King's Business - 1915-03

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THE KING’S BUSINESS

any further who the people are who will be disappointed in these meet­ ings, and who will say in after years, the meetings were a failure—every man and every woman who don’t get quickened themselves. If one of these ministers here does not get quickened himself, he will say the work has failed. I have never known a man who has got quickened him­ self to say the work had failed. No­ where that we have been has that ever been the case. What we want is to get down to ourselves, then there will be a true revival. There must be a casting down of ourselves before there can be a lifting up. it was only when Abraham was on his face in the dust before God that God would talk to him. It is when we get down there that God lifts up and the blessing comes. There is no true revival until God’s own people arc blessed, until they are quickened, it is all superficial until then. Unless we have that, the work will be a counterfeit. If you Christians at­ tempt to get to work among the un­ godly and unconverted before you get quickened yourselves, God won’t bless you. It is as the Psalmist says, that when the Lord has restored unto us the joy of His salvation we are able to teach transgressors' His way and sinners are converted unto Him. We are not able to do it until then. While we are cold and lukewarm and conformed to the world and have not the Holy Ghost resting upon us, God is not going to revive His work. Here and there you will hear of one converted, but the work won’t be deep and thorough and last­ ing unless the Church of God is quick­ ened. Now I have just come here from Princeton. I confess I have seen nothing in America that has pleased me like what I have seen in Prince­ ton. I think they have a revival

there. The President of the College told me he had not seen anything like it, and one of the faculty told me he did not think there had ever been anything like it in the history of Princeton. Of course, I inquired into it and I found that they had sent for different ministers to come there and had been disappointed. Then they got together, the Christians did, and prayed God to bless them, and one of .the faculty asked them to pray for him, and right there the work broke out. There have been about 50 quickened and brought back who had wandered from Christ, and it looks now as if all Princeton was going to be blessed. Oh! that it may commence here tonight in our own hearts. Oh ! that we may be quick­ ened first and then how quick the Lord will bless us. If you want to introduce two men to each other, you must be near to them. If you want to introduce sinners to God, you must be near to God and to the sinner, too. But if a man is near God, he will have a love for the sinner, too, and his heart will be near that man. But until we are brought near to God ourselves, we cannot introduce men to God. Somebody has said, “God uses the vessel that is nearest at hand.” If we are near to God, He will use us and if we are not, of course, He cannot use us. Now what we want is to be in a position that will give God all the glory. There is one thing that makes me tremble at times for fear the work will all come to naught—because there is so much man-worship. Now we have got to get rid of this man-worship before there will be any deep work. We must sink self out of sight. If we can only get that big “I ” down in the dust and lose sight of our dignity and get self out of the way and are ready to say, “Here I am, Lord, use me if Thou canst, and if

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