May 20, 2013
-
with one accord in prayer & supplication: "No other course has been prescribed" ~ George Smeaton
Yesterday was Pentecost Sunday, and I'd like to re-post here a blog I'd written yesterday for my other site, http://naphtali_deer.xanga.com ... but I'm adding this introduction first...
Earlier this morning, I opened to the book of Isaiah to look something up, and then came across these words beginning in Isaiah 30 (all references in this introduction are from the NKJV; in the post below they are taken from the KJV, unless otherwise indicated):
Isaiah 30
1 “Woe to the rebellious children,” says the Lord,
“Who take counsel, but not of Me,
And who devise plans, but not of My Spirit,
That they may add sin to sin;
2 Who walk to go down to Egypt,
And have not asked My advice,
To strengthen themselves in the strength of Pharaoh,
And to trust in the shadow of Egypt!
3 Therefore the strength of Pharaoh
Shall be your shame,
And trust in the shadow of Egypt
Shall be your humiliation.
4 For his princes were at Zoan,
And his ambassadors came to Hanes.
5 They were all ashamed of a people who could not benefit them,
Or be help or benefit,
But a shame and also a reproach.”The Lord calls Israel "rebellious children," and accuses them of adding "sin to sin." . . . What were they doing to justify God's calling down woe upon them?
"Who take counsel, but NOT OF ME..."
"And who devise plans, but NOT OF MY SPIRIT..."
We find myriad similar examples throughout the Bible (as well as Church history). At the current time, how are we in the Church in the United States really any different than Israel were in time of Isaiah? What real help and what true benefit can we derive by taking counsel NOT of the LORD and devising plans NOT of God's Spirit? What will we reap by seeking help elsewhere –– except shame and reproach upon ourselves, and shame and reproach upon the name of God and the cause of Christ?
One of my favorite and most encouraging verses of Scripture is found in Isaiah 45:19b:
I did not say to the seed of Jacob,
‘Seek Me in vain’What a reminder from the Lord of hosts, that our seeking Him is not in vain! However, as we seek help anywhere else, it will always be in vain. May we zealously, earnestly and fervently seek God's face in prayer and not let Him go, to prevail in prayer like Jacob and the 120 in the upper room, and plead with Him to bless us and baptize us afresh with His Holy Spirit, just as He did on that Pentecost Sunday ten days after Jesus' ascension. As George Smeaton (whom I've quoted more extensively in the post below) wrote:
As to the peculiar mode of praying, we may say that in every season of general awakening the Christian community waits just as they waited for the effusion of the Spirit, with one accord in prayer and supplication, in the interval between the Ascension and Pentecost. No other course has been prescribed; and the Church of the present has all the warrant she ever had to wait, expect, and, pray.
My brothers and sisters, we can be assured that our seeking the face of God is never in vain! May we show ourselves to be the seed of Jacob, and purify ourselves as He is pure, and seek Him with a holy boldness through our Great High Priest, the Lord Jesus Christ –– for that is the only course God Himself has prescribed for His people.
Psalm 24
3 Who may ascend into the hill of the Lord?
Or who may stand in His holy place?
4 He who has clean hands and a pure heart,
Who has not lifted up his soul to an idol,
Nor sworn deceitfully.
5 He shall receive blessing from the Lord,
And righteousness from the God of his salvation.
6 This is Jacob, the generation of those who seek Him,
Who seek Your face. SelahYours in Christ, seeking your joy, for the reviving of Christ's Church, for the joy of the nations, for the joy and glory and renown of God Himself,
Karen
with one accord in prayer & supplication: "No other course has been prescribed" ~ George Smeaton
Luke 24:49 And, behold, I send the promise of my Father upon you: but tarry ye in the city of Jerusalem, until ye be endued with power from on high...
Acts 1:4 And, being assembled together with them, commanded them that they should not depart from Jerusalem, but wait for the promise of the Father, which, saith he, ye have heard of me. 5 For John truly baptized with water; but ye shall be baptized with the Holy Ghost not many days hence.
Today is the celebration of Pentecost Sunday, the day on which the Lord Jesus Christ fulfilled His word to send the promise of the Father –– the day when He baptized His people with the Holy Spirit and with fire. Though the Church's understanding was lacking and deficient in some ways at that time, e.g. - her query to Jesus as to whether He was going to restore the Kingdom to Israel at that time (Acts 1:6) –– (and it's all too tempting for us to point fingers at them, isn't it?) –– yet these first century saints had a knowledge that many of us lack today... they were fully persuaded that without power from above, they could do nothing!
The early Church had been clearly impressed with the vital necessity to tarry in Jerusalem just as Jesus commanded. They had been humbled; they had been brought to see and to own their total insufficiency, and accordingly their need to receive the gift of the promised Holy Spirit. For those ten days between Jesus' Ascension and Pentecost, the 120 were in one accord in prayer and supplication: the Bride of Christ was "leaning upon her Beloved!"
Even though some of these disciples had had intimate fellowship with Jesus, even though many of them had walked with Jesus and learned from Him and of Him for a period of three years, yet each and every one of them had come to understand they were ill-equipped for the commission Christ had given them – to go and make disciples of all nations. Therefore, they fully obeyed Jesus' command to wait: they did tarry in Jerusalem, and they did continue in prayer (imagine a ten-day round-the-clock prayer meeting at your church?!) –– until the blessing was poured out –– until they were baptized with the blessed Holy Spirit.
O! that we in the Church today might have a Spirit-imparted sense of our total insufficiency and our poverty and our need to receive the outpouring of the Spirit as did they, so we might persevere with one accord in prayer and supplication as did they! Luke 11:13 "If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!"
Martyn Lloyd-Jones reminds us:
There is only one sense in which what happened on the day of Pentecost cannot be repeated and that is simply that it did happen to be the first of a series. And, of course, you cannot repeat the first. But the fact that you cannot repeat the first does not mean for a moment that what happened on the first occasion cannot happen again. And every revival of religion, I say, is really a repetition of what happened on the day of Pentecost. It is really almost incredible that people should go on saying that what happened at Pentecost was once and for all. ~ from Chapter 16 (What Happens in Revival) in "Revival" (Wheaton: Crossway, 1987), 199-200.
The following is an excerpt from George Smeaton's "The Doctrine of the Holy Spirit" (orig. published 1882, second edition 1889; Fourth Banner of Truth Trust reprint 1997), pages 287-290...
As to the peculiar mode of praying, we may say that in every season of general awakening the Christian community waits just as they waited for the effusion of the Spirit, with one accord in prayer and supplication, in the interval between the Ascension and Pentecost. No other course has been prescribed; and the Church of the present has all the warrant she ever had to wait, expect, and, pray. The first disciples waited in the youthfulness of simple hope, not for a spirit which they had not, but for more of the Spirit which they had; and Christianity has not outlived itself. Ten days they waited with one accord in prayer, when of a sudden the Spirit came to give them spiritual eyes to apprehend divine things as they never knew them before, and to impart a joy which no man could take from them. It was prayer IN THE SPIRIT (Eph. vi. 18), and prayer FOR THE SPIRIT, the great promise of the Father. But the prayer which brought down the Holy Ghost was not that style of petition which ceases if it is not heard at once or if the heart is out of tune. The prayer which prevails with Him who gives the Spirit is that which will not let go without the blessing. When the spirit of extraordinary supplication is poured out from on high,––when an ardent desire is cherished for the Holy Ghost,––when the Church asks according to God’s riches in glory, and expects such great things as God’s promises warrant and Christ’s merits can procure, the time to favour Zion, the set time, is come (Ps. cii. 16-18). When we look at the prayers in Scripture, we find that God’s glory, the Church’s growth and welfare, her holiness and progress, were ever higher in the thoughts and breathings of the saints than personal considerations (Ps. lxvii. 1-7). And if we are animated with any other frame of mind, it is not prayer taught by the Spirit, nor offered up in the name of Christ (Isa. lxii. 1-7).
The praying attitude of the Church in the first days after the Ascension, when the disciples waited for the Spirit, should be the Church's attitude still. I need not refer to the copious references of the apostles to the urgent duty of praying in the Spirit and praying for the Spirit, nor shall I refer at large to the habits of all true labourers, such as Luther, Welsh, Whitefield, and others, in proof of the great truth that prayer is the main work of a ministry. And no more mischievous and misleading theory could be propounded, nor any one more dishonouring to the Holy Spirit, than the principle adopted by the Plymouth Brethren, that because the Spirit was poured out at Pentecost, the Church has no need, and no warrant, to pray any more for the effusion of the Spirit of God. On the contrary, the more the Church asks the Spirit ¹; and waits for His communication, the more she receives. ² The prayer of faith in one incessant cry comes up from the earth in support of the efforts put forth for the conversion of a people ready to perish. This prayer goes before and follows after all the calls to repentance. The company of labourers associated together in such work, come to feel as they proceed that they are encircled with a mighty power, and have an authority not their own. The interest taken in the work of advancing the Redeemer’s Kingdom thus has much of a personal concern, and is far elevated above the vague and pointless efforts of mere official routine.
The apostles, in their various Epistles, when referring to their own unceasing exercise of prayer, hold up the mirror to others; a nd never do men more realize than in a time of revival that in all their previous career they have been scarcely half-awake. In such a time the conviction is borne home upon them that no fitful exercise of prayer will avail to obtain the blessing. And their purpose, as they seek to take the kingdom by force, is to do violence to the lethargy and disinclination of nature, and to act as the Lord's remembrancers, who keep not silence and give Him no rest, till He establish Jerusalem and make her a praise in the earth.
____________
¹ As I do not deem it proper to exceed the limits of the required six lectures; I would take occasion to direct attention to the great work of [John] OWEN, The Work of the Holy Ghost in Prayer, and also to [William] GURNALL'S discussion of the same theme in The Christian in Complete Armour.
² A remarkable passage on prayer, and on working by the power of prayer, occurs in [John] Foster's essay on the application of the epithet “Romantic:" [in Essays in a Series of Letters, published in 1826] “I am convinced,” says he, “that every man who, amidst his serious projects, is apprised of his dependence on God, as completely as that dependence is a fact, will be impelled to pray, and anxious to induce his serious friends to pray, almost every hour. He will as little without it promise himself any noble success, as a mariner would expect to reach a distant coast by having his sails spread in a stagnation of air. I have intimated my fear that it is visionary to expect any unusual success in the human administration of religion unless there are unusual omens; now a most emphatical spirit of prayer would be such an omen; and the individual who should solemnly determine to try its last possible efficacy, might probably find himself becoming a much more prevailing agent in his little sphere. And if the whole, or the greater number of the disciples of Christianity were, with an earnest, unalterable determination of each to combine that heaven should not withhold one single influence, which the very utmost of conspiring and persevering supplication would obtain, it would be the sign that a revolution of the world was at hand."
* * *
Instead of following the latest worldly trends, instead of implementing 21st century solutions, and instead of leaning upon our own power, let us give due glory and honor to the Godhead by returning to the Scripture, by returning to the apostolic doctrine, and by returning to the apostolic practice of full reliance upon the Holy Spirit of God by prevailing in prayer and not letting go until we receive the blessing of the Holy Spirit pouring down from on high in reviving fire!
Let us repent and return to the Lord with weeping, and seek the Lord of hosts and entreat the Lord, and wrestle with Him in unceasing prayer and wait for our God, that He might pour down His favor upon us –– to pour out His Holy Spirit upon us –– just as He did for the saints of old... because, as George Smeaton reminds us, "no other course has been prescribed."
The mirror is being held up to us today, my brothers and sisters... May God have mercy upon us, and may the Spirit give us an ear to hear what these examples in the Bible and throughout Church history have to say to us today, so we might be found faithful in prayer along with the great cloud of remembrancers... for we have the warrant "to wait, expect, and, pray" for more of the Holy Spirit.
Luke 18:1 And he spake a parable unto them to this end, that men ought always to pray, and not to faint; 2 Saying, There was in a city a judge, which feared not God, neither regarded man: 3 And there was a widow in that city; and she came unto him, saying, Avenge me of mine adversary. 4 And he would not for a while: but afterward he said within himself, Though I fear not God, nor regard man; 5 Yet because this widow troubleth me, I will avenge her, lest by her continual coming she weary me. 6 And the Lord said, Hear what the unjust judge saith. 7 And shall not God avenge his own elect, which cry day and night unto him, though he bear long with them? 8 I tell you that he will avenge them speedily. Nevertheless when the Son of man cometh, shall he find faith on the earth?
I Corinthians 10:11 Now all these things happened unto them for ensamples: and they are written for our admonition, upon whom the ends of the world are come. 12 Wherefore let him that thinketh he standeth take heed lest he fall.
Hosea 12
3 In the womb he [Jacob] took his brother by the heel,
and in his manhood he strove with God.
4 He strove with the angel and prevailed;
he wept and sought his favor.
He met God at Bethel,
and there God spoke with us—
5 the LORD, the God of hosts,
the LORD is his memorial name:
6 “So you, by the help of your God, return,
hold fast to love and justice,
and wait continually for your God.”
(ESV)Acts 1:14 These all continued with one accord in prayer and supplication, with the women, and Mary the mother of Jesus, and with his brethren...
Image credit: Work found here / CC BY-SA 3.0Acts 2
1 And when the day of Pentecost was fully come,
they were all with one accord in one place.
2 And suddenly there came a sound from heaven
as of a rushing mighty wind,
and it filled all the house where they were sitting.
3 And there appeared unto them cloven tongues like as of fire,
and it sat upon each of them.
4 And they were all filled with the Holy Ghost,
and began to speak with other tongues,
as the Spirit gave them utterance.* * *
* Please add your PRAYERS below as the Holy Spirit leads you. *
RSS Feed
