The Judgement Seat of Christ - Part 8 — Leonard Ravenhill

The Testing Fire of Words and Works

The gold is going to be tried to our devotional life. The silver, what is the silver? I guess you can interpret it different ways. I like to interpret it this way. The book of Proverbs says the tongue of the just is as choice silver.

Accountability for Every Idle Word

Yeah, every idle word you've spoken, even since you were saved, God has a kind of, you know, he doesn't need a tape recorder, but he has an eternal record of it. You know the gossip, the slander, the criticism, the prejudice.

You know, when somebody upset you and instead of being quiet, you spilled out just what was on your heart at that moment. Can you think of all those awesome words? Can you think of all the words we've preached?

To thousands of people over the years, and we're going to answer, and the fire is going to be put to them? Well, will they be hay and stubble, or will they abide the fire? The fire shall try every believer's work.

Precious Stones and the Priest's Intercession

Look, silver, gold, precious stone. What are the precious stones? Well, when I read that, I think of the breastplate that was on the priest, the priest in the Old Testament. It was divided into twelve.

Each stone was a different stone. Each stone had the name of the tribe on it. And he went into the holy place to pray with a breastplate on him. Oh, well, how do you handle this? How do you handle this?

Prayer as the Measure of Spiritual Greatness

Do you know why the world is poor and sick outside? Because we really don't know how to pray, that's why. Because we're satisfied we've left our lousy living, and we don't drink and lust and damn ourselves every day.

And now we're Christians, and we're so content and so happy and so satisfied. I've said it many times. I said it again this morning, that no man is greater than his prayer life. I don't care about his organization and his...

These boys all have a, what is it, a mailing list. It doesn't worry me. Let me live with a man a while and share his prayer life, and I'll tell you how tall I think he is, or how majestic I think he is in God.

Supposing I could say to Gabriel this morning, Gabriel, hand this book down. Well, let's preview eternity. Here we are, millions of people, all the prayer bodies. America has produced some of the greatest.

Historical Models of Fervent Prayer

Praying Payson of Portland had a floor harder than that. And at the side of his bed, when he knelt, he used to pray and pray and pray. And when they washed his body for burial, he had great big hooves on his knees like camels.

Like history says that James, in the Bible, had camel's knees. At least tradition says that. Well, it's a living fact that Payson had them. And when they were washing him, somebody said, Abnormal knees, they're calloused, they're heavy with calluses.

Yeah, because he used to pray at the side of his bed with energy. And in that hard floor, he wore two grooves like that, about six or seven inches long, where he used to pray and make intercession. Praying Payson of Portland.

Many of you can buy the book. If you haven't read it, I think it's in the book still there, Praying Hyde. John Hyde. I met somebody who used to hear him pray, and told me what an amazing thing it was to hear him pray in India.

You know, we think we've got a message, you've got to drop it here and run there and catch a plane here and go there and... No, no, that's not the greatest ministry. It's good, God has ordained it. But the greatest ministry, I'm sure, is the ministry of intercession.

The Record of the Saints' Prayers

Let's ask Gabriel to hand the book down. Let's look at all the apostles and all the saints of all the ages. There's Finney, look, there's Finney with his amazing revival. There's William Boole, the founder of the Salvation Army.

There's John Wesley. Here are all the great heroic figures, we've all read about them. And here they are, all watching while the book is handed down. And somebody's going to read the record. Would you volunteer and say, well, I'd be happy if you read my record to this multitude?

David Brainerd's Costly Intercession

Supposing I say, Gabriel, hand me the record for 1724. And I open the book there, I read 1724. I go down the B's, David Braynard, just a young American, died at the age of 28. All he possessed was a cowhide that he hadn't tanned and he wrapped himself in it and put a rope around him and he rode over the Susquehanna River there and he followed the Indians.

And he had tuberculosis. And he says, I got up this morning and the Indians were still committing adultery there and still drinking there and still beating their tom-toms and still shouting like hell itself.

He came out of the teepee, he was sharing, and he said, there was nowhere to pray, so I went out in the forest. And he said, now Nelson, the snow was up to my chin. And it was a half hour after sunrise.

He weighed about 95 pounds. No, he didn't have a heater with him or anything else. He was just there in the frigid snow, half an hour after sunrise, and he said, I did so wrestle in prayer, he says in his archaic English, I wrestled in prayer for about 12 hours.

The sun was setting and then I could only touch the snow with the tips of my fingers. The snow was up to his chin when he started praying. And he makes intercession of a little body that weighed 90 pounds until the sweat of his body melted the snow.

The Poverty of Contemporary Prayer

Well, God pity us, we can't get folk to our churches and we've got velvet cushions on the seats and we've got nice stuff on the floor so our darling little knees won't get hurt. And boy, we can't get, we can't muster a corporal's guard to pray in the average church.

Praying patron of Portland, John Hyde, the great intercessor, David Brainerd, when God opens that book of intercession, when he puts the fire to their prayer life, their devotional life, I'll tell you what, there'll be nothing lost.

It won't be wood, it won't be hay, it won't be stubble. I discovered this poem just yesterday. It's called His Plan for Me, I didn't have time to memorize it. When I stand at the judgment seat of Christ and he shows his plan for me, the plan of my life as it might have been, had he had his way, and I see how I blocked him here and I checked him there and I would not yield my will, will there be grief in my Savior's eyes, grief, though he loves me still?

Would he have me rich and I stand there poor, stripped of all but his grace, while memory runs like a hunted thing down the paths I cannot retrace? Lord of the years that are left to me, I give them to thy hand.

Take me and break me and mold me to the pattern that thou hast planned. It's going to be an awesome day. When I was at school, I said about two-thirds back, there was a kind of a level here, then there were some seats up here and I sat in the first little gallery, as it were.

And you know, I didn't mind school too much, but I was very envious in those days of the school captain. He worked just across the aisle from me. He was the best soccer player and I wanted to be that.

He was the best at cricket and I liked cricket. He was the best runner we had and I liked running. And he was a very good artist. He was quite a brain. And you know, if I could ever save up my stomach aches, I saved them till the day before the final examination.

But my mother was smart. She knew I was saving them up. I don't know how. And I'd get up that morning and say, Mother, I don't feel good at all. I think I should stay at home. She'd say, OK, you can stay at home tomorrow, but not today.

But today was the day of judgment. And you know, the things would be put down on the board there and as soon as they were down, Renton would get it. His name was Renton and he'd get his paper and he'd dash through it.

Manny was through the first two or three subjects before I'd even got the things read. Oh, he and another guy that were there, they used to say, boy, it's exams. And they knew they'd be number one and number two and every year I was at school, they were number one and number two on the chart when it came out.

These boys were always at the top. They had no fear of the judgment. They were prepared for it.