Revival in the Hebrides

in revival the fear of God lays hold upon the community, moving men and women, who until then had no concern for spiritual things, to seek after God.

Thirdly, they must be prepared for God to work in His own way and not according to their programme – God is sovereign and must act according to His sovereign purpose – but ever keeping in mind that, while God is sovereign in the affairs of men, His sovereignty does not relieve men of responsibility. “God is the God of revival but man is the human agent through whom revival is possible.”

The supernatural working of God the Holy Spirit in revival power is something that no man can fully describe, and it would be folly to attempt it. There are, however, features of the Lewis revival which also characterized revivals of the past, one of which is the spirit of expectancy.

Here was demonstrated the power of prevailing prayer, and that nothing lies beyond the reach of prayer except that which lies outside the will of God.

“We did not know what church-going meant until the revival came, now the prayer meeting is the weekly attraction, and the worship of God in His house on the Sabbath our chief delight.”

Wherever people worked, they prayed. The place of solitude was precious to them. Out on the moor, caring for cattle, they prayed. Prayer was not a burden to them but a delight. They loved to pray; they were constrained to pray.

he and his other office bearers were gripped by the conviction that a God-sent revival must ever be related to holiness, must ever be related to Godliness. Are my hands clean? Is my heart pure?

“the Kingdom of God is not going to be advanced by our churches becoming filled with men, but by men in our churches becoming filled with God.”

It is my own deep conviction that the average man is not going to be impressed by our publicity, our posters or our programmes, but let there be a demonstration of the supernatural in the realm of religion, and at once man is arrested.

it is the getting of men and women into vital, saving and covenant relationship with Jesus Christ, and so supernaturally altered that holiness will characterize their whole being: body, soul and spirit.

“Am I alive to my responsibility as a labourer in God’s vineyard?” I, personally, have constantly to remind myself that I can be a very busy man, and a very idle minister.

Are our lives, are our churches, lights that mark the road that lead men to the Lamb?

Oswald Chambers, who said, "Sanctification is allowing the perfections of Jesus to express themselves through your personality."

Oh, how true it is that hunger, real hunger, creates a capacity for God. "Blessed are they that hunger and thirst after righteousness for they shall be filled." And the reason why we are not filled is simply because we are not hungering after God. We may be hungering after other things, but not after righteousness.

"The greatest thing about us all is not what we say, it is not what we do; the greatest thing about us all is our unconscious influence, and that unconscious influence impregnated by the life of Jesus."

I suppose it might be considered a truism to say that we live in a world that is rocked in a sea of trouble. Solid foundations that we once built upon are being abandoned and we think of them today as mere shadows belonging to a vanished past. On every hand we see signs of frustration, of barrenness and of defeat, and I suppose we all agree that the stream of vital Christianity runs very low indeed.

Now it seems to me that the all-important question for us to face at this hour is, what have we as a Church to offer a generation that is awake, but a generation that is failing to find the true way of life. I know no question in all the range of thought so vital in its issue, so devastating in its implication as this one question: Is the Church we know today a light that marks the road that leads men to the Cross? Is it not true that too often faintheartedness creeps over us, and accordingly there springs up an unwillingness to make strenuous effort toward revival? Now if any book is fitted to correct that tendency, that book is the Word of God,