Just a few quotes from the late Leonard Ravenhill. The master of homiletical alliteration and rhyme.
One thing Bible College cannot really teach you, and that is how to pray.
“One does not need to be spiritual to preach, that is, to make and deliver sermons of homiletical perfection and exegetical exactitude. By a combination of memory, knowledge, ambition, personality, plus well-lined book shelves, self-confidence and a sense of having arrived - the pulpit is yours almost anywhere these days. Preaching of the type mentioned affects men; prayer affects God. Preaching affects time; prayer affects eternity.”
Would to God we’d acknowledge the truth of the following words, and then do something about it!
“Poverty-stricken as the Church is today in many things, she is most stricken here, in the place of prayer. We have many organizers, but few agonizers; many players and payers, few pray-ers; many singers, few clingers; lots of pastors, few wrestlers; many fears, few tears; much fashion, little passion; many interferers, few intercessors; many writers, but few fighters. Failing here, we fail everywhere.”
We try to deny the following, but if you scratch the surface of most churches today, the following will be proved true.
“Can any deny that in the modern church setup the main cause of anxiety is money? Yet that which tries the modern churches the most, troubled the New Testament Church the least. Our accent is on paying, theirs was on praying. When we have paid, the place is taken; when they had prayed, the place was shaken!”
Think
Christian…what are doing with your life? Are you pursuing a “knowledge of the holy”, or a knowledge of politics, sports results, flowers, cars, and all the other temporal, soul dulling nonesense of the day?
If you haven’t read Ravenhill’s book, “Why Revival Tarries”, it’s about time you did. I don’t agree with everything in it, but then as someone rightly said, if we agree with everything in the books we read, we are probably the authors.
Do you forget to visit the blog? Get free updates via email. Or via RSS if you use a feedreaderWant to read other articles? Try these...
- Expositional Preaching - Why I Prefer It
- Our first mid-week service
- 5 Spheres of the Spirit-filled Life in the Christian
Want to pray intelligently for this preacher? Go here to learn more!
Added Commentary
By Roman
on 27.07.07
Good post, Armen! I won’t be reading this book, but I liked the quotes from it that you shared. These are things we already know, so let’s continue practicing them! Bravo!
By Armen
on 28.07.07
Roman
By Roman
on 28.07.07
Armen philos mou agapitos,
I spent about the first dozen years of my adult Christian life trying to come to terms with the wide disparity between my following of Christ and what the Church wanted of me and its other members. Then, after a fruitless struggle, the Lord quietly moved me into Orthodox Christianity, and I found there that what I was doing is what the Church has always been doing, albeit often invisibly, that is, following Christ and living the life of heaven on earth, where nothing we do on our own is of any help, but what God does in us is all that matters, and where no one is watching us but God. I appreciate the things this author is saying, and I like his play on words (I do the same sometimes), and I hope what he says will help free people from false churchly piety and unconscious attitudes of salvation-by-works. But as for me, I just want to stay off the leash of the spirit of the age, and only run after Jesus. Even at age 56, I feel like a 29 year old. “He renews your youth like the eagle’s.”
Give glory to God, and keep running, adelphos mou!
Haven't you got anything to say?