Habakkuk 3:2 O LORD, I have heard your speech, and was afraid: O LORD, revive your work in the middle of the years… This is a very important question; for the conversions in any Church will generally be in proportion to the average spiritual life of the Church. This is the law. Of course, there are exceptions. Men fish through the ice in midwinter and catch a large supply; and so it is possible for a pastor to dip right through the crust of worldliness and formality, with which the Church is covered, and bring out converts by the score. But a fisher of men that. can do this must be endowed with a powerful personality and an uncommon zeal. But taking it for granted, then, that the first thing is to bring the Church into a revived condition, how shall we proceed? Now, we remember that in physics it is said, that, in thawing a cake of ice, all the heat which you pour in below the melting point becomes latent and disappears, but that having raised the whole temperature up to the melting point, it takes but little heat to keep it thawing. It is exactly so with a Church. There is what may be called the zealothemial point in the spiritual thermometer. When the temperature of the body is below that point, you may pour in sermons and prayers and pleadings, and all will soon be absorbed and lost. But once bring the condition above that point, and a little effort will keep converts coming constantly. (A. J. Gordon, D. D.) Parallel Verses KJV: O LORD, I have heard thy speech, and was afraid: O LORD, revive thy work in the midst of the years, in the midst of the years make known; in wrath remember mercy. |
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