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THE LUKEWARM
by Leonard Ravenhill
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)
Oh, my ministering brethren! Much of our praying is but giving God
advice. Our praying is discolored with ambition, either for ourselves
or for our denomination. Perish the thought! Our goal must be God
alone. It is His honor that is defiled, 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 then 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? The
most important thing a man can study is the prayer part of the
book. But where is this taught? Let us strip off the last bandage
and declare that many of our presidents and teachers do not pray,
shed no tears, know no travail. Can they teach what they do not
know?
The man who can get believers to praying would, under God,
usher in the greatest revival that the world has ever known. There
is no fault in God. He is able. God "is able to do according to the
power that worketh in us." God's problem today is not communism,
nor yet Romanism, nor liberalism, nor modernism. God's problem
is - dead fundamentalism!
"So because you are lukewarm, and neither hot nor cold, I will
spew you out of my mouth." - Rev. 3:16...
Sin today is both glamorized and popularized, thrown into the ear
by radio, thrown into the eye by television, and splashed on popular
magazine covers. Churchgoers, sermon-sick and teaching-tired,
leave the meeting as they entered it - visionless and passionless!
Oh God, give this perishing generation ten thousand John the Baptists!
Just as Moses could not mistake the sight of the burning bush,
so a nation could not mistake the sight of a burning man! God
meets fire with fire. John the Baptist was a new man with a new
message. As a man accused of murder hears the dread cry of
the judge, "Guilty!" and pales at it, so the crowd heard John's cry,
"Repent!" until it rang down the corridors of their minds, stirred
memory, bowed the conscience and brought them terror-stricken
to repentance and baptism! After Pentecost, the onslaught of
Peter, fresh from his fiery baptism of the Spirit, shook the crowd
until as one man they cried out: "Men and brethren, what shall
we do?" Imagine someone telling these sin-stricken men, "Just
sign a card! Attend church regularly! Pay your tithes!" No! A
thousand times no!
"... 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 spew us out of Thy mouth!
If Thou cannot do something with us and through us, then please
God, do something without us!"
-From Leonard Ravenhill's classic book, 'Why Revival Tarries'.
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