======================================================================== COLIN PECKHAM 02 by Colin Peckham ======================================================================== Summary: This sermon emphasizes the power of fervent prayer and the need for a deep, heartfelt cry to God. It recounts powerful moments of prayer where individuals like Tommy Dillon and Aileen led others into the presence of God, resulting in deep weeping and spiritual breakthroughs. The sermon highlights the importance of desperation in prayer, the necessity of surrendering all to God, and the significance of revival through genuine, sacrificial prayer and brokenness before God. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ DESCRIPTION ------------------------------------------------------------------------ This sermon emphasizes the power of fervent prayer and the need for a deep, heartfelt cry to God. It recounts powerful moments of prayer where individuals like Tommy Dillon and Aileen led others into the presence of God, resulting in deep weeping and spiritual breakthroughs. The sermon highlights the importance of desperation in prayer, the necessity of surrendering all to God, and the significance of revival through genuine, sacrificial prayer and brokenness before God. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ CONTENT ------------------------------------------------------------------------ I'm going to preach at night for a week. And people come to that. It was a hall once upon a time. Now, once, there are a lot of conventions being held. But, my, those prayers, my dear, the mighty power of God in those prayers. There's a little man called Tommy Dillon. He's gone to be with the Lord. I watched him as he prayed. I tell you, for one hour, ten minutes, Tommy Dillon was holding forth, getting right through to God. And we'd weep. Then we'd laugh, because it was the day of the troubles. And he would say, Lord, you're not afraid of the bombs, you're not afraid of the bullets. Well, Larry says, if you'd come out and laugh. And then he would bring us into the presence of God. Weep. And weep. We went on a tour, students, I was the principal of the Faith Mission Bible Club. And we went on a tour all over the country. And we were down in Launceston, in Cornwall, Devon, down there. And we were in a big Methodist church, and we had a prayer meeting in the afternoon. We had two meetings in that church. Two prayer meetings as well, in the afternoon. And one afternoon, as we prayed, a girl called Aileen got really into the spirit. And she led us into the presence of God, right there. And we wept for 15 minutes. And when Aileen said, Amen, I thought, my, who would dare to touch this meeting now? And yet another girl, another student, Alison, she took it up, and she began to pray. And it didn't drop one by one, it just went on, and on, and on. And we wept for another 15 minutes as Alison led us into the presence of God. There was a cry. Oh, Lord, come, come. Oh, oh, oh. You see, there's that oh, that oh, that cry. There is Psalm 80. He speaks, this vine that you brought out of Egypt, it's trampled underfoot. It's trampled underfoot, the people of God. They've taken, there's a wild boar out of the wood, and a wild beast. They've trampled it underfoot. They plucked the people, plucked the grapes. It's the vine, oh, the vine. Come, come to the vine, oh. And right through that psalm, you give that little word, oh, oh, oh. Isaiah said it, didn't he? Oh, but that was when they had it. The problem is, my friends, that so many of us have lost the oh. We bring to God our little shoppiness, but we've lost the cry, the heart cry. I remember a long ago when Meg Morrison was going around South Africa, and I was the youth leader, and I was organizing youth campaigns, and I got her to do a couple of them. And we were in Pretoria, and I, she spoke the first night, and then I realized, we've got to pray together, because I'm the mission, and she's the mission, and I'm organizing it, and she's preaching. But how can I pray? I mean, we're just two young people. And so, as we went out, she grabbed the arm of Mr. McFarlane, and Mr. McFarlane from the other mission, if you can, said, Uncle Meg, come and pray with us. And I said, yes. I can just weep. Even now, I think of those prayers every morning. We go out together, and we just pray. Uncle Meg, I mean, he prayed for an hour and a half, he prayed for an hour, he prayed for an hour and a quarter, again and again, that power of God just descending upon us as we waited for His presence. That kind of praying is necessary. That kind of desperation, somebody said desperation here this afternoon, that kind of desperation is absolutely essential. We can just drift through in our ordinary prayer meetings, and some of these prayer meetings are just bringing to God, I mean, the other day, there was the one, the lady said, Lord Jesus, please come to Mrs. Sonsworth, she's lost her dog, and please help us find the dog. You know, all right, that's good to bring these things to God, but you've got to get through God. You've got to get through, you've got to touch this room. Thank God He hears our prayer at these little things. But the immense importance of getting through to the presence of God, where He touches my heart and breaks my heart, breaks me apart so that I can weep in His presence, where God comes down my soul to grieve, and Lord, He crowns the mercy seat. God touches me, God brings me into His presence. That's essential. How long ago was it that you wept in prayer? How long ago was it that you had the oh, the cry, the cry? Or your prayers just very ordinary. And if they are, then life will be very ordinary, won't it? And then, you see, the preparation for revival is prayer. Now when Solomon had made an end of praying, the fire came down from heaven. So there is the peculiarity of revival. Not only the preparation of revival, prayer, the peculiarity of revival, fire. And my dear friends, I am afraid of false fire. Not man-made fire, not merely an emotional upsurge. And if you have the right technique and you know how to manipulate people and you say the words which people want to hear, they will respond, and they will well be deceived into thinking that this is the fire of our Ghost. And people are thrown by crowds, and sometimes they think that the inspiration of the crowd is the fire of God. And people are swept along at times in a wave of emotion. And one must discern whether that is the power of God or merely a release of human energy, and a relief. And sometimes it can be merely the fleshly uprisings in these things. And they want to bring God down because God is not here. We are so empty, we haven't got the power of God, we need God. And so all sorts of things happen. You know, a very interesting, very bright energy, who wrote the book Revival and was the moderator of that, if I see some time. He said, the other day, he was a good man, he said, I went to all the different types of churches to find the presence of God. He said, I went to the Closed Brethren, the Open Brethren, the Evangelical Brethren, the Baptists, the Methodists, the Presbyteries, the Church of England, went right through the Episcopal, the Charismatic, the Wild Charismatic, and he said, I did not find the presence of God more in any one part of all these churches than in any other. There was not one which was outstanding in the presence of God. So we have our cultural differences. One likes to kneel, and up and down, and up and down, like animals. They think they've got it. That's the way of worship. That's the way that God must come. And then others want to jump around and leap and praise God. They think they've got it. There are different cultures, different cultures. But God looks past the cultures. He wants to see the heart. He wants to see the cry. That cry which comes from the heart. Then he falls upon that person whose heart is thirsty for God, whose heart is thirsty for the streams of living water, not just content with the unperturbed things, but the heart in tune with God. I remember a little while back, Mary and I were up in the island of Paris in the Hebrides, northwest Scotland. And she gave her testimony. She's doing her testimony on the other side there now. She gave her testimony. And oh my God came into that meeting. There was such a silence, an absolute silence. You felt you just didn't want to even breathe in the presence of our God in the midst. We sat for 15 minutes without a trace of sound. Then Mary turned to the person behind us, to whom we were going for tea and supper after the meeting. She whispered as he leant forward, and said, I think you'd better put the kettle on. And he said, then he whispered back, I'm not going to be the first to move in this meeting. Eventually the minister got up and took a few books and shuffled them, put them on the table. Nobody moved. He said, oh, I'd better sit down. So we sat down. And we sat on and on and on. And eventually the move got up to go home. So I went to the door. There were no happy, happy greetings there. It was just a firm group of men, nodding and out-breathing into their cause, with the presence of God, in a way. But it was God's presence. Richard Owen Robertson said, he said, I'm praying for a revival of silence. Because God comes in different ways. I was preaching in Kensington, Wales, and I was in London, in a prayer in Wales, for a little while there. And I was speaking and giving Bible readings there as well. And one night God came. Oh, my. It was so beautiful, so precious, that presence of God saturated the place. We sat for half an hour without moving. And eventually, when everything was over, the chairman of the council said to me, this convention has never had such community. When God comes down. Sometimes it's glory. Sometimes you can shout. You know, there's several premises. Sometimes the shouts and loud praises of God's people are like the banging of an empty drum. And sometimes they are like the boom of a great gun. That's beautiful. Sometimes they're like the boom of a great gun. You can shout and shout. The wonder of it. And sometimes you just do that out of habit. And it's just like an empty drum. You know, in Revelation chapter 3, if we're in the Laodicean age, this is the Laodicean age now. You know the gift that God told them? They knew. He said, anoint your eyes with eyesal. That you may see. That's the gift for the last days, my friend. That you may see. The gift of discernment. That we can say, God, help us. Not to be deceived. We need the fire of God to descend upon us. The peculiarity of the Bible? The fire. You see, the fire came down from heaven. It wasn't a strange fire. It was God's fire. Fire illuminates. If fire falls on the sacred page, it must make me live. And the word becomes real. And the book is no longer dry, in which we must search in order to say something. Now it lives, and we have something to say. And the sermons live, because the fire has fallen upon the preacher, and the friend lightens up the page, and the word becomes living to himself. And as he proclaims, that life is transferred to the people, because of the fire of God within his own soul, upon the page. It illumines the page. A fire falls upon us and warms our hearts. I remember sitting on a kitchen table, and one day in South Africa it was cold. We all climbed into the kitchen, and there I was sitting at the table, and we were just having a wonderful time, of fellowship, and testimony, and singing, and so on. And one somebody looked at the watch and said, Hey, it's half past one. I mean, that is an impossible time in South Africa. In the north of Scotland, in the south of Ireland, that's OK. That's their time. But in South Africa, you don't get paid at half past one. You get paid much, much, much earlier. And he said, Hey, it's half past one. And someone sitting next to me at the table looked at me and smiled from ear to ear, and he said, Isn't it wonderful when the children of God get together like this? It warms our hearts. We're warmed in the presence of God. As the fire falls. And fire cleanses. He shall purify, who? The sons of Levi. The sons of Levi. The children of God. And purge them as gold and silver. And some population, you know, when they have this fine bone china, and they have it at the biscuit stage, and they get the fire to go right through that cup. Burning out anything which should not be there. Destroying unwanted matter. Fire of God burns through me. And every aspect of everything which should not be there be taken away. Fire cleanses. Fire unifies. Sunday school picnics and all that are very good. You get to know people on that level. But that doesn't unify the church. The thing that unifies the church is the power of God falling upon the church. And the brokenness in the church. I remember we went for another tour in South Africa, Morocco. And we were up and we left Cape Town early in the morning. I remember we got to Barclay West, which was a place where they were camping sites and so we were there for the night. And we were going to have a prayer meeting at 8 o'clock in the morning. These are students. These are people who are going through God. These are people who have come to study the word. Now we're going to preach through the country a little bit. Testify and sing. There's a choir. So I went for a walk early that morning along the river. And I came back and God gave me a world as I walked. I came back. And I opened my heart to these students just for 15 minutes. And suddenly God came upon us unexpectedly. The power of God just descended. I remember seeing one fellow crawling on his knees to the others to make right. They wept. My wife came late to the prayer meeting and she heard 50 yards away these students weeping. These are people who are going through with God, friends. These are not just backsliders. These are people who are seeking God. And when God revealed Himself, they were stripped bare. And they began to sob in His presence. There's a brokenness of spirit, a brokenness of heart, which is absolutely necessary which God brings to God. And that unifies. Fire unifies. Fire attracts. There's something wonderfully attractive about the one upon whom the fire of God has fallen. Isn't there? There's something wonderful. Something wonderful when we have the fire of God within our hearts. There's an attraction. There's a joy. There's something very wonderful. And fire melts. Oh, my. I can take you to one meeting after another now. And maybe I can just take you to one. There in South Africa, we were just outside of Cape Town. We were going to preach. And Mary, my wife, was to speak at 9 o'clock. And I was to speak, I think, at the next meeting. And then someone else was to close the convention. It was an Easter convention. It was a Monday morning. And we got into our little Volkswagen Beetle and we began to pray. And as we prayed, at about half-past eight in the morning, 9 o'clock was the meeting, half-past eight, Who is this that cometh from Eden? She quoted in her prayer. Who is this that cometh from Eden with thine garments from what was? This that is glorious in its apparel, traveling in the greatness of its fame. I that speak in righteousness, mighty forsaken. And she pictured the heavenly choir singing to one another. Who? Who? Who is this that cometh from the land of Eden, the land of Eden? Who can it be? He's traveling in the greatness of his strength. He's got beautiful clothes. Look at his garments, glorious in his apparel. He must be a king. Who is this who is returning? Oh, but his garments are dying. He must have been in a battle. What's happened to him? He's coming back. Oh my. We saw Jesus. We awoke to that God. We just softened our hearts up as we saw Jesus returning to glory in victory. And we walked across just 50 yards into the big temple, about 600 people sitting there. A few more people. I mean, they were solid biblical sites. There they sat. Everybody was praying and praying and praying that God would come. And here I'm going to speak. I was leading the meeting. I listened. And I looked. And I looked across the meeting. 600 people. Nearly all of them were sitting, sobbing silently in that meeting. And at the end of that meeting, one, there was a middle-aged, under- respected teacher. He ran. She didn't make an appeal. He just ran in front of them and threw himself down there and wept like a baby. And I'm telling you, God came down upon that place. People were seeking God together. People were seeking God in the front, in the aisles together, wherever they knelt. They just sought God. It was one of the most powerful meetings I've ever been in in my life. God came once again to his temple. That's the revelation of the Spirit of God amongst the people of God. That's what you need in your church. When did it happen? Did it happen last week or last year? Ten years ago? Did it happen ever? We need God coming down into our midst, breaking our hearts and drawing us into his presence. So, the peculiarity of revival, fire. And then the price of revival. Notice what he says. And Solomon had made an end of praying. That's the preparation for revival. The fire came down from heaven. That's the peculiarity of revival. And consumed the burnt offerings and the sacrifices. So there were sacrifices. Yes, sir. There are sacrifices in revival. Burnt offerings and sacrifices. Sometimes it's a moral sacrifice. Sometimes it's a reputation that has to be lost. Sometimes when we think, well, we're revivalists, the most spiritual person in this whole area. Sure, I can't humble myself in front of all these people. Yes, there's a moral price and reputation to be put on the altar. I remember there was a young man in the Canadian revival in 1972. He had a job because he had a master's degree. And when the revival came, there he sat because he had cheated to get his master's degree. And he had his own job resting upon the fact that he had the master's degree. Now he could have said, this is a lot of nonsense. I oppose this as evidence of fleshly uprising. Now that's what many people do when they come, when the Holy Ghost falls upon them. See, it cuts across our natural things. And when we oppose the revival for which we actually pray. He didn't. He said, I'm not going to oppose this. I've done a lot of it. He wrote a letter to the university, sent back his master's. He wrote a letter to the people who employed him. He said, I resigned because I have no masters to hold down the job. He lost his job, he lost his reputation, he lost everything. And he went through with God. And sometimes when the fire falls, when the fire falls, then there's a revelation, revelation in our own hearts as to our own condition of heart. When W.P. Nicholson was holding his campaigns in Belfast, you remember, there in the 1920s, God blessed him so mightily in Belfast. In fact, he went to the people at Holland and Wolfe, the people who built many of the large ships. And there were thousands of men there working. And so he asked whether he could hold a meeting in the middle of the day outside. He said, no, we won't listen to you. He said, just give me an opportunity. What can I give you? So he took out his loud pipe and he began. He said, come here, you lousy bunch of drunkards, you wife-eaters. They gave it. Who dared to say such things? They listened. And they got converted by the Huns. And they came back and brought all their stolen goods and they gave them back to Holland and Wolfe and Holland and Wolfe built a shed to house the returned stolen goods until they said, don't bring any more, please. We haven't got any more room. Couldn't get it right with God. Suddenly, God had done that as a moral for us to say, I have stolen. I'm sorry. Bring it back. Yes. I was preaching at a place in the Middle East in South Africa and it was the hardest campaign I've ever worked in my life. It was just like knocking your head against a brick wall. And the man who was with me all right through the convention, right through the week, Sunday to Sunday. At the end of that week, he came to her. I hear was I cried to God every day, every day on my face before him. Lord God, am I at fault? Please cleanse my heart. Lord, come to me. At the end, the last meeting, after the last meeting, I went to see him at his house just to say goodbye because I was leaving very early the next morning. I saw him, he was in his bedroom with his wife and I knocked at the door. He came. He said, where can I come in? He put his gown on and came to sit in the car with me. And we had a meeting. He wept for half an hour and I just let it go. And he said, brother, he mentioned, brother, do you know why you've been having such a hard time? I'm living in sin and she comes and stands, sits in front of me every night in the meeting and just looks at me and laughs. That's why you've been having such a hard time. And here am I, holding him with an iron arm. Lord, please help me. And it's him all the time. And I do a good deal of sorting out with his wife and everything else once I have to go. My word. I take nothing for granted any night. May God pour his light into our lives. Whatever I've seen in the highest spiritual circle, sin and immorality has got in men of God who have been used of God and have set their feet and have been thrown to the ministry and suddenly they're gone because of immoral acts. What a tragedy this is. So here we have the moral price that has to be paid. You've got to get right on that level. And there's a social price that has to be paid. There are friendships which have to be broken. And our children have to be placed on the altar. And our parents have to be placed on the altar. And our possessions have to be placed on the altar. And our time has to be placed on the altar. John Calvin said, I give thee all. I keep nothing for myself. I'm giving everything to Jesus. Lord, I give thee all. There's a social price to be paid in ministry. And then there's a spiritual price to be paid. There's this aspect of prayer as I was saying just now. There is a message of prayer. There in Joel 2, verse 17, we read, Let the ministers weep between the porch and the altar. The country was devastated by locusts and by drought. And there was no hope for the land. Let the ministers, the priests of the Lord, weep. That was God's way of getting out of the situation. What can you do? You can't do anything. Let the ministers weep. Let them weep. My, that changes things when we start doing that. In fact, I was so moved at this, I wrote a poem. Here it is. Barren altars, what reproach. Empty cribs, the church forlorn. Here we near God's grand approach, blessed cry of babe's newborn. Servants of His passion we, dazed and aching for the lost, Marked the silent forehead sea, One with Christ, at life's blood cost. Supplicate in bloody sweat, intercede in agony, plead for souls with faces wettened, passion burned at Calvary. Souls! My heart breaks with a cry. What counts else? What matters more? Give me souls or else I die. Finally storms at heaven's door. Sobbing in the secret place, broken hearted, anguished nose. Children will be born in grace, God's transforming blessing in flow. Heaven shall reign in mountains flow, fields of hell in terror flee, Christ shall reign above, below, His the glorious victory. For the fire to fall upon your congregation, it must fall on you, girl. You must know the painful fellowship of the piercing hand. You must know what it means to weep in the secret place. You must know what it means to have a broken heart. You can depend upon your ability and your charm and your theology and your training and your good keen mind and your oratory and your human affinity and your rapport with people and the people's respect for you. You can depend upon all that and just go on and do a good job and not have the mighty power of God resting upon you. You can be theologically trained with a good library. You can go to the library and pull out a few books and put a message together and come and give a sermon. But is that a message from God? Does it come from heaven? No. We need soul travel. There's no other way. I remember long ago I was speaking to a group of ministers and I had the message. I had to go there for breakfast and it was just around the corner. But I got up at four o'clock. I was broken because of this meeting that I had to go and preach. And Mary brought me a tray for something she knows also the secrets of spiritual housing. And so here I went out and got to that pre-minister meeting. I didn't need to do that. I didn't need to get up at four o'clock in the morning. I didn't need to spend half the night in prayer waiting for this. But God moved upon my heart and I broke my heart. And that morning God came into the midst amongst those men who were in the service of God. God wants a broken heart. I was preaching at Bradford Keswick in England. And we had good meetings Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday. And one meeting to go. Not this being in the church, but one meeting from the convention. And we had good meetings. But Saturday, I was in my practice. We hadn't gone breakthrough in this ministry. God hadn't broken through into it. Our hearts were still longing for the revelation and ministry of the power of the spirit of God. And the dear people with whom I was staying, the elderly couple, they said, look, we want to take you up to the Yorkshire Dales on Saturday afternoon. Your Saturday. So I said, yes, thank you very much. I wanted to see, it would be nice to see the Yorkshire Devil, but not now. I was in a fight. I was in a battle. Here was I crying to God into the night, every night. And here they had not yet been awakened. So I said, look, Jesus, I can't give up on this. I've got to go and these dear people have been so good to me this week. Now, Lord, you just look after my heart. Because I know I've got to have an agony time. That's what I thought. My agony time. I've got to have that. I've got to be broken before this meeting. So we went up into the Yorkshire Dales. She says, isn't that much more wonderful? Isn't that more? My heart's breaking. I'm seeing these things, but I'm not seeing them. We get right over to the hillside. And they show you all these wonderful things. And there's a cafe. Let's go and have cream scones and tea. Yes. So I said, just a moment. I'll meet you there. And I went around the room. And I found a little corner there. Nobody was seeing. Nobody was looking. And I leant against the wall right around the corner. And I sobbed and sobbed and sobbed. The Holy Ghost came upon me now. It broke my soul. The Holy Ghost broke me in half. I went to the washroom. And I washed myself. And I got back and enjoyed the tea. And all of a sudden, isn't that amazing? Isn't that amazing? My heart's broken. I got up there at that meeting that evening. And God came into the meeting. ======================================================================== Video: https://sermonindex2.b-cdn.net/NTgKjZLsQY4.mp4 Source: https://sermonindex.net/speakers/colin-peckham/colin-peckham-02/ ========================================================================