.

I came, concerned about them. They were soon better, and they were soon going to church with the others. It seemed that the whole conversation of the village revolved around what was happening in these meetings, and I hated it. I didn’t want to have anything to do with it. I felt inwardly disturbed when they started to talk about meetings and started to talk about conversions and people who had been drunkards were now praying in the prayer meeting.

I resisted, and I resented, because basically I was afraid. The Bible says the sinners in Zion are afraid. Fearfulness encompasseth the hypocrite (see Isaiah 33:14). So, there I was afraid of the supernatural, afraid that God would come to my life—that God would speak to me, because that was an area that was foreign to me. I didn’t want to have anything to do with the things of God. I hoped that maybe at the end of life, I might be saved, but not now. I have too much going on.

My parents were strict, and one night, they found me out, and they said they weren’t going to the meeting unless I would go, too. I went in a rage. Now, I want to give you a little insight into what was happening. The church was crowded. The atmosphere was indescribable.

One sensed as one came in the drive towards the church a silence already falling upon the people, and as they went into the church itself, they moved slowly into their pews and they sat. Sometimes before the service began at all, the tears were flowing, and for a person who was unconverted to be in such a situation was not a very comfortable thing.

But as I listened to the singing of the Psalms, they were singing the Word of God, and they were singing as if their hearts would burst, and the singing sent shivers down my spine. I thought I was being, as it were, hounded into a corner. When the preacher got up, the late Duncan Campbell, I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that this man was in earnest.

He stormed up and down, sometimes down the pulpit steps. The perspiration rolled down his face, and he didn’t preach a soft Gospel. “Though the wicked join hand and hand they shall not go unpunished” (Proverbs 11:21). “The wicked shall be turned into hell, and all nations that forget God” (Psalm 9:17).

Hell was made real to us, and sin was made a reality, and our condition out of Christ was such as ought to make us fear, and we did fear. I went home that evening in a daze after that meeting. As I entered the door, my father said, “Well, Mary, how did you enjoy that?” I said, “I didn’t enjoy it at all.”

Now, that was true. I didn’t enjoy it. You know there’s a word that says, and you know it well: “The Son of Man is come to seek and to save that which is lost” (Luke 19:10). And I was lost. And the Son of God was seeking me, although I didn’t know it.

I went again and again and again. It seemed in a way that I was going against my will, but my feet were taking me there, even though it meant a walk of two and half miles, sometimes in wintry weather. But we walked, and we went, and everywhere around us—you didn’t need to go to church to sense what was going on.

When the Spirit of God is outpoured, God was everywhere. I listened at the door of my father’s bedroom, and I could hear that hardened sailor crying out aloud the prayer of the publican, “Oh, God, be merciful to me, a sinner” (Luke 18:13).

One night in the meeting, I kept my eye on my mother, and I thought, “Well, if this conversion doesn’t come to our home, it won’t be so bad. I can put up with it in the lives of others, but there’s something that I can’t resist.” But this night, as I looked at my mother I saw her taking out her handkerchief and the tears coursed down her cheeks, and I thought, “Oh my. What are we going to say to mother tonight?”

Our house was very quiet that night. We moved around as if we were moving in a dream. Nobody wanted to talk. You know, sometimes that awareness of the presence of God comes to us in church. It was in our homes. It was there. It was in the neighborhood.

I walked the streets, and it seemed as if a record was going around in my mind, walking the village streets, “Oh everyone that thirsteth, cometh ye to the waters and he that has no money, come ye buy and eat. Yea, come buy wine and milk without money and without price. Wherefore do you spend money for that which is not bread and you labor for that which satisfieth not? Hearken diligently unto me and eat ye that which is good, and let your soul delight itself in fatness. Incline your ear and come unto me here and your soul shall live” (Isaiah 55:1–3), and so it would go on to the end of the chapter.

“Then, who hath believed our report and to whom is the arm of the Lord revealed? They shall grow before Him as a tender plant and as the root of a dry ground hath no form or comeliness, we when we shall see Him, there is no beauty that we should desire, and He is despised and rejected of man, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief, and we hid as it were our faces. He was despised and we esteemed Him not” (Isaiah 53:1–3). And so it went on and on to the end of the chapter.

And where was I? An ungodly young girl who had no interest in church. I was in my teens, and I’m walking the street, and the Word of God is pounding through my consciousness. Then it came again. I remember the Word of God came onto me, walking along a dust road from another village: “Put off thy shoes from off thy feet, for the place for on thou standest is holy ground” (Exodus 3:5)

And instinctively, I stepped off the road onto the verge, and I felt I shouldn’t be there either. It was a case of where every prospect raises and only man is vile. When I went with dad in the boat, I looked down into the depths of the sea, watching the fish as they swum, and all I could think of was God made them. God did it. This is God’s creation. God is everywhere.

I wish I could transport you back in time to these services to sense that solemnity of eternity. You know what’s wrong with us today in our services? There’s no awareness of eternity—no awareness of eternity. May I say, sometimes there is no relationship in our Christianity to eternity.

It’s all in time, and it’s all what would benefit me, and it’s all to do with me and with other people, but it’s divorced from eternity. It seemed as if at that time, eternity was solely in the prayers of the people of God.

Can you imagine an elder standing up to pray, his hands uplifted to God and praying for the young people of the community, the tears coursing down his cheeks. And I’m sitting as a teenager, holding on to my seat with the fear of God in my heart, seeing myself as he described us on the slippery parts of darkness, slipping down, slipping down, slipping down to an endless Hell.

It’s a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God. In the midst of revival, one is so concerned about oneself that one doesn’t observe much of what’s happening in other people’s lives. But one night I observed it, and I saw what it meant to be saved, and I saw what happened when Christ saved a life.

For the first time, I went to one of the cottage meetings that happened after the services in the church were over, and these cottage meetings went on into the night. I’d come home at six o’clock in the morning from these cottage meetings. People didn’t want to part one from the other, and the presence of God was so wonderful, but so fearful to others and so fearful to me.

This particular night, they made some kind of appeal for those who were exorcised about their souls, that they should come to a room was cleared for purpose, and the preacher would pray with them. I thought, “It’s another meeting, and I want to go to meetings now.” Do you see the drawing power of the Spirit of God? “The Son of Man has come to seek and to save that which is lost” (Luke 19:10). I went into the meeting, and I was horrified when I saw that it was just those who were anxious about their souls.

Two of my childhood friends were there, two of the girls from the village, and they sat and wept their hearts out. I didn’t feel quite like that yet, and Duncan Campbell asked the one, “Are you really in earnest about seeking Christ as your Savior?” And I thought, “Wow, he’s going to ask me that. What shall I say? I can’t say to the good man, ‘No.’”

Then he asked is that why am I here? And I said, “Yes.” But oh, I felt so convicted. I felt like such a hypocrite. God knew my heart, and God knew that in my ignorance, I did desire something. I didn’t know what.

I was now being drawn irresistibly to the things of God. But I had no assurance of salvation. Not for myself. I believed that anybody and anybody else could get saved, but there was some kind of something in me whereby I couldn’t get the assurance of salvation.

One night, on the 24th of August, 1950, I was sitting as usual in the prayer meeting, and the men were praying one after the other, and the minister got up to close in prayer. I prayed in my heart. Do you know what I said? I said, “Oh God, I love Your people. I can’t explain it, but I love Your people, and I want to be in them, in their company. And Lord, I want to stay in their company for the rest of my life, and then send me to Hell, for that’s what I deserve.”

You know, the conviction of sin in a season of revival is too terrible for words. Here was I, brought up in a society that was modern, religious, and any immorality would have been frowned upon. And yet I felt like such a sinner in the sight of God that I couldn’t see how He could save me.

Nancy: That’s Mary Peckham, and tomorrow, we’ll learn how she came to the place where she experienced assurance of her salvation. As I listen to Mary’s testimony, my own heart is so quickened as she talks about those very sacred moments when the Word of God was pounding in her consciousness.

It’s interesting to me that although at this point in her life, she was a hard-hearted rebellious teenage women, yet when the Spirit of God began to move in revival, there was some kindling for the flame of God’s Spirit because the Word of God was in Mary Peckham’s mind. She couldn’t escape it, and where had it come from? It came during her childhood years as she had been trained in her home and in her church, trained in the Word and in the ways of God.

And though she wandered far from those childhood roots during her teenage years, God used those very Scriptures to bring her to a place of repentance and faith. If you’re a mom who has young children, I hope this story is an encouragement to you about the importance of what you’re doing in training those children in the Word and in the ways of God.

It may not be evident to you right now what kinds of rewards and benefits are being reaped from day in and day out teaching your children the Word of God, but you are planting seeds in their lives that God is going to use. Those seeds will take root and one day, through prayer and faith and the grace of God, you can believe that those seeds will bring forth fruit in the lives of your little ones.

Perhaps you’re the mother of an older son or daughter, and you say, “My son or daughter is far from God. They’re a prodigal child. Is there any hope?” Well, as you’ve listened to Mary’s story, I trust that you can see that there is hope.

I would just encourage you: don’t stop praying. Don’t stop crying out to God to take those seeds that were planted in the life of your son or daughter when they were younger. Even if you didn’t know at the time to plant the seeds of the Word in their life, trust that God is able even now to bring His Word into their life, that Word that will produce fruit unto repentance and righteousness.

Leslie: Don’t ever stop teaching Scripture to your children. Nancy Leigh DeMoss has been reminding us about the power of God’s Word. Tomorrow, we’ll see specifically how the Bible impacted the life of Mary Peckham.

You know, I really don’t like cutting into the middle a story like we’ve done, but I have great news. You can get a copy of Mary’s talk at no cost. It’s her uninterrupted speech, which is longer than we were able to bring you on the radio.

Nancy Leigh DeMoss and the staff at Revive Our Hearts believe so strongly in the importance of revival that we want to give you a CD of this story so your passion for revival will grow. When you ask for your CD from Mary Peckham, you’ll also receive a booklet from Nancy called “Preparing for Revival.” It will help you evaluate your heart and respond quickly to whatever God is doing.

The CD and booklet are a gift to you. Just ask for the CD called, “When God Comes Down,” and the booklet, “Preparing for Revival.” Call 1-800-569-5959 to ask for these helpful resources at no cost to you. You can also order the free CD and booklet at ReviveOurHearts.com.

Now, imagine that you missed today’s radio program for some reason. You wouldn’t have found out about the free CD and booklet unless you were signed up for the Revive Our Hearts Daily Connection. It’s an email that brings you key quotes from Nancy’s messages every day.

When you’re intrigued by a topic, you can use the quick links to hear the audio online, or read the transcript or download the podcast. The Daily Connection will keep you informed about the special offers you heard about today. So the Daily Connection keeps you informed about life changing content and great deals. Signing up is easy when you visit ReviveOurHearts.com.

I hope you can be back tomorrow, when we will again transport you to the Isle of Lewis in the 1950s. Please join us for Revive Our Hearts.

[b]Mar 27 - Resisting Revival [/b]
http://www.reviveourhearts.com/radio/roh/today.php?pid=9554


_________________
SI Moderator - Greg Gordon

 2007/3/27 12:37Profile









 Re: correction

This morning when I posted this I was under the impression that Nancy was going to interview Mrs. Peckham. I apoligize for mispresenting this broadcast. :-( But I do hope many listen to it and are greatly blessed and encouraged by this testimony of revival. :)

 2007/3/27 14:35
crsschk
Member



Joined: 2003/6/11
Posts: 9192
Santa Clara, CA

 Revival

Quote:
I wish I could transport you back in time to these services to sense that solemnity of eternity. You know what’s wrong with us today in our services? There’s no awareness of eternity—no awareness of eternity. May I say, sometimes there is no relationship in our Christianity to eternity.



Oh my! This is just tremendous ... Reading the transcript ... I don't have any words for this ... wonderful...


_________________
Mike Balog

 2007/3/27 16:03Profile









 Re: Revival

Quote:
Mary Peckham:
And I believed, furthermore, that I was going to Hell and [b]that there were so many people going to Hell with me that it didn’t concern me too much.[/b]


Something else that would be of interest to you is the fact that [b]there were those among the people of God who were still dissatisfied, and they were craving and longing for a movement of the Spirit of God in the Islands.[/b] Before that time, it was about every 10 years there was an outpouring of the Spirit of God. In 1939, there was an outpouring of the Spirit of God greater than in 1949, and so there were people who had lived through not only one revival, but two revivals.



Quote:
Nancy:
I would just encourage you: [b]don’t stop praying.[/b] Don’t stop crying out to God to take those seeds that were planted in the life of your son or daughter when they were younger. Even if you didn’t know at the time to plant the seeds of the Word in their life, trust that God is able even now to bring His Word into their life, that Word that will produce fruit unto repentance and righteousness.



This is such a powerful testimony!

 2007/3/27 21:44









 Re:

[b]Bought With a Price[/b]

Series: When God Comes Down: An Eyewitness Account of Revival


Mary Peckham: I would leave my loom and go upstairs and I would pray and travel through the whole village—every family, every home, every person and then to the ends of the earth. God had opened my eyes. I wasn’t my own anymore. I was bought with a price.

Leslie: It’s Wednesday, March 28th, and this is Revive Our Hearts with Nancy Leigh DeMoss. Sin isn’t a very pleasant topic to think about, but recognizing sin and then grieving over it is the first step to incredible joy. We’re going to hear about some people who discovered this in a powerful way. Nancy.

Nancy Leigh DeMoss: This matter of intense searching, Holy Spirit conviction of sin is something that you read about in many of the accounts of revival history. It’s something that we’re going to hear about today as we listen to the continuation of Mary Peckham’s testimony.

I believe that this conviction of sin is an important part of the conversion process. The process of coming to true faith in Christ. Yet it’s something that we don’t often see today. I believe that when God moves in genuine revival in our day, this will be one of the marks of that revival. That people will not be making decisions for Christ in a flippant or half-hearted way, but that they will come with a desperate sense of their need to flee to Christ, to be delivered from their lost, sinful condition.

Mary Peckham was a hard-hearted teenager who had no interest in the things of God. Yet when God began to stir in the island of Lewis, off the coast of Scotland, there in the early 1950s and Mary came home to see what God was doing, she was caught up in this irresistible sense of the presence of God. She couldn’t run from it. There was a growing, intense sense of her sinful condition and her desperate need for Christ.

As we heard yesterday, Mary had actually attended what was called an inquirer’s meeting for those who were searching spiritually and wanted to know more about a personal relationship with Christ. Duncan Campbell, who was the revivalist that God used as an instrument in this revival, had prayed with each of the young people who came to that meeting.

Here’s Mary Peckham years later reflecting on that moment.

Mary: That night as the minister closed in prayer, he quoted a verse that I have already quoted to you: Isaiah 53, verse 5. Suddenly, it seemed as if I was transported from that prayer meeting to the place called Calvary, and I was there alone. “He was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed.” And I felt healed.

Nobody needed to tell me. The Spirit of God, through His Word, witnessed with my spirit that—miracle of miracles—I was a child of God. I couldn’t go to bed that night. A crowd of us walked the shore, singing above the noise of the waves, “Now none but Christ can satisfy; none other name for me; there’s love and life and lasting joy, Lord Jesus, found in Thee."

The following day at my loom, weaving Harris Tweed of which you probably have heard, the loom was rattling away and the shuttle flying and the pattern unfolding. I was conscious that God had a pattern for my life. I felt I’m not my own. I’ve been bought with a price. “Therefore glorify God in your body, and in your spirit, which are God’s” (1 Corinthians 6:20).

But again the question came, “But who am I?” All these fine young men who are being saved in the revival, they can go. They can go to the ends of the earth. They can go into the ministry and so on. But they closed the service with the psalm, again and again, Psalm 45, verse 10. “Hearken, O daughter, and consider, and incline thine ear; forget thine own people, and thy father’s house.” This thundered in my inner consciousness.

It seemed as if I was being estranged even from the revival. I would leave my loom and go upstairs. I would pray and travel through the whole village—every family, every home, every person, and then to the ends of the earth. God had opened my eyes. I wasn’t my own anymore. I was bought with a price.

But the arguments continued. We traveled here and there throughout the island. Nothing was a bother. No place too far away. Sixty miles we would go in and an old lorry, clinging on in the back. Walking through the snow two or three miles, we would go to the meetings, our hearts aflame. We were filled with laughter. Our tongue was filled with singing. Hymns were being composed all over the place.

People who were almost illiterate found themselves flowing in verse after verse after verse of spiritual psalms. Glory filled the land. All the people of God were rejoicing. They could hardly contain themselves. They were so overjoyed, and yet the tears were never far away as the burden would come upon them for others.

Someone wrote from London, a young girl to her parents, “Why didn’t you tell me about Jesus? I’ve found Him here in London.” Somebody else from the island, away at sea on board ship, “Why didn’t you tell me? I fell on my knees on board the ship, and I found Christ as my Savior.” So all over, Lewis people all over the world, as they heard the news of the revival, came under conviction where they were and came to Christ. God wasn’t confined to the island. He wasn’t confined to the meetings.

I could describe to you some scenes after these meetings of young people gathering together. I remember one night a crowd of young men—strong young island men—and the meeting is over and there was a row of them sitting on a couch with their white handkerchiefs spread over their faces and their frames shaking as they sobbed and sobbed and sobbed in the presence of God.

One night as Duncan Campbell was preaching, we could hardly hear him because of the distraction of the people at the back of the house—young people who were strangers to grace and to God. There they were repenting of their sin.

I remember another night, Duncan Campbell coming into a room and there was a bed in the room. Every room was filled. The stairs in the homes were made into pews, with people sitting on the stairs all the way up and in the rooms upstairs. He had a strong voice. You could hear him up there. He comes into this room, and there were the young people, their heads in the middle of the bed, weeping. I remember Duncan Campbell standing above them and looking and shaking his head and saying, “What a beautiful nest! What a beautiful nest!” People seeking God.

I was in a meeting one night where Duncan Campbell lost his voice. Yet we followed on to the cottage meeting. At that time I was so convinced that God was calling me, but how? How could I? What could I do? I was capable of nothing as far as the work of God was concerned. He lost his voice and we thought, “Well, how is he going to preach in the cottage?” The cottage was crowded—so crowded that I was sitting on a polished table.

Duncan Campbell was in another room. I couldn’t see him. He stood to speak and he was only able to give out his text. As far as I was concerned, that was all that I needed. The text was merely, “The Master is come, and he calleth for thee” (John 11:28). He calleth for thee.

I left the island of Lewis in 1951 in September with four pounds in my pocket and the call of God in my heart to go to Bible school in Edinburgh where I was a total stranger. I knew nobody there. I sat in the boat that left Stornoway at midnight and went seven hours across the channel to Mallaig.

I had an English Bible. The revival meetings were all in Gaelic, of course. I had an English Bible that my unconverted sister had given me. I spent the night taking the pages apart so that they wouldn’t say, in the Bible school, that I didn’t read my Bible because the Bible was so new.

I got to the Bible school, and I looked at the front door. I was a country girl, remember. I looked at the front door; and I thought, “Oh, that’s so austere. No, I couldn’t go in there.” I slipped around to the kitchen door behind. The cook met me. She said, “Now who are you?”

I was carrying a big case. “I’ve come as a student.” “Okay, come in.” Then they said we must hand in our fees to the office. I went into the office, and I said to the secretary, “I’ve only got four pounds, but God has called me.” Graciously, they accepted me.

I’ll tell you about one lady who knew the voice of God. She heard that there was a girl in the college who could speak the Gaelic language and the possibility was that she might be sent to her island, the Island of Tyree. She was over 80 years of age. She was almost blind. She was living alone in a thatched cottage.

I will never forget my first encounter with that lady because she was one of those who sent fees to pay for me being in Bible college. I went up the winding path through the field to her little thatched cottage. She came out to the door. I can still see her. She’s in the Glory now. She spread out her hands, and she said, “Girls, come to my palace.” We went into her palace with its earthen floor and its tiny, little window. Dark it was in there. Now she said, “Sit down and sing, girls. Sing.”

We lived in very poor homes. Privations there were. We had very little by way of money, very little by way of food. The gales in Tyree in the wintertime were something else. We had to cling to each other sometimes going to the meetings.

I remember going in a particular church where the shutters were left on the church because the windows were broken and the draft used to come in under the doors. Some nights nobody came. We knelt for the duration of the meeting (for the hour) and prayed and prayed and prayed, on and on for seven weeks. We prayed and visited and sought to encourage people to come.

Then suddenly one Wednesday night, the church was almost filled. They came and they brought heaters. They said to us at the door, “This is the answer to your prayers.” Then, wonder of wonders, God broke through. God began to speak to them in their homes. God brought them along. God saved them.

As we moved on through the island, some notorious characters were saved. In the final mission that we held, the largest church in the island was filled to capacity. God had visited the island. Still, these converts (some of them are in the Glory and old fellows in the Glory too), and there they are witnessing. Some of them preaching and keeping the doors of the churches open and continuing a witness there in the island. Does it not give us a hunger in our hearts to see what God can do?

There was a blacksmith in Lewis named John Smith. He was very involved in the revival. In fact, before the revival he and other elders prayed right through. They took Psalm 24, “Who shall ascend into the hill of the LORD? Or who shall stand in his holy place? He that hath clean hands, and a pure heart; who has not lifted up his soul unto vanity, nor sworn deceitfully. He shall receive the blessing from the LORD, and righteousness from the God of his salvation” (verses 3-5).

John Smith turns to the other elders and he said, “It’s absolute humbug for us to be praying like this unless our hands are clean and our hearts are pure.” So they united together. They confessed before God. They got right with God and prayed on.

I am so glad tonight that when I was away in the world, not interested in the things of God, there were men like these who prayed and who prayed through.

There were two old ladies. I saw them once. One was bent almost double. The other one was almost blind. They were the ones who sent for Duncan Campbell. God gave them a vision that this was the man whom God would send to preach in the island—to be a new voice, to proclaim the old truths that they knew so well.

These two ladies prayed on into the night. They sent word by one of the village girls to Duncan Campbell to come to the island. He said, “No, I’m booked up with campaign after campaign in the Isle of Skye. I’m not coming to Lewis.” He had never been to Lewis before.

The old ladies said, “Write to him again and tell him that that is what he says, but that is not what God says.” So he came. When he stepped off the boat, two elders from Barvis met him and the question they asked him was this: “Mr. Campbell, are you walking with God? Are you walking with God?”

He went to the church that night. The first meeting was hard. The next meeting happened as a spontaneous meeting because as they poured out of the church disappointed that night, one of the elders stood on the steps of the church, a headmaster; and he lifted up his hands to heaven. He wept before God. He cried to God that He would come. The congregation turned and came back into the church again. God broke through.

How glad I am that there were men and women like that in Lewis. When I was away in the world, singing at my concerts, dancing in the Highland Institute in Glasgow, not interested in any church, not noticing any church. How glad I am that there were men and women who believed God.

John Smith, on another occasion, was in a home in a little village called Arnol. It was about the midnight hour. The prayer meeting was going on. John got up and he said, “O God,” he said, “I don’t know where Duncan Campbell stands with You. I don’t know where these, my brethren, stand with you, but if I know my own heart, I am thirsty. You have said, ‘I will pour water upon him that is thirsty, and floods upon the dry ground’ (Isaiah 44:3).’” He said, “If you don’t, Lord, how can I believe You again?” The house shook. The house literally shook. They thought it was an earthquake, but it was God.

They stepped out of the house into the night. All over that community were pinpoints of light—people coming with torches, some of them carrying chairs, making for the little mission hall in the middle of village, crowding it out. It wasn’t announced. The people just came, hungry for God. “I will pour water on him that is thirsty, and floods upon the dry ground.”

How many of us are thirsty? Or are we like the Laodicean church, neither cold nor hot? “Behold, I stand at the door and knock; if any man hear My voice and open the door, I will come into him and will sup with him, and he with Me” (Revelation 3:20).

God is a great God. As Duncan Campbell used to cry out, “God, You are a covenant-keeping God.” I am here tonight to testify that God is a covenant-keeping God and that Jesus Christ is the Good Shepherd that gave His life for the sheep, the Son of Man who came to seek and to save that which is lost.

Nancy: I don’t know about you, but that story makes me just so thirsty and so longing to see God do in our day a fresh work of revival by the power of His Spirit. We’ve been listening to the testimony of Mary Peckham, a young woman who was converted as a teenager in 1950 as God moved in revival on the island of Lewis just off the coast of Scotland.

What Mary has been sharing really reflects my burden and my heart for the ministry of Revive Our Hearts. This is what we’re all about—believing God to do in our day a fresh work, sending revival to our land. Don’t you agree that we desperately need such a revival?

As I listen to those stories, I’m tempted to think, “Well, how could we ever experience that in our day? I’m just one believer. What could I possibly do that would make a difference—this kind of difference in people’s lives?”

Well, did you catch what Mary said about the influence of the praying people that God used as the feeder streams to give birth to this revival. As Mary says today, she is so thankful that when she was out in the world, not looking for God, these elderly women, these elders in her church were on their knees crying out to God for revival in the church and for the conversion of the lost.

You may be a mom at home with several toddlers. You may be home schooling your children. You may be an empty nester. You may be a widow living by yourself on a limited income. I don’t know what your season of life is, but I know whatever your season of life, it’s the time for us to get serious about praying and saying, “Lord, would you use us as women to be instruments of revival in our day?”

Ladies, I just have to tell you that I believe as we get on our knees, as we humble ourselves and cry out to God for mercy in our day, I believe that you and I may well live to see a great outpouring of God’s Spirit in our land. Who knows but that 50 years from now, there may be another Mary Peckham who’s telling her story and she’ll be saying, “I’m so glad that when I was out in the world, not interested in God, there were some moms, there were some grandmoms, there were some single women who prayed, who believed God, who cried out for revival and my life is the fruit of that.”

Leslie: Nancy Leigh DeMoss will be right back to pray. Isn’t that an appropriate response to today’s program? We heard how effective the humble prayers of a few people on the Isle of Lewis were. God will hear your prayers too.

To encourage you to pray that way, we want to give you a copy of Mary Peckham’s testimony on CD. You can have it at no charge this week. We broke Mary’s message into pieces to air on the radio; but when you ask for your free CD, you can hear Mary’s talk in its entirety, without interruption. This story will help the desire for revival to grow in your heart.

We’ll also send you a booklet called “Preparing for Revival.” It’ll help you evaluate your own heart, get right before the Lord and be ready for whatever incredible thing He wants to do in your life. We’ll send Mary Peckham’s CD and the booklet, “Preparing for Revival” at no charge when you call and ask. The toll-free number is 1-800-569-5959.

Or look for this special offer when you visit ReviveOurHearts.com. While you’re there, I hope you’ll stay and browse a while. Find out what other women think of today’s program by reading our listener blog. You can even add to it yourself. You can also find a lot of helpful resources on revival. Take a look at Nancy’s books and transcripts of past broadcasts to learn more about this important topic.

Can you imagine people sighing in church so loud that you can hear it? That’s what Mary Peckham remembers. Nancy’s going to interview her tomorrow and get an inside look at revival. Now, Nancy’s back to pray.

Nancy: Father, as I’ve heard Mary Peckham’s story again this week, my heart cries out, "O God, You are a great covenant-keeping God." My heart cries out, "O God, would you do it again? What you did back in 1950 on the island of Lewis, You can do today. You have not changed. You still have the power to draw people to Yourself, to quicken Your church, to revive Your people and to bring the conversion of the lost."

So, Lord, we join our hearts together and pray would You not revive us again, that Your people may rejoice in You and that Your name may be known throughout all the earth? For Jesus’ sake we pray it and for the sake of His great kingdom, amen.

[b]March 28 - Bought With A Price[/b]
http://www.reviveourhearts.com/radio/roh/today.php

 2007/3/28 9:49
crsschk
Member



Joined: 2003/6/11
Posts: 9192
Santa Clara, CA

 Re: Revival!

Quote:
Then, wonder of wonders, God broke through. God began to speak to them in their homes. God brought them along. God saved them.

Quote:
Does it not give us a hunger in our hearts to see what God can do?

Quote:
The prayer meeting was going on. John got up and he said, “O God,” he said, “I don’t know where Duncan Campbell stands with You. I don’t know where these, my brethren, stand with you, but if I know my own heart, I am thirsty. You have said, ‘I will pour water upon him that is thirsty, and floods upon the dry ground’ (Isaiah 44:3).’” He said, “If you don’t, Lord, how can I believe You again?”


That is just bold ...

There is no tirying of hearing this over again, to hear her relate the same things that many of us have heard prior here on this Revival ... Her stark honesty ... I just do not know that this is the requirement through and through, honesty to bring revival, honesty in revival, honesty is revival and the results of revival. To pray honestly for just this;

[i]Then, wonder of wonders, God broke through. God began to speak to them in their homes. God brought them along. God saved them.[/i]

It just must happen again. There is no other way...

Thank you sister for bringing this forth, it is tremendous. It does sound like after all that an interview is still to come;

Quote:
Nancy’s going to interview her tomorrow and get an inside look at revival.



Quote:
"O God, would you do it again?


_________________
Mike Balog

 2007/3/28 10:32Profile









 Re:

And here is the interview. ;-)

------

[b]A Heart that Welcomes Revival

Series: When God Comes Down: An Eyewitness Account of Revival[/b]

Thursday, March 29 2007

Leslie Basham: When God spoke to Elijah, it was in a still, small voice. That meant the prophet had to be quiet and listen. Here’s Mary Peckham.

Mary Peckham: Maybe we’re making too much noise nowadays. We’re making a lot of noise in the churches—a lot of music and a lot of this and that and the other thing. And we can’t hear a still, small voice because we don’t expect God to speak in that way.

Leslie Basham: This is Revive Our Hearts with Nancy Leigh DeMoss for Thursday, March 29th.

Over the last couple of days, we heard a message from Mary Peckham. As a teenager she experienced revival on the Island of Lewis off the coast of Scotland. Nancy had a chance to sit down with Mary and her husband to talk about revival. Learn to have the kind of heart that God visits in revival as we hear that conversation today.

Nancy Leigh DeMoss: This week we’ve been hearing what I think is one of the most thrilling testimonies of revival: an eyewitness account of revival and one of the most moving ones that I have heard. I’ve listened to it many times over the years, and each time my heart has been freshly stirred as Mary Peckham has shared with us what she saw and experienced as the presence of God moved in the Island of Lewis, just off the coast of Scotland, in the 1950s.

I know your heart has been stirred as you’ve listened to that story. I had heard of Colin and Mary Peckham many times over the years. Now I’ve been visiting in Scotland on a revival heritage tour over these past few days and have just had a chance to meet Mary and her husband Colin, and what a privilege it has been.

Colin was for many years the president or the principal of a Bible college, first in South Africa and then here in Edinburgh, Scotland, and so has been training students in the Word of God, the ways of God, and in revival.

Now for the last five years, Colin and Mary have been together in itinerant ministry sharing the heart and the ways of God and calling God’s people to revival, proclaiming Christ in churches throughout the United Kingdom, the United States, and other places as well.

So Colin and Mary, thank you so much for joining us here on Revive Our Hearts.

Colin Peckham: Thank you so much. It’s wonderful to be speaking to the folks about this great subject. This really moves our hearts—the subject of revival. It must be protected on the one hand from indifference and simple illogical things. But on the other hand, it must be protected from the wild heresies and the wild practices of a number of people. So we’ve got to get the true presence of God in meetings again and again when God comes in reviving power.

Nancy: And that presence of God really was one of the distinguishing marks as I’ve heard you tell the story, Mary, of the Lewis Revival, now over 55 years ago. Even as we were at a meal just this week and were talking about your memories of that, and Colin as he had heard the stories, that awesome sense of the presence of God seemed to be so distinctive. Is that what sticks with you today as you think back to those days?

Mary Peckham: Yes. We had a tremendous privilege in the islands, and one can truly see that these islands are the land of revivals. From 1824 onwards there have been frequent outpourings of the Spirit of God. Revival has swept the Island, which resulted in family worship being conducted nearly in all the homes at one stage, whether the converted or the unconverted.

You see, they’re all Presbyterians, and they brought their children to church when they were small. They called it christening. But the parents are given the responsibility in front of the whole congregation, and they’re exhorted to bring up this child in the nurture and fear and admonition of the Lord.

The only way they know to do that is to read to them the Word of God. And in reading the Word of God to them, they are being taught in the Scriptures. Of course, that was also in the schools. We had to learn chapters of Scripture by heart in Gaelic and in English.

There was a result of that—a fear of God amongst the people and a respect for God so that you could meet a person on the street and talk to them about God. There were no strangers to that, and there would be no opposition to you sharing the gospel with them.

But as I grew up in my teenage years, I had no time for religion really, although I had a mind that was absolutely full of the memorized Scripture. But I didn’t call it to mind, and I didn’t pay much heed to it. All I wanted was just the round of pleasure that was typical of my generation at that time.

The pleasures that we enjoyed were totally Celtic, Highland, Scottish dance music and the dance and so on and so forth. But when it came to immorality, anyone engaged in immorality in the community was ostracized because after all we had learned early, “Thou shalt not.”

So like the psalmist said, “Thy Word is a lamp unto my feet and a light unto my path” (Psalm 119:105). So we had that lamp, as it were, in our hands, and we were restrained from what we might call more heinous sins. But nevertheless, when the presence of God was outpoured during that season of revival, we were sinners in the sight of a God who was infinitely holy.

It wasn’t a case of being convicted of this sin or that sin, but just the very fact that you are lost, that you are separated from God without God and without hope in the world. And wherever we went, we were aware of that presence of God, though at the time we would not have said it was the presence of God, but maybe a holy solemnity throughout the whole area.

There was a solemnity. Wherever you went, people were gripped with the thought of God and what God was saying in the meetings, the preaching, the preacher. That was the subject of conversation.

Nancy: And Colin, you were teaching us on a tour that I’ve been on this week. It was interesting to me that you mentioned that the Island of Lewis had a long history of revivals leading up to this revival in the 1950s. This was not something new to these people.

Colin: Yes. In the 1820s a man called Alexander McLeod went to a far outlying place, a very isolated spot called Urig on the west coast of the Island of Lewis, and he began to preach the gospel. Whereas the man before him it had been said of him that he knew very little of the doctrines of grace, and he had been there for 40 years. So there was very grave ignorance on the whole work of the gospel.

So he said that we would now have no more communions until the people were worthy of taking communion. Now the Communion season begins on Thursday and Thursday evening, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Monday. So it’s a whole convention and a very solemn occasion.

Nancy: And how often would they have this Communion season?

Colin: They had it twice a year. But at that time I think they just had it once a year with Alexander McLeod. Anyway, he said, “We’ll have no more communions until people are worthy of taking communion.”

So he preached, and God was mightily with him, and great conviction settled on the Island. People heard of this, and they came from all over the Island to come and hear Alexander McLeod. Eventually he had his first communion.

There were 7,000 people that walked across the peat bogs. There were no roads. It was just a very primitive area at that time. They’d walk barefoot many of them across the peat bogs to Urig to attend. But only six from his congregation took communion while there were 7,000 people there.

The height of that movement was a little while later when they had another communion the next year, and there 9,000 people at that communion. Nine thousand! The whole Island at that time there were only 12,000 on the Island, so it was a huge move of the Spirit at that time.

Since that time, again and again, there have been outpourings of the Spirit—every five years or every ten years somebody would hear of a movement in one place and then in another place. All over the Island there would be sporadic ebbs and flows of the workings of the Spirit. The whole Island was nurtured in the culture of revival. They knew what it was, the movings of God and the Holy Ghost.

So there was one big one in 1939, which was widespread, which was not conducted by any ministerial brethren. The laymen, the elders themselves ran the prayer meetings. In those prayer meetings those people came to know the Lord.

Then came the war that separated the people. Many of those boys went out and didn’t come back again from the war. They continued to pray, but the revival had abated until Duncan Campbell came in 1949, and revival broke out. He went for a week, and he was there for three years when the revival moved on that occasion.

Nancy: Has Lewis experienced outpourings of God’s Spirit in a similar way since then?

Colin: No. There have not been widespread movements. There was one in 1957 in one part of the island and then in other occasions there were a few other sporadic outbreaks of the Spirit’s working. But only recently in various parts of the Island there have been encouraging signs of ten young people here, five young people, six young people there in towns and villages all over the Island.

Nancy: I know you’ve prayed for and believed God for revival for many years. Have you had any sense to what creates a climate that is conducive to revival, or what might hinder the outpouring of God’s Spirit? Obviously, God is sovereign. He moves when and how and He will. But this is a place you love. I’m thinking about not just Lewis, but Scotland has been the scene of many great movings of the Spirit of God, outpourings. Yet today we see very little of that. What thoughts do you have as to why?

Colin: "'I will yet for this be inquired of the house of Israel,’ says the Lord God” (Ezekiel 20:31). Now that is a huge statement. “I will yet for of this be inquired over.” God is waiting and stirring people to pray. And as a matter of fact, all over the world there are people who are praying.

It’s quite an amazing thing when people of God get praying. It was Matthew Henry who said, “When God intends great mercy for His people, He first sets them a praying.” And it was D.L. Moody who said, “Behind every move of the Spirit there is a bent figure.” And John Wesley said, “God will do nothing but by prayer and everything with it.”

So prayer is essential, and God prepares people and gives them a burden, preparing people for that moment when they are united and when they can give themselves to prayer and seek Him and believe Him. And He prepares a people to receive the Spirit.

Nancy: One of the places we’re visiting on this tour is Charlotte Chapel here in Edinburg. Can you give us a nutshell version of what it was God did in that revival at Charlotte Chapel? I know one of the names associated with that is Joseph Kemp. Just for our listeners who aren’t familiar with that, can you give us a little bit of that story?

Colin: Yes. There was a lady. Charlotte Chapel had gone down to the doldrums. There were only about 30 or 40 people coming to the chapel, which holds about 1,000.

Nancy: And give us a timeframe. When are we talking about?

Colin: This is 1890s, about there. So this lady had a daughter, and they were transferred here. Her husband was transferred from Charlotte Chapel. She wrote a poem about Charlotte Chapel, hoping one day that God would come again to the chapel. She was away. They were away at another place in Scotland, and he died. She returned to her home town, which was Wick, in the very north of Scotland.

God had given her a promise that not in her father, but in her children shall the blessing come. So she clung to this promise. Their little girl was growing up, and a young man came to the Wick Baptist Church as a pastor. They got together, and they got married. He went down to Jedburgh, which was just south of Edinburgh where Charlotte Chapel is.

Then from Jedburgh he was called to the chapel. She was now in the manse, that young girl—beautiful story. Joseph Kemp was not a well man. He went down to Bormouth for a holiday. He was only there for a few days. He heard of the Welsh revival in 1904. He went across to see what was going on. He returned from Wales, and he came into Charlotte Chapel.

He called his elders and deacons together, and they talked together about this thing. And they discussed it. They began on one Saturday afternoon at about 3:00 in the afternoon, and that meeting did not end until 4:00. And suddenly God set Charlotte Chapel alight. Where there were only 40 or 50 people coming, suddenly more and more. And 1,000 people got saved that very year.

So on it went. Joseph Kemp was in the flow of the movement at Charlotte Chapel. He was head of ministry for about ten or fifteen years.

Nancy: Then what I found very sad was that you were telling me today that not only at Charlotte Chapel but in places all across Scotland that have seen the glory of the Lord in times past, that today there’s very little memory or consciousness of what God did or desire or longing for God to do it again.

Colin: Quite a lot of the evangelical churches have got good Bible training, good Bible teaching. Yet one longs for just a touch from heaven, a touch from God. Because we have been so bereft of the Spirit of God working in revival power, that concept is not born in the large groups of the population of the churches. So that’s a great pity.

And may God stir the churches once again to see that it is only He who can bring back the power into the churches and revive them.

Nancy: In the United States, we have a lot of large churches, a lot of active churches, a lot of Christian activity, Christian radio, Christian television, large publishing houses publishing Christian books. And some would say that is revival. But you have tasted of that outpouring of the Spirit of God.

Mary, what’s the difference? Help somebody who’s not experienced what you have experienced understand what would be different. What is it that we’re praying for and believing and longing for God to do in our day that’s different perhaps than what we are experiencing.

Mary: Well, there’s a lot of organization in the church. And the church that you describe, the large churches we have seen in the States, there’s a department for everything. But the difference to me is spontaneity. Because when God comes, you don’t know what’s going to happen. It’s perfect organization in that God is in control. And there’s no confusion and very little noise, no noise.

What I recall of the meetings in Lewis, the only sound would be the voice of the preacher and sometimes the sighing of the people. You would hear them sighing as the sword of the Spirit found its mark in their hearts. So there is a great difference.

I’ve seen a placard saying, “Come to such and such meeting. Tonight there will be healings and signs and wonders and so on.” You couldn’t forecast anything in the revival because you didn’t know what was going to happen. So you came to the meetings and wondered what was God going to do tonight? There might be no healings. There might be no signs and wonders.

But you recall God’s servant Elijah when God passed by. He was not in the earthquake, and He was not in the wind. But it was a still, small voice. But maybe we’re making too much noise nowadays. We’re making a lot of noise in the churches—a lot of music and a lot of this and that and the other thing. And we can’t hear a still, small voice because we don’t expect God to speak in that way.

So I would say that when revival comes there is a spontaneity about it.

Lord, we do thank Thee for the privilege of sharing together. And Thou hast said in Thy Word that those who spoke together like this that Thou didst take note of them. A book of remembrance was written. And we praise Thee, Lord, that Thy Word says that Thou aren’t far from any one of us. And Lord, we love Thee because Thou hast first loved us.

Thou knowest the burden of our hearts, Lord, for this land of Scotland and for the western world. We pray, Lord, that Thou wilt glorify Thy Son. Our concern is more for that, Lord, than even that souls should be saved or that churches should be blessed and enriched. That will happen we know. But our desire is and our longing is to see Christ vindicated, exalted, glorified on earth, reverenced and revered in these lands.

So Lord take Thy place we pray Thee and bless all who listen to this program today in Jesus’ name, amen.

Leslie Basham: That’s Mary Peckham encouraging you to slow down, turn off the noise, and listen. She and her husband Colin have been talking with Nancy Leigh DeMoss about the kind of heart attitude that welcomes revival.

If you’ve been intrigued by today’s conversation, would you do what Mary just suggested? Slow down. Get away from the noise and read a booklet from Nancy called Preparing for Revival. Make sure your heart is ready for whatever God wants to do through you. We’ll send you Preparing for Revival at no cost. We’ll also include a CD of the message we heard yesterday from Mary Peckham.

We believe so strongly in the message of revival that we want to put this CD and booklet in your hands with no obligation. Just call and ask for it at 1-800-569-5959. You can also look for this special offer online at www.ReviveOurHearts.com. Again look for the booklet called Preparing for Revival and the message from Mary Peckham on CD, both at no charge when you visit www.ReviveOurHearts.com.

While you’re there, I hope you’ll stay and browse a bit. One of the many features you’ll find there is the daily transcript of the program. And you can also subscribe to Revive Our Hearts as a podcast.

A listener emailed us recently to thank us for the podcast. She said, “I just received an iPod for Christmas and was thrilled to see that your website offers podcasts of your daily radio programs. With my busy schedule I don’t always get the chance to listen to the program on the radio. Now I can download it and put it on my iPod and take it with me to listen whenever I have time. Thank you for your ministry, and may God bless you.”

If you’d like to learn more about our podcast, just visit www.ReviveOurHearts.com.

Contentment is usually an excellent quality. But if a church is just moving along with business as usual, it’s important to have a God-given discontentment. Hear about that tomorrow when Nancy continues her interview with Colin and Mary Peckham.

You know, this week’s topic is dear to Nancy’s heart. Revival is one of the core topics that we return to on Revive Our Hearts. Now let’s take a few minutes to hear Nancy’s heart on why this subject is so important.

Nancy: I grew up in a home, a godly, Christian home, where my parents were first-generation believers. They always had a passion for those who did not know Christ to come into the Kingdom of Christ. But I looked around and saw that so many of the believers that I knew were enduring Christianity rather than enjoying Jesus, its Author.

This was troubling to me. Then as a probably twelve- or thirteen-year-old girl, somehow I came across some accounts of how God had moved in the history of the church to quicken and awaken the church so that they had a new passion for Christ and a new effectiveness in taking the gospel of Christ out into a lost world.

I can remember reading also in the book of Acts the account of Pentecost and what happened when the people of God were filled with the Spirit of God and began to live that life out in the secular community. As I read these accounts, something was quickened in my heart. I remember thinking, “What’s gone wrong?” I knew that God hadn’t changed. This set me on a quest, which has been a lifelong burden and passion to say, “Lord, would You do it again?”

But so many times we as believers today are operating in our own steam in the energy of the flesh trying to develop new programs to motivate people, to get people to be spiritually productive. It’s really consuming a whole lot of energy, but without necessarily a whole lot of fruit.

And I look back and realize that there are times when God chooses to reveal His glory in a new way. The manifest presence and glory of God is experienced among His people. Then the impact that takes place in the lost world is astounding. This set me on a burden to believe God for revival in our day.

http://www.reviveourhearts.com/radio/roh/today.php

 2007/3/29 9:56
crsschk
Member



Joined: 2003/6/11
Posts: 9192
Santa Clara, CA

 A Heart that Welcomes Revival

Quote:
There was a result of that—a fear of God amongst the people and a respect for God



Quote:
Colin: Yes. In the 1820s a man called Alexander McLeod went to a far outlying place, a very isolated spot called Urig on the west coast of the Island of Lewis, and he began to preach the gospel. Whereas the man before him it had been said of him that he knew very little of the doctrines of grace, and he had been there for 40 years. So there was very grave ignorance on the whole work of the gospel.

So he said that we would now have no more communions until the people were worthy of taking communion. Now the Communion season begins on Thursday and Thursday evening, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Monday. So it’s a whole convention and a very solemn occasion.

Nancy: And how often would they have this Communion season?

Colin: They had it twice a year. But at that time I think they just had it once a year with Alexander McLeod. Anyway, he said, “We’ll have no more communions until people are worthy of taking communion.”



Imagine that ... In [i]our[/i] day

God's Presence


_________________
Mike Balog

 2007/3/29 10:14Profile





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