Just a Middleman — E.A. Johnston

Knowing God Beyond Secondhand Knowledge

Years ago, I was having dinner with a pastor who had been in the ministry for 40 years and who had written a book on revival. And during that dinner, he kept lamenting the fact that he had never had a personal revival nor ever seen revival.

And he was asking me what revival was like. If you're going to write about great movements of God, then shouldn't you be personally familiar with how God moves? Why write a book on how to do brain surgery if you've never performed one?

We have a multitude of men in our pulpits who speak about a God they know very little about. It's like writing a travel guide without ever having visited those places yourself. I can personally tell you, friends, the evil I felt standing in the Colosseum of Rome.

I can tell you from experience what it was like climbing the crumbling steps to the Parthenon in Athens. I can give you a visual of the thrill of the blue grotto at Capri because I saw how translucent that blue sun-streaked water was.

Personal Experience of God's Character and Ways

I can tell you about God because I know him. I don't know all there is to know about him, but I can assure you I am deeply familiar with his character and his ways. I've had some remarkable experiences of God that I can't even talk about.

I can appreciate the Apostle Paul who, being called up to a third heaven, saw such astounding things he wouldn't talk about it for 14 years. Why do you think the early church endured such persecution of their houses being ransacked, their families being separated, and their own selves dying as martyrs to a Christ-hating world?

They could endure it because they had seen such a glimpse of eternity and had such a vision of the risen Christ that nothing else mattered but the souls of men. I was speaking to a minister who had lived on the Isle of Lewis in Scotland and he had known Duncan Campbell, and I asked this man to describe to me this man Duncan Campbell who was so mightily used to God in the Lewis revival.

Ordinary People and Extraordinary Encounters With God

He put it in one sentence. He said, Duncan Campbell was an ordinary man who had had an extraordinary experience of God. That experience is open and available to any one of us friends, but we have to be open to it.

In 2 Chronicles we read, For the eyes of the Lord run to and fro throughout the whole earth to show themselves strong in the behalf of them whose heart is perfect toward him. God is on the lookout for men, not angels or a superman, but just men.

God is on the lookout for just an ordinary man that he can use, that there is no other explanation for the wondrous works that will be performed other than God himself, for there is nothing personally unique about the man God uses, but that he is available, accountable, and expendable.

The Cost of Surrender and Availability

Do you want extraordinary experience of God, friend? Then are you willing to die to your reputation? Are you willing to go out on a limb for God? Are you willing to have the entire course of your life changed with all that entails?

Are you willing to let go of your ministry as you know it? I had the extreme pleasure of being given access to the personal papers of Dr. W. Graham Scroggie, his handwritten sermons, his notes, and his outlines.

W. Graham Scroggie's Crisis of Ministry

I had to immerse myself in them for a whole year in order to write my book on Scroggie that I wrote with Stephen Alford. I can't think of many men who possessed a deeper knowledge of the Bible better than W. Graham Scroggie, but it didn't come easy.

First, he had to be dismissed from his first church for opposing theological liberalism, and then he was dismissed from his second church for opposing worldliness. After these dismissals, he entered a crisis point in his life where he shut himself up entirely to God until he got such an extraordinary experience of God it altered the course of the rest of his life.

From Middleman to God's Messenger

I'll let him explain it in his own words. Can I ever forget the time long ago when my whole life and ministry were suddenly challenged when it was revealed to me that I was little more than a middleman between my books and my people, when it dawned upon me that I was more anxious to be a preacher than to be God's messenger, that my master passion was not the accomplishment of the will of God at any cost, and that my ruling motive was not the love of Christ.

In that hour the edifice I had been building lay in ruins about me, and for a while all was dark despair, but into the woods my master came, and finding me there, in his mercy he brought me out, out into newness of life, out into fullness of service, and although I blush to think of much that lies between that hour and this, yet I gratefully bear testimony that his coming then and in that way has been the determining factor of my life.

Seeking a Deepening Experience of God

Well, I can relate to that story about Graham Scroggie because I've been in those same woods until my master came. Let me ask you, friend, is your heart's desire for a deepening experience of God? Do you long for a closer intimacy with the Christ who loved you enough to endure Calvary for you?

Then go into the woods and stretch yourself up with God, and don't come out until you can emerge with a fresh anointing and a touch from on high, for when that happens, friend, others will sit up and take notice, all for the glory of God.

Amen.