7.1.15 Mother Teresa of Calcutta

taken from Life in the Spirit, reflections, meditations, prayers

often you see small and big wires, new and old..they alone are useless and until the current passes through them there will be on light. the wire is you and me. the current is god. we have the power to let the current pass through us and use us to produce the light of the world or we can refuse to be used and allow the darkness to spread. ..put your heart into being a bright light..we find Jesus the Word incarnate, is like a living flame; the drier the fuel, the brighter it burns-that is our hearts must be separated from earthly motives and united to the will of God

today, once more when Jesus comes amongst His own, His own don't know Him! He comes in the rotten bodies of our poor: He comes even in the rich choked by their own riches. He comes in the loneliness of their hearts and when there is no one to love them. Jesus comes to you and me and often, very, very often, we pass Him by.
after working many years among the dying, the sick, the crippled, the handicapped and mentally deficient men, women and children, i have come to the understanding of what Jesus felt when He came amongst His own and they didn't want Him. 
today Christ is in people who are unwanted, unemployed, uncared for, hungry, naked and homeless. they seem useless to the state or to society and nobody has time for them. it is you and i as christians, worthy of the love of Christ if our love is true, who must find them and help them. they are there for the finding.
everywhere we find lonely people who are at times only known by the number of their room. where are we? do we really know that these persons exist at all? maybe next door to us there is a blind man who would be happy if we would be ready to read the newspaper for him; maybe there is a rich person who has no one to visit him. he has plenty of things, he is really drowned in them but there is no human touch and he needs that touch.
some time back a very rich man came and told me: 'this i give you for somebody to come to my house. i am nearly half blind, my wife is nearly mental, our children have all gone abroad and we are dying of loneliness'.
they are people longing for the loving sound of a human voice.
these are people that we must know. this is Jesus yesterday and today and tomorrow that you and i must know who they are. that knowledge will lead us to love them and love to be of service to them. let us not be satisfied with just giving money. money is not enough. they need our hands to serve them, they need our hearts to love them. the religion of Christ is love, the spreading of love and to be able to love we must pray.
don't search for God in far lands-He is not there. He is close to you...watch and pray. keep kindling the lamp and you will see His love and you will see how sweet is the Lord you love.

God has identified Himself with the hungry, the sick, the naked, the homeless; hunger not for bread, but for love, for care, to be somebody to someone; nakedness, not of clothing only, but nakedness of that compassion that very few people give to the unknown; homelessness, not only just for a shelter made of stone but that homelessness that comes from having no one to call your own.
...the spiritual poverty of the western world is much greater than the physical poverty of our people. you in the west have millions of people who suffer such terrible loneliness and emptiness. they feel unloved and unwanted.
these people are not hungry in the physical sense but they are in another way. they know they need something more than money, yet they don't know what it is. what they are missing really is a living relationship with God.
today, the poor are hungry for bread and rice-and for love and the living word of god.
the poor are thirsty-for water and for peace, truth and justice.
the poor are homeless0for a shelter made of bricks and for a joyful heart that understands, covers, loves.
the poor are naked-for clothes, for human dignity and compassion for the naked sinner.
they are sick-for medical car and for that gentle touch and a warm smile.
the 'shut-in', the unwanted, the unloved, the alcoholics, the dying destitutes, the abandoned and the lonely, the outcasts and the untouchables, the leprosy sufferers-all those who are a burden to human society-who have forgotten how to smile-who have lost the sensibility or the warm hand-touch of love and friendship- they look to us for comfort. if we turn our back on them, we turn it on Christ and at the hour of our death we shall be judged if we have recognized Christ in them and on what we have done for and to them. there will only be two ways, 'come' or 'go'.
therefore, i appeal to every one of you-poor and rich, young and old -to give your own hands to serve Christ in His poor and your hearts to love Him in them...

it is not possible to engage in the direct apostolate (an organization of the laity devoted to the mission of the roman catholic church) without being a soul at prayer. we must be aware of oneness with Christ, as He was aware of oneness with His Father. our activity is truly apostolic only in so far as we permit Him to work in us and through us, with His power, with His desire, with His love. we must e holy, not because we want to feel holy, but because Christ must be able to live His life fully in us. we are to be all love, all faith, all purity, for the sake of the poor we serve and once we have learned to seek god ad His will, our contact with the poor will become the means of greater sanctity to ourselves and to others.
love to pray-feel the need to pray often during the day and take the trouble to pray. if you want to pray better, you must pray more. prayer enlarges the heart until it is capable to containing God's gift of Himself. ask and seek and your heart will grow big enough to receive Him and keep Him as your own.
pray-pray for grace, pray that you may understand how Jesus has loved you so that you may love others, and pray for us that we may not spoil God's work.
prayer to be fruitful must come from the heart and must be able to touch the heart of god. see how Jesus taught His disciples to pray. call god your Father, praise and glorify His name. do His will, ask for daily bread, spiritual and temporal, ask for forgiveness of your own sins and that we may forgive others-and also for the grace to be delivered form evil with is in us and around us.

if we really want to pry we must first learn to listen, for in the silence of the heart God speaks. and to be able to see that silence, to be able to hear God, we need a clean heart, for a clean heart can see god, can hear god, can listen to God.
when it is difficult to pray we must help ourselves to do so. the first means to use is silence, for souls of prayer are souls of great silence. we cannot put ourselves directly in the presence of God if we do not practise internal and external silence.
God is the friend of silence.
let us adore Jesus in our hearts, who spent thirty years out of thirty three in silence, who began his public life by spending forty days in silence, who often retired alone to spend the night on a mountain in silence. he who spoke with authority, now spends his earthy life in silence...
we need to find god and He cannot be found in noise and restlessness. see how nature, the trees, the flowers, the grass grow in perfect silence-see the stars, the moon and the sun, how they move in silence. is not our mission to give God to the poor in the slums? not a dead God but a living, loving God. the more we receive in silent prayer, the more we can give in our active life.
silence gives us a new outlook on everything. we need silence to be able to touch souls. the essential thing is not what we say but what God says to us and through us. Jesus is always waiting for us in silence. in that silence He will listen to us, there He will speak to our soul and there we will hear His voice. interior silence is very difficult but we must make the effort. in silence we will find new energy and true unity. the energy of god will be ours to do all things well. the unity of our thoughts with his thoughts, the unity of our actions with His actions, of our life with His life. all our words will be useless, unless they come from within-words which do not give the light of Christ increase they darkness...

..give yourself fully to God. He will use you to accomplish great things on the condition that you believe much more in His love than in your own weakness.
st. augustine says:  'fill yourselves first and then only will you be able to give to others'...

..the life of the soul is the life of Jesus Christ Himself. Jesus with the Father and the Holy Spirit is the efficient cause of sanctifying grace in our souls...
i kept the Lord ever before my eyes because He is ever at my right hand that i may not slip' says the psalmist. god is within me with a more intimate presence than that whereby i am in myself: in Him we live and move and have our being...
the true interior life makes the active life burn forth and consume everything. it makes us find Jesus in the dark holes of the slums in the most pitiful miseries of the poor-the god-man naked on the cross.

thoughtfulness is the beginning of great sanctity. if you learn this art of being thoughtful, you will become more and more Christlike, for His hear was meek and he always thought of the needs of others-our lives to be beautiful must be full of thought for others. Jesus went about doing good....
the quickest and the surest way is the 'tongue'-use it for the good of others. if you think well of others, you will also speak well of others and to others. from the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh. if your heart is full of love, you will speak of love...

..we must all fill our hearts with great love. don't imagine that love, to be true and burning, must be extraordinary. No-what we need in our love is the continuity to love the One who loved the world so much He gave His Son. God is still love, He is still loving the world. today God loves the world so much that He gives you and He gives me to love the world, to be His love and compassion...

..in one of the places in melbourne i visited an old man and nobody ever knew that he existed. i saw his room in a terrible state and i wanted to clean his house and he kept on saying: 'i'm all right!' but i repeated the same words: 'you will be more all right if you will allow me to clean your place', and in the end he allowed me. there in that room there was a beautiful lamp covered with the dirt of many years and i asked him, 'why do you not light your lamp?' then i asked him, 'will you light the lamp if the sisters come to see you?' and the other day he sent me word: 'tell my friend the light she has lit in my life is still burning'.
simple acts of love and care keep the light of Christ burning...

we can do not great things-only small things with great love. the sisters are doing small things: helping the children, visiting the lonely, the sick the unwanted. in one of the houses the sisters visit a woman living alone who was dead many days before she was found-and she was found because her body had begun to decompose. the people around her did not even know her name.
when someone told me that the sisters had not started any big work, that they were quietly doing small things, i said that even if they helped one person, that was enough. Jesus would have died for one person, for one sinner.
you can do what i can't do. i can do what you can't do. together we can do something beautiful for god.
let no one glory in their success but refer all to god in deepest thankfulness; on the other hand no failure should dishearten them as long as they have done their est. God sees only our love. God will not ask how many books we have read, how many miracles we have worked, but whether we have done our best for the love of Him. have we played well? slept well? eaten well? nothing is mall for god because He is almighty and therefore each one of our actions done with and for and through Jesus Christ is a great success.

it is beautiful to see the humility of Christ. this humility can be seen in the crib, in the exile in egypt, in the hidden life, in the inability to make people understand Him, in the desertion of His apostles, in the hatred of the jews and all the terrible sufferings and death of His passion and now in His permanent state of humility (Teresa says here that Christ has reduced Himself to a small particle of bread that the priest can hold between two fingers...i say, in His constant intercession...the groaning of the Spirit of God unutterable, unintelligible by man! and Jesus, beheld as a lamb standing as if slain...for me who often despises and forsakes Him..hide my face from and do often do not esteem Him for who He is...joined in this by countless other of His creatures.) the more we empty ourselves, the more room we give God to fill us. let there be no pride nor vanity in the work. the work is God's work; the poor are God's poor. work for Jesus and Jesus will work for you, pray with Jesus and Jesus will pray through you. the more you forget yourself, the more Jesus will think of you. the more you detach yourself from self, the more attached Jesus is to you.

do not think it is a wast of time to feed the hungry, to visit and take care of the sick and the dying, to open and receive the unwanted and the homeless, for this is our love of Christ in action. we must not drift away from the humble works, because these are the works nobody will do. it is never too small. we are so small we look at things in a small way. but God, being Almighty, sees everything great. therefore, even if you write a letter for a blind man or you just go and sit and listen or you take the mail for him or you visit somebody or bring a flower to somebody-small things- or wash clothes for somebody or clean the house. very humble work that is where you and i must be. for there are many people who can do big things. but there are very few people who will do the small things.
there may be times when we appear to be wasting our precious life and burying our talents. our lives are utterly wasted if we use only the light of reason. our life has no meaning unless we look at Christ in His poverty....
knowledge of God gives love and knowledge of self gives humility. humility is nothing but truth. what have we got that we have not received?..if i have received everything, what good have i of my own? if we are convinced of this we will never raise our head in pride. if you are humble nothing will touch you, neither praise nor disgrace, because you know what you are. if you are blamed you will not be discouraged. if they call you a saint you will not put yourself on a pedestal.
self knowledge puts us on our knees.

the poorest of the poor are free, happy and without the aggression of those who aspire or can aspire to many things. the poor of the third world can teach us contentment. that is something that the west does not have much of. i'll give you an example of what happened to me recently. i went out with my sisters in calcutta to seek out the sick and dying. we picked up about forty people that day. one woman, covered in a dirty cloth, was very ill and i could see it. so i just held her hand and tried to comfort her. she smiled weakly at me and said, 'thank you'. then she died. she was more concerned to give to me than to receive from me. i put myself in her place and i thought what i would have done. i am sure i would have said: 'i am dying, i am hungry, call a doctor call a Father, call somebody'. but what she did was so beautiful. that woman was more concerned with me than i was with her.

it is not a sin to be rich. there must be a reason why some people can afford to live well. thy must have worked for it. but i tell you this provokes avarice and there comes sin. richness is given by God and it is our duty to divide it with those less favoured.
some time ago, a hindu gentleman was asked:  'what is a christian?' and he gave a very simple and a very strange answer:  'a christian is giving'. and right from the beginning we find that it is really just giving. God loved the world so much that He gave His Son-the first great giving. being rich He became poor for you and me. He gave Himself totally. but that was not enough. he wanted to give something more-to give us the chance to give to Him. so He made himself the hungry one, the naked one so that we could give to Him.
let us not be satisfied with just giving money; money is not enough for money one can get. the poor need our hands to serve them, they need our hearts to love them. let us give, not from our abundance but until it hurts. let us make ourselves poor for Him.

the very poor do not need words but actions and i cannot analyse systems, economic patterns and ideologies. i recognize that each person has a conscience and must respond to its calling. mine is this. so many times i have been told that i must not offer fishes to men but rods so that they can fish for themselves. Ah! my God! so often they do not have the strength to hold the rods. giving them fish i help them to recover the strength necessary for the fishing of tomorrow. there are in the world those who struggle for justice and for human rights and who try to change structures. we are not inattentive to this but our daily contact is with men who do not even have a piece of bread to eat. our mission is to look at the problem more individually and not collectively we care for a person and not a multitude. we seek the person with whom Jesus Christ identified Himself when He said, 'I was hungry, I was sick'.

to know the problem of poverty intellectually is not to understand it. it is not by reading, taking a walk in the slums, admiring and regretting that we come to understand it and to discover what it has of bad and good. we have to dive into it, live it, share it.

wherever there are two, they are not without God, and where there is one alone, i say i am with him. raise the stone and there thou shalt find me; cleave the wood and there i am. let not him who seeks cease until he finds and when he finds he shall be astonished. astonished he shall reach the kingdom and having reached the kingdom, he shall rest.  the oxyrhynchus sayings of Jesus

for all kinds of diseases there are medicines and cures, but for being unwanted, except where there are willing hands to serve and there's a loving heart to love, i don't think this terrible disease can ever be cured.

...each time Jesus wanted to prove His love for us, He was rejected by mankind. before His birth, His parents asked for a simple dwelling place and there was none. at christmas Christ comes like a little child, so small, so helpless, so much in need of all that love can give. are we ready to receive Him?
if mary and joseph were looking for a place to make a home for Jesus, would they choose our house and all that it holds and is filed with?

today there is so much trouble in the world and i think that much of it begins at home. the world is suffering so much because there is no peace. there is no peace because there is no peace in the family and we have so many thousands and thousands of broken homes. we must make our homes centers of compassion and forgive endlessly and so bring peace.

make your house, your family another nazareth where love, peace, joy and unity reign, for love begins at home. you must start there and make your home the centre of burning love. you must be the hope of eternal happiness to your wife, your husband, your child, to your grandfather, grandmother, to whoever is connected with you.

do you know the poor of your own home first? maybe in your home there is somebody who is feeling very lonely, very unwanted, very handicapped. maybe your husband, your wife, your child is lonely. do you know that? where are the old people today? they are put into institutions. why? because they are unwanted, they are a burden. i remember some time ago i visited a very wonderful home for old people. there were about forty there and they had everything, but they were all looking towards the door. there was not a smile on their faces and i asked the sister in charge of them:  'sister, why are these people not smiling? why are they looking towards the door? and she, very beautifully, had to answer and give the truth: 'it's the same every day. they are longing for someone to come and visit them' this is great poverty.

i remember also, once i picked up a woman from a dustbin and i knew she was dying. i took her out and took her to the convent. she kept on repeating the same words: 'my son did this to me'. not once did she utter the words: 'i'm hungry, 'i'm dying, 'i'm suffering. she just kept on repeating: 'my son did this to me'. it took me a long time to help her to say: 'i forgive my son', before she died.

the home is where the mother is. once i picked up a child and took him to our children's home, ave him a bath, clean clothes. everything, but after a day the child ran away. he was found again by somebody else but again he ran away. then i said to the sisters: 'please follow that child. one of you stay with him and see where he goes when he runs away'. and the child ran away a third time. there under a tree was the mother. she had put two stones under a small earthenware vessel and was cooking something that she had picked up from the dustbins. the Sister asked the child: 'why did you run away from the home?' and the child said: 'but this is my home because this is where my mother is'.
mother was there. that was home. that the food was taken from the dustbins was all right because mother had cooked it. it was mother that hugged the child, mother who wanted the child and the child had its mother. between a wife and a husband it is the same.

smile at one another. it is not always easy. sometimes i find it hard to smile at my sisters but then we must pray. prayer begins at home and a family that prays together, stays together. we must give Jesus a home in our homes for only then can we give Him to others.

today we have no time even to look at each other, to talk to each other, to enjoy each other, and still less to be what our children expect from us, what the husband expects from the wife, what the wife expects from the husband. and so less and less we are in touch with each other. the world is lost for want of sweetness and kindness. people are starving for love because everybody is in such a great rush.

christian unity is very important because christians stand as a light for the world. if we are christian we must be christlike. ghandhi once said that if christians lived their christian life to the full there would be no hindus left in india. that is what people expect of us, that we live our christian life to the full.
the first christians died for Jesus and they were recognized because they loved one another, and the world has never needed more love than today.

6.25.2015 TOXIC CHARITY by robert d. lupton

am a babe in the wilderness of philadelphia seeking from God the way He would have me represent Him there. have learned firsthand what not to do to. now to try and learn what to do....

all the following taken from the book...
3  when we do for those in need what they have the capacity to do for themselves, we disempower them.
africa can serve as a large scale example of the problem.
in the last 50 years, the continent has received $1 trillion in benevolent aid...
overall per capita income is lowe today than in tthe 1970s.
over half of africa's 700 million population lives on less than $1 a day.
life expectancy has stagnated and adult literacy has plummet below pre -1980 levels.
'its a kind of a curse...
aid, though intended to promote health, becomes 'the disease of which it pretends to be he cure'.
...we have succeeded only in creating a permanent underclass, dismantling their family stuctures,
and eroding their ethic of work.

4  the organization i founded, Focused Community Strategies, has worked diligentl to sort ou, by trial and error, which efforts result in actual transformation and which efforts have results that are..noxious...

5  ..as compassionate people, we have been evaluating our charity by the rewards we receive throug service, rather than the benefits recived by the served

..a world bank study found that 85% of the aid money flowing into african counties never reaches the targeted areas of need and often goes to unproductive if not blatantly corrupt uses.

expenditures for a week of service by church and college groups are grossly out of proportion with what is actually accomplished.

6  our compassionate instinct has a serious shortcoming.
our memory is short when recovery is long.
we respond with immediacy to desperate circumstances by often ae unable to shift from crisis relief to the more complex work of long term development.
consequently, aid agencies end to prolong the 'emergency' status of a crisis when a rebuilding strategy should be well under way.

7  the US government's Millennium Challenge Corporation MCC now focuses not merely on dollars invested in developing countries but on the lasting and meaningful changes that result from those...
smart investments call for partnerships with counries willing to help themselves, willing to stand up to corruption and willing to assume accountability for results delivered from each and every investment  in their development...
agricultural training and infrastucture improvements (roads, bridges)...
the net result is sustainable economic growth.

Food Security for America, a fledgling nonprofit based in atlanta,
assists churches and other community groups in establishing food co-ops,
replacing food pantries that offer free food at the price of recipients' dignity.
..organizes food 'buying clubs that leverage the $3 biweekly dues of each low income member to purchase $30 worth of surplus food.

8 the oath for compassionate service
- never do for the poor what they have (or could have) the capacity to do for themselves.
- limit one way giving to emergency situations.
- strive to empower the poor through employment, lending and investing,
using grants sparingly to reinforce achievements.
- subordinate self interests to the needs of those being served
-listen closely to those you seek to help, especially to what is not being said-unspoken feelings may contain essential clues to effective service.
- abov e all do no harm.

..interactions between the rich and poor may be redemptive - never toxic - for either group.

13 Opportunity International, a chicago based microlending organization,
commissioned a community developer to assist the residents
in creating a plan for their much needed well.
she assisted them in finding information on drilling and material costs.
she helped them formulate a budget and a rudimentary business plan.
she aranged for a loan conditional upon villaers'
investing their own money from their meager savings.
then she connected them with a reliable nicaraguan engineer
and helped them organize a water commission to
set fees, collect water bills, manage finances and maintain their new utility.

village men provided all the labor, digging trenches, laying waer lines and setting 220 water meters.
when the pump was switched on the waer surged o the homes, the village erupted with pride.
heir water supply, they soon learned, was abundant-
suficient to allow them to sell water to the local government school
and negotiate supplying an adjacent village.
 they now owned and managed a welath producing asset.

14 critics of sho term trips often point to the make work nature of many of these service trips.
they point to projects like the wall built on an orphanage soccer field in brazil
that had to be ton down after the visitors left
or the church in mexico that was painted six times during one summer by six different mission groups...

...in 2008 princeton university conducted a study that found 1.6 million american church members tok mission trips abroad in 2005-an average of eight days long-at a cost of $2.4 billion...
'religiious ourism'..has become a growth industry.
the web is full of agencies  (denominational and parachurch, college and service organizations)
ready to connc service roups and church groups to a 'meaningful experience' in an exotic  location
rife with human need.

15 contrary to popular belief, most mission trips and service pojecs do no
-empower those being served
-engender healthy cross cultural relationships
-improve local quality of life
-relieve poverty
-change the lives of participants
-increase support for long termmission work

16 ..they do
-weaken those being served
-foster dishonest relationships
-erode recipients' work ethic
-deepen dependency

..most work done by volunteers could be better done by locals in less ime and with better results.

18  ..if the money spent on travel, lodging, food and staff...
were directly invested in the people being served,
far more could be accomplished with greater effectiveness. 

..Opportunity International..invests in poverty stricken populations through micro loans
to help them build their small, life sustaining businesses.
...micro lans at modest interest rates counteract he exploitation of loan sharkes
and enable the poorest of the culture to take small, steady steps toward economic health...

19..many micro finance organizations sy their default rate is less than

..through the establishment of 'trust groups'-
small clusters of twenty to thirty neighbors, all of whom run tiny businesses-
borrowers agree to provide accountability and support for one another.
trust roup members, mostly women, selec from among themselves who should recieve the first loan
and collectively guarantee its repayment.
over time all the members of the trust group receive loans and, with positive credit histories building
the frequency and size of heir loans increase.
Opportunity International requires each borower o etablish a savings account.
peasants in nicaragua have accumulated more the $1 million in pirvate savings
-a safety net for emergencies, equity for home improvements or funds for heir children's education.

20..aid is the enemy of this..
'why should we borrow money when the churches give it to us?'

21..dignity is eroded as people come to view themselves as charity cases
..'vacationaries' spending millions of dollars ..creating a welfare economy..

28..in countries with high  unemployment
it is virtually impossible for a person with a prison record to get a job..
microloans and business mentoring ..enable them to create heir own small businesses
..the granting of money creates dependence and conflict..

29..away from..'doing for' the poor ..toward a 'doing with' paradigm

32..best chance for ..families to build hopeful futures lay in effecting change from within their neighborhoods

34..jacques ellul..in Money and power:
'..almsgiving..affirms the superiority of the giver,
who thus gains a point on the recipient, binds him, demands gratitude, humiliates him
and reduces him to a lower state than he had before.

37..i have experimented..with methods to minimize the toxins and foster health in the relationsips between the haves and have lesses..
it is delicate work..establishing authentic parity between people of unequal power..
built on reciprocal exchange..thrift stores, unlike free clothes closets,
are legitimate businesses that need customers o pay the light bill and make weekly payroll.

38..redirect traditional methods of charity into systems of genuine exchange.
..paid employees behind the counter..
discovering bargains generates excitement...
being greeted as valued customers..affirmed self eseem.
..terminated adopt a family gift giving program..
insead of delivering toys directly to the homes of the poor,
donors were directed to bring unwrapped gifts to the Family Store
where a large section was decorated as the Old Toy Shop
a bargain price was placed on each toy and parents from the neighborhood were invited to come
shopping for the special gifts sure to delight their children.
those who had no money were able to work at the sore,
earning what they needed for their purchases.

39 compassion is a dangerous thing.
it can open a person to all manner of risks.
it causes reasonable people to make extravagant hear decisions,
from spending untold hours collecting supplies to assist flood victims,
to journeying into harm's way to feed starving refugees.
some have een left successful careers, devoting themselves to a cause that gripped their hearts.

compassion is a powrful force, a stamp of the divine nature within our spirits.
it lies within us all..waiting for the right trigger to set it off:
a bird with a broken wing, a lonely widow whose family and friends have moved on,
a child orphaned by a terrorist car bomb.

41..micah 6.8 combines mercy with justice...
-immediate care with a future plan
-emergency relif and responsible development
short term intervention and longerm involvemen
-heart responses and engaged minds

42..mercy is a door, an opening, an invitation to touch a life, to make a difference.
but it is not a destination.
..mercy is also a portal throuh which we glimpse the hear of god.
the tug on our heartstrigs draws us in.
but soon we encounter brokenness so overwhelming
that neither tender heart nor inventive problem solver feels up to the task.
our solutions fall short.
pathologiesare too deep, poverty too entrenched
and we descend into ou own poverty, a poverty of spirit,
a crisis of confidence in our own abilities to rescue.
and like the broken, we find ourseles callin out to God for answers.
when our best efforts have failed us, we are lef with nothing to cling o but frail faith.
in a strange twist of divine irony,
those who would extend mercy discover that they themselves are in need of mercy.
out of our own need, we are readied for service that is both humble and wise.

45...give money to street people who ask for it?
48...there is no simple or immediate way to discern the right response without a relationship...
49..the best i could offer...due diligence.
and if you don't have time to invest in forging a rusting relationship,
give your money to a ministry that does.

even so, every once in a while we might feel an inner nudge to stop immediately
and help a person, offering food or money or a ride.
this may well be he intervention of the divine
showing unconditional grace at a critical point in someone's life.
still, ther is no way of knowing until the curtain of history is pulled back to reveal the unknowable.

3.14.15 to the KIDs (oxford english dictionary - 'the young offspring of a goat) sister and wife

dear Nate, Kate and Jon (and i'm going to include my sister, Eileen ...
and would be so inclined to, so i will in spirit, include my dear wife Susan...though would never think to irritate her by actually sending it to her!)...
the five most important people in my life...humanly
(and all their extended family member, with the exception of Susan's significant other, Nick- nothing personal, Nick, but you are not a part of our family...and my almost daily prayer is the God, in mercy, will return you to your own family as soon as possible.)..
this may be the first, but it may also be the only,
(who knows, i may be with the Lord before today ends)
communication of this nature,

the reason(s?) i am communicating in this manner is that i:
don't want to take up too much of your time. people, including myself, are very busy these days.
this format allows for absolutely no time intrusion..just a click and no time lost,
but it allows me, in the insanely busy life i lead to just, as it were, jump out of the stream for a second and share whatever is on the surface, or possibly deeper whatever 'needs' to get out.
understand what i mean?
(Lord, at this point, i look to You and ask that You would so guide that what is shared should be shared and would be what You Yourself would have me say...that You may be better loved and known and 'seen'...i pray with thanksgiving in the name of Jesus, amen.)

i don't have any indication that such is the case, but just in case you don't feel that i am 'paying enough attention to' you may be the result of one, all or noon of the reasons i come up with...and i may not, and you may not even know the reason.

in a perfect world people were meant to love and communicate with one another in such a way that that love is more perfectly experienced. in my experience this rarely happens and it seems that there are always reason(s) for this.
long ago i thought i lived in an ideal home and was extremely proud to be a part of the family into which i was born. this is no longer the case. over time i have come to see my family much differently. this new perspective  has come from various life experiences the most important of which has been my experience of Jesus Christ.

for years i thought of myself as a christian...but was troubled with niggling doubts. this in spite of the fact that i went to seminary and briefly was pastor of two churches and, outwardly at least, lived a good (in my view) life, read the bible and prayed, etc. ad nauseum.

this is all a distant memory. sometime in the last decade i think i had some kind of encounter with Jesus Christ and as a result no longer think of myself and good but rather as very evil. Jesus, likewise, has changed in my conception from a concept into a living being. He now truly is an ongoing savior and a never absent, except once, friend. i finally have hope of heaven, not because of who i am or what i do but only because of Him and am DRIVEN more and more to give myself over to DOING what He says in His word based on two verses i believe He has given me highlighted in blazing yellow, see-in-the-dark highlighter
(matthew 7.21 - not every one that saith unto Me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven; but he that DOETH the will of My Father which is in heaven.

luke 13.24 - Strive
(the greek verb agonidzO  from which we get our words, agonize and agony-constant, intense pain; used of the effort made by the olympic athletes training for and competing in the games. cf. I corinthians 9. 24-5)
to enter into the strait
(lit. narrow; cf. matt. 7.13-14)
gate; for many, I say unto you, will not be able.

true faith, i have come to see has life.
it does not consist of 'going to church' but of being a living, active member of Jesus' spiritual body.
true faith is not creedal (though doctrine true to the bible is its only foundation)
but obedient action..
obedient to the written word, the bible, and the Living Word, Jesus.
i am not saved by 'works'
but FAITH always WORKS..
it is a life lived not a faith concieved.

i am grateful for God saving me eternally from my sin.
didn't get far but time is up.

12.16.14 WHY REVIVAL TARRIES by leonard ravenhill

copyright 1959, 1987..ravenhill died in 1994..snippets of the book are..

(ravenhill's son speaking...'my mother was a singing mother. every day as she carried me in her womb she sang and prayed for me...an amazing thing happened two hours..after i was born. i was in a prayer meeting. my mother told me twenty years after, 'when the midwife went out, i reached over the bed and laid my hands on you and just prayed, 'Lord, make this boy a preacher or don't let him live.')

ravenhill's father...'was raised in a God fearing home that believed in the power of prayer. his earliest recollection of school was that of being taught the ten commandments as a five year old as well as having to memorize and recite many of the psalms. at the age of 14 he was attending all night prayer meetings-a passion he carried throughout his life.

he recalled: 'they prayed with tears, they prayed with brokenness. they prayed for a lost world, then they began to pray for nations i knew little about. they had signs of niagara falls, but instead of water falling over, it was people dropping down'.

chapter one - with all thy getting, get unction
'the offense of prayer is that it does not essentially tie in to mental efficiency. (that is not to say that prayer is a partner to mental sloth; in these days efficiency is at a premium.) prayer is conditioned by one thing alone and that is spirituality. one does not need to be spiritual to preach, that is, to make and deliver sermons of homiletical perfection and exegetical exactitude. by a combination of memory, knowledge, ambition, personality, plus well lined bookshelves, self confidence and a sense of having arrived-brother, the pulpit is yours almost anywhere these days. preaching of the type mentioned affects men;
prayer affects God.
preaching affects time; prayer affects eternity. the pulpit can be a shop window to display our talents; the closet speaks death to display.

the tragedy of this late hour is that we have too many dead men in the pulpits giving out too many dead sermons to too many dead people. oh! the horror of it. there is a strange thing that i have seen 'under the sun', even in the fundamentalist circles; it is preaching without unction. what is unction? i hardly know. but i know what it is not (or at least i know when it is not upon my own soul).
preaching without unction kills instead of giving life.
the unctionless preacher is a savor of death unto death.
the word does not live unless the unction is upon the preacher.
preacher with all thy getting-get unction.

..preaching is a spiritual business. a sermon born in the head reaches the head;
a sermon born in the heart reaches the heart. ..
unction is not a gentle dove beating her wings against the bars outside of the preacher's soul; rather she must be pursued and won.
unction cannot be learned, only earned-by prayer.
unction is God's knighthood for the soldier-preacher who has wrestled in prayer and gained the victory. victory is not won in the pulpit by firing intellectual bullets or wisecracks, but in the prayer closet...unction comes not by the medium of the bishop's hands, neither does it mildew when the preacher is cast into prison. unction will pierce and percolate; it will sweeten and soften. when the hammer of logic and the fire of human zeal fail to open the stony heart, unction will succeed.

what a fever of church building there is just now! yet without unctionized preachers, these altars will never see anxious penitents. suppose that we saw fishing boats with the latest in radar equipment and fishing gear launched month after month and put out to sea only to return without a catch-what excuse would we take for this barrenness?
yet thousand of churches see empty altars week after week
and year after year,
and cover this sterile situation by misapplying the scripture, 'my word...shall not return unto me void.

but ye, beloved, building up yourselves on your most holy faith, PRAYING IN THE HOLY GHOST.
Jude

O that we were more deeply moved by the languishing state of Christ's cause upon the earth today, by the inroads of the enemy and the awful desolation he has wrought in zion
alas that a spirit of indifference or at least of fatalistic stoicism, is freezing so many of us. a.w. pink

whole days and weeks have i spent prostrate on the ground in silent or vocal prayer. george whitefield

all decays begin in the closet; no heart thrives without much secret converse with God and nothing will make amends for the want of it. berridge

it seemed to me as if he had gone straight into heaven and lost himself in God;
but often when he had done praying he was as white as the wall.
a friend's comment after meeting tersteegen at kronenberg

chapter two - prayer grasps eternity

no man is greater than his prayer life.
the pastor who is not praying is playing;
the people who are not praying are straying..

poverty stricken as the church is today in many things, she is most stricken here, in the place of prayer. 
we have many organizers, but few agonizers;
many players and payers, few pray-ers...
lots of pastors, few wrestlers;
many fears, few tears;
much fashion, little passion...
failing here, we fail everywhere.

the two prerequisites to successful christian living are vision and passion,
both of which are born in and maintained by prayer.
the ministry of preaching is open to few;
the ministry of prayer-the highest ministry of all human offices-is open to all.
spiritual adolescents say, 'i'll not go tonight, it's only the prayer meeting'.
it may be that satan has little cause to fear most preaching.
yet past experiences sting him to rally all his infernal army to fight against god's people praying.
modern christians know little of 'binding and loosing', though the onus is on us
-'whatsoever YE shall bind...'
have you done any of this lately?
God is not prodigal with His power..
to be much for God, we must be much with God....

the secret of praying is praying in secret.
a sinning man will stop praying and a praying man will stop sinning.
we are beggared and bankrupt, but not broken, nor even bent.

prayer is profoundly simple and simply profound.
'prayer is the simplest form of speech that infant lips can try...
a niagara of burning words does not mean that god is either impressed or moved.
one of the most profound of old testament intercessors had no language
-'her lips moved, but her voice was not heard'.
...there are 'groanings which cannot be uttered'.

...prayer is to the believer what capital is to the business man.

can any deny that in the modern church setup the main cause of anxiety is money? yet that which tries the modern churches the most, troubled the new testament church the least. our accent is on paying, theirs was on praying.
when we have paid, the place is taken;
when they had prayed, the place was shaken!

a religion of mere emotion and sensationalism
is the most terrible of all curses that can come upon any people.
the absence of reality is sad enough, but the aggravation of pretence is a deadly sin. samuel chadwick

when God intends great mercy for His people,
the first thing He does is set them a-praying. matthew henry

truth without enthusiasm,
morality without emotion,
ritual without soul, are the things Christ unsparingly condemned.
destitute of fire, they are nothing more than a godless philosophy,
an ethical system and
a superstition. samuel chadwick

i have seen faces upon which the Dove sat visibly brooding. charles lamb on the quakers

fervent in spirit, serving the Lord. paul

chapter 3 - a call for Unction in the pulpit-Action in the pew!

when a man who has crept along for years in conventional christianity
suddenly zooms into spiritual alertness,
becomes aggressive in the battle of the Lord, and
has a quenchless zeal for the lost, there is a reason for it....
the secret of this 'jet propelled fellow' we have just mentioned is that somewhere
he has had jacob like wrestlings with God
and has come out stripped, but also 'strengthened by the Holy Ghost!'

there are two indispensable factors to successful christian living. they are VISION and PASSION.
men battle mountainous seas of human carnal criticism
and storm the flinty height of devilish opposition
to plant the cross of Christ amidst the habitations of cruelty. why?
because they have caught a vision and contracted a passion....
friend, if you were as good at soul cultivation as you are in developing your business,
you would be a menace to the devil;
but if you were as poor in business matters as you are in soul, you would be begging for bread.

george deakin drummed into my mind many years ago..
a vision without a task makes a visionary
a task without a vision is drudgery;
a vision with a task makes a missionary.
...there are no reduced rates for revolution of soul.
if you only want to be saved, sanctified and satisfied , then the Lord's battle hath no need of thee.

isaiah had a vision in three dimensions.
WOE, a word of confession (6.5)
LO, a word of cleansing; (v7)
GO, a word of commission. (v9)

it was and upward vision-he saw the Lord
and inward vision-he saw himself, and
and outward vision-he saw the world.

...william booth of the salvation army is quoted as saying that if he could do it, he would have finalized the training of his soldiers with twenty four hours hanging over hell, to see its eternal torment.

...he who fears God fears no man.
he who kneels before God will stand in any situation.

...(speaking of isaiah in the 6th chapter)...'woe is me!
it's me, it's me, o Lord, standing in the need of prayer! how true.
are there chambers of the mind with unclean pictures hanging in them?...
are there not secret springs and secret motives that control and secret chambers where polluted things hold empire over the soul? there are three persons living in each of us: the one we thing we are, the one other people think we are and the one God knows we are.

unless we are desperate to get into real victory, we are so easy on ourselves and so hard on others!
self loves self...but too often we hide ourselves from ourselves lest the sight of ourselves should sicken ourselves. let us invite the searching eye of God to locate this corrupted, spotted, stinking Self in us.
let it be torn from us and 'crucified with Him, (so) that henceforth we no longer serve sin'. romans 6.6

 it will not do to call sin by some other name, saying, 'the other fellow has a devilish temper; mine is just righteous indignation! she is touchy; my irritability is just 'a case of nerves'. he is covetous; i am expanding my business. he is stubborn; i have convictions. she is proud; i have superior tastes'. there is a coverup for anything if you want it that way.

do not we rest in our day too much on the arm of flesh?
cannot the same wonders be done now as of old?
do not the eyes of the lord still run to and fro throughout the whole earth to show Himself strong
on behalf of those who put their trust in Him?
oh, that God would give me more practical faith in Him!
where is now the Lord God of elijah?
He is waiting for elijah to call on Him. james gilmour of mongolia

we know the utility of prayer from the efforts of the wicked spirits to distract us during the divine office;
and we experience the fruit of prayer in the defeat of our enemies.  john climacus

when we go to God in prayer, the devil knows we go to fetch strength against him,
and therefore he opposeth us all he can.  r. sibbes.

I sought for a man. ezekiel 22.30

elias was a man. james 5.17

chapter 4 - where are the elijahs of God?

today God is bypassing men-not because they are too ignorant, but because they are too self sufficient.

...how the God of Glory had departed! the salt had lost its savour! the gold had become dim! but out of this measureless backsliding, God raised up a man-not a committee, not a sect, not an angel-but A MAN and a man of like passions as we are! God 'sought for a man', not to preach, but 'TO STAND IN THE GAP'. as abraham, so now elijah 'stood before the lord'. therefore the blessed Holy Spirit could write the life of elijah in two words: HE PRAYED'.

...the preacher may go with the crowd; the prophet goes against it.
a man freed, fired and filled with God will be branded unpatriotic because he speaks against his nation's sins;
unkind because his tongue is a two edged sword;
unbalanced because the weight of preaching opinion is against him.
the preacher will be heralded; the prophet hounded.

...in england..we stir national interest against the cruel, half-civilized mau mau (wicked enought!)
but powwow with and pander to the roman catholic church!
these priests who dope men's souls, these idolatrous 'masses', these calvary eclipsing prayers to mary, these miserable millions cheated in life and in death by the greatest forgery lucifer ever made-
all these do not seem to stir us to tearful intercessions and godly jealousy, as identical circumstances stirred elijah. the enemy has come in like a flood. is there no Spirit filled messenger today, armed with all the panoply of god, to lift up a standard against him?
one place alone will keep the heart in passion and the eyes in vision-the place of prayer.

...'got any rivers you think are uncrossable?
got any mountains you can't tunnel through?
God specializes in things thought impossible,
and He can do what  no other pow'r can do'.

the price is high. God does not want partnership with us, but ownership of us.

elijah lived with God. he thought about the nation's sin like God; he grieved over sin like God; he spoke against sin like God. he was all passion in his prayers and passionate in his denunciation of evil in the land. he had no smooth preaching. passion fired his preaching and his words wee on the hearts of men as molten metal on their flesh.

but 'the steps of a good man are ordered by the Lord' psalm 37.23
the Lord said to elijah, 'hide thyself' and again, 'show thyself'. it would be wrong to hide when we should be rebuking kings for His sake; it would be wrong to preach if the Spirit is calling us to wait upon the Lord.
we must learn with david, 'my soul, wait thou only upon God'. psalm 62.5 WHO OF US DARES TO INVITE THE LORD TO CUT OUT ALL OUR PROPS? God's ways are not our ways. His ways are 'past finding out', but He reveals them unto us by His Spirit...

later, elijah's prayer at carmel was a masterpiece of concise praying.
'hear me, o Lord, hear me, that this people may know that Thou art the Lord God and that Thou hast turned their heart back again'. I kings 18.37
e.m. bounds is right in saying that short, powerful public prayers are the outcome of long secret intercession. elijah prayed, not for the destruction of the idolatrous priests, not for thunderbolts from heaven to consume rebellious israel, but that the glory of God and the power of god might be revealed.

we try to help God out of difficulties.
remember how abraham tried to do this and to this day the earth is cursed with his folly because of ishmael.
on the other hand, elijah made it as difficult as he could for the Lord.
he wanted fire, but yet he soaked the sacrifice with water!
God loves such holy boldness in our prayers.
'ask of Me and I shall give thee the heathen for thine inheritance and the uttermost parts of the earth for thy possession'. psalm 2.8

...much of our praying is but giving god advice!
our praying is discolored with ambition, either for ourselves or for our denomination...
our goal must be God alone. it is His honor that is sullied, His blessed son who is ignored, His laws broken,His name profaned, His book forgotten,His house made a circus of social efforts.

does God ever need more patience with His people than when they are 'praying'?
we tell Him what to do and how to do it.
we pass judgments and make appreciations in our prayers.
in short we do everything except pray...
no bible school can teach us this art. what bible school has 'prayer' on its curriculum?..

..God's problem today is not communism nor yet romanism, nor liberalism nor modernism. God's problem is dead fundamentalism.

revival is an experience in the church; evangelism is an expression of the church. paul s. rees

God never intended His Church to be a refrigerator in which to preserve perishable piety.
He intended it to be an incubator in which to hatch out converts. f. lincicome

Lord, is it I? the disciples

God helps us seek popularity where it counts-at the court of God!  zepp

chapter 5 - revival in a bone yard

...preachers deal with possibilities, prophets with impossibilities.
isaiah had seen this nation full of wounds and putrefying sores; but disease had galloped on to death, death to disintegration and now these disjointed bones spell out despair. written over the whole situation in large capitals is I-M-P-O-S-S-I-B-I-L-T-Y. now obviously no faith is required to do THE POSSIBLE;
actually only a morsel of this atom powered stuff is needed to do THE IMPOSSIBLE, for a piece as large as a mustard seed will do more than we have ever dreamed of.
again and again God asks men to do not what they can, but what they can't.
to prove that no sleight of hand does it but that they link their impotence to His omnipotence, the word impossible is dropped from their vocabularies.

prophets are lone men: they walk alone, pray alone and God makes them alone. for them there is no mold; their patent rights are with god, for the principle of divine selection is 'past finding out'. but let no man despair; let none of us say, however we may have been or have not been used, that we are too old. moses was 80 when he took command of an enslaved and broken people. after george mueller was 70 he went around the world several times and, without the aid of radio, preached to millions of people.

as for ezekiel, he called no committee and set out no prayer letter; he solicited no funds and loathed publicity. but this situation was a matter of life and death...

to this mountain of bones, then, ezekiel was asked to say, 'be thou removed!'...the world is not waiting for a new definition of the Gospel, but for a new demonstration of the power of the Gospel...
where are the men not of doctrine, but of faith? no faith is required to curse the darkness or give staggering statistical evidence that the dikes are down and a tidal wave of hellish impurity has submerged this generation. doctrine? -we have enough and to spare, while a sick, sad, sin sodden, ex soaked world perishes with hunger.

at this grim hour, the world sleeps in darkness and the church sleeps in the light;
so Christ is 'wounded in the house of His friends'. the limping church militant is derisively called the Church impotent. yearly we use mountains of paper and rivers of ink reprinting dead men's brains, while the LIVING HOLY GHOST IS SEEKING for men to trample underfoot their own learning, deflate their inflated ego and confess that with all their seeing they are blind. such men, at the price of brokenness and strong crying and tears, seek that they may be anointed with divine eye salve, bought at the price of honest acknowledgment of
poverty of soul.

..sign outside..church..'this church will have either a revival or a funeral!'

..by overstating the sovereignty of God and blundering on in an atmosphere of stagnant dispensationalism, we safeguard our spiritual bankruptcy.
all the while hell fills...

..these days we are more fond of travelling than travailing, hence-no births...
right now God is preparing His elijahs for the last great earthly offensive against militant godlessness(whether political or wearing a mask of religion)....

..john citizen has heard of the gospel with the hearing of the ear,
but his eyes have never seen and his soul has never felt the power of a divine visitation.
he has every right to ask, 'where is your God? ' what shall we answer him?

..a razor is blunt, compared to Spirit edged truth.

herein are three very vital issues: BROKEN HEARTS, MOURNING, SIN
first,'a broken and a contrite heart God will not despise' psalm 52.17;

in fact, God only uses broken things. for example, Jesus took the lad's bread and brake it; then and only then could it feed the crowd. the alabaster box was broken; only then could its fragrance escape and fill the house -and the world. Jesus said, 'this is My body which was broken for you'.



and next, mourning for sin! jeremiah cried, 'oh that my head were waters, while the psalmist says, 'rivers run down my eyes continually'...
our eyes are dry because our hearts are dry.
we live in a day when we can have piety without pity.
it is passing strange.
when a couple of struggling salvation army officers wrote to william booth telling him they tried every way to get a move and failed, he sent this terse reply, 'try tears!' they did. and they had revival.

bible schools don't teach 'tears'.
they really cannot, of course. this is Spirit taught..a preacher..has not gotten far unless he knows soul bitterness over the sin of this day..

thirdly, what of sin? fools mock at it...the Schoolmen of the church have classified 'seven deadly sins'. we know, of course, that they are wrong,for all sin is deadly.

..to our knees..desist the folly of sprinkling today's individual and international iniquity with theological rose water. turn loose against this putrefaction those might rivers of weeping, of prayer and of unctionized preaching until all be cleansed.

power from on high is the supreme need of today. charles g. finney

if Christ waited to be anointed before He went to preach,
no young man ought to preach until he, too, has been anointed by the Holy Ghost. f.b.meyer

BEWARE OF REASONING ABOUT GOD'S WORD-OBEY IT. oswald chambers

i cannot work my soul to save,
for that my Lord hath done;
but i will work like any slave,
for love of God's dear Son.    unknown

as soon as we cease to bleed, we cease to bless. dr. j.h.jowett

chapter 6 - revival tarries because

harnack defined christianity as
'a very simple but very sublime thing; to live in time and for eternity under the eye of God and by His help'.

..it has been well said that there are only three classes of people in the world today;
those who are afraid, those who do not know enough to be afraid and those who know their bibles...

almost every bible conference majors on today's church being like the ephesian church.
we are told that, despite our sin and carnality, we are seated with Him.
alas, what a lie!
we are ephesians all right; but, as the ephesian church in the revelation, we have 'left our first love,.
we appease sin-but do not oppose it.
to such a cold, carnal, critical, care-cowed church, this lax, loose, lustful, licentious age will never capitulate.
let us stop looking for scapegoats.
the fault in declining morality is not radio or television.
the would blame for the present international degeneration and corruption lies at the door of the CHURCH.
IT IS NO LONGER A THORN IN THE SIDE OF THE WORLD.
..it has not been in times of popularity but of adversity that the true church has always triumphed.

..we are not protestants any more-just 'non catholics.
of what and of whom do we protest?
were we half as hot as we think we are and a tenth as powerful as we say we are, our christians would be baptized in blood, as well as in water and in fire...

..if, in the new testament, christians were stoned and suffered every ignominy, how is it then, since sin and sinners have not changed, that we..no longer raise the wrath of hell?
why are we so icily regular, so splendidly null?...

..we will write about prayer power, but not FIGHT while in prayer...
who will storm hell's stronghold? who will say the devil nay?

..revival tarries because we steal the glory that belongs to God. listen to this and wonder:
Jesus said, 'I receive not honour from men' and
'who can ye believe which receive honour one of another and seek not the honour that cometh from god only? john 5.41,44
away with all fleshly backslapping and platform flattery!
away with this exalting of 'MY radio program, MY church, MY books!
oh the sickening parade of flesh in our pulpits:
'we are greatly privileged, etc'.
speakers (who are there really by grace alone) accept all this, nay-even expect it!...

POOR GOD! He does not get much out of it all! then why doesn't God fulfill His blessed and yet awful promise and spew us out of His mouth?

the gospel is a fact; therefore tell it simply.
the gospel is a joyful fact; therefore tell it cheerfully.
the gospel is an entrusted fact; therefore tell it faithfully.
the gospel is a fact of infinite moment; therefore tell it earnestly.
the gospel is a fact of infinite love; therefore tell it feelingly.
the gospel is a fact of difficult comprehension to many; therefore tell it with illustration.
the gospel is a fact about a person; therefore preach Christ. archibald brown

true preaching is the sweating of blood. dr. joseph parker

chapter 7 - is soul-hot preaching a lost art?

..we need more 'good and fervent preachers'.
isaiah was one such with his 'woe of confession'
-'woe is me! for i am undone; because i am a man of unclean lips
and i dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips.'
..paul was another such, with his 'woe' of commission
-'woe is unto me, if i preach not the gospel!'
..richard baxter of kidderminster, england..in answer to the taunts that he was idle:
'the worst i wish you is that you had my ease instead of your labor.
i have reason to take myself for the least of all saints and yet i fear not to tell the accuser
that i take the labor of most tradesmen in the town to be a pleasure to the body in comparison to mine,
though i would not exchange it with the greatest prince.
their labor preserveth health and mine consumeth it.
they work in ease and i in continual pain.
they have hours and days of recreation; i have scarce time to eat and drink.
nobody molesteth them for their labor, but the more i do the more hatred and trouble i draw upon me.

...this is the baxter who ever sought to preach as 'a dying man to dying men'.

we may have an all time high in church attendance with a corresponding all time low in spirituality.
..have we to confess with one of old, 'the fault, dear brutus, is within ourselves'?
...do we endeavor to bring 'the powers of the world to come' into every meeting?

consider paul. with a powerful anointing of the Holy Spirit upon him, he went out to ransack asia minor, mauling its markets, stirring its synagogues, penetrating its palaces. out he went, with the war cry of the gospel in his heart and on his lips..
paul was not merely a citywide preacher but a city wide shaker and yet he had time to knock on the doors along the street and to pray for lost souls in the street...

i am increasingly convinced that TEARS are an integral part..
this is the time to blush that we have no shame (note: and disgrace)..
this is the time to weep for our lack of tears...
the time to groan that we have no burden,
the time to angry with ourselves that we have no anger over the devil's monopoly in this 'end time' hour
the time to chastise ourselves that the world can so easily get along with us and not attempt to chastise us.

pentecost meant PAIN, yet we have so much pleasure.
pentecost meant BURDEN, yet we love ease.
pentecost meant PRISON, yet most of us would do anything rather than...get into prison..

...the devil wants us to major on minors.
many of us in the 'deeper life' bracket are hunting mice-while lions devour the land.

chapter 8 - unbelieving believers

..we have adopted the convenient theory that the bible is a book to be explained,
whereas first and foremost if is a book to be believed (and after that to be obeyed).

..there is a world of difference between knowing the word of God and knowing the God of the word.

..the bible, the christian's checkbook from the Lord of glory, says:
'ALL things are yours...and ye are Christ's and Christ is God's'.

...a familiar cry is: 'we believe that the Lord would have us broadcast over ten more radio stations;
we are looking to Him to supply our needs;
send us your letters before next week'.
that may be faith and hints, but it is not being shut up to God alone.

...if we displease God, does it matter whom we please?
if we please Him, does it matter whom we displease?

until self-effacing (efface-remove or obliterate) men
(note: for every comment in this book about spiritual leaders please add 'regular' disciples of Christ...we ALL will be held accountable for every thought, word and deed amiss, without a hint of 'blameshifting' or 'discounting' of the culpability of our sin going on in that day when we stand before God)

return again to spiritual leadership,
we may expect a progressive deterioration in the quality of popular christianity year after year till we reach the point where the grieved Holy Spirit withdraws-like the Shekinah (glory) from the temple.  a.w.tozer

no man is ever fully accepted until he has, first of all, been utterly rejected. unknown.

no boasting for me...none!-except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ,
by which the world has been crucified to me and i crucified to the world. galatians 6.14(moffatt's translation)

if i had a thousand heads i would rather have them all cut off than to revoke. luther at the diet of worms

i fear not the tyranny of man, neither yet what the devil can invent against me. john knox in 'a godly letter'

the business of the truth is not to be deserted even to the sacrifice of our lives,
for we live not for this age of ours, nor for the princes,but for the Lord. zwingli




chapter 9 - wanted - prophets for a day of doom!

paul's head is already halfway into the lion's mouth. what of it? before agrippa this daring, dauntless disciple paul has neither nerves nor reserves! he can be no 'tongue-in-cheek'

(note: joking, ironic..difference between apparent and intended meaning)
preacher anytime or anywhere.
physical courage will make a man brave one way and moral courage, which despises men's opinions whosoever they be, will make a man brave another way.
both these types of courage made paul a christian daniel in a roman 'den of lions'.
men may try to destroy a prophet's body, but they can not destroy the prophet.

the clock creeps up to midnight as i write and a peep through the window reveals a sky of velvet blackness.
transfer this into the realm of politics and it is a sky without a guiding star.
put that midnight sky in the realm of morals and you must multiply it to gross darkness.
come not to the realm of religion; count your t.v. audiences for top line evangelists;
tell me how many 'big tops' are operating in evangelism at the moment;
quote me the 'converts' of all last year's gospel efforts
and when you are done, i shall shout, with the roar of a tornado.
'the moon of revival has not yet risen on this hell bound, Christ rejecting, speeding-to-judgment generation'.
we don't 'sit at ease' in zion anymore.
we have gone past that; we just sleep.
in the church, pillars have given place to pillows.

as i began to say, paul, as he stands before agrippa, has his head half into the lion's mouth.
with an awareness that the feet of pallbearers are not far away, he now 'turns on the heat'
until that wretched immoral king agrippa stammers, 'thou almost persuadest me to be a christian'.
then festus a mere guest, forgets his manners and barges in with
'paul thou art beside thyself; much learning doth make thee mad'.
paul parries, 'i am not mad, noble festus'.
(i think the tone of his voice infers that the listening sinners are mad.)

but tell me, today when we preach the everlasting gospel, does anybody think that we are 'raving'
(as rotherham translates mad) or going 'insane' (as weymouth translates it)?on the contrary, we have our love offering in view, our big name to defend, our crowds to consider and our extent of days to think over..

the methodist in england have just finished their 'yearly corporation of the people called methodists',
a thing that john wesley formed in 1784.
it was held in newcastle, england (1958).
in spite of the colossal efforts of mass envangelism in the past two years
and the boasted 'lasting value of much follow up work',
it was acknowledged almost with tears that 'the evangelistic candle' is almost guttered out.
there are men among them large of mind, large of heart and large of vision.
peep into the dabating hall. yes, there on his feet is edwin sangster-scholar, theologian,author
and now head of methodism's home missions.
he is not refuting the charge that methodism is sick and (some add) nigh unto death.
the man is moved and moving.
listen to him.i quote:
'we are combating something deep in the soul of the nation.
for this deep malady, we need some deep xray therapy that we have not found'.
he adds, 'i think, with passion, that agnosticism is flourishing in britain
in place of the great religious revival for which methodists so fervently hoped.
...we thought that, even if our numbers were smaller,
we could count on the total conviction of the people who came.
but even those in the pews are having their battle for faith.

CHAPTER 10 - fire begets fire

a baptism of holiness, a demonstration of godly living is the crying need of our day.  duncn campbell

the same church members who yell like comanche indians at a ball game on saturday
sit like wooden indians in church on sunday. vance havner

there can be no revival when Mr. Amen and Mr. Wet-Eyes are not found in the audience.
charles g. finney

men of prayer must be men of steel,
for they will be assaulted by satan even before they attempt to assault his kingdom.

praying which is merely putting in a request sheet to the ruler of the universe
is but the smallest side of this many faced truth.

like everything else in the christian's life, prayer can become lopsided.
prayer is no substitute for work;
equally true is it that work is no substitute for prayer.
in his masterly but little known work, the weapon of prayer, e.m. bounds says,
''it is better to let the work go by default than to let the praying go by neglect'.
again he says, 'the most efficient agents in disseminating the knowledge of God,
in prosecuting his work upon the earth
and in standing as a breakwater against the billows of evil, having been praying church leaders.
God depends upon them, employs them and blesses them.'

SURELY REVIVAL DELAYS BECAUSE PRAYER DECAYS.
nothing do satan or hell fear more than praying men.
but to live well you don't have to live long.
a man only 28 years old may die a hundred years old in wisdom...
fellow missionaries envied henry martyn's spirituality.
one says of him, 'oh to be able to emulate his excellences, his elevation of piety, his diligence...
his love for souls, his anxiety to improve all occasions to do souls good,
his insight into Christ and the heavenly temper!'
these are the secrets of the wonderful impression he made in india.
martyn says of himself, 'the ways of wisdom appear more sweet and reasonable than ever
and the world more insipid and vexatious.
the chief thing i mourn over..is my want of power and lack of fervour in secret prayer,
especially when i plead for the heathen.
in proportion to my light, warmth does not increase within me.
..would we not all have to say that in intercession we lack 'heat'?

by its very nature fire begets fire.
if other combustible material is about, fire will only spread its kind.
'see how great a matter a little fire kindleth'.
fire can never make ice,  the devil certainly cannot make saints;
neither can PRAYERLESS PASTORS produce warriors of intercession;
yet one spark from an anvil may set a city on fire.
from one candle, ten thousand others may take a light...
from the life of david brainerd....!

william careu read brainerd's life story and a dynamo started within the young soul winner's story
and a dynamo started within the young soul winner's breast, finally landing him on india's coral strand.
at the flame of brainerd's molten soul, the candly of edward payson's heart was lighted under God.
thus from just the diary of the pain-wracked, cowhide-clad apostle to the north american indians,
payson caught the motivating inspiration and began at 20 a prayer life that almost eclipsed brainerd's.
to add yet another soul-kinsman of brainerd's, another master of prayer,
who tottered into his grave at the 'ripe old age' of 29..we speak of robert murray mccheyne..
this giant in prayer was first magnetized to this 'greatest of all human offices that the soul of man can exercise' by reading about brainerd.

then another soul, the great jonathan edwards, watched brainerd (while his daughter jerusha wept),
as the tides of consumption (tuberculosis) grew greater over brainerd's body.
godly edwards wrote
'i praise God that in His providence B should die in my house so that i might hear his prayers,
so that i might witness his consecration and be inspired by his example'.
when B was dying, wesley was in about the prime of his spiritual conquest.
listen to master wesley talking to his conference in england. ..
'what can be done to revive the work of the Lord where it has decayed?'
and then the relentless, tireless evangelist..answered his own question by saying,
'let every preacher read carefully the life of david brainerd'.

...payson, mccheyne, cary, edwards, wesley..all debtors to the sickly but supplicating brainerd.

chapter 11 - why don't they stir themselves?

could a mariner sit idle if he heard the drowning cry?
could a doctor sit in comfort and just let his patients die?
could a fireman sit idle, let men burn and give no hand?
can you sit at ease in zion with the world around you DAMNED?

give me the love that leads the way,
the faith that nothing can dismay,
the hope no disappointments tire,
the passion that will burn like fire,
let me not sink to be a clod:
make me Thy fuel, Flame of God. amy wilson carmichael





..among whom ye shine as lights in the world; holding forth the word of life...phil. 2.15-6

ye are the light of the world...matt. 5.14

america cannot fall-because she is already fallen!
this goes for britain too.
she cannot go into slavery-because her people are fettered at the moment in the chains of
self forged, self chosen moral anarchy.
here are millions, diseased morally, with no longing for healing.
here are men paying for shadows at the price of their immortal souls,
men who not only reject the Substance, but who openly sneer at and caricature it.

an unprecedented tidal wave of commandment breaking, God-defying, soul-destroying iniquity
sweeps the ocean of human affairs.
never before have men in the masses sold their souls to the devil at such bargain prices.
'there is none...that stirreth up himself to take hold of Thee. isa. 64.7
what hell born mesmerism holds them?
how does the spell bind?
who brainwashed them?
why don't they wake and stir themselves?

...this is an hour in need of BURNING HEARTS, BURSTING LIPS and BRIMMING EYES!
...shaking at the calamity that has brought the church to be
the unlovely, unnerved, unproductive thing that she is!

chapter 12 - the prodigal church in a prodigal world

...we must be hot of cold, flaming or freezing, burning out or cast out.
lack of heat and lack of love God hates.

Christ is now 'wounded in the house of His friends'.
the Holy Book of the living God suffers more from its exponents today than from its opponents!

we are loose in the use of scriptural phrases, lopsided in interpreting them
and lazy to the point of impotence in appropriating their measureless wealth.
Mr. Preacher will wax eloquent in speech and fervent in spirit,
serving the Lord with vigor and perspiration to defend the bible's inspiration.
yet that same dear man a few breaths later with deadly calmness
will be heard rationalizing that same inspired Word by outdating its miracles and by firmly declaring:
'THIS TEXT IS NOT FOR THIS DAY'.
thus the new believer's warm faith is doused with the ice water of the preacher's unbelief.

...'Oh, my God! if in our cultivated unbelief and our theological twilight and our spiritual powerlessness
we have grieved and are continuing to grieve Thy Holy Spirit,
then in mercy spue us out of Thy mouth!
if Thou canst not do something with us and through us,
then please, God, do something without us!
(note: this written decades ago... answered in the evangelization of the muslim world?)
bypass us and take up a people who now know Thee not!

...until they were fire-purged, the miracle working disciples who beheld His resurrection glory,
were held back from ministering the Cross...

chapter 13 - wanted-a prophet to preach to the preachers

let me burn out for God.
after all, whatever God may appoint, prayer is the great thing.
oh, that i may be a man of prayer! henry martyn

love is kindled in a flame and ardency is its life.
flame is the air which true christian experience breathes.
it feeds of fire; it can withstand anything, rather than a feeble flame;
but when the surrounding atmosphere is frigid or lukewarm, it dies, chilled and starved to its vitals.
true prayer MUST be aflame.    e.m. bounds

O for a passionate passion for souls,
O for a pity that yearns!
O for the love that loves unto death,
O for the fire that burns!
O for the pure prayer-power that prevails, that pours itself out for the lost!
victorious prayer in the Conqueror's name,
O for a  PENTECOST!  amy wilson carmichael

john the baptist probably had not one qualification for the priesthood,
but he had every quality to become a prophet.
immediately before his coming there had been 400 years of darkness without one ray of prophetic light-
400 years of silence without a 'thus saith the Lord'-
400 years of progressive deterioration in spiritual things.
with a river of beasts' blood for its atonement and with an overfed priesthood for its mediator,
israel, God's favored nation, was lost in ceremony, sacrifice and circumcision.

but what an army of priests could not do in 400 years, one man 'sent of God',
john the baptist, God fashioned, God filled and God fired, did in six months!

i share the view of e. m. bounds that it takes God 20 years to make a preacher.
john the baptist's training was in God's UNIVERSITY OF SILENCE.
God takes all His great men there.
though to paul, the proud, law-keeping pharisee of colossal intellect and boasted pedigree,
Christ made a challenge on the damascus road,
it needed his three years (note: not 14?) in arabia for emptying and unlearning
before he could say, 'God has revealed Himself to me.'
God can fill in a moment what may take years to empty. Hallelujah!

Jesus said, 'God ye!' but He also said, 'Tarry until'!
let any man shut himself up for a week with only bread and water,
with no books except the bible,
with no visitor except the Holy Ghost
and i guarantee, my preacher brethren, that that man will either break up or break through and out.
after that, like paul, he will be known in hell!

...who, i ask, could be greater than john?
truly 'he did no miracle', that is, he never raised a dead man;
but he did far mare-he raised a dead nation!

this leathern-girdled prophet with a TIME-LIMIT MINISTRY so burned and shown
that those who heard his hot-tongued, heart-burning message, went home
to sleepless night until their blistered souls were broken in repentance.
yet john the baptist was
STRANGE IN DOCTRINE-no sacrifice, ceremony or circumcision;
STRANGE IN DIET-no winebibbing nor banqueting;
STRANGE IN DRESS-no phylacteries nor pharisaic garment.

yes but john was great!
great eagles fly alone; great lions hunt alone; great souls walk alone-alone with God.
such LONELINESS is HARD to endure and impossible to enjoy UNLESS GOD ACCOMPANIED...

...200 years ago, charles wesley sang
'O that in me the sacred fire might now begin to glow,
burn up the dross of base desire and make the mountains flow!

dr. hatch cried,
'breath on me, breath of God, till i am wholly Thine,
until this earthly part of me glows with Thy fire divine'....

an automobile will never moe until it has ignition-fire;
so some men are neither moved nor moving becuse they have everything except fire...

..to make my weak heart strong and brave,
send the fire.
to live a dying world to save, send the fire.
oh, see me on Thy altar lay
my life, my all, this very day;
to crown the offering now, i pray:
send the fire!   f. de L. booth tucker

we have a cold church in a cold world because the preachers are cold.
therefore, 'Lord, send the Fire!'

chapter 14 - an empire builder for God

no hat will i have but that of a martyr, reddened with my own blood.
-savonarola, when rejecting a cardinal's hat

apostolic preaching is not marked
by its beautiful diction, or literary polish or cleverness of expression,
but operates 'in demonstration of the Spirit and of power'.   arthur wallis

there are three things i would have liked to have seen...
1. Jesus in the flesh.
2. imperial rome in its splendor.
3. paul preaching.     augustine

most joyfully will i confirm with my blood that truth which i have written and preached.
john huss at the stake

the primary qualification for a missionary is not love for souls...
but love for Christ. vance havner

a man with an experience of God is never at the mercy of a man with an argument,
for an experience of God thatcosts something is worth something and does something.
paul's was not an experiment that day; it was an experience...

paul calls the Holy Ghost as a witness
that he could wish himself 'accursed' for his brethren. rom. 9.3...
we cannot have big results from our small praying.
the law of prayer is the law of harvest:
so sparingly in prayer, reap sparingly;
sow bountifully in prayer, reap bountifully.
the trouble is we are trying to get from our efforts what we never put into them.

chapter 16 - 'give me children or i die'

i have begotten you through the gospel. paul

O brother, pray; in spite of satan pray; spend hours in prayer; rather neglect friends than not pray; father fast ans lose breakfast, dinner, tea and supper-and sleep too-than not pray.
and we must not talk about prayer, we must pray in right earnest.
the Lord is near. He comes softly while the virgins slumber. andrew a. bonar

it was seven years
....before carey baptized his first convert in india.
...before judson won his first disciple in burmah.
...that morisson toiled before the first chinaman was brought to Christ.
...declares moffat, that he waited to see the first evident moving of the Holy Spirit
upon his bechuanas of africa.
...before henry richards wrought the first convert, gained at banza manteka.   a. j. gordon

prayer-the soul's blood.   george herbert


revival is imperative, for the sluice gates of hell have opened on this degenerate generation.
we need (and we say that we want) revival...

we wish revival would come to us as it came in the hebrides, said a pastor recently.
but fellow servant, revival did not come to the hebrides by wishing!
the heavens were opened and the mighty power of the Lord shook those islands because
'frail children of dust...sanctified a fast and called a solemn assembly',
and waited tear-stained, tire, and travailing before the throne of the living God.
...they had no double motive in their praying.
no petitions were colored with desire to save the face of a failing denomination.
THEIR EYE WAS SINGLE TO GOD'S GLORY.
they were not jealous of another group who was outgrowing them,
but jealous for the Lord of Hosts, whose glory was in the dust,
the 'wall of whose house was broken down and whose gates were burned with fire'.

to draw the brooding Holy Ghost, a church group fundamentlly sound in the bible
is not in itself a decoy.
beloved, we have thousands of such groups over the world.
a girl of sevnteen years and a boy of the same age may be equipped physically to parent a child
and even legally married.
but does that in itself justify their offspring coming?
would they have financial security to cover all the need?
and would they be mentally mature enough to train a child in the way he would go?
revival would die in a week in some 'bible' churches,
for wher are the 'mothers in israel' to care for them?
how many of our believers could lead a soul out of darkness into light?
it would be as sensible to have spiritual births in the present condition of some of these churches
as to put a newborn babe into a deep freeze!

the birth of a natural child is predated by months of burden and days of travail;
so is the birth of a spiritual child.
Jesus prayed for His Church but then to bring it to spiritual birth He gave Himself in death.
paul PRAYED 'NIGHT AND DAY EXCEEDINGLY' for the church;
moreover, he TRAVAILED  for the sinners.
it was when zion travailed that she brought forth.
though preachers each week cry, 'ye must be born again', how many could say with paul
'though ye have ten thousand instructors in Christ, yet have ye not many fathers:
for in Christ Jesus i have begotten you through the gospel'?
so he fathered them in the faith
he does not say that he merely prayed for them; he implies that he travailed for them...
'we must pray to live the christian life', we say;
whereas the truth is that we must live the christian life to pray.
'if ye abide...ye shall ask (ie. pray)....but prayer is more than asking.
prayer, surely is getting us into subjection to the Holy Ghost so that He can work in and through us....

we evangelists get a lot of credit-and very often take what is not ours at all.
a woman in ireland who prays for hours, prays each day for this poor stammerer.
others tell me 'never a day passes but what i lay hold of God for you'.
they have brought to birth many that are credited to me,
whereas i very often only act as the midwife.
in the judgment we shall be amazed to see big rewards go to unknown. disciples....

it is true that science has alleviated some of the suffering that our mothers knew in childbirth;
but science will never shrink the long slow months of child formation.
in the same way we preachers have also found easier methods of getting
folks to our altars for salvation...
for salvation, folk are permitted just to slip up their hand and presto!
the groaning at the altar is eliminated....

...the mother to be wearies more as the time of the birth draws near
(often spending sleepless but not tearless nights);
so the lamps of the sanctuary burn the midnight oil as distressed, sin-carrying intercessors
pour out their souls for a nation's iniquities...

...rachel..was gripped with grief, stunned with shame and bowed low in barrenness...
sincerely but passionately invite the Holy Ghost to PLAGUE YOUR HEART WITH GRIEF
because you are spiritually unable to bring to birth.
oh, the reproach of our barren altars!
has the Holy Ghost delight in our electric organs, carpeted aisles and new decorations
if the crib is empty? never!
Oh that the deathlike stillness of the sanctuary
could be shattered by the blessed cry of newborn babes!

there is no pattern for revival.
though babes are everywhere born by the same process, how different the babes themselves are
-all new! no repeats!
by the very same process of soul grief and protracted prayer and burden because of barrenness, revivals of all ages have come
-yet how different the revivals themselves have been!

jonathan edwards lacked no congregations and had no financial worries.
but spiritual stagnation haunted him.
the blemish of birth bakruptcy so bucked his knees and smote his spirt
that his grief stricken soul clung to the mercy seat
in sobbing silence until the Holy Ghost came upon him.
the church and the world know the answer to his victorious vigil.
the vows he made, the tears he shed, the groans he uttered
are all written in the chronicles of the things of God...

political and military histories are wrapped up around individual men.
history is sprinked with the names of men who invested themselves with certain power
and often made the world tremble.
think of that evil genius hitler.
what kings he overthrew!
what governments he tottered!
what millions of graves he filled!
to our age he was a bigger scourge than ten plagues.
hitler had one thing to do and-he did it!
the bible says that in the last days when wicked men do wickedly,
'the people that do KNOW THEIR GOD shall be strong and do exploits'.
not those who sing about God,
not those who write or preach about God,
but they that know their God shall be strong and do exploits.
not talking about food will fill the stomach;
not speaking of knowledge will make us wise;
not talking of God means that the energies of the Holy Ghost are within us.
we do well to ponder the fact that revival comes as a result of a cleanse section of the Church,
bent and bowed in supplication and intercession.
it views an age shackled with false religion and sickened at the sight of perishing millions;
then they wait
-perhaps days, weeks and even months until the Spirit moves upon them
and heaven opens in revival blessing.

women of the bible who had been barren brought forth its noblest children:
...sarah-issac...manoah's wife-samson...hannah-samuel...
ruth-obed, who begat jesse, the father of david, of whose line came our saviour.
elizabeth-john the baptist...

as a child conceived suddenly leaps to life, so with revival...

the church of our day should be pregnant with passionate propagation,
whereas she is often pleading with pale propaganda.
to be sure, methods of child delivery have altered with the advance of science;
but again we say that science, that darling of the doctors, cannot shrink the 9 months of (gestation)
brethren we are beaten by the time element.
the preacher and church, TOO BUSY TO PRAY,
are busier than the Lord would have them be.
if we will give God time, He will give us timeless souls.