We repeat the question. Are we ready for an outpouring of the Spirit? Have we all the channels cleaned out which our fathers dug, and are we digging fresh ones? Do we look as if a revival would be welcomed? Does the enemy know that he may expect an attack, or is he chuckling over our rusty spades and swords?
A WORD TO PARENTS.
Brother Moses Welsby was speaking with me at some Open-air Meetings at Radcliffe, the other day, and he told of seeing a lad being taken to prison, and as he was going his father called out, “Keep thy spirits up, lad, it will soon be over,” but the lad replied,
“I should not be going now if you had shewed me a better example.”
What sort of a model are you? Can your children copy you with safety? Are your actions what you would like to see over again in your boys and girls? Perhaps some who read this are in danger of being driven from God at the last day. If so, shall you be chained to your children, and will your punishment be all the greater because they say,
“We should not have been in hell if you had set us a better example?”
XVIII. “THERE IS A SOUND OF ABUNDANCE OF RAIN.”
1 Kings, xix. 41.
So said the man of God. Rain was much needed, for famine stared them in the face. Even Ahab himself had walked many weary miles to seek grass for his horses; other men’s cattle had perished, and if the drought had continued, everything would have died. Still, it was not Ahab who heard the sound of the rain. There was no sign of it. The heavens were as brass, the sky was without a cloud, everything was burned up with dry heat, and yet, said Elijah, “There is a sound of abundance of rain.” It is so in the spiritual world. There are those who know of a coming Revival long before there is any sign. They have felt their prayers being answered, and have heard the cry of the penitent sinner, though, as yet, he seems to be as hard and careless as ever.
“So Ahab went up to Eat and to Drink.” Not so Elijah, he went up to the top of Carmel. The man of God “Cast Himself down on the Earth, and put his Face between his Knees.” Those who would procure blessings must not expect to win them at the table of luxury and ease, but by climbing the hill of difficulty, and in the humbling of self. If we would bring the blessing down, we must be prepared to say, “No,” to our own likings, and to refuse that which would gratify flesh and blood. If we would prevail in prayer, we must be alone with God. The priests who fed at Jezebel’s table could not bring rain, or
they would have saved themselves from the sword of Elijah. We need not to look toward the sea till we have bowed before the Lord, then we may expect some sign of the coming Revival.