Lectures on Revival for a Laodicean Church — E.A. Johnston

I've just had a new book published, and it's the culmination of my four decades of study on the subject of revival, and I wrote it as an aid for pastors and church leaders to prepare your church for revival, as well as anyone who has a serious interest in learning more about revival.

The title of the book is Lectures on Revival for a Laodicean Church, and I wanted to read us an excerpt today, friends, so we can perhaps get our own hearts stirred for revival in our day. I know we desperately need it.

The Man God Uses

This excerpt is from chapter 8, which is entitled The Man God Uses. God's eyes are continually searching the earth for those rare individuals of whom the world was not worthy. Men like Moses and John the Baptist, Luther and Calvin, Whitefield and Wesley, Finney and Moody, men who live in a different atmosphere than other mortals, men who have annihilated self with the cross and whose lives are broken alabaster boxes from which fragrances arise to the heavens from the broken pieces of selflessness, self-sacrifice, and self-crucifixion.

God Uses the Ordinary and Surrendered

God is always on the lookout for such men. When one studies the history of revival and reads biographies on men that God has used in seasons of revival, it is truly remarkable that God seems pleased to use men not for their learning and education, not for their talents and winning personality, but because they were simple men who were single-eyed and were entirely surrendered to God.

God took an uneducated, rough man who could not even properly spell the word bed and used him to shake Great Britain in revival for God, D .L. Moody. God took a broken-down alcoholic lawyer and used him to transform the moral and spiritual life of entire cities in powerful revivals, Sam Jones.

God took a youth of divorced parents who was raised in a tavern with a physical deformity of a noticeable squint in his eye and used him to shake two continents for God in powerful revival and spiritual awakening, George Whitefield.

God took a broken-down pastor in his fifties and placed him in the midst of a four-year-long revival from 1949 to 1952 on the Isle of Lewis in the Scottish Hebrides to where it was said the entire island was saturated with the presence of God, Duncan Campbell.

God took an asthmatic, sickly old man of 53 who, against all orders of his doctors and against the pleas of his wife and family, took a one-way trip into the heart of Africa to preach the gospel of the Son of God to the heathens and sparked fires of revival in missionary enterprise, C .T. Studd.

God took the president of the Atheist Club on a college campus to Canvas America in an evangelistic preaching ministry that would transform entire towns in revival after revival, Rolf Barnard. God took a man out of China, sent him to America to be educated, and then placed him against his will in an insane asylum for 193 days, during which he read through his Bible over forty times and then sent him back to China to shake China for God in ground-shaking miracle work and revival, John Sung.

God took an obstinate lawyer with no theological training and thrust him into an itinerant ministry in western New York during the Second Great Awakening and used him in powerful revivals that had his hearers fall out of their chairs, crying out to God for mercy quicker than if he had a sword in two hands, he could not have cut them down fast enough, Charles Finney.

God took a man and used him for his glory. This could be your story, friend. I once asked a minister on the Isle of Lewis, who knew Duncan Campbell personally, to describe to me in one sentence, Duncan Campbell.

He said, Duncan Campbell was an ordinary man who had had an extraordinary experience of God. I believe the same can be said of Moses, David, Abraham, Jacob, and Joseph. God took a murderer and a fugitive who became a lowly sheepherder on the backside of the desert to work miracles and deliver a nation, Moses.

God took a shepherd boy and made him a king, David. God took an ordinary man in whom he built faith and made him the father of a nation, Abraham. God took a man so crooked he could hide behind a corkscrew and used him time and time again to bring him glory, Jacob.

God took a youth whose brothers turned against him and was sold into slavery to lead an entire nation, Joseph. The man God uses is a man willing to go out on a limb for him and risk his reputation and his skin to do something great for God in eternity.

Risk, Prayer, and Full Surrender

What cost counts and what counts costs. The man God uses is a man willing to take risks for God and to risk his very life if necessary for Christ and the gospel. God is looking for the Peters who are willing to step out of the boat on faith and walk on the water with him.

The man God uses is a man who, once he gets a taste of the supernatural, no longer desires the safety of the boat. The man God uses is a man of prayer, a man empty of self and ambition, a man full of the Holy Ghost, a man entirely surrendered to the Lordship of Jesus Christ.

Persecution in Revival Ministry

The man God uses is a man willing to face fierce persecution for Christ and the souls of men. Mordecai Ham was such a man, used to God mighty in revivals all over 20th century America. He faced high persecution in every city he preached in and in every city he preached in he saw powerful revivals that transformed the moral life of the community.

Mordecai Ham set up a tent in the red light district of a town and preached every day for four weeks straight until the brothels had to close their doors and go out of business because all the girls had been saved.

Mordecai Ham was once pistol whipped. One time he was captured by a gang of men, dragged out of town to be tarred, feathered and hung from a tree, and he was only rescued when the mayor of that Texas city called in the Calvary to save him.

Mordecai Ham one time was run over by a car, hired by the liquor trade, and he spent the next six months trying not to die for he was in a hospital in a coma. Upon leaving his hotel one other time on the way to a meeting he was attacked in the hotel lobby from behind by a man with a quirk.

Billy Graham and the Call to Be Used by God

But besides all this Mordecai Ham was preaching one night when a teenage church member in good standing came to hear him and became mad at the preacher for pointing him out as a big sinner. That young man was brought to Christ that night and saved, Billy Graham.

The man God uses is a man who wants to be used to God more than he wants to use his life for his own pleasure, comforts and gain. Well friends that's my little excerpt from my book on revival entitled Lectures on Revival for a Laodicean Church.

It's a book that will teach you how to have a better understanding of revival, teach you how to pray better and prepare your own heart for personal revival and corporate revival and national revival. It can be purchased at BarnesandNoble .com or on Amazon.

Get your copy today and start getting fired up for revival.