When I was twelve years of age I felt the need of a new heart. I asked God for it, and He gave it to me. I am now forty-six years old, and oh, how wonderfully the Lord has led me! I must say, there is nothing so grand and glorious as to know that we are of God’s chosen ones. When I came to Grand Rapids five years ago I became acquainted with S. B. Shaw (President of the Michigan Holiness Association), and his very worthy wife. I saw them live by faith alone for all things, both spiritual and temporal.; and of them I learned how to consecrate myself wholly unto the Lord.
I had been afflicted with rheumatism from a child; and had spent large sums of money for my recovery, but could only find relief for a few weeks at a time. I was sick and helpless in bed with inflammatory rheumatism, when I heard through Mrs. Shaw of Mrs. Dora Griffin. I sent for her to anoint me. After she had done so, and while she was praying for my recovery, the Lord touched my body, and I was healed that very same hour, and have never been troubled with rheumatism since; praise God!
One year after this, the piles came upon me, and I suffered greatly. After trying many remedies and doctors without relief, I said: “The Lord has healed me, and He will heal me again; ” so I went to the “Beulah” rest, and after prayer and anointing, I was healed, and went home happy, healed and saved in both soul and body; praise His name forever!
Dear friends, you who are sick of sin and sick in body, come to Jesus, and be healed, soul and body. — Mrs. Susan E. Miller.
On his fiftieth birthday, C. H. Spurgeon was interviewed in reference to his long and eventful ministerial life, especially as to his confidence in the efficacy of prayer. Being asked whether he had in any way modified his views, he replied:
Only in my faith growing far stronger and firmer than ever. It is not a matter of faith with me, but of knowledge and everyday experience. I am constantly witnessing the most unmistakable instances of answers to prayer. My whole life is made up of them. To me they are so familiar as to tease to excite surprise; but to many they would seem marvelous, no doubt. Why, I could no more doubt the efficacy of prayer than I could disbelieve the laws of gravitation. The one is as much a fact as the other, constantly verified every day of my life. Elijah, by the brook Cherith, as he received the daily rations from the ravens, could hardly be a more likely subject for skepticism than I.
Look at my Orphanage. To keep it going entails an annual expenditure of about ten thousand pounds. Only one thousand four hundred is provided for by endowment. The remaining eight thousand six hundred comes to me regularly in answer to prayer. I do not know where I shall get it from day to day. I ask God for it, and he sends it. Mr. Muller, of Bristol, does the same on a far larger scale, and his experience is the same as mine.
The constant inflow of funds-of all the funds necessary to carry on these works-is not stimulated by advertisements, by begging letters, by canvassing, or any of the usual modes of raising the wind. We ask God for the cash, and he sends it. That is a good, material fact, not to be explained away.
But quite as remarkable illustrations of the efficacy of believing faith are constantly occurring in spiritual things. Some two years ago a poor woman, accompanied by her neighbors, came to my vestry in deep distress. Her husband had fled the country; in her sorrow she went to the house of God, and something I said in the sermon made her think I was personally familiar with her case. Of course I had known nothing about her. It was a general illustration that fitted a particular case. She told me her story, and a very sad one it was.
I said: ”There is nothing we can do but to kneel down and cry to the Lord for the immediate conversion of your husband.” We knelt down, and I prayed that the Lord would touch the heart of the deserter, convert his soul, and bring him back to his home. When we rose from our knees , I said to the poor woman : “Do not fret about the matter. I feel sure that your husband will come home, and that he will yet become connected with our church.” She went away, and I forgot all about it. Some months after she reappeared, with her neighbors, and a man, whom she introduced to me as her husband. He had indeed come back, and he had returned a converted man. On making inquiry and comparing notes, we found that the very day on which we had prayed for his conversion, he, being at that time on board a ship far away on the sea, stumbled most unexpectedly upon a stray copy of one of my sermons. He read it.
The truth went to his heart. He repented, and sought the Lord, and as soon as possible he returned to his wife and to his daily calling. He was admitted a member, and last Monday his wife, who up to that time had not been a member, was received among us. That woman does not doubt the power of prayer. All the infidels in the world could not shake her conviction that there is a God that answereth prayer.
I should be the most irrational creature in the world if, with a life every day of which is full of experiences so remarkable, I entertained the slightest doubt on the subject. I do not regard it as miraculous; it is a part and parcel of the established order of the universe, that the shadow of a
coming event should fall in advance upon some believing soul in the shape of prayer for its realization. The prayer of faith is a Divine decree commencing its operation. – Faith Made Easy.
John W. Redfield was a remarkable revivalist among the Methodists and Free Methodists. He died not many years ago. From his memoir, prepared by J. G. Terrill, we take the following: “The Sunday came, and I went to church. A goodly number had come, probably from curiosity, to see the new preacher. I had resolved to deliver my own soul regardless of persons or conditions, by declaring the whole counsel of God. But I saw no favorable indications. After a few efforts during the week following to bring about a change, and finding it all in vain, I went to sinners and exhorted them to flee from the wrath to come. The response from them was: “‘Go, look after your ungodly members.” Sunday came again, and I delivered my message in view of the judgment; When I was leaving the church, I met the principal member of the official board, who accosted me thus: ‘We don’t like your preaching here at all, nor the chapters you lead from the pulpit. Hell is not very popular here.’ “I inquired: ‘Will you tell me, brother, what I have preached that is not Bible truth?” “Well,” said he, “I believe it is true.” “‘Do you want me to preach lies?” I asked. “I went home, weeping along the street. I now saw I was going to accomplish anything, I must do it with might. So, Monday morning, I went to the grove, and before, the Lord in prayer. It seemed as though the power I experienced of darkness were all about me. The sensations were as if by the hardest effort I was overcoming great obstacles and rising higher and higher, until my head struck against a rock, and I sank back overcome. I arose and sought another place to plead with God, and there experienced the same. Thus I continued day after day through the week. I would go to the house once in a while and get something to eat, and then return to the struggle. Sometimes my agony was such that it seemed to me I could rend the heavens with my cries for the salvation of sinners. It seemed to me that if I could hold on until the victory came, I should see them saved. When Saturday night came my very brain seemed sore, and the jar of my step gave me pain. I felt a kind of bewilderment coming on, but I had received no answer. I had resolved, in the name of God, to see a break and salvation come to the church, on the next Sunday, or an end put to its standing as a stench in the nostrils of the Almighty and the world. “Sunday morning came, and with eyes sore from weeping, and my brain tender from the continual struggle of the week, I walked softly and carefully to the church, and into the pulpit. In opening the service, I said to the membership. “This day ends my labors in this place. You do not want me here, and I do not want to stay, for I am heartily tired of pouring water on to rocks.
But if God will help me, I will either see a break today, or see this ungodly apology for Methodism annihilated. I have asked no man’s money; I go at my own expense; but I shall go straight for God.” Nothing seemed to move in the morning. In the evening I went into the pulpit again, and announced that I should redeem my pledge. Of course, this aroused their hate to a high pitch. As God helped, I pointed out the track of an acceptable disciple, and the only one that could possibly pass the gates of Paradise. At the close of the sermon, I asked those, and only those who meant it and would take this track and where needed go to their neighbors and confess to them, and pray with them, and who would seek for the blessing of holiness until they knew they had it, to rise. I didn’t believe I could get them to come forward. Two only arose, and they were of the most lowly. ‘Well,’ said I, ‘there seem to be but three of us, counting myself as one, and God besides; but I think we will try and have a prayer meeting.
Those two and myself were all that would kneel, I in the altar and they at their seats, about half-way down the church. I opened with a short prayer, and began to rise in spirit until I struck that rock again. I then asked some one else to pray, but no one responded; and I tried again with the same experience and result, and the third time, and the fourth, and fifth until the sixth time, in immediate succession. I now felt that this is the last time, and that if I did not get the victory, God would say to me: ‘Let them alone.’ The case was a desperate one, and I knew the world and the devil were against me, and the church members who would not kneel; but I said in my prayer: ‘O God, I’ll go as far as I can.” Again in spirit I began to rise, and soon I struck that rock again, and it seemed to shiver to atoms. Instantly the house was filled with the Divine glory. The two who were kneeling with me fell, and their shouts and screams were so loud that they alarmed the village. The people came running in to see what was the matter, and as they crowded up the aisles and saw the two prostrate under the power of God, tears each other down their faces; and the poor tempted members began one after another to confess their hostility and ask for pardon, and promised to take the track pointed out to them. I stayed one more week, and forty-five sinners were converted. The preacher, who had abandoned the work returned and revival went on in power for some time. — Ten or fifteen years afterward, I heard from that society, and it still was well.’
A good clergyman was once sent to a wild and dangerous part of Australia on an errand of duty and traveled up to the place, he was too poor to be in any great danger from bush-rangers or robbers, but as he came back he had to bring in his saddle-bags a large sum of money not belonging to him, but belonging to the dying man he had been sent for to comfort. He knew that a dangerous robber was aware of the fact that he was going to be riding along that lonely track of road through the bush alone, and when he got to one part of the road he felt so frightened that he thought he was not trusting God as a Christian should.
He wanted a little quiet, so he got off his horse and stood by it, with his eyes shut, praying for faith courage not to be afraid of the bush-rangers or robbers, and to be guarded against them. He prayed till he felt calm enough ride on, and then he mounted his horse and reached the in safety with the money which he had in charge. Some time later he was once more called to visit a man a sick bed, and he recognized him as the robber of whom he had been so afraid of on the previous ride. This man told him that he felt he could not die without confessing that on that day he had followed him, intending to rob and murder him, but could get no opportunity. “Why did you not do it when I got off my horse?” asked the clergyman in surprise. “I could not then,” said the bush-ranger; “there were too many of you.””What do you mean?” asked the clergyman. “I was quite alone in the bush, standing with my head resting against my horse’s side for a long time. You could have killed me then.” “You were not alone,” said the bush-ranger; “I saw you standing as you describe, but there was a man on each side there had been no other men with the clergyman in that hour of terror when he cried to God, but it is just possible that God really opened the robbers eyes and showed him his angels guarding his servant as he went on his dangerous duty, as Elisha’s servant’s eyes were opened to see guardians around his muster.
Whatever may be the explanation God did send his angels to frighten away the robber, and by so doing he saved him from a great crime as well as the good clergyman from death. – The Mission Worker. “Are they not all ministering spirits, sent forth to for them who who shall be heirs of salvation?”
At the close of a prayer-meeting, the pastor observed a little girl, about twelve years of age, remaining upon her knees, when most of the congregation had retired. Thinking the child had fallen asleep, he touched her, and told her it was time to return home. To his surprise, he found that she was engaged in prayer, and he said: “All things whatsoever ye ask in prayer, believing, ye shall receive.” She looked at her pastor earnestly, and inquired: “Is it so? Does God say that?”
He took up a Bible, and read the passage aloud. She immediately commenced praying: “Lord, send my Father here; Lord, send my father to the church.” Thus she continued for about half an hour, attracting by her earnest cry the attention of persons who lingered about the door.
At last a man rushed into the church, ran up the aisle, and sank upon his knees by the side of his child, exclaiming: “What do you want of me?” She threw her arms about his neck, and began to pray: “O Lord, covert my father!” Soon the man’s heart was melted, and he began to pray for himself.
The child’s father was three miles from the church when she began praying for him. He was packing goods in a wagon, and felt impressed with an irresistible impulse to return to his house, he left the goods in the wagon, and hastened to the church, where he found his daughter crying mightily to God in his behalf; and he was there led to the Savior. – Foster’s Cyclopedia
This is my personal collection of thoughts and writings, mainly from much smarter people than I, which challenge me in my discipleship walk. Don't rush by these thoughts, but ponder them.
Milo 