George Whitefield

  • a challenge to you (God has some secret ones in all places)

    In his Journals, George Whitefield wrote of a group called “The New Lights,” who were set up for worship and fellowship in Gibraltar (131).

    Sunday, Feb. 25 [1738]. About six this morning went with friend Habersham to the church to pray with some devout soldiers, who I heard used to meet there at that time, and with whom my soul was knit immediately. After we had finished our devotion, I made an enquiry into their state, and found that their Society had been subsisting about twelve years, and that one Sergeant B., (a devout soldier indeed) now amongst them, was the first beginner of it. At first, they told me they used to meet in dens and mountains, and caves int he rocks; but afterwards, upon their applying for leave to build a little place to retire in, Doctor C., and Governor Sabine gave them the free use of the Church, where they constantly meet three times in a day to pray, read, and sing psalms, and at any other season when they pleased. They have met with contempt, and are now, in derision, called The New Lights. A glorious light they are indeed; for I conversed closely with several of them, and they made me quite ashamed of my little proficiency in the School of Christ. Many have joined with them for a time, but a servile fear of men – that bane of Christianity – made them draw back. However, some continue steadfast and immoveable, though despised by the world. Governor Sabine countenances them much, and has spoken of them often to me with respect. Blessed be God! even the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, Who hath not left Himself without witness in any place, but hath some everywhere, who serve Him and work righteousness.

    The Sunday before we came hither, I was telling my friend Habersham that I had reason to think by what had happened to me, that God had some work for me to do at Gibraltar. He answered that there could not be much good expected from among soldiers. I replied – No Doubt God has some secret ones in all places, who tremble at His Word. And lo! He hath this day brought me to them.

    Iain Murray (in “Revival and Revivalism: The Making and Marring of American Evangelicalism 1750-1858,” Banner of Truth Trust (Edinburgh: 1994, reprinted 1996, 57)) wrote this:

    At Princeton [John] Witherspoon’s students used to hear him say that when the church was to prosper it was noticeable that her leaders ‘flourish in clusters’, each helping one another.

    George Whitefield also wrote that he “had a sweet knot of religious friends” (Journals, 91).

    All of us who are here together are sure testimony to how God has some secret ones in all places, who tremble at His Word – even here at Xanga and Revelife! Certainly something good came out of Nazareth…and something good can even come out of Xanga and Revelife too. (Please see here and here.)

    When I began blogging, as I’ve said before, revival wasn’t even on my radar screen. Yes, I knew there were things not right with the church, and that greatly distressed me. I was thinking of and reading about and researching ways we/I could fix the Church, but in the meantime, God made it clear the only way the Church can be reformed is through a sovereign movement of His Holy Spirit. (The first step in that process was for Him to humble me and to show me that I couldn’t fix myself, much less the Church! How ridiculous we are to have such thoughts!)

    I’ve been so blessed as I’ve come across people both here and locally whom God has been touching and reviving with His Spirit, to show them their insufficiency and His sufficiency, helping them to delight in Him and His Gospel and giving them eyes to see the sad state of the Church and burdening them to pray for revival as well as to encourage and build up one another in the faith.

    I will say that God has indeed brought a few of us together here as “The New Lights,” as a little “cluster,” as “a sweet knot of religious friends.”

    I’ve not met any of you. Yet, you are a sweet knot of religious friends to me. You are lights here that have served to bring brightness to some of my dark days. Just to know there are others out there who are like-minded has been such an encouragement to me. That God has other people in “this city,” so to speak. When we may be tempted to feel we are alone like Elijah, yet we can know God does have many of His people throughout the world who hunger and thirst for Him. (Yes, I know I wrote yesterday about the danger and temptation to make more of our friends than we ought. Yet, God does give us Christian friends to encourage us, for sure; we must always keep all things in the right perspective, however.)

    Yes, we’re small in number, but we know numbers never limit God (e.g.- see here).

    Yes, we’re limited by distance (computer screens just aren’t quite the same as in-person contact) and we have no formal structure, both of which I’ve found a bit frustrating. Yet I will say God has knit our souls together in Him in a way I’d not imagined. We have a common love for the Lord and His Church given to us by His Spirit.

    As I said when I started up deerlife, my intent here is to encourage us to encourage one another as we blog/comment here, but also to go out into our local communities and churches and work there. I truly value the friendships and fellowship I have found here. I have been truly blessed. More than I could have imagined. I am not ready to discard what we have here, nor do I believe God intends for us to discard it at this time. I also believe there are others God wants to draw into this cluster here along with us. (I would appreciate your continuing to pray that God would draw those He wills to come alongside us, those who have a desire to see God glorified and magnified in His Church.)

    From the time I started up tent of meeting, I’ve had in the back of my mind to challenge those of you out there to begin praying that God might bring you to like-minded men and women in your own churches and cities and begin to meet with them on a regular basis to pray for revival for we know that God does have some secret ones in all places, who tremble at His Word. (I’ve already been doing this for myself to some extent.) I’ve held off on publicly announcing that since I didn’t want to go ahead of God, but I believe I He’s leading me to give you that challenge today. I do know He is calling me to more concerted prayer for myself in that regard.

    I have no authority over any of you, but I will humbly ask you to consider praying about this, to pray that God would lead you to others in your own area who are zealous for God’s Name and are longing for revival in the Church and seeking to pray for revival. In due time, I also expect to make this type of request on tent of meeting as well (and possibly my other blog, napthali_deer), but for now I am bringing this request to this cluster of friends here, and I am asking as God leads you, that you would begin praying this not only for yourself but also for the rest of us here.

    I have a dream of many sweet knots of religious friends, clusters of friends flourishing all over the globe as they gather together in concerted prayer to seek God’s face for revival! No Doubt God has some secret ones in all places, who tremble at His Word. The thought of this thrills me! I hope it does you also.

    I’m also bringing this request to you now in part because just last month I became a member of our local church (after having been there over two years) and tonight for the first time I will be attending a women’s gathering with some other women from our church. Yes, it’s taken me a while, but now God has made it clear to us this is the place we are to be, so now I am stepping out in faith. I have already been praying God would give me His eyes to see those He has given a heart to see the Church revived. I have also been praying about and for several other friends in the area whom I know in other churches. I have seen God working in some women (and men) here in much the same way He has in me (and as I’ve seen in you): giving us a hunger for Him which goes beyond a mere head knowledge to an intimate, experiential knowledge of Him; a greater desire to worship Him and enjoy Him; an increasing desire for holiness and an increasing hatred of sin; and so on.

    I don’t know what God has ahead for any of us, but I want to thank God and thank you all for your fellowship here and your many encouragements to me.

    May God Almighty strengthen us to keep prostrating ourselves before Him on behalf of His Church, for we are His people and His inheritance whom He brought out with His mighty power and outstretched arm! (Deuteronomy 9)

    I Samuel 12:19  And all the people said to Samuel, “Pray for your servants to the LORD your God, that we may not die, for we have added to all our sins this evil, to ask for ourselves a king.” 20  And Samuel said to the people, “Do not be afraid; you have done all this evil. Yet do not turn aside from following the LORD, but serve the LORD with all your heart. 21  And do not turn aside after empty things that cannot profit or deliver, for they are empty. 22  For the LORD will not forsake his people, for his great name’s sake, because it has pleased the LORD to make you a people for himself. 23  Moreover, as for me, far be it from me that I should sin against the LORD by ceasing to pray for you, and I will instruct you in the good and the right way.

    May we seek to glorify God and enjoy Him forever!

    Captured by His love, mercy and grace,
    Karen

  • Half a dozen men: Is that too many to ask for? (deer retreat update)

     
    I read George Whitefield’s Journals last year and have wanted to reread them (I’ve dabbled in them a bit since that time), but I did take them along with me on retreat last week (see here and here for more on my time away).

    Luke Tyerman (quoted by Iain Murray in the Introduction to George Whitefield’s Journals, p. 19) wrote this about Whitefield:

    Half a dozen men like Whitefield would at any time move a nation, stir its churches, and reform its morals. Whitefield’s power was not in his talents, nor even in his oratory, but in his piety. In some respects, he has no successors; but in prayer, in faith, in religious experience, in devotedness to God, he may have many. Such men are the gift of God, and are infinitely more valuable than all the gold in the Church’s coffers. Never did the world need them more than it needs them now. May Whitefield’s God raise them up, and thrust them out!

    After reading those words I wrote the following reflection/prayer in the margin and at the bottom of the page:

    Is He [the Lord] not the Giver of every good gift? Can we not ask Him for half a dozen? Are not half a dozen sufficient – so long as they are animated by the Spirit of God, devoted to the glory of God and driven by the zeal of the Lord of hosts? Matthew 7:7. He can save by many or few. His glory is magnified when it is but few.

    He provides workers with an eye and aim to HIS glory first and foremost. He will never provide a single worker more lest it obscure His glory.

    Let us rejoice in the workers He has provided.

    Let us pray He would send more workers into His harvest.

    Let us not question His ways, nor presume to be His counselor. All things are from Him, through Him and to Him and His glory. Romans 11:36.

    A worker He will not withhold should that soul in concert with the others work to magnify His Name.

    Let us trust His ways > ours.

    Amen.

    So there I was praying in faith for half a dozen workers, trusting God to work through that small number…I thought that was a pretty strong prayer of faith…

    But God showed me otherwise…

    During one the services I attended while I was away, Scripture was read from Isaiah 51…

    1  “Listen to me, you who pursue righteousness,
    you who seek the LORD:
    look to the rock from which you were hewn,
    and to the quarry from which you were dug.
    2  Look to Abraham your father
    and to Sarah who bore you;
    for he was but one when I called him,
    that I might bless him and multiply him.
    3  For the LORD comforts Zion;
    he comforts all her waste places
    and makes her wilderness like Eden,
    her desert like the garden of the LORD;
    joy and gladness will be found in her,
    thanksgiving and the voice of song.
    4  “Give attention to me, my people,
    and give ear to me, my nation;
    for a law will go out from me,
    and I will set my justice for a light to the peoples.
    5  My righteousness draws near,
    my salvation has gone out,
    and my arms will judge the peoples;
    the coastlands hope for me,
    and for my arm they wait.

    I had been asking the Lord for a half a dozen men and had been thinking that was a bold step of faith since in the big scheme of things half a dozen men is not very many, yet God rebuked and humbled me and reminded me all He needs is a single man. He doesn’t need half a dozen men! He needs but one!

    Look to Abraham your father…
    for he was but one when I called him,
    that I might bless him and multiply him.

    Aren’t God’s ways and thoughts are higher than ours?

    for he was but one when I called him,
    that I might bless him and multiply him.

    We think (I think, anyhow) we certainly need more than one. We think (I think, anyhow) we need half a dozen men (or more, often many more). I continue to fall into the trap that we need more, more, more. More people to pray. More people to preach the Word. More. More. Grrr!

    Is anything too hard for the Lord? No, of course not!

    Can the Lord save by many or by few? Yes and yes!

    Is not the Lord among His people wherever they go? Certainly yes!

    Is the Lord’s arm shortened or His power diminished because the numbers of men He chooses to enlist in His work are small? No, of course not!

    On a retreat last spring God pretty much reminded me of this very same thing as I read Joshua 3 and reflected on His call to Israel to step out in faith:

    There God is saying to the priests and the people (and us) (my paraphrase, see also Psalm 78):

    “Yes, the Jordan is ahead of you. Yes, I see the Jordan is overflowing its banks because it is harvest time. Yes, I have eyes to see that. I see that. Of course I do. I see all things. Do you not know I created the Jordan River? But do you not also know I am the God of the Jordan River? Do you not remember that I created the seasons and control them all? Do you not know? Have you not heard? Have you forgotten I am the living God? Have you forgotten all things exist because of Me and all things were created through Me and for Me and that I am before all things and in Me all things consist?

    “Do you not see Me high and lifted up? No, you may not see me with your naked eye but do you see me with the eye of faith? Will you not trust in Me, the God who is invisible, but the God who abides in and with you? Will you trust me with a heart of faith? Do you not see that I am going before you and beside you and behind you? I am with My people whithersoever they go. You are My people. I have redeemed you and I have set my love on you because I loved you. I have promised to never leave you or forsake you. The Jordan is flooding now. But I command you to go on, to begin. “How can we go on?” you ask. “How can we begin?” you ask. I tell you, you go on by faith in Me and My promises to you. You begin by faith in Me and My promises to you. Don’t limit me as your fathers did in the wilderness did.

    “Do you not remember My power, on the day I redeemed you from the enemy with the precious Lamb’s blood and worked signs and wonders in Egypt and made you to go forth. Did I not guide you like a flock and lead you safely through the Red Sea? Will you not remember I am your Rock and I am the Most High God, your Redeemer? Will you be like your fathers? Will you limit the Holy One of Israel? Remember My power! Remember the day I redeemed you from the enemy. I am the God who did wonders then and I am the God who does wonders today and I am the God who will do wonders among you tomorrow. I am the same yesterday, today and forever. I am the Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the End, who is and who was and who is to come, the Almighty God.”

    Once more I’ve been reminded of how small my view of God is, how puny my faith is, and how I continue to limit God.

    Did not God’s Spirit move and bless and multiply through a single soul like Abraham our father?

    Did not God’s Spirit move and bless and multiply through a single soul, our Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ?

    Cannot God’s Spirit move and bless and multiply through a single one of us today?

    I confess I find that hard to believe at times. (“O, Karen, ye of little faith!”)

    Yesterday on my other blog I was reflecting on Kingdom vision and posted some quotes from David Livingstone (from Rob Mackenzie’s biography “David Livingstone: The Truth behind the Legend”). Here’s one of them:

     
     
    A quiet audience today. The seed being sown, the least of all seeds now, but it will grow a mighty tree. It is as if it were a small stone cut out of a mountain, but it will fill the whole earth. He that believeth shall not make haste. Surely if God can bear with hardened impenitent sinners for 30, 40 or 50 years, waiting to be gracious, we may take it for granted that His is the best way. He could destroy His enemies, but He waits to be gracious. To become irritated with their stubbornness and hardness of heart is ungodlike.

    I know Livingstone meant this in a different way, but my friends in Christ, aren’t we are that seed being sown, aren’t we that small stone…

    John 12:24  Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit. 25  Whoever loves his life loses it, and whoever hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life. 26  If anyone serves me, he must follow me; and where I am, there will my servant be also. If anyone serves me, the Father will honor him.

    Yes, it’s true that we are the least of all seeds now and we are a small stone now…seemingly insignificant in the eyes of men (and in our own eyes)…

    However, because we are called by God and because we are filled with the Spirit of God … Will we not grow a mighty tree? Will we not fill the whole earth?

    Has God not called us like He did Abraham … so He might bless and multiply us?

    We see how we are so much like Abraham. Abraham was weak and powerless, his body was as good as dead and Sarah’s womb was barren (see the last part of Romans 4) and yet we see how he trusted God’s word and was justified by faith and lived by faith and God wrought through him a great nation, of which we are now a part by faith in Christ.

    Romans 4:18  In hope [Abraham] believed against hope, that he should become the father of many nations, as he had been told, “So shall your offspring be.” 19  He did not weaken in faith when he considered his own body, which was as good as dead (since he was about a hundred years old), or when he considered the barrenness of Sarah’s womb. 20  No distrust made him waver concerning the promise of God, but he grew strong in his faith as he gave glory to God, 21  fully convinced that God was able to do what he had promised.

    This is the same type of faith we’re to have in God and in the promises of God. Yes, we are as good as dead. Yes, we are the least of seeds now. Yes, we are the small stone now … Yes, that’s us. But what do we know about God? Is not our God is the God who gives life to the dead and calls into existence the things that do not exist. Romans 4:17.

    Just as the Lord Jesus Christ was crucified, died, was buried and rose again from the dead to be the firstfruits of many creatures, so too we have been buried with Christ and raised by His resurrection power and filled with His Spirit so we might bear fruit to God – much fruit, fruit that will last (John 15). As we put to death our fleshly desires and live the life by His Spirit He intends, as we die to our own interests and live to His Kingdom interests, to seek to serve rather than be served, there is no doubt the Lord Christ will bear fruit through us (e.g.- see Romans 6). That is God’s intent for each of His children, not just the George Whitefields of the world, not just the ordained pastors, not just the worship leaders, etc., etc. If we are Christ’s joint-heirs, we cannot help but bear fruit like our Brother because we have His same fruit-bearing Spirit dwelling within us.

    As Abraham was but one, we are but few when He calls us, but God’s intent has always been the same for His people: to bless us and multiply us and bear fruit through us throughout the whole earth! Was that not Jesus’ commission to us? Has our Lord not given us all we need to bear fruit as He commands?

    Luke 24:46  …“Thus it is written, that the Christ should suffer and on the third day rise from the dead, 47  and that repentance and forgiveness of sins should be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem. 48  You are witnesses of these things. 49  And behold, I am sending the promise of my Father upon you. But stay in the city until you are clothed with power from on high.”

    Matthew 28:18  And Jesus came and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. 19  Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, 20  teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”

    Returning back to the title of this post…

    Half a dozen men: Is that too many to ask for?

    Perhaps it is too many. Perhaps not. No matter. Let us ask our Lord first and foremost to circumcise each of our hearts by His Spirit so we might die to self to live to Him, to hate our lives in this world so we might keep them for eternal life, so we might bear much fruit to His glory. By His grace, may we trust His ways and His timing, knowing that He is working all things for His glory, whether it takes 30, 40 or 50 years or more, for we can be assured that He waits only so He might be highly exalted (Isaiah 30:18)! And, by His grace, may we (I) not limit Him but leave the numbers to Him! For indeed He doeth all things well, does He not?

    Never did the world need them more than it needs them now!
    May Whitefield’s God and our God raise them (us) up, and thrust them (and us) out!
    Soli Deo Gloria!

     

    If you have a burden and calling from God to pray for revival, please visit my website tent of meeting, dedicated to prayer for revival.

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    Scripture quotations are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version, copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.