Trading Self Absorption for Serving

I felt that maybe I might go back to Isaiah 58 this morning. Isaiah 58. And I dealt some with this when I preached.

James sent me something that he had discovered. And Isaiah 58. We've gathered here this morning to pray.

And often throughout my Christian life, I think of God making these promises with regards to prayer. Let me find my text here. In Isaiah 58, verse 8, your light break forth like the dawn.

Brethren, I want to emphasize this again. We pray, and I've heard this here in this prayer meeting, we pray for revival. I hear prayers for revival for self, revival for our churches, revival for our nation.

And if you think about these promises, if we share our bread with the hungry, we bring the homeless poor into our house, when you see the naked to cover him, not hide yourself from your own flesh, then your light, your light, the light of our churches, the light of our self, we are to be the lights of the world. We are to be the salt of the earth. That light will break forth.

God is making a promise here. This is the number one promise here. Your light will break forth.

Righteousness shall go before you. Well, you have healing, speedily, glory of the Lord. He's going to be our rear guard.

He's going to be with us. He's going to be our protector. And this promise, then you shall call.

This has everything to do with our prayer meeting. It has everything to do with what we do right now. Then you shall call, and the Lord will answer.

But you see the connection. You shall cry. He will say, here I am.

Brethren, if there's anything we want, we want to pray and have this confidence that God is saying, here I am. Here I am. The blessings that go along with this.

I want to tell you a story here, historically. James sent me this just this week here at the conference. You all know Andrew Fuller.

You know the name? He had a group of these Baptists, little band of brothers. Cary and Fuller and Ryland and Sutcliffe and Pierce. And these guys came together.

Very interestingly, we know that Cary went to the mission field. Fuller was the man who stayed in England and oversaw this thing. He was really at home.

He was the backbone to the mission in India. Sarampore. Listen to this.

The late Andrew Fuller of Kettering shared with a friend an important lesson from his ministry. There was a time when I made every effort to comfort my serious people. You know what he means by serious people? Particular Baptists, late 1700s.

These guys were emerging from a deep hyper-Calvinism. And a lot of the people in their churches, you see this in the hyper-Calvinistic circles, struggles with assurance. When he says my serious people, he's talking about the people in these Calvinistic circles and in his church specifically who were just full of doubts.

They were full of doubts all the time. This cloud hung over their heads. And he said, there was a time I made every effort to comfort these people, yet the more I tried, the more they complained of doubts and darkness.

Wherever I went, I heard the same lament. So you see, it's in that band of churches, this circle of churches, not only in his own church wherever he went, but he's getting this. I heard this, ah, sir, I can find no comfort.

I cannot claim the promises as my own. I'm obviously lacking assurance. I don't know if He loves me.

I don't know if I'm in, if I'm out. Am I a Christian? Am I not a Christian? I don't... He says, I was bewildered. So here he's a pastor.

He's wanting to help people. You come across people that lack assurance. You want to help.

I had a conversation with a young lady yesterday, and she doesn't know if she's saved or not. Her parents are here at Providence, and you want to help. You want to just pull the person out of that.

You want them to be grounded. You don't want them... And that's where he is. Bewildered and distressed.

And that's how you feel when you're dealing with people that lack assurance. You're trying to give them comfort. You're pointing them to Christ.

You're pointing them to the promises. He says, for all I had done that I could to console the mourners in Zion, yet they remained disheartened. I was at my wit's end.

And you know what happened? Right at this time, that seed of thought began to sprout. We need to do something for the heathen in India. He says, God directed my attention to the plight of the heathen in India.

So that was happening in Fuller's mind. That was happening in Cary's heart. These men were getting together.

Of course, you know that Fuller wrote this treatise on the gospel worthy of all acceptation. And Cary took that and he ran with it. And if it's worthy of all acceptation, then we need to take it out there.

This was not just in those two men. It was in this circle of churches and even among the people. And he says, I share this conviction with my congregation.

He says they were moved to tears. And they were grieving over their indifference to the lost. They began talking about a Baptist mission.

Women started collecting money for the spread of the gospel. We gathered to pray for the heathen to discuss what could be done for them. And then we acted on it.

He says, as this unfolded, the complaints of struggles with assurance ceased. The sorrowful became cheerful. The despondent found peace.

No one lamented a lack of comfort anymore. I no longer had to study how to comfort them. They were comforted in their work.

And I too found comfort through them. They were drawn out of themselves. That was the secret.

Brethren, there is so much truth to our prayers, and especially the prayers for revival. Brethren, a lot of times, the secret as he found is right here. And it goes on to develop then Isaiah 58.

He saw that connection. And the author here is bringing this example out because he's seen this connection. Brethren, as we pray for revival, I heard this after I spoke here.

Some of the young people in my family said there was a group of young people that were strategizing. Okay, how do we go forward with this? Brethren, I really believe that this is the key for us to be in a place where we gather together in our prayer meetings and God says, Here I am. And brethren, remember, He promises healing.

And undoubtedly, where we've got people that are wrestling with assurance, something needs to be fixed, wouldn't you say? And yet the healing is promised, connected right here. Brethren, I just want us to think about this. Sometimes the greatest success and key to our prayers and to revival is their selfishness.

They were so self-consumed and so inwardly focused. Brethren, sometimes we just have to look out. Look beyond.

Brethren, let's pray. Father, I want this. I want this.

I want these promises. I want to live like this. I want to live pleasing to You.

I see brothers and sisters here nodding. Lord, this is what we want. We want to be pleasing to You.

We want to be the kind of people that when we gather together and we pray, oh, it is such a reality. You say, Here I am. Lord, that's what we want when we pray.

Last thing we want is to just pray to the ceiling, pray to a brass sky. Lord, we so desire, have a great longing to just have a reality of our Christianity, a reality of Your presence, a reality of us just hearing those words of our Savior who said, Follow Me. Lord, we want to follow.

And we pray for the grace to be able to put our feet into His footprints and follow on. And Lord, we know we're not where we ought to be. We're not where we should be.

We haven't arrived yet. But oh, we pray for grace. Give us ears to hear.

Lord, I want to turn in 60 this week. Whatever time I have left, I want to live this out. I want to pour myself out for the spiritually hungry and the physically hungry.

We all feel it. We want our lives to matter. We want to live as we will have wished to have lived when we arrived there to look at You at that judgment bar.

Lord, we want no regrets. We want to run well. We want to run fast.

We want to run with grace. We want to run with speed. Lord, we want Your grace.

We want to run with reality. We want to run knowing that You're close. We want to run with this healing, with our light just breaking forth like the noonday and being like a garden planted beside a river.

And we want to rebuild the ancient ruins. And Lord, be a repairer of the breaches. Lord, we want these things.

We want this reality. Father, we love the idea of a Christianity that just spills over with reality. Lord, come close.

Draw near. Help our brother Stuart today as he preaches. Lord, we want a word from You.

We want to hear from You. We want it to resonate. We want to be able to drive home today to all of our places with the Word of God fresh in our minds.

And Lord, I pray that the brethren would be able to go forth from this place at the end having benefited, profited, having grown, having been blessed for having been here. And Lord, we pray that You would carry us on now into our lives, being better for having heard what we've heard and the fellowship that we've had. Lord, I thank You.

The fellowship here has been so rich and the conversation so good. And Lord, we called it Fellowship Conference in the beginning because that's exactly what we desired would happen. And You've caused that to happen, it seems, year after year.

We thank You for these 15 years of Your faithfulness to us in gathering people together and the preachers together. Lord, we thank You in Christ's name for just all Your... Lord, for our salvation, for the unspeakable gift of the Lord Jesus Christ who became poor for our sakes that we might become rich. We thank You in Christ's name, Amen.