Finney: Why the Church needs revival

After hearing Lou Engle speak at IHOPU chapel last night I started reading Charles Finney’s Lectures on Revivals of Religion.  There is a lot of wisdom rooted in experience in Finney’s talks.  I was particularly struck by two points in the first talk:

1. Many Christians – and I think Christian leaders in particular – would rather see the Church make progress steadily and grow over time instead of going through all the confusion and disruption – and excess and error – that comes with revival.  Finney answers the argument squarely.  If the Church were who she is supposed to be most of the time, revival would not be necessary.  But in this age, with the deceitfulness of sin and the influence of the world which is “under the sway of the wicked one,” (1 Jn 5:19), we need revival.  The Church continually backslides without regular injections of God’s power in revival.
2. Revival, when it is the real thing, is so clearly the work of God and beyond what human beings could work up, that people often conclude that it is entirely a work of God’s sovereignty and human beings have nothing to do with it.  In fact, the history of revival shows the opposite.  It is the praying Church, consecrated and committed to seeing God’s will done on earth as in heaven, that opens the door for God’s power to be manifested.

Lectures on Revivals of Religion by Charles Finney
There is so little principle in the church, so little firmness and stability of purpose, that unless the religious feelings are awakened and kept excited, counter worldly feeling and excitement will prevail, and men will not obey God. They have so little knowledge, and their principles are so weak, that unless they are excited, they will go back from the path of duty, and do nothing to promote the glory of God. The state of the world is still such, and probably will be till the millennium is fully come, that religion must be mainly promoted by means of revivals. How long and how often has the experiment been tried, to bring the church to act steadily for God, without these periodical excitements. Many good men have supposed, and still suppose, that the best way to promote religion, is to go along uniformly, and gather in the ungodly gradually, and without excitement. But however sound such reasoning 11may appear in the abstract, facts demonstrate its futility. If the church were far enough advanced in knowledge, and had stability of principle enough to keep awake, such a course would do; but the church is so little enlightened, and there are so many counteracting causes, that she will not go steadily to work without a special interest being awakened.
....
I wish this idea to be impressed on all your minds, for there has long been an idea prevalent that promoting religion has something very peculiar in it, not to be judged of by the ordinary rules of cause and effect; in short, that there is no connection of the means with the result, and no tendency in the means to produce the effect. No doctrine is more dangerous than this to the prosperity of the church, and nothing more absurd.

Suppose a man were to go and preach this doctrine among farmers, about their sowing grain. Let him tell them that God is a sovereign, and will give them a crop only when it pleases him, and that for them to plow and plant and labor as if they expected to raise a crop is very wrong, and taking the work out of the hands of God, that it interferes with his sovereignty, and is going on in their own strength: and that 14there is no connection between the means and the result on which they can depend. And now, suppose the farmers should believe such doctrine. Why, they would starve the world to death.

Just such results will follow from the church’s being persuaded that promoting religion is somehow so mysteriously a subject of Divine sovereignty, that there is no natural connection between the means and the end. What are the results? Why, generation after generation has gone down to hell. No doubt more than five thousand millions have gone down to hell, while the church has been dreaming, and waiting for God to save them without the use of means. It has been the devil’s most successful means of destroying souls. The connection is as clear in religion as it is when the farmer sows his grain. (pp 12-14)

The Silence is Broken

I suppose this post title could be apropos to the fact that I haven’t posted anything here for two months.  But actually it’s the title of this poem, which I wrote yesterday as an assignment for my Pentateuch class.  I don’t particularly think I’m a poet, but poetry can be a great way to meditate on things that are hard to capture in prose.  I’ve probably written half a dozen poems in my life, most of which are not worth sharing, but I don’t mind this one.  It’s a meditation on Exodus 3.

 

For four hundred years of silence
They waited for You to speak
They lived out their lives in darkness
With a future endlessly bleak

Their deadlines came and false hopes went
Generations were spent like grass
All still awaiting the promise
When Your word would come to pass

They were burdened beyond strength
But still You allowed yet more
And You extended Your silence
While the groan of their hearts turned sore

And then there appeared a man
Who seemed to be someone great
Yet he failed when put to the test
And obscurity was his fate

You tested him in the desert
For forty years tending sheep
And while their hopes seemed still empty
Your promise was not asleep

There came a day - at last, that day
When You broke Your silence fast
On a day like any other
A mountainside gleamed as he passed

"Moses! Moses!" Your word spoke out
"Take off the shoes from your feet.
For the place where you are standing
Is where God and mankind will meet."

And in those minutes that followed
You opened up Your heart
And earth would never recover
From the fire Your word would start

Now again we wait, as they did
Having learned that You cannot lie
We saw the Cross, the empty tomb
But await the light in the sky

Silence surrounds us, and we groan
But exult in hope as we wait
For from creation until now
Your word never comes too late!

Sayers: No one ever spoke to women like this Man

I’m making a point of collecting and sharing quotes on the uniqueness and glory of Jesus.  This is from Dorothy Sayers, in her book Are Women Human?, which I found quotes in Leanne Payne’s Crisis in Masculinity:

Perhaps it is no wonder that the women were first at the Cradle and last at the Cross. They had never known a man like this Man — there never has been such another. A prophet and teacher who never nagged at them, never flattered or coaxed or patronised; who never made arch jokes about them, never treated them either as "The women, God help us!" or "The ladies, God bless them!"; who rebuked without querulousness and praised without condescension; who took their questions and arguments seriously; who never mapped out their sphere for them, never urged them to be feminine or jeered at them for being female; who had no axe to grind and no uneasy male dignity to defend; who took them as he found them and was completely unself-conscious.

There is no act, no sermon, no parable in the whole Gospel that borrows its pungency from female perversity; nobody could possibly guess from the words of Jesus that there was anything 'funny' about woman’s nature.

But we might easily deduce it from His contemporaries, and from His prophets before Him, and from His Church to this day.

- Are Women Human?, pg 68-69 (Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing, 2005)

Lord, give grace to Your Church to treat our sisters as You did!

On a sidenote, Payne’s point in quoting the passage was actually quite a good one – she wites that anytime an intellectual system builds itself on the contrast of one class with another (women vs. men, poor vs. rich, etc.), that intellectual system creates a conflict between the two.  One class will always come out on the downside of the comparison: women have indeed been oppressed by men, the poor have indeed been oppressed by the rich.  But to focus on that contrast is to perpetuate conflict – women’s rights at men’s expense – and whoever buys into that system becomes a warrior for the oppressed class. They end up being oppressors themselves, albeit in a different way (e.g. the feminist professor who verbally abuses the comparatively helpless young men in her classes).

The answer is not to “balance the scales” by exalting the downtrodden at the expense of their oppressors.  The answer is reconciliation, which happens at the cross, when both sides lay down their rights, repent of their wrongs, forgive those who wronged them, and find a new identity in the One who had nothing to repent of, but nonetheless laid down everything for them:

Galatians 3:28 (ESV)
²⁸ There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.

Balthasar: The Complete Man

A quote on the uniqueness of Jesus of Nazareth, even when He is considered simply as a Man:

Here is a man with an utterly free interior life under the most restricted and oppressive conditions, simply through prayer, as we see from the sovereign self-consciousness he displays in dialogue with his disciples and, even more, with his enemies.  Here is a man whose love is perfect, although he often makes of others the same inflexible demands he makes of himself.  Here is the complete man; not a man who fits in with all and sundry, but a strong and distinctive personality, utterly unforgettable, whose words an deeds are unique and inimitable, whose influence on history is supreme.  The perfect friend, the perfect leader, whose energy, however concentrated, never distorted his character, who always remained fresh and even childlike, with no false sophistication, loving children (a sure sign!) and commending their outlook on life to those who liked to think themselves "adult".  He never reacts in a banal, predictable way; all that he does is original and creative.  Indeed, the gospels and the whole New Testament pulsate with "spirit", in the literary sense as well as the philosophical and religious sense.  How empty and relatively poor in imagination, by contrast, are such writings as the Koran or the Speeches of Buddha - once one has the "feel" of them, one can make them up oneself!

-Hans Urs Von Balthasar, Prayer, pp 171-172

While fully embracing Jesus' fully divine nature, and even emphasizing it (e.g. It was God that went to the wedding and turned water into wine...), Balthasar urges his readers to meditate on Jesus' full humanity as well:

True holiness in the Church, with its influence on history, has always been connected with the straightforward endeavor to take the humanity of Christ seriously, and all the kitsch to be found in Christian life and Christian art arises from the failure to take it seriously. (pg 172)

Common Sense from the Early Church Fathers

I read the Didache the other day because of something I read in a commentary.  The Didache (or "Teaching of the Twelve Apostles") is an anonymous early church document which summarizes scripture and gives practical advice for how to live as a church.  Opinions are very divided about when it was written (some details here), but the consensus seems to be that it was quite early - possibly as early as 100-120 AD.  The instructions given are tremendously practical, even earthy.  I actually laughed out when I read this passage:

5. But he [a traveling prophet or apostle] shall not remain except one day; but if there be need, also the next; but if he remain three days, he is a false prophet. 6. And when the apostle goeth away, let him take nothing but bread until he lodgeth; but if he ask money, he is a false prophet. 7. And every prophet that speaketh in the Spirit ye shall neither try nor judge; for every sin shall be forgiven, but this sin shall not be forgiven. 8. But not every one that speaketh in the Spirit is a prophet; but only if he hold the ways of the Lord. Therefore from their ways shall the false prophet and the prophet be known. 9. And every prophet who ordereth a meal in the Spirit eateth not from it, except indeed he be a false prophet; 10. and every prophet who teacheth the truth, if he do not what he teacheth, is a false prophet. 11. And every prophet, proved true, working unto the mystery of the Church in the world, yet not teaching others to do what he himself doeth, shall not be judged among you, for with God he hath his judgment; for so did also the ancient prophets. But whoever saith in the Spirit, Give me money, or something else, ye shall not listen to him; but if he saith to you to give for others’ sake who are in need, let no one judge him.

Alexander Roberts, James Donaldson and A. Cleveland Coxe, The Ante-Nicene Fathers Vol. VII : Translations of the Writings of the Fathers Down to A.D. 325, Fathers of the Third and Fourth Centuries: Lactantius, Venantius, Asterius, Victorinus, Dionysius, Apostolic Teaching and Constitutions, Homily and Liturgies., 380 (Oak Harbor: Logos Research Systems, 1997).

Note that while this is great common sense advice, it is actually not Biblical to say that a person is a false prophet just because they're greedy.  True prophets may fall into sin through greed (1 Timothy 6:9-10).  The Biblical test of whether a prophet is true or false is whether or not they confess Jesus as fully God and fully man (1 John 4:1-3), and whether their lives bear good fruit (Matthew 7:15-20).  In the New Testament, the test is not whether or not they ever make predictions that don't come true (cf. Deut 18:22) - but that's a topic for another (longer) post...

Murray: Prayer is Meant to be Answered!

I have been making an effort to read a chapter of With Christ in the School of Prayer by Andrew Murray each day, and am being provoked all over again to seek God for what the Bible actually says is possible in prayer.  Even at IHOP-KC, it is all too easy to come up with a theology to explain away my barrenness and lack of power in prayer.

Oh Lord, may I not settle for less than what You have actually promised to Your Church!

With Christ in the School of Prayer, note after ch 21, "The All-Inclusive Condition"

On a thoughtful comparison of what we mostly find in books or sermons on prayer, and the teaching of the Master, we shall find one great difference:  the importance assigned to the answer to prayer is by no means the same.  In the former we find a great deal on the blessing of prayer as a spiritual exercise even if there be no answer, and on the reasons why we should be content without it.  God’s fellowship ought to be more to us than the gift we ask; God’s wisdom only knows what is best; God may bestow something better than what He withholds.  Though this teaching looks very high and spiritual, it is remarkable that we find nothing of it with our Lord.  The more carefully we gather together all He spoke on prayer, the clearer it becomes that He wished us to think of prayer simply as the means to an end, and that the answer was to be the proof that we and our prayer are acceptable to the Father in heaven. It is not that Christ would have us count the gifts of higher value than the fellowship and favour of the Father.  By no means.  But the Father means the answer to be the token of His favour and of the reality of our fellowship with Him.  ‘To-day thy servant knoweth that I have found grace in thy sight, my lord, O king, in that the king hath fulfilled the request of his servant.’

A life marked by daily answer to prayer is the proof of our spiritual maturity; that we have indeed attained to the true abiding in Christ; that our will is truly at one with God’s will; that our faith has grown strong to see and take what God has prepared for us; that the Name of Christ and His nature have taken full possession of us; and that we have been found fit to take a place among those whom God admits to His counsels, and according to whose prayer He rules the world.  These are they in whom something of man’s original dignity hath been restored, in whom, as they abide in Christ, His power as the all-prevailing Intercessor can manifest itself, in whom the glory of His Name is shown forth.   Prayer is very blessed; the answer is more blessed still, as the response from the Father that our prayer, our faith, our will are indeed as He would wish them to be.

I make these remarks with the one desire of leading my readers themselves to put together all that Christ has said on prayer, and to yield themselves to the full impression of the truth that when prayer is what it should be, or rather when we are what we should be, abiding in Christ, the answer must be expected.  It will bring us out from those refuges where we have comforted ourselves with unanswered prayer.  It will discover to us the place of power to which Christ has appointed His Church, and which it so little occupies.  It will reveal the terrible feebleness of our spiritual life as the cause of our not knowing to pray boldly in Christ’s Name.  It will urge us mightily to rise to a life in the full union with Christ, and in the fulness of the Spirit, as the secret of effectual prayer.  And it will so lead us on to realize our destiny:  ‘At that day:  Verily, verily, I say unto you, If ye shall ask anything of the Father, He will give it you in my Name:  ask, and ye shall receive, that your joy may be fulfilled.’  Prayer that is really, spiritually, in union with Jesus, is always answered.

 

Abraham’s Revelation of the Everlasting God

Then Abraham planted a tamarisk tree in Beersheba, and there called on the name of the LORD, the Everlasting God. (Genesis 21:33¹)

Abraham, the first man to be called a prophet in scripture (Genesis 20:7) received significant revelation into the attributes and personality of God. God had told him His name "Yahweh" (Genesis 15:7 and 18:14, rendered as "the LORD" in most translations²), had communicated that He is a Rewarder of those who seek Him (Genesis 15:1), that He is "Almighty God" for whom nothing is too hard (Genesis 17:1 and 18:14), and that He is the ultimate Provider (Genesis 22:8,14). Abraham had also discovered, perhaps through the priest Melchizedek, that God was the Possessor of heaven and earth (Genesis 14:22, 24:3). He had even received revelation, according to the writer of Hebrews, that God would raise the dead, and so he was willing to sacrifice Isaac, the son God had promised him and with whom all his destiny lay (Hebrews 11:19, also note "we will come back to you" in Genesis 22:8).

With all of this revelation, we might say of Abraham what A.W. Tozer wrote of the Church looking at the scriptures:

"The truth is that if the Bible did not teach that God possessed endless being in the ultimate meaning of that term, we would be compelled to infer it from His other attributes, and if the Holy Scriptures had no word for absolute everlastingness, it would be necessary for us to coin one to express the concept, for it is assumed, implied, and generally taken for granted everywhere throughout the inspired Scriptures."³

We learn that Abraham had received revelation of God's eternity by the time he made his covenant with Abimelech and Phichol in Genesis 21. We do not know whether Abraham learned, as Moses did later, that God had no beginning, but was "from everlasting to everlasting" (Psalm 90:2), nor whether he understood as Isaiah did that God's eternity is not an endless extension of time as we experience it, but actually outside of time ("…the High and Lofty One who inhabits eternity…" Isaiah 57:15). The revelation that Abraham received, however, was sufficient for those promises in which God had asked him to trust. God had given to Abraham an "everlasting covenant" (Genesis 17:7,13,19), and had promised him the land of Canaan as an "everlasting possession" (Genesis 17:8). What kind of God can enter into an everlasting covenant and be able to perform what He promises? Only an everlasting God!

The letter to the Hebrews gives us additional information about Abraham's revelation of God. According to the writer of Hebrews, Abraham "waited for the city which has foundations, whose builder and maker is God" (Hebrews 11:10), he was seeking a homeland (11:14), and desired "a better, that is, a heavenly country" (11:16). Here we see how high the revelation of God's everlastingness will take us. As soon as the revelation that God is eternal is taken seriously and sinks in, human life immediately takes on new meaning – or to put it more clearly, human life sheds all kinds of false meanings that our darkened minds have created for it. When we grasp that God is everlasting, then human life – no matter how long – is revealed to be a vapor (Psalm 39:5,11), and human glory to be a flower that blooms overnight and then dies (Isaiah 40:6, 1 Peter 1:24). The only thing that matters is the everlasting reward that can be given only by the everlasting God. And thus Abraham found strength to be steady throughout his life. Abraham was not the one who wrote "one thing I do… I press toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God" (Philippians 3:13-14), but he would have agreed!

The Everlasting God of Abraham is the same God who lives inside of us if we belong to Jesus. Let us also press on to know this One who has eternal reward for those who seek Him!

---

¹ All scriptures quoted from the New King James Version, (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 1982), unless otherwise noted.

² Note that Exodus 6:3 seems to say that Abraham did not know the name Yahweh (YHWH – an abbreviation for "I AM THAT I AM" – Ex 3:15), but this cannot be reconciled with Genesis 15:7 and 18:14. The best understanding seems to be that God revealed the Name to Abraham, but did not explain it.

³ Tozer, A.W. The Knowledge of the Holy (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1961), p. 38-39

The Beholding-Becoming Principle

Psalm 27:4
One thing I have desired of the Lord,
That will I seek:
That I may dwell in the house of the LORD
All the days of my life,
To behold the beauty of the LORD,
And to inquire in His temple.

What does it mean to "behold the beauty of the LORD?"  Phrases similar to this occur in several places in the scriptures - "Behold your God!" (Isaiah 40:9); "Behold the Lamb of God!" (John 1:36), etc.  But Psalm 27:4 is notable because King David - easily Israel's most powerful and successful king, and arguably one of the greatest political leaders in history - said that this was the only thing he wanted from God.

So what is it?  What did it mean to David to behold the beauty of the God of Israel, and why was it such a big deal to him?

 

Beholding God is Meditation on God

As usual, the Bible explains itself if we keep reading.  The rest of the Psalms give us an example of what this "one thing" that David wanted above all else was. 

Psalm 18:2
The LORD is my rock and my fortress and my deliverer;
My God, my strength, in whom I will trust;

Psalm 23:1
The LORD is my shepherd; I shall not want.

Psalm 24:1
The earth is the LORD's, and all its fullness,
The world and those who dwell therein.

Psalm 25:8-9
⁸ Good and upright is the LORD;
Therefore He teaches sinners in the way.
⁹ The humble He guides in justice,
And the humble He teaches His way.

God is a Rock.  God is a Fortress.  God is a Deliverer.  God is a Shepherd.  God owns everything and is rich beyond measure.  God is good and upright.  God is a teacher.  And so on.  David filled his psalms with meditations on the attributes and personality of God.

Meditation should not be a scary word to Christians.  It is a profoundly Biblical concept, and in most translations the word is used frequently.  Psalm 1 says that the righteous man meditates in the Word of God day and night.  Psalm 119 repeats the word 8 times, always in reference to either the words or the works of God.  Paul tells the Philippians to meditate on "whatever is true, noble, just, pure, lovely, or of good report," and Timothy to meditate on the Word and doctrine, giving himself entirely to them.

Richard Foster has an excellent discussion of the difference between Christian meditation and eastern meditation in his book Celebration of Discipline.  In a nutshell, the difference is that the Christian focuses his mind on the things of God, while in eastern meditation, the practitioner seeks to empty his mind and thus opens himself up to whatever spiritual influences are available.  The two practices are diametrical opposites.

So to behold the beauty of God is to mediate on God - His character, His works, His word.

 

Knowing God is Crucial

If you ask the average Church-goer today what he thinks about the attributes of God, you're likely to get either a blank look or a pat answer gleaned from a popular worship song.  "Theology Proper," as it's technically called - meaning the study of God Himself - takes a back seat in most churches today.  We love the fact that God is forgiving and loving and has a wonderful plan for our lives...  But for the most part, what we really care about is precisely that: our lives. 

What we like to hear about in church is what God can do for us.  We are big on salvation... fixing relationships... getting out of debt... dealing with emotional problems... healing... etc.  All of these things are good and Biblical.  But they cannot be central, because human beings cannot be central.  A theology that puts human beings in the center will rapidly drift away from the teaching of the Bible.  With humanity in the center, we can find a use for a God of love, a God who wants to improve our lives, and even a God who laid down His life for us (as long as we don't think too hard about why He did that). 

But what do we do with a God who is jealous?  A God who has fiery wrath towards sin?  A God who threatens - and delivers - horrific judgment to unrepentant sinners?

David knew God - not just the parts of His nature that were comfortable, but all of Him, as He really is.  He knew God as a tender Shepherd (Psalm 23), but he also knew that God is a just judge who is angry every day (Psalm 7).

This is a crucial.  It really is the "one thing" that matters for us to know God as He actually is.  There is a terrible verse in Matthew in which Jesus warns us that it is possible to think you are a Christian, and even be active in ministry, and yet never actually know Him at all. (Matthew 7:22-23)

 

As We Behold God We are Transformed

As if it were not enough for us to come into genuine encounter with the Creator of the universe - who loves us with fiery, jealous, dangerous passion - there is more.  Another reason that David's "one thing" was to behold God's beauty was that he found that as He did so, he himself was transformed:

Psalm 17:15
¹⁵ As for me, I will see Your face in righteousness;
I shall be satisfied when I awake in Your likeness.

As David meditated on God, he found that his own character was being changed into the likeness of God.  Not into the likeness of God's deity: we will never be omnipotent, infinite, omniscient, or omnipresent (though we are eternal right now!)  But our character can become like His.  We can become gracious, full of compassion, slow to anger, and great in mercy (Psalm 145:8).  We can love righteousness and hate wickedness (Psalm 45:7). We can learn to humble ourselves (Psalm 113:6).

Paul said the same thing this way:

2 Corinthians 3:18
^18 But we all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as by the Spirit of the Lord.

This is precisely the same thought, but with a specifically Trinitarian understanding. 

It is not just "God" that we behold in his glory to become transformed, but specifically the Lord Jesus Christ.  God incarnate.  The "express image of His Person" (Hebrews 1:3).  The Word made flesh and dwelling among us (John 1:14).  Jesus said of Himself that whatever we saw Him do or heard Him say was precisely what the Father was doing or saying (John 14:9-11, 5:19-30).

Also, it is not just a general principle that by beholding the Lord Jesus we become like Him - it is the operation of the Holy Spirit in our lives that transforms us.  In fact, this process of meditating on the life, words, and works - especially the Cross - of the Lord Jesus is a significant part of what it means to "walk in the Spirit," to which is attached the stunning promise that "you shall not fulfill the lust of the flesh." (Galatians 5:16)

 

So let us make a beginning!  This is the one thing that matters in this life.  Getting to know Jesus through His Word and becoming like Him through His Spirit.  Let's set aside an hour a day, open up the Gospels, and read through the story of Jesus again with prayer on our lips.  Jesus, I want to know You!  Jesus, let me become like You!