Longing for God's Work of Revival?

As a pastor in the American church I long for God to do a work of reformation and revival in his church. On each Sunday evening as I have said my last words from the sermon I take my seat in silence and the few members who have gathered to worship God from the rising of the sun to its setting begin to pray. We pray together as a congregation for God to bring about reformation and revival in our churches. In the article below written by Rev. Al Baker my hope is that you to will be encouraged to pray for reformation and revival in God's church.

Men Whom God Uses In Revival: Robert Murray M’Cheyne

Written by Rev. Al Baker

Robert Murray M’Cheyne, the well-known and powerful preacher of the Presbyterian Church of Scotland, was born outside Edinburgh in May, 1813, and reared in a Christian home, being taught the Westminster Shorter Catechism from an early age. He came to sincere and converting faith in Christ as a college student at the University of Edinburgh. Shortly thereafter he entered the theological college at St. Andrews and studied under the great preacher and theologian Thomas Chalmers. Upon his graduation at the age of twenty-two, M’Cheyne took the pastoral position at the St. Peter’s Presbyterian Church in Dundee, not far from St. Andrews. In 19th-century Scotland nearly everyone, whether true believers or not, attended both morning and evening Lord’s Day services. Dundee was no exception. M’Cheyne, following the lead of other Scottish Presbyterians preachers--men such as William Burns, Robert Bruce, Thomas Boston, Thomas Chalmers, and Andrew and Horatio Bonar--preached the lectio continua method, preaching verse by verse through various books of the Bible.

Within a few years the people of Dundee were responding with great joy and solemnity to the preaching of M’Cheyne. It is said that some would begin weeping before M’Cheyne opened his mouth to preach, knowing that he had just come from the presence of Christ, and this presence was so obvious to everyone who saw him. M’Cheyne long had a burden for the Jews in Palestine and, after only three years in Dundee, accepted a call to engage in missionary work. He was absent for nearly two years while he engaged Jewish people with the gospel. While he was away in Palestine William Burns filled the pulpit for him, and God visited the Dundee congregation with revival and awakening. The people were severely wounded in conscience, deeply concerned about their sin and impending judgment. Burns and other pastors were busy answering the questions of the awakened, granting them counsel on how to find peace with God. Instead of feeling jealous over Burns’ success, M’Cheyne, who returned to Dundee in the midst of the revival, picked up where Burns left off and also saw a remarkable harvest of souls. M’Cheyne continued in Dundee, preaching in nearby towns as well, for another three years until he became ill and died suddenly, just short of his 30th birthday. Believer and unbeliever alike were stunned and mourned his death, for all knew he preached Christ winsomely and with solemnity.

What was it that made M’Cheyne such a powerful preacher of the gospel of grace? He wrote to a seminary student in 1840, three years before his death, saying, “Remember, you are now forming the character of your future ministry in great measure, if God spare you. If you acquire slovenly or sleepy habits of study now, you will never get the better of it. Do everything in its own time. Do everything in earnest--if it is worth doing, then do it with all your might. Above all, keep much in the presence of God. Never see the face of man till you have seen His face who is our life, our all. Pray for others, pray for your teachers, fellow students.”

We see from this that M’Cheyne was a man of great discipline and earnestness in all aspects of ministry. There never has been a man powerfully used of God who was lazy and undisciplined. Such is quite impossible. M’Cheyne yearned for, was jealous in keeping, a felt sense of the presence of the Holy Spirit. He was quite sensitive to His leading, being quick to repent and make restitution when he had offended or grieved Him. Are you disciplined in your personal devotional times, in scripture memory and meditation? Are you given to regular and earnest times of prayer? Is prayer and personal devotional time with God a driving force in your life?

To another student, M’Cheyne wrote, “Beware of the atmosphere of the classics [by this he meant the tendency in his day for preachers to spend inordinate time in reading the writers of Greek and Roman antiquity]. It is pernicious indeed; and you need much of the south wind breathing over the Scriptures to counteract it. True, we ought to know them; but only as chemists handled poisons--to discover their qualities, not to infect their blood with them.” So M’Cheyne guarded his mind and heart against scholastic or theological pride, embracing the Puritan notion that a preacher ought to be well read and well prepared when preaching, but his learnedness must be hidden behind the Christ he is exalting. Are you a student of theology? Are you continuing to read, to grow in the knowledge of Christ; while at the same time resisting the temptation to theological pride?

To another student M’Cheyne said, “Pray that the Holy Spirit would not only make you a believing and holy man, but make you wise in your studies also...The smile of God calms the spirit, and the left hand of Jesus holds up the fainting head, and the Holy Spirit quickens the affection; so that even natural studies go on a million times more easily and comfortably.” Following in the wake of Calvin and the 17th-century Puritans and 18th-century Old School Presbyterians, M’Cheyne lived in the presence of the Holy Spirit, knowing His vital ministry in his preaching and pastoral work. A common thread runs through the powerful preachers of the past. They were all men of prayer. They approached their task on their knees, as it were. They resisted the tendency toward professionalism. They had the unction of the Holy Spirit upon them, and this comes only through sincere, heartfelt prayer.

We preachers can sometimes be guilty of speaking the gospel in harshness, especially when we know there are those listening who are against us, who make life terribly difficult. M’Cheyne was very careful to guard against what he called bitterness in preaching. A preacher, even when speaking of God’s judgment on sinners, must preach with compassion and solemnity. Andrew Bonar remembered M’Cheyne’s asking him about his (Bonar’s) previous sermon. When Bonar said that he had preached on the wrath of God, M’Cheyne asked if he were able to preach it with tenderness. M’Cheyne said that the sharpest point of the two-edged sword is not death but life, and even against the self-righteous it ought to be used more than the message of death. To proclaim that faith in Christ removes immediately the judgment and wrath of God strikes more powerfully in the heart of the lost than any word of judgment. M’Cheyne is not saying we should avoid the hard sayings of Jesus, but he is saying the gospel of grace is to have pre-immanence. Would your people and visitors say you preach with tenderness and compassion?

M’Cheyne’s pulpit presence evoked awe from people, for they knew he had come from the presence of God. His reading, study, and meditation on God’s word were so thorough that the word of God oozed from him as he preached. He was quick to tell people to read the Scriptures and to feel them. His manner of preaching was from the Puritan school of expounding the text, showing its context, then putting forth doctrine derived from the text, finally applying the text practically in numerous ways in each sermon. He was very careful to draw out the meaning of the text in his preaching. Clearly M’Cheyne’s sermon preparation was not limited to the hours he spent in his study. It was an ongoing reality throughout the day, beginning in his private times with God and carrying him throughout the day with pastoral work. Perhaps we would do well to turn off the radio while driving to an appointment and meditate of the mysteries of the gospel, using any spare moment of the day for meditation on Scripture, feeding ourselves deeply from the well of Scripture so that we may draw deeply, pouring out our own experience of God’s word to our people in preaching and one-on-one ministry.

Robert Murray M’Cheyne once said that the presence of his beloved Christ was everything, and His absence was death to him. I wonder if we are really conscious of the Spirit’s presence. I wonder if our people can discern anything unusual, supernatural in our preaching. Could it be that we have preached for so many years, having our theology nailed down, that we lack Holy Ghost power in our ministries? Does anything unusual ever happen in your worship services? Are people ever converted, convicted, broken under your preaching? I dare say that we know little of this in our denomination. What do I mean by the presence of God in our preaching? It is difficult to define but we all know it when we see it. It is an unmistakable awareness that God is speaking directly through the preacher, in that very moment to the congregants. It comforts the afflicted and afflicts the comfortable. It comes with life-changing power.

After experiencing revival at Dundee, M’Cheyne was grieved by the paltry response his ministry was then receiving. He wrote Bonar, saying, “O that my soul. . .was made a full vessel of the Spirit, to tell only of Jesus and His love. . The same Jesus reigns. . The same Spirit is able. Why is He restrained? Is the sin ours? Are we the bottle-stoppers of these heavenly dews?” Would you not agree that the Holy Spirit is restrained in our denomination? Are we not a tame denomination? Why do we see so few conversions? Why do we have such strife and division in our churches? Why do Session members refuse to speak with one another? Why do congregations not trust their Sessions? Why are we merely seeing a “shuffling of the deck” concerning church membership? Can we blame this simply on the post-modern disinclination to truth? Should we not look deeply into our own hearts, minds, and consciences, asking ourselves the hard questions? Is it not possible that we are consumed with pride? At our G.A. seminar in June, 2008, we discussed our sin of theological pride and arrogance. One participant observed that when we are accused of being unloving that does not bother us, but when anyone says we are stupid or unlearned, then we are deeply offended. Is it possible that we are grieving, driving away the Holy Spirit by our trust in our planning, programs, and personalities? Are we not guilty of the sin of unbelief? It seems to me that we have blinked, that we are not very confident in the simple preaching of the gospel in the power of the Holy Spirit to do its converting and sanctifying work. And I suggest we examine our hearts concerning our evangelism, or lack of it. Church history clearly notes that any church, college, or seminary that forfeits evangelism as its driving force will surely die. And could it be that in our evangelism are we forgetting the total depravity of man, tending instead to embrace semi-Pelagianism? We vehemently deny such a charge, but could we be saying one thing and doing another? Our failure boldly but compassionately to use the S(in) and H(ell) words reveal a vestige of semi-Pelagianism. We still think man holds the last card, that he has the last say, and we must therefore go easy on the doctrine of sin and hell. May God have mercy, drawing us to repentance!

M’Cheyne was also very quick to maintain a clear conscience before God, seeking always to be washed in the blood of Jesus, seeking to be filled with the Holy Spirit at all times. He sought to maintain a conscience void of offense to anyone. I too often wait until the end of the day or Saturday night, asking God to show me my sin, before the Lord’s Day preaching. What a dangerous practice! By doing this am I not saying that I can pretty much carry on the day-to-day activities of ministry, that I really need the Spirit only when I am preaching? Not only are we in danger of grieving the Spirit in such a practice, but we also are prone to hardness of heart that fuels our brazenness to sin horribly, bringing shame to the One who bought us with His own blood.

M’Cheyne said, “I ought to meditate often on heaven as a world of holiness. . .I ought to avoid the appearance of evil.” May I suggest you memorize and meditate on such passages as Revelation 4, 5, 19-21? May God so work in us that heaven is as real to us and our people as living in this world! Be careful to guard yourself from every appearance of evil. We all know friends in the ministry who have made shipwreck of their faith, ministries, and families by carelessness with women and money. Are you too close with a woman who is not your wife? Are you dabbling in pornography, even sensual television programs, movies, or magazines? Are you materialistic, careless, or dishonest with money? Do you have anyone in your life who will ask you the hard questions? Are you honest with that person?

In summary, the one thing that sets Robert Murray M’Cheyne apart as a man greatly used of God in revival is his desire to be as holy as any sinner can be. In a day when Reformed pastors champion grace to the point of denying the third use of the Law; in a day when we sin so casually, rarely grieving deeply over our sin; in a day when we say we believe in man’s total inability but live as though man makes the decision to believe or not believe on Christ; it is vital that we return to a balanced view of gospel ministry. We glory in the doctrine of election, knowing that God has chosen a people for Himself; but we need also to remember our responsibility to walk in holiness, to discipline ourselves for the purpose of godliness, to fight the good fight of faith, to be sober, to fulfill our ministries, to do the work of an evangelist, to offer our bodies as living sacrifices for Christ, to spend and be spent for the sake of the gospel.

Are you praying earnestly with others for revival and the power of the Holy Spirit upon your preaching and other aspects of ministry? Are you urging your church officers and people to pray earnestly for these things? Are you conscious, really conscious of your frailty and inability to affect change in your culture? Are you a true Calvinist or are you a de facto Arminian?

Can we put away the silver bullets that promise to make us successful in ministry? Can we build on holiness of life, sufficiency of Scripture and the crucified Christ, and the ministry of the Holy Spirit? I suggest this Biblical approach is wonderfully liberating to those of us who have tried all the latest gimmicks meant to make us successful, promising large congregations. We are tired, discouraged, and perhaps disillusioned.

Most of us reading this are not greatly gifted or talented, but this does not matter. Most of us pastor smaller congregations and this will probably never change. But if we are truly faithful to Christ, if we are walking in holiness, if we are men of earnest prayer, if we long for the presence of the Spirit, then we will bear fruit in ministry--some thirty fold, some sixty fold, some one hundred fold. The amount does not matter, for our God is sovereign in salvation, as in all things. As you seek to live godly in Christ Jesus you will experience the joy of ministry. God will rekindle that which you had in the early days of your gospel work.