The Revival Hymn

But oh, I know so many people that are trying to know the fullness of God so that they can use God. A young preacher came to me down in West Virginia, Huntington, West Virginia. What I read is I've got a great church. I've got a wonderful Sunday school program. I've got a radio ministry growing. But I feel a personal need and a personal lack. I need to be baptized with the Holy Ghost. I need to be filled with the Spirit. And someone told me, God's done something for you. And I wondered if you could help me. I looked at the fellow. You know what he looked like? Me. Just looked like me. I just saw in him everything that was in me. You thought I was going to say me before. No, listen to your heart. If you've ever seen yourself, you'll know that you're never going to be anything else than you were. For in me and my flesh, there's no good thing. Looked like me. He was like a fellow driving up in a big Cadillac, you know, to someone standing at the filling station, saying, Pour out butter the highest octane you've got. Well, that's the way it looked. He wanted power for his program. And God is not going to be a means to anyone's end. I said, I'm awfully sorry. I don't think I can help you. He said, Why? I don't think you're ready. I said, Well, suppose you consider yourself coming up with a Cadillac. You've talked about your program. You've talked about your radio. You've talked about your Sunday school in church. Very good. You've done wonderfully well without the power of the Holy Spirit. That's what the Chinese Christian said, you know, when he got back to China. What impressed you most about America? He said, The great things Americans can accomplish without God. And he'd accomplished a great deal, admittedly, without God. Now he's wanted something powerful to accomplish his ends even further. I said, No, no. You're sitting behind the wheel and you're saying to God, Give me power so I can go. You won't work. You've got to slide over. But I knew that rascal if I knew me. I said, No, it'll never do. You've got to get in the backseat. I could see him leaning over and grabbing the wheel. No, I said, We'll never do in the backseat. I said, Before God will do anything for you, you know what you've got to do? He said, What? I said, You've got to get out of the car and take the keys around. Open up the trunk lid. Hand the keys to the Lord Jesus. Get inside the trunk. Slam the lid down. Whisper through the keyhole. Fill her up with anything you want and you drive. It's up to you from now on. And that's why so many people, you know, do not enter into the fullness of Christ. Because they want to become a Levite with ten shekels and a shirt. They've been serving Micah, but they think if they had the power of the Holy Ghost, they could serve the tribe of Dan. It'll never work. There's only one reason for God needing you. And that's to bring you to the place where, in repentance, you've been pardoned for his glory. And in victory, you've been brought to the place of death that he might reign. And in the fullness, Jesus Christ is able to live and walk in you. And your attitude is the attitude of the Lord himself who said, I can do nothing of myself. I can't speak of myself. I don't make plans for myself. My only reason for being is the glory of God in Jesus Christ. If I were to say to you, come to be saved so you can go to heaven. Come to the cross so that you can have joy and victory. Come to the fullness of the Spirit so that you can be satisfied. I'd be falling into the trap of humanism. I'm going to say to you, dear friend, if you're out here without Christ, you come to Jesus Christ and serve him as long as you live, whether you go to hell at the end of the way, because he's worthy. I say to you, Christian friend, you come to the cross and join in the union of death and enter into all the meaning of death to hell in order that he can have glory. I say to you, dear Christian, if you do not know the fullness of the Holy Ghost, come and present your body a living sacrifice and let him fill you so that he can have the purpose for his coming fulfilled in you and get glory for your life. It's not what you're going to get out of God. It's what he is going to get out of you. Let's be done once and for all with utilitarian Christianity that makes God a means instead of the glorious end that he is. Let's resign. Let's tell Micah we're through. We're no longer going to be his priest serving for ten shekels and a shirt. Let's tell the tribe of Dan we're through. And let's come and cast ourselves at the feet of the nail-pierced son of God and tell him that we're going to obey him and love him and serve him as long as we live because he is worthy. Two young Moravians heard of an island in the West Indies where an atheist British owner had 2,000 or 3,000 slaves. And the owner had said, No preacher, no clergyman will ever stay on this island. If he's shipwrecked, we'll keep him in a separate house until he has to leave. But he's never going to talk to any of us about God. I'm through with all that nonsense. 3,000 slaves from the jungles of Africa bought to an island in the Atlantic and there to live and die without hearing of Christ. Two young Moravians heard about it. They sold themselves to the British planter and used the money they received from the sale for he paid no more than he would for any slave to pay their passage out to his island for he wouldn't even transport them. And as the ship left the river at Hamburg, left its pier in the river at Hamburg and was going out into the North Sea carried with the tide, the Moravians had come from Hernhut to see these two lads off in the early 20s never to return again for this wasn't a four-year term. And they'd sold themselves into lifetime slavery simply that as slaves they could be as Christians or these others were. The families were there weeping for they knew they'd never see them again. And they wondered why they were going and questioned the wisdom of it. And as the gap widened and the houses had been cast off and were being curled up there on the pier, and the young boys saw the widening gap, one lad with his arm linked to the arm of his fellow raised his hand and shouted across the gap the last words that were heard from them. They were these, May the land that was slain receive the reward of his suffering. This became the core of Moravian mission. This is the only reason for being that the land that was slain, the reward of his suffering. The question isn't will you challenge, the question is will you change.