Revival Meeting Quotes

I have watched people come to revival meetings burdened, broken, and hopeless, and then leave completely transformed. The difference is undeniable—their eyes are brighter, their posture changes, and their spirit is lighter because Jesus set them free.

The so-called paradox of freedom is the argument that freedom in the sense of absence of any constraining control must lead to very great restraint, since it makes the bully free to enslave the meek. The idea is, in a slightly different form, and with very different tendency, clearly expressed in Plato. Less well known is the paradox of tolerance: Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them. — In this formulation, I do not imply, for instance, that we should always suppress the utterance of intolerant philosophies; as long as we can counter them by rational argument and keep them in check by public opinion, suppression would certainly be unwise. But we should claim the right to suppress them if necessary even by force; for it may easily turn out that they are not prepared to meet us on the level of rational argument, but begin by denouncing all argument; they may forbid their followers to listen to rational argument, because it is deceptive, and teach them to answer arguments by the use of their fists or pistols. We should therefore claim, in the name of tolerance, the right not to tolerate the intolerant. We should claim that any movement preaching intolerance places itself outside the law, and we should consider incitement to intolerance and persecution as criminal, in the same way as we should consider incitement to murder, or to kidnapping, or to the revival of the slave trade, as criminal.

The wondrous moment of our meeting... Still I remember you appear Before me like a vision fleeting, A beauty's angel pure and clear. In hopeless ennui surrounding The worldly bustle, to my ear For long your tender voice kept sounding, For long in dreams came features dear. Time passed. Unruly storms confounded Old dreams, and I from year to year Forgot how tender you had sounded, Your heavenly features once so dear. My backwoods days dragged slow and quiet -- Dull fence around, dark vault above -- Devoid of God and uninspired, Devoid of tears, of fire, of love. Sleep from my soul began retreating, And here you once again appear Before me like a vision fleeting, A beauty's angel pure and clear. In ecstasy my heart is beating, Old joys for it anew revive; Inspired and God-filled, it is greeting The fire, and tears, and love alive.

I liked to watch a play with Lena; everything was wonderful to her, and everything was true. It was like going to revival meetings with someone who was always being converted.

Sodom, which had no Bible, no preachers, no tracts, no prayer meetings, no churches, perished. How then will America and England be spared from the wrath of the Almighty, think you? We have millions of Bibles, scores of thousands of churches, endless preachers—and yet what sin!

Two thousand saved? You’re a revival meeting in a red dress! (Kaity, to Samantha)

Technicality,” Shiro said. “The cigars?” “My Christianity,” Shiro said. “When I was a boy, I liked Elvis. Had a chance to see him in concert when we moved to California. It was a big revival meeting. There was Elvis and then a speaker and my English was not so good. He invited people backstage to meet the king. Thought he meant Elvis, so I go backstage.” He sighed. “Found out later I had become a Baptist.” I barked out a laugh. “You’re kidding.” “No. But it was done, so I tried not to be too bad at being Baptist.

The Cinderella of the church of today is the prayer meeting. This handmaid of the Lord is unloved and unwooed because she is not dripping with the pearls of intellectualism, nor glamorous with the silks of philosophy; neither is she enchanting with the tiara of psychology.

Prayer for revival will prevail when it is accompanied by radical amendment of life; not before. All-night prayer meetings that are not preceded by practical repentance may actually be displeasing to God. "To obey is better than sacrifice." We must return to New Testament Christianity, not in creed only but in complete manner of life as well. Separation, obedience, humility, simplicity, gravity, self-control, modesty, cross-bearing: these all must again be made a living part of the total Christian concept and be carried out in everyday conduct. We

shows the destructive forces that affect young women. As a girl, Ophelia is happy and free, but with adolescence she loses herself. When she falls in love with Hamlet, she lives only for his approval. She has no inner direction ; rather she struggles to meet the demands of Hamlet and her father. Her value is determined utterly by their approval. Ophelia is torn apart by her efforts to please. When Hamlet spurns her because she is an obedient daughter, she goes mad with grief. Dressed in elegant clothes that weigh her down, she drowns in a stream filled with flowers.

An attachment grew up. What is an attachment? It is the most difficult of all the human interrelationships to explain, because it is the vaguest, the most impalpable. It has all the good points of love, and none of its drawbacks. No jealousy, no quarrels, no greed to possess, no fear of losing possession, no hatred (which is very much a part of love), no surge of passion and no hangover afterward. It never reaches the heights, and it never reaches the depths. As a rule it comes on subtly. As theirs did. As a rule the two involved are not even aware of it at first. As they were not. As a rule it only becomes noticeable when it is interrupted in some way, or broken off by circumstances. As theirs was. In other words, its presence only becomes known in its absence. It is only missed after it stops. While it is still going on, little thought is given to it, because little thought needs to be. It is pleasant to meet, it is pleasant to be together. To put your shopping packages down on a little wire-backed chair at a little table at a sidewalk cafe, and sit down and have a vermouth with someone who has been waiting there for you. And will be waiting there again tomorrow afternoon. Same time, same table, same sidewalk cafe. Or to watch Italian youth going through the gyrations of the latest dance craze in some inexpensive indigenous night-place-while you, who come from the country where the dance originated, only get up to do a sedate fox trot. It is even pleasant to part, because this simply means preparing the way for the next meeting. One long continuous being-together, even in a love affair, might make the thing wilt. In an attachment it would surely kill the thing off altogether. But to meet, to part, then to meet again in a few days, keeps the thing going, encourages it to flower. And yet it requires a certain amount of vanity, as love does; a desire to please, to look one's best, to elicit compliments. It inspires a certain amount of flirtation, for the two are of opposite sex. A wink of understanding over the rim of a raised glass, a low-voiced confidential aside about something and the smile of intimacy that answers it, a small impromptu gift - a necktie on the one part because of an accidental spill on the one he was wearing, or of a small bunch of flowers on the other part because of the color of the dress she has on. So it goes. And suddenly they part, and suddenly there's a void, and suddenly they discover they have had an attachment. Rome passed into the past, and became New York. Now, if they had never come together again, or only after a long time and in different circumstances, then the attachment would have faded and died. But if they suddenly do come together again - while the sharp sting of missing one another is still smarting - then the attachment will revive full force, full strength. But never again as merely an attachment. It has to go on from there, it has to build, to pick up speed. And sometimes it is so glad to be brought back again that it makes the mistake of thinking it is love. ("For The Rest Of Her Life")

grew up a Southern Baptist, and we had revival meetings with mesmerizing but corrupt preachers,” recounted Alvy Ray Smith.

When a pharmaceutical company releases a new drug, they have a big launch meeting, which can seem like some unholy combination of a bachelor party, a marketing convention, and a revival meeting.

the paradox of tolerance: unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them.—In this formulation, I do not imply, for instance, that we should always suppress the utterance of intolerant philosophies; as long as we can counter them by rational argument and keep them in check by public opinion, suppression would certainly be most unwise. But we should claim the right to suppress them if necessary even by force; for it may easily turn out that they are not prepared to meet us on the level of rational argument, but begin by denouncing all argument; they may forbid their followers to listen to rational argument, because it is deceptive, and teach them to answer arguments by the use of their fists or pistols. We should therefore claim, in the name of tolerance, the right not to tolerate the intolerant. We should claim that any movement preaching intolerance places itself outside the law, and we should consider incitement to intolerance and persecution as criminal, in the same way as we should consider incitement to murder, or to kidnapping, or to the revival of the slave trade, as criminal.

The ugly fact is that altar fires are either out or burning very low. The prayer meeting is dead or dying. By our attitude to prayer we tell God that what was begun in the Spirit we can finish in the flesh. What church ever asks its candidating ministers what time they spend in prayer? Yet ministers who do not spend two hours a day in prayer are not worth a dime a dozen, degrees or no degrees.

For some of us, the idea of repentance can bring to mind a particular emotional experience, or the minor-key songs of an altar call at a revival meeting. But repentance and faith are the constant, daily rhythms of the Christian life, our breathing out and breathing in.

1924 A revival meeting seems never to get under my skin. Perhaps I am too fish-blooded to enjoy them. But I object not so much to the emotionalism as to the lack of intellectual honesty of the average revival preacher. I do not mean to imply that the evangelists are necessarily consciously dishonest. They just don’t know enough about life and history to present the problem of the Christian life in its full meaning. They are always assuming that nothing but an emotional commitment to Christ is needed to save the soul from its sin and chaos. They seem never to realize how many of the miseries of mankind are due not to malice but to misdirected zeal and unbalanced virtue. They never help the people who corrupt family love by making the family a selfish unit in society or those who brutalize industry by excessive devotion to the prudential virtues.

It is from the pulpit that God speaks to His people through His word, so when His voice is removed and replaced with another, the church is quickly led astray. History bears witness to the fact that when the church loses her influence, the culture suffers, degrades, and eventually falls. But worse than the damage to culture is the absolute tragic end of souls who meet their demise without ever being reconciled to God through the gospel of Jesus Christ.

It begins with us letting Him into the darkness. It completes with Him shining His light. Somehow, it’s both. Fully. The honesty of earth meets the truth of Heaven. The cross and the resurrection. This is the completion. And I have found the order to be key: earth is the question. Heaven is the answer.

I mean I’m just bad at being good. Bad despite more than sixty years of attending Sunday school, worship services, summer camps, revivals, prayer meetings, retreats, workshops, religious colleges, seminary; being a pastor; reading spiritual books, writing spiritual books, and memorizing Bible verses. I stumble a lot!

Many readers are familiar with the spirit and the letter of the definition of “prayer”, as given by Ambrose Bierce in his Devil’s Dictionary. It runs like this, and is extremely easy to comprehend: Prayer: A petition that the laws of nature be suspended in favor of the petitioner; himself confessedly unworthy. Everybody can see the joke that is lodged within this entry: The man who prays is the one who thinks that god has arranged matters all wrong, but who also thinks that he can instruct god how to put them right. Half–buried in the contradiction is the distressing idea that nobody is in charge, or nobody with any moral authority. The call to prayer is self–cancelling. Those of us who don’t take part in it will justify our abstention on the grounds that we do not need, or care, to undergo the futile process of continuous reinforcement. Either our convictions are enough in themselves or they are not: At any rate they do require standing in a crowd and uttering constant and uniform incantations. This is ordered by one religion to take place five times a day, and by other monotheists for almost that number, while all of them set aside at least one whole day for the exclusive praise of the Lord, and Judaism seems to consist in its original constitution of a huge list of prohibitions that must be followed before all else. The tone of the prayers replicates the silliness of the mandate, in that god is enjoined or thanked to do what he was going to do anyway. Thus the Jewish male begins each day by thanking god for not making him into a woman (or a Gentile), while the Jewish woman contents herself with thanking the almighty for creating her “as she is.” Presumably the almighty is pleased to receive this tribute to his power and the approval of those he created. It’s just that, if he is truly almighty, the achievement would seem rather a slight one. Much the same applies to the idea that prayer, instead of making Christianity look foolish, makes it appear convincing. Now, it can be asserted with some confidence, first, that its deity is all–wise and all–powerful and, second, that its congregants stand in desperate need of that deity’s infinite wisdom and power. Just to give some elementary quotations, it is stated in the book of Philippians, 4:6, “Be careful for nothing; but in everything by prayer and supplication and thanksgiving, let your requests be known to God.” Deuteronomy 32:4 proclaims that “he is the rock, his work is perfect,” and Isaiah 64:8 tells us, “Now O Lord, thou art our father; we art clay and thou our potter; and we are all the work of thy hand.” Note, then, that Christianity insists on the absolute dependence of its flock, and then only on the offering of undiluted praise and thanks. A person using prayer time to ask for the world to be set to rights, or to beseech god to bestow a favor upon himself, would in effect be guilty of a profound blasphemy or, at the very least, a pathetic misunderstanding. It is not for the mere human to be presuming that he or she can advise the divine. And this, sad to say, opens religion to the additional charge of corruption. The leaders of the church know perfectly well that prayer is not intended to gratify the devout. So that, every time they accept a donation in return for some petition, they are accepting a gross negation of their faith: a faith that depends on the passive acceptance of the devout and not on their making demands for betterment. Eventually, and after a bitter and schismatic quarrel, practices like the notorious “sale of indulgences” were abandoned. But many a fine basilica or chantry would not be standing today if this awful violation had not turned such a spectacularly good profit. And today it is easy enough to see, at the revival meetings of Protestant fundamentalists, the counting of the checks and bills before the laying on of hands by the preacher has even been completed. Again, the spectacle is a shameless one.

Why should I teach when the Spirit is teaching? What need have these people to be told that they are sinners? What they need is salvation. Do they not know it? It is not knowledge that they lack, but decision—action. And why should I control the meetings? The meetings control themselves, or rather the Spirit that is in them controls them.

People who are starving and dressed in rags don’t want to hear someone read a list of propositional “good news.” They want to see the good news in action. The church doesn’t hold revival meetings and call it a day — we feed the hungry, clothe the naked, dig wells, and staff medical clinics. Social action isn’t an optional part of evangelism; it is evangelism. This is an important correction to the overspirituality that dominated evangelical Christianity just a generation ago. But the both/and of holistic mission still misses the heart of Jesus if we don’t see that the church needs the poor as much as the poor need the church. Jesus didn’t embrace the poor only because he pitied them or because he knew he had the resources to help them. Jesus embraced the poor because they were rushing into the kingdom ahead of the scribes and Pharisees — those who called themselves God’s people. Jesus welcomed people who knew poverty because they were ready to receive what he had to offer. Religious people, he said, could learn something from them. Our spiritual lives are linked to the material conditions of our life. When we feel like we don’t need much materially, we often have trouble remembering why we need God. We comfortable Americans can go through an entire day without thinking of God. But Jesus gave the poor more than food to eat and relief from their sickness. He restored them to God’s beloved community.

The people are the meeting, not the preacher, once his short talk is ended, though his spirit remains to fire them to congregational rather than individual leadership.

We’ve prayed for this awakening,” cries a workman at one meeting. “We’ve seen the devils worst often; but now, at last, we are seeing Christ’s best.

None of the hundreds of dramatic scenes that have occurred in these meetings have come while Roberts has been talking. They have come afterwards and often a considerable time afterwards.

There would be no more parades of that sort. Probably they would play some beastly yelping game...Like baseball or Association football...And heaven?...Oh, it would be a revival meeting on a Welsh hillside. Or Chautauqua, wherever that was...And God? A Real Estate Agent, with Marxist views...He hoped to be out of it before the cessation of hostilities, in which case he might be just in time for the last train to the old heaven...

When the fallow ground is thoroughly broken up in the hearts of Christians, when they have confessed and made restitution, as I have taught in my former articles--if the work be thorough and honest--they will naturally and inevitably fulfill the conditions, and will prevail in prayer. But it cannot be too distinctly understood that none others will. What we commonly hear in prayer and conference meetings is not prevailing prayer. It is often astonishing and lamentable to witness the delusions that prevail upon the subject. Who that has witnessed real revivals of religion has not been struck with the change that comes over the whole spirit and manner of the prayers of really revived Christians? I do not think I ever could have been converted if I had not discovered the solution of the question: "Why is it that so much that is called prayer is not answered?

The man who wields the blood-clotted cowskin during the week fills the pulpit on Sunday, and claims to be a minister of the meek and lowly Jesus. The man who robs me of my earnings at the end of each week meets me as a class- leader on Sunday morning, to show me the way of life, and the path of salvation. He who sells my sister, for purposes of prostitution, stands forth as the pious advocate of purity. He who proclaims it a religious duty to read the Bible denies me the right of learning to read the name of the God who made me. He who is the religious advocate of marriage robs whole millions of its sacred influence, and leaves them to the ravages of wholesale pollution. The warm defender of the sacredness of the family relation is the same that scatters whole families,— sundering husbands and wives, parents and children, sisters and brothers,—leaving the hut vacant, and the hearth desolate. We see the thief preaching against theft, and the adulterer against adultery. We have men sold to build churches, women sold to support the gospel, and babes sold to purchase Bibles for the poor heathen! all for the glory of God and the good of souls! The slave auctioneer’s bell and the church-going bell chime in with each other, and the bitter cries of the heart-broken slave are drowned in the religious shouts of his pious master. Revivals of religion and revivals in the slave-trade go hand in hand together. The slave prison and the church stand near each other. The clanking of fetters and the rattling of chains in the prison, and the pious psalm and solemn prayer in the church, may be heard at the same time. The dealers in the bodies and souls of men erect their stand in the presence of the pulpit, and they mutually help each other. The dealer gives his blood-stained gold to support the pulpit, and the pulpit, in return, covers his infernal business with the garb of Christianity. Here we have religion and robbery the allies of each other—devils dressed in angels’ robes, and hell presenting the semblance of paradise.

And Evan Roberts, I believe, has said that he is glad that this is the case, for it proves that it is not Roberts, the man, his magnetism, or his personality that is so great an influence, but rather the Spirit at work in the meetings.

Prayer for revival will prevail when it is accompanied by radical amendment of life; not before. All-night prayer meetings that are not preceded by practical repentance may actually be displeasing to God. "To obey is better than sacrifice." We

I was sorting stamps in the slotted drawer at the post office when Garnelle Fielding came in to send a little package to Wilbur. She said she’d gone and signed up for the WAFS, and her mother and daddy drove her down to Sweetwater to take a test at Avenger Field, where the government was training hundreds and hundreds of women to be pilots. Trouble was, she didn’t pass her physical because they said she was too short and too thin for the service. Her mother rushed her to a doctor in Toullange the next day and tried to get him to write her a letter so she could join the navy instead, but he wouldn’t do it. He told her the service was no place for a girl, and she’d be better off to wait home for someone brave to come marry her. Garnelle hung around until four o’clock when my hours were up, then walked with me to my house. “You should have seen my mother,” she said. “Better yet, you should have heard her. She fussed and fumed the whole way home about how women in her family had fought in every war this country has ever had, right up from loading muskets in the Revolution to she herself driving a staff car in North Carolina during the Great War. I tell you, she would have made a better recruiter than any of those movie star speeches I’ve ever heard. My mother doesn’t sell kisses in a low-cut basque. She preaches pure patriotism like an evangelist in a tent revival. If she’d had a tambourine, we could have stopped the car and held a meeting.” We laughed. “I’m still mad, though,” she said.

Tatyana’s Letter to Onegin I’m writing you this declaration— What more can I in candour say? It may be now your inclination To scorn me and to turn away; But if my hapless situation Evokes some pity for my woe, You won’t abandon me, I know. I first tried silence and evasion; Believe me, you‘d have never learned My secret shame, had I discerned The slightest hope that on occasion— But once a week—I’d see your face, Behold you at our country place, Might hear you speak a friendly greeting, Could say a word to you; and then, Could dream both day and night again Of but one thing, till our next meeting. They say you like to be alone And find the country unappealing; We lack, I know, a worldly tone, But still, we welcome you with feeling. Why did you ever come to call? In this forgotten country dwelling I’d not have known you then at all, Nor known this bitter heartache’s swelling. Perhaps, when time had helped in quelling The girlish hopes on which I fed, I might have found (who knows?) another And been a faithful wife and mother, Contented with the life I led. Another! No! In all creation There’s no one else whom I’d adore; The heavens chose my destination And made me thine for evermore! My life till now has been a token In pledge of meeting you, my friend; And in your coming, God has spoken, You‘ll be my guardian till the end…. You filled my dreams and sweetest trances; As yet unseen, and yet so dear, You stirred me with your wondrous glances, Your voice within my soul rang clear…. And then the dream came true for me! When you came in, I seemed to waken, I turned to flame, I felt all shaken, And in my heart I cried: It’s he! And was it you I heard replying Amid the stillness of the night, Or when I helped the poor and dying, Or turned to heaven, softly crying, And said a prayer to soothe my plight? And even now, my dearest vision, Did I not see your apparition Flit softly through this lucent night? Was it not you who seemed to hover Above my bed, a gentle lover, To whisper hope and sweet delight? Are you my angel of salvation Or hell’s own demon of temptation? Be kind and send my doubts away; For this may all be mere illusion, The things a simple girl would say, While Fate intends no grand conclusion…. So be it then! Henceforth I place My faith in you and your affection; I plead with tears upon my face And beg you for your kind protection. You cannot know: I’m so alone, There’s no one here to whom I’ve spoken, My mind and will are almost broken, And I must die without a moan. I wait for you … and your decision: Revive my hopes with but a sign, Or halt this heavy dream of mine— Alas, with well-deserved derision! I close. I dare not now reread…. I shrink with shame and fear. But surely, Your honour’s all the pledge I need, And I submit to it securely.

The prayer level of a church never rises any higher than the personal example and passion of the leaders. The quantity and quality of prayer in leadership meetings is the essential indicator of the amount of prayer that will eventually arise among the congregation.

During the Society's early years, no member personified the organization's eccentricities or audacious mission more than Sir Francis Galton. A cousin of Charles Darwin's, he had been a child prodigy who, by the age of four, could read and recite Latin. He went on to concoct myriad inventions. They included a ventilating top hat; a machine called a Gumption-Reviver, which periodically wet his head to keep him awake during endless study; underwater goggles; and a rotating-vane steam engine. Suffering from periodic nervous breakdowns––"sprained brain," as he called it––he had a compulsion to measure and count virtually everything. He quantified the sensitivity of animal hearing, using a walking stick that could make an inconspicuous whistle; the efficacy of prayer; the average age of death in each profession (lawyers: 66.51; doctors: 67.04); the exact amount of rope needed to break a criminal's neck while avoiding decapitation; and levels of boredom (at meetings of the Royal Geographical Society he would count the rate of fidgets among each member of the audience).

The story of the very first outbreak of the Revival traces it to the trembling utterance of a poor Welsh girl, who, at a meeting in a Cardigan village, was the first to rise and testify. “If no one else will, then I must say that I love the Lord Jesus Christ with all my heart.

The timing of the Internet explosion means that it cannot possibly be causally linked to the crumbling of social connectedness described in previous chapters. Voting, giving, trusting, meeting, visiting, and so on had all begun to decline while Bill Gates was still in grade school.

To revive the Victorian ghost, invite it in on its own terms. Wait for dark. Dim the lights. If you can arrange a draft to waft through the room, all the better. Meeting the ghosts of Christmas does not limit you to Dickens’s edifying spirits; instead, prepare yourself for a sensual experience of midwinter leisure and Victorian story-telling tradition.

The gates were thrown open by their companions upon guard, and by the domestics of the old court, who had already formed a secret conspiracy against the life of the too virtuous emperor. On the news of their approach, Pertinax, disdaining either flight or concealment, advanced to meet his assassins; and recalled to their minds his own innocence, and the sanctity of their recent oath. For a few moments they stood in silent suspense, ashamed of their atrocious design, and awed by the venerable aspect and majestic firmness of their sovereign, till at length, the despair of pardon reviving their fury, a barbarian of the country of Tongress levelled the first blow against Pertinax, who was instantly despatched with a multitude of wounds. His head, separated from his body, and placed on a lance, was carried in triumph to the Prætorian camp, in the sight of a mournful and indignant people, who lamented the unworthy fate of that excellent prince, and the transient blessings of a reign, the memory of which could serve only to aggravate their approaching misfortunes.

It is our shame and disgrace today that so many Christians—I will be more specific: so many of the soundest and most orthodox Christians—go through this world in the spirit of the priest and the Levite in our Lord’s parable, seeing human needs all around them, but (after a pious wish, and perhaps a prayer, that God might meet those needs) averting their eyes and passing by on the other side. That is not the Christmas spirit. Nor is it the spirit of those Christians—alas, they are many—whose ambition in life seems limited to building a nice middle-class Christian home, and making nice middle-class Christian friends, and bringing up their children in nice middle-class Christian ways, and who leave the submiddle-class sections of the community, Christian and non-Christian, to get on by themselves. The Christmas spirit does not shine out in the Christian snob, For the Christmas spirit is the spirit of those who, like their Master, live their whole lives on the principle of making themselves poor-spending and being spent—to enrich their fellow humans, giving time, trouble, care and concern, to do good to others—and not just their own friends—in whatever way there seems need. There are not as many who show this spirit as there should be. If God in mercy revives us, one of the things he will do will be to work more of this spirit in our hearts and lives. If we desire spiritual quickening for ourselves individually, one step we should take is to seek to cultivate this spirit. “You know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sakes he became poor, so that you through his poverty might become rich” (2 Cor 8:9). “Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus” (Phil 2:5). “I will run the way of thy commandments, when thou shalt enlarge my heart” (Ps 119:32 KJV).

Nevertheless, by dint of his personality and controlling instincts, Jobs was soon playing a stronger role. He spewed out a stream of ideas - some reasonable, others wacky - about what Pixar's hardware and software could become. And on his occasional visits to the PIxar offices, he was an inspiring presence. "I grew up a Southern Baptist, and we had revival meetings with mesmerizing but corrupt preachers," recounted Alvy Ray Smith. "Steve's got it: the power of the tongue and the web of words that catches people up. We were aware of this when we had board meetings, so we developed signals - nose scratching or ear tugs - for when someone had been caught up in Steve's distortion field and he needed to be tugged back to reality.

We are among the first peoples in human history who do not broadly inherit religious identity as a given, a matter of kin and tribe, like hair color and hometown. But the very fluidity of this—the possibility of choice that arises, the ability to craft and discern one’s own spiritual bearings—is not leading to the decline of spiritual life but its revival. It is changing us, collectively. It is even renewing religion, and our cultural encounter with religion, in counterintuitive ways. I meet scientists who speak of a religiosity without spirituality—a reverence for the place of ritual in human life, and the value of human community, without a need for something supernaturally transcendent. There is something called the New Humanism, which is in dialogue about moral imagination and ethical passions across boundaries of belief and nonbelief. But I apprehend— with a knowledge that is as much visceral as cognitive— that God is love. That somehow the possibility of care that can transform us— love muscular and resilient— is an echo of a reality behind reality, embedded in the creative force that gives us life.

Our forebears back in the the camp meeting days used to say that if people left a meeting talking about what a wonderful sermon the preacher gave or how beautifully the singers sang, the meeting had failed. But if people went home saying things like "Isn't God good? He met me tonight in such a wonderful way," it was a good meeting. There was to be no sharing the stage with the Lord.

A cynical, indifferent critic watching any one of these meetings would be forced to admit that the young man is sincere to the core; that he descends to no trick of gesture or word or act; that he is straightforward and simple to the last degree; that he does not try to force people against their will, and yet that in some way he draws all before him, not to himself, but to the Spirit of Whom he is the avowed disciple.

Forcing new loans upon the bankrupt on condition that they shrink their income is nothing short of cruel and unusual punishment. Greece was never bailed out. With their ‘rescue’ loan and their troika of bailiffs enthusiastically slashing incomes, the EU and IMF effectively condemned Greece to a modern version of the Dickensian debtors’ prison and then threw away the key. Debtors’ prisons were ultimately abandoned because, despite their cruelty, they neither deterred the accumulation of new bad debts nor helped creditors get their money back. For capitalism to advance in the nineteenth century, the absurd notion that all debts are sacred had to be ditched and replaced with the notion of limited liability. After all, if all debts are guaranteed, why should lenders lend responsibly? And why should some debts carry a higher interest rate than other debts, reflecting the higher risk of going bad? Bankruptcy and debt write-downs became for capitalism what hell had always been for Christian dogma – unpleasant yet essential – but curiously bankruptcy-denial was revived in the twenty-first century to deal with the Greek state’s insolvency. Why? Did the EU and the IMF not realize what they were doing? They knew exactly what they were doing. Despite their meticulous propaganda, in which they insisted that they were trying to save Greece, to grant the Greek people a second chance, to help reform Greece’s chronically crooked state and so on, the world’s most powerful institutions and governments were under no illusions. […] Banks restructure the debt of stressed corporations every day, not out of philanthropy but out of enlightened self-interest. But the problem was that, now that we had accepted the EU–IMF bailout, we were no longer dealing with banks but with politicians who had lied to their parliaments to convince them to relieve the banks of Greece’s debt and take it on themselves. A debt restructuring would require them to go back to their parliaments and confess their earlier sin, something they would never do voluntarily, fearful of the repercussions. The only alternative was to continue the pretence by giving the Greek government another wad of money with which to pretend to meet its debt repayments to the EU and the IMF: a second bailout.

My own belief is that, though they may start by being something of an embarrassment, these new mind changers will tend in the long run to deepen the spiritual life of the communities in which they are available. That famous “revival of religion,” about which so many people have been talking for so long, will not come about as the result of evangelistic mass meetings or the television appearances of photogenic clergymen. It will come about as the result of biochemical discoveries that will make it possible for large numbers of men and women to achieve a radical self-transcendence and a deeper understanding of the nature of things. And this revival of religion will be at the same time a revolution. From being an activity mainly concerned with symbols, religion will be transformed into an activity concerned mainly with experience and intuition—an everyday mysticism underlying and giving significance to everyday rationality, everyday tasks and duties, everyday human relationships.

depressed like you ruined everything God had planned for you? This is not the end! Just like the artists who spent consistent time with their creations in order for them to become masterpieces, we get this opportunity with God. He is eager to continue molding, shaping, and creating us to become the masterpieces he had in mind from the beginning. Even though he is eager, we must decide to meet with him to let him do his work. Spending consistent time with the Lord is the way to let him continue his work with us.

The work of God requires stamina. Nehemiah sustained his stamina even through staggering difficulties. He persisted through both ridicule and discouragement, and he remained faithful when tempted to compromise. This tenacity is required of leaders who will make a difference. Will you crumble under the pressures, or will you face the trials with God’s strength? Many today question the possibility of revival. These naysayers see only the decaying moral condition of society and the disappointing lukewarm condition of churches. Revival, however, is not dependent on or the result of a flourishing spiritual condition. Some of the greatest revivals in Scripture came during the darkest times. Let us not look at the rubbish, but at Christ, the Rock, who can rebuild our country through revival. Let us be leaders God can use to bring revival. Nehemiah was not a man to sit idly by when there was tremendous need. Neither was he a man to attempt meeting such need in his own strength. God used Nehemiah to bring revival because Nehemiah began with supplication for God’s forgiveness and power. The task of rebuilding the walls could never have been completed by one man alone; it needed a leader who understood the power of synergy. Nehemiah’s willingness to be personally involved in the work, as well as his ability to convey the need to others, resulted in a task force that completed this enormous building project in a mere fifty-two days—to the glory of God. Like any godly leader, Nehemiah did not go unchallenged. Yet, he sustained his stamina in the face of every opposition. Nehemiah’s life proves that revival is possible, even when it appears the most unlikely. God sends revival through leaders willing to make a difference.

Evan Roberts speaks: “Let us see what God’s Spirit will do for us in a quiet meeting. It did wonderful things at Lougher when no one sung or spoke.” A few moments later all are kneeling in five minutes of silent prayer. The crowded room is still except for quick gasps of sobbing breath from those who are deeply moved. Here and there a half audible voice is mumbling inarticulate prayer. Deeper yet grows time silence and more impressive. Wrinkled faces are upturned, and unseeing eyes look upward. Heads are bowed in folded hands. Shoulders are convulsed with emotion, and lips are moving from which no sound comes. Still the preacher gives no sign. Gradually a single low voice is heard in all parts of the chapel, singing sweetly the hymn, “Have you seen Him?” in Welsh. For an instant there is time stillness of listening with bated breath; then slowly other voices join in singing until the building rings with thrilling melody. It is as if they have burst from prayer into song. And this is a scene of the revival which so respected a paper as the Lancet, evidently without investigating it except through time reports of the sensational papers and its own prejudice, calls “a debauch of emotionalism,” “a hysterical outburst,” marked with “scenes of disorder.

The effects following this movement are wholly good — the church raised up to a higher spiritual level, almost entire absence of fanaticism because of previous careful instruction in the Bible; not one case of insanity, but many thousands clothed in their right mind; scores of men called to the holy ministry; greater congregations, searching the Word, as many as two thousand meeting in one place for the study of the Bible; many thousands learning to read, and making inquiries; multitudes of them pressing upon the tired missionary and native pastors praying, “Give us to eat.” I beseech you do not listen to any word suggestions of doubt as to the vitality and reality of this. Drunkards, gamblers, thieves, adulterers, murderers, self-righteous Confucianists and dead Buddhists, and thousands of devil-worshipers have been made new men in Christ, the old things gone forever.29

So I could not stay seated, I got back on to my feet; and thus at every moment, I had to meet one of those countless, humble selves that compose us who had not yet learned of Albertine’s departure and inform them of it—this task was all more cruel than if they had been strangers, and had not borrowed my sensitivity in order to suffer—to announce the impending misfortune to all of these people, all of these selves who did not yet know it; each one of them in turn needed to hear these words for the first time “Albertine asked for her trunk”—that coffin-shaped trunk which I had seen loaded into the carriage at Balbec along with my mother’s luggage—“Albertine has left.” I had to inform every one of them of my sorrow, that sorrow which is not at all a pessimistic conclusion freely drawn from a collection of sinister circumstances, but the intermittent and involuntary revival of a specific impression, externally provoked rather than chosen by us.

The argument came to a head in the first contested election on American soil, May 17, 1637, an important date in the development of American democracy. The issue was religious; but behind it was the question of good, orderly government. If the antinomians had their way, it was argued, religion and government would cease to be based on reasoned argument, and learning, and the laws of evidence, and would come to rest entirely on heightened emotion—a form of continuous revivalism with everyone claiming to be inspired by the Holy Spirit. The issue was settled at a crowded outdoor meeting in Cambridge. ‘There was a great danger of a tumult that day. [The antinomians] grew into fierce speeches; and some laid hands on others; but seeing themselves too weak [in numbers], they grew quiet.’69 Winthrop was triumphantly reelected governor, the antinomians being ‘quite left out’ in the voting. So from 1637 Winthrop was free to resume his clear and insistent policy of imposing orthodoxy on the colony by punishment, exclusion, and banishment.70

Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them. ... We should claim the right to suppress them if necessary even by force; for it may easily turn out that they are not prepared to meet us on the level of rational argument, but begin by denouncing all argument; they may forbid their followers to listen to rational argument, because it is deceptive, and teach them to answer arguments by the use of their fists or pistols. We should therefore claim, in the name of tolerance, the right not to tolerate the intolerant. We should claim that any movement preaching intolerance places itself outside the law, and we should consider incitement to intolerance and persecution as criminal, in the same way as we should consider incitement to murder, or to kidnapping, or to the revival of the slave trade, as criminal.

I foresaw that I should have a summer after my own literary heart, and the sense of playing with my opportunity was much greater after all than any sense of being played with. There could be no Venetian business without patience, and since I adored the place I was much more in the spirit of it for having laid in a large provision. That spirit kept me perpetual company and seemed to look out at me from the revived immortal face - in which all his genius shone - of the great poet who was my prompter. I had invoked him and he had come; he hovered before me half the time; it was as if his bright ghost had returned to earth to assure me he regarded the affair as his own no less than as mine and that we should see it fraternally and fondly to a conclusion. It was as if he had said: 'Poor dear, be easy with her; she has some natural prejudices; only give her time. Strange as it may appear to you she was very attractive in 1820. Meanwhile, aren't we in Venice together, and what better place is there for the meeting of dear friends? See how it glows with the advancing summer; how the sky and the sea and the rosy air and the marble of the palaces all shimmer and melt together.

You, er..." He hesitated. "Not that I mind, but you may want to fix your frock." She glanced downward. Seeing her exposed breast, she quickly tucked it back in her stays. "See what I mean? Heaps of humiliations. Heaps." Gabe wondered if the past quarter hour went into her heaps of humiliations, or whether she regarded it as something else. He wondered, but he wasn't going to ask. On his part, he wouldn't be filing this memory under the heading of "Humiliations." Oh, no. It was going straight into the stash of "Fantasies" that every man kept under his mattress, figuratively if not literally. He was never going to forget the taste of her, pure and sweet. The way her skin moved liked satin under his hands, warming to his touch. And the way she'd responded to him? That was already etched on his brain. I think it's the urges, she'd said. The worrisome part of it was, their urges had gone unsatisfied. They would remain so, he told himself. This afternoon had been a mistake. An enjoyable mistake, but a mistake nonetheless. Time to revive his judgement. Gabe could survive deprivation of all sorts, including this one. He would not put his hands on Lady Penelope Campion again. Absolutely not. Definitely not. Probably not. Damn.

For attractive lips, speak words of kindness. For lovely eyes, seek out the good in people. For a slim figure, share your food with the hungry. For beautiful hair, let a child run his fingers through it once a day. For poise, walk with the knowledge you’ll never walk alone. ...카톡【ACD5】텔레【KKD55】 We leave you a tradition with a future. The tender loving care of human beings will never become obsolete. People even more than things have to be restored, renewed, revived, reclaimed and redeemed and redeemed and redeemed. Never throw out anybody. ♥물뽕 구입♥물뽕 구매♥물뽕 판매♥물뽕 구입방법♥물뽕 구매방법♥물뽕 파는곳♥물뽕 가격♥물뽕 파는곳♥물뽕 정품구입♥물뽕 정품구매♥물뽕 정품판매♥물뽕 가격♥물뽕 복용법♥물뽕 부작용♥ Remember, if you ever need a helping hand, you’ll find one at the end of your arm. As you grow older, you will discover that you have two hands: one for helping yourself, the other for helping others. Your “good old days” are still ahead of you, may you have many of them 수면제,액상수면제,낙태약,여성최음제,ghb물뽕,여성흥분제,남성발기부전치유제,비아,시알,88정,드래곤,바오메이,정력제,남성성기확대제,카마그라젤,비닉스,센돔,,꽃물,남성조루제,네노마정,러쉬파퍼,엑스터시,신의눈물,lsd,아이스,캔디,대마초,떨,마리화나,프로포폴,에토미데이트,해피벌륜 등많은제품판매하고있습니다 원하시는제품있으시면 추천상으로 더좋은제품으로 모시겠습니다 It is a five-member boy group of YG Entertainment who debuted in 2006. It is a group that has had a great influence on young fashion trends, the idol group that has been pouring since then, and the Korean music industry from the mid to late 2000s. Since the mid-2000s, he has released a lot of hit songs. He has played an important role in all aspects of music, fashion, and trends enjoyed by Korea's generations. In 2010, the concept of emphasizing exposure, The number of idols on the line as if they were filmed in the factory instead of the "singer", the big bang musicality got more attention, and the ALIVE of 2012, the great success of the MADE album from 2015 to 2016, It showed musical performance, performance, and stage control, which made it possible to recognize not only the public in their twenties and thirties but also men and women, both young and old, as true artists with national talents. Even today, it is in a unique position in terms of musical performance, influence, and trend setting, and it is the idol who keeps the longest working and longest position. We have made the popularity of big bang by combining various factors such as exquisite talent of all members, sophisticated music, trendy style, various arts and performances in broadcasting, lovecalls and collaboration of global brands, and global popularity. The big bang was also different from the existing idols. It is considered to be a popular idol, a idol, because it has a unique musicality, debut as a talented person in a countless idol that has become a singer as a representative, not a talent. In addition, the male group is almost the only counterpart to the unchanging proposition that there is not a lot of male fans, and as mentioned several times, it has been loved by gender regardless of gender.

If administration actions are not to mock its own rhetoric, the President must now take the lead in mobilizing public opinion behind a new resolve to meet the crisis in our cities. He should now put before Congress a National Emergency Public Works and Reconstruction bill aimed at building housing for homeless victims of the riot-torn ghettos, repairing damaged public facilities, and in the process generating maximum employment opportunities for unskilled and semiskilled workers. Such a bill should be the first step in the imperative reconstruction of all our decaying center cities. Admittedly, the prospects for passage of such a bill in the present Congress are dismal. Congressmen will cry out that the rioters must not be re-warded, thereby further penalizing the very victims of the riots. This, after all, is a Congress capable of defeating a meager $40 million rat extermination program the same week it votes $10 million for an aquarium in the District of Columbia! But the vindictive racial meanness that has descended upon this Congress, already dominated by the revived coalition of Republicans and Dixiecrats, must be challenged—not accommodated. The President must go directly to the people, as Harry Truman did in 1948. He must go to them, not with slogans, but with a timetable for tearing down every slum in the country. There can be no further delay. The daydreamers and utopians are not those of us who have prepared massive Freedom Budgets and similar programs. They are the smugly "practical" and myopic philistines in the Congress, the state legislatures, and the city halls who thought they could sit it out. The very practical choice now before them and the American people is whether we shall have a conscious and authentic democratic social revolution or more tragic and futile riots that tear our nation to shreds.

Although the founders were often good classicists, they took as a model for the American republic the pre-Julius Caesar Roman Republic. For the record, our word democracy comes from the Greek demokratia, which means, literally, “people-power.” History’s only democracy was instituted at Athens in 508 B.C. by Cleisthenes. Every male citizen over eighteen years of age was a citizen, able to gather with his fellows on a hillside, where, after listening to various demagogues, he could vote with the other citizens on matters of war and peace and anything else that happened to be introduced that day. In 322 B.C. Alexander of Macedon conquered Athens and eliminated their democracy, which was never again to be tried by a proper state (as opposed to an occasional New England town meeting). Current publicists for the American Empire have convinced themselves that if other nations, living as they do in utter darkness, would only hold numerous elections at enormous cost to their polity’s plutocracy (or to the benign empire back of these exercises), perfect government would henceforward obtain as The People had Been Heard: one million votes for Saddam Hussein, let us say, to five against. Although the Athenian system might now be revived through technology, voting through some sort of “safe” cybersystem, no one would wish an uneducated, misinformed majority to launch a war, much less do something meaningful like balance the budget of Orange County, California. One interesting aspect of the Athenian system was the rotation of offices. When Pericles told Sophocles, the poet-dramatist, that it was his turn to be postmaster general or some such dull office, Sophocles said he was busy with a play and that, besides, politics was not his business. To which the great Pericles responded, the man who says politics is no business of his has no business.

Kuhn argued that revolutions in human thought progress through five stages. It’s no accident that the word Kuhn used for the inconclusive-muddle stage—a stage that can last for decades, even centuries—was “crisis.”* To change how we talk is to change who we are. More and more every day, how we talk is a function of how we talk on the internet. The bigoted propagandists of the alt-right are wrong about almost everything, but they are correct about this much: the United States of America was founded by white men, for white men. The problem with the bigots is not that they acknowledge this aspect of the country’s history; the problem is that they cling to it, doing their utmost to revive the horrors of the past, instead of taking up the more difficult task of piecing together the future. The bigots are not destined to win. Nor are they destined to lose. The ending is not yet written. The blithely optimistic view—the view that still infuses far too many op-eds and Silicon Valley pitch meetings and political stump speeches—is that the basic good sense of the American people will prevail, that the good stuff will spread, that if we just hold fast we will surely end up in the right place. But the vehicle doesn’t drive itself. Getting to the right place takes work. Copernicus was not the first astronomer to suggest that the Earth revolved around the sun. Aristarchus of Samos proposed the same idea in the third century B.C., but Aristotle convinced everyone that the idea was wrong. Overcoming Aristotle’s mistake took almost two thousand years, and even then it required a struggle.

Eventually there were more than 100 Ikhwan settlements scattered across the Nejd. Never more than a day’s march apart, they created an extraordinary military network that provided Abdulaziz with some 60,000 men of fighting age.3 These Ikhwan settlements created religious, agricultural, and military communities that were something of a cross between an American Indian reservation, religious revival meeting, and organized military camp.

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The number of people is legion who pray for the baptism with the Holy Ghost, but who, in their hearts, are not willing to pay the price and meet the responsibility involved in receiving the blessing, It is almost safe to say that a thousand ministers pray for this blessing for every one who is really willing to die to sin and self and the world, and live ever and Only for God in holiness of heart.

For more than two centuries, black people had resisted Christianity, often with the tacit acquiescence of their owners. During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, Christian missionaries who attempted to bring slaves into the fold confronted a hostile planter class, whose only interest in the slaves' spirituality was to denigrate it as idolatry. Westward-moving planters showed little sympathy with slaves who prayed when they might be working and even less patience with separate gatherings of converts, which they suspected to be revolutionary cabals. An 1822 Mississippi law barring black people from meeting without white supervision spoke directly to the planters' fears. But the trauma of the Second Middle Passage and the cotton revolution sensitized transplanted slaves to the evangelicals' message. Young men and women forcibly displaced from their old homes were eager to find alternative sources of authority and comfort. Responding to the evangelical message, they found new meaning in the emotional deliverance of conversion and the baptismal rituals of the church. In turning their lives over to Christ, the deportees took control of their own destiny. White missionaries, some of them still committed to the evangelical egalitarianism of the eighteenth-century revivals, welcomed black believers into their churches. Slaves - sometimes carrying letters of separation from their home congregations - were present in the first evangelical services in Mississippi and Alabama. The earliest religious associations listed black churches, and black preachers - free and slave - won fame for the exercise of 'their gift.' Established denominational lines informed much of slaves' Christianity. The large Protestant denominations - Baptist and Methodist, Anglican and Presbyterian - made the most substantial claims, although Catholicism had a powerful impact all along the Gulf Coast, especially in Louisiana and Florida. From this melange, slaves selectively appropriated those ideas that best fit their own sacred universe and secular world. With little standing in the church of the master, these men and women fostered a new faith. For that reason, it was not the church of the master or even the church of the missionary that attracted black converts; they much preferred their own religious conclaves. These fugitive meetings were often held deep in the woods in brush tents called 'arbors.' Kept private by overturning a pot to muffle the sound of their prayers, these meetings promised African-American spirituality and mixed black and white religious forms into a theological amalgam that white clerics found unrecognizable - what one planter-preacher called 'a jumble of Protestantism, Romanism, and Fetishism.' Under the brush arbor, notions of secular and sacred life took on new meanings. The experience of spiritual rebirth and the conviction that Christ spoke directly to them armed slaves against their owners, assuring them that they too were God's children, perhaps even his chosen people. It infused daily life with the promise of the Great Jubilee and eternal life that offered a final escape from earthly captivity. In the end, it would be they - not their owners - who would stand at God's side and enjoy the blessing of eternal salvation.

The arch patriarchal and highly illogical rule regarding nudity tells us: men want to see naked women, women do not want to see naked men; men want to show their naked body to women, women do not want to be naked in front of men. The age-old male practice of indecent exposure has been revived on the internet where millions of men shamelessly send images of their genitals to women they have never met and enjoy the idea that women are looking at their penis. When she sees his penis, patriarchal logic dictates, he has power over her. Yet this power also manifests when he sees her naked, for a man who sees a woman naked is able to ruin her life. He can, in certain cultures, wreck her chances of marriage and he can publicly ridicule her so that she is beset by horrific shame. He can spread her image at school, to her colleagues and parents and bring her to the verge of suicide. A woman, on the other hand, has no power over a man she sees naked: the only meagre vengeance she could possibly mete out is to spread the rumour that he has a micro penis. Opening women's changing rooms to anyone who wishes to call themselves a woman changes absolutely nothing in this power dynamic. In the meeting between the post-modern patriarchy and traditional patriarchy, women are left in the firing line with only themselves to rely on to resolve their predicament.

As July ran out both sides settled down to an erratic apprehensive calm, enduring the same blistering sun, the same plague of flies and infected dust, the same ant-like existence in the ground. The Allies waited for the Turks to issue forth from the hills; the Turks waited for the Allies to come up to meet them. It was all very old and very new, a twentieth-century revival of the interminable siege. The Turks had a trench and a machine-gun post among Schliemann’s excavations on the site of Troy. CHAPTER TWELVE THE

The intrusion of entertainment in worship today can trace its roots back to the work of revivalist minister Charles G. Finney (1792–1875). An American Presbyterian minister, Finney became famous for the methods employed at his meetings, later known as the “new measures,” which were carefully designed to manipulate an emotional response from the crowd. For Finney, there was a formula that, employed correctly, would guarantee interest in the things of God. He said so himself: “A revival is not a miracle, or dependent on a miracle in any sense. It is a purely philosophic [i.e., scientific] result of the right use of the constituted means.”2 It was this sort of ministry that caused Charles Spurgeon (1834–1892) to remark in the 1800s that “the devil has seldom done a cleverer thing than hinting to the church that part of their mission is to provide entertainment for the people, with a view to winning them.”3 These words are just as true today.

What kills someone with that kind of signet?” Jack asks, crossing his arms over his thick chest. Professor Kaori glances at me for a heartbeat before looking away. “He attempted to use that power to revive a fallen rider—which didn’t work, because there’s no signet capable of resurrection—and depleted himself in the process. To use a phrase you’ll become accustomed to after Threshing, he burned out and died next to that rider.” Something in my chest shifts, a feeling that I can’t explain and yet can’t shake. The bells ring, signaling the hour is up, and we all begin to gather our things. The squads filter out to the hallway, emptying the room, and I rise from behind my desk, shouldering my satchel as Rhiannon waits for me by the door, a puzzled expression on her face. “It was Brennan, wasn’t it?” I ask Professor Kaori. Sadness fills his gaze as he meets mine. “Yes. He died trying to save your brother, but Brennan was too far gone.

COUNTERFEIT CROSS Jesus said, “If anyone desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me” (Matt. 16:24). A misunderstanding of this call has led many to follow His life of self-denial, but to stop short of His life of power. For them the cross-walk involves trying to crucify their sin nature by embracing joyless brokenness as an evidence of the cross. But, we must follow Him all the way—to a lifestyle empowered by the resurrection! Most every religion has a copy of the cross-walk. Self-denial, self-abasement, and the like are all easily copied by the sects of this world. People admire those who have religious disciplines. They applaud fasting and respect those who embrace poverty or endure disease for the sake of personal spirituality. But show them a life filled with joy because of the transforming power of God, and they will not only applaud but will want to be like you. Religion is unable to mimic the life of resurrection with its victory over sin and hell. One who embraces an inferior cross is constantly filled with introspection and self-induced suffering. But the cross is not self-applied—Jesus did not nail Himself to the cross. Christians who are trapped by this counterfeit are constantly talking about their weaknesses. If the devil finds us uninterested in evil, then he’ll try to get us to focus on our unworthiness and inability. This is especially noticeable in prayer meetings where people try to project great brokenness before God, hoping to earn revival. They will often reconfess old sins searching for real humility. In my own pursuit of God, I often became preoccupied with ME! It was easy to think that being constantly aware of my faults and weaknesses was humility. It’s not! If I’m the main subject, talking incessantly about my weaknesses, I have entered into the most subtle form of pride. Repeated phrases such as, “I’m so unworthy,” become a nauseating replacement for the declarations of the worthiness of God. By being sold on my own unrighteousness, the enemy has disengaged me from effective service. It’s a perversion of true holiness when introspection causes my spiritual self-esteem to increase, but my effectiveness in demonstrating the power of the gospel to decrease. True brokenness causes complete dependency on God, moving us to radical obedience that releases the power of the gospel to the world around

I received a letter from Elder Benjamin Watkins of Virginia, dated June 30, 1801, in which he says, “I have lived to see several revivals in our parts, but the last has been the greatest, which originated about two years ago, in several churches belonging to the middle district association. Before the revival began, wickedness had gotten to a great height. Deism and irreligion abounded on every hand. Professors had be come very carnal, many had apostatized, so that there were but a few names in Sardis who had not defiled their garments; so that I had some awful fears about our condition and was dreading that some great judgment would befall our wretched land. But, contrary to my fears, the Lord visited us in a way of mercy, by stirring up His church often to assemble together, and to carry on worship by prayer and fasting, called prayer meetings. And He came amongst us, and the sacred flame has spread in various parts of Virginia; so that we may truly say, The lines are fallen unto us in pleasant places, and we have a goodly heritage.

Go somewhere where you won't hear the sound of cars! Let the moonlight see you; let the silent hedgehogs pass you by; let the scent of honeysuckle meet your nose; hear the owl's hoot; greet a shooting star; if you see flickering candles instead of electric lights in the windows of stone houses, look, my friend, you are truly in a beautiful place, drink in that beauty to your heart's content, let your soul revive!

Although the move from Calvinism to Arminianism began in the seminary classroom, it came to have a profound influence on American culture through the events of the Second Great Awakening. The revivals of the first Great Awakening were supernatural events, wrought by the power of God’s Spirit. The same could be said of the new wave of revivals that began in the 1790s and continued well into the nineteenth century. Like its predecessor, the Second Great Awakening began and flourished in Calvinist churches, where it was believed that because revival is a work of God alone, it is “peculiarly illustrative of the glorious doctrines of grace.”29 However, since it was only natural to want the awakening to continue, some Christian leaders—especially Methodists—sought to devise methods for promoting revival. Their concern for personal salvation was commendable. However, rather than relying on God to bless the ordinary means of grace (prayer, the ministry of the Word, and the sacraments), they adopted the “New Measures” associated with the invitation system: the protracted camp meeting, the “anxious bench,” the altar call. These pragmatic techniques were susceptible to manipulation, especially where it was considered important to count the number of converts. Preachers stressed the necessity of “coming forward to receive Christ,” with the unintended consequence of con-fusing a human decision (to come forward) with a divine transformation (spiritual conversion). In short, there was a shift from revival to revivalism.30 This transition was rooted in an Arminian theology of conversion, which maintained that sinners were neutral—free to choose their own spiritual destiny. Whereas the Puritans had insisted that depravity prevented anyone from choosing for Christ apart from the prior work of the Holy Spirit, the new revivalists called on people to exercise their own ability to receive the gospel. Gardiner Spring described this as the difference between a revival that is “got up by man’s device” and one that is “brought down by the Spirit of God.”31 The difference can be illustrated by comparing Jonathan Edwards, who described revival as “a very extraordinary dispensation of Providence,”32 with Charles Finney, who insisted that a revival is not supernatural but the natural “result of the right use of the constituted means.” Like most revivalists, Finney explicitly rejected the doctrines of grace. Early in his ministry he left the Presbyterian church and repudiated Calvin’s views “on the subject of atonement, regeneration, faith, repentance, the slavery of the will, or any of the kindred doctrines.”33 The view he eventually adopted was not merely Arminian but actually Pelagian. Finney believed that sinners could initiate their own conversion: “Instead of telling sinners to use the means of grace and pray for a new heart, we called on them to make themselves a new heart and a new spirit and pressed the duty of instant surrender to God.

Through the other he could see the hazy, white-topped hills of Fife in the distance, the austere, dark blue calm of the Forth, and the snow-specked slate rooftops of Leith. In between there was a corpse in blood-drenched pyjama trousers, with most of its nose bitten off, two severed fingers stuffed up what remained of its nostrils, the rest of its face a swollen mass of bruising, and a wide gash around half the circumference of its neck. It was lying on the missing door, which sat at thirty degrees to the horizontal, propped up by the twisted metal frame of what had recently been a cheesy smoked-glass coffee table. The blood had run off the door and collected on the polished wood below, and might have lapped its way gently down to meet the postman’s spew if much of it had not drained through a gap in the floorboards, from where it ran along an electrical flex into the main-door flat underneath, dripping off the end of the living room light-fitting. The police would find the unconscious Mrs Angus a few hours later amidst the damp fragments of a broken tea-set, and once revived she would swear never to let her clairvoyant sister-in-law bring the ouija board round again, before phoning a Catholic priest to come out and exorcise the place. And so what if she was C of S, when it came to this sort of thing, nothing less than a Tim would do.

The blood had run off the door and collected on the polished wood below, and might have lapped its way gently down to meet the postman’s spew if much of it had not drained through a gap in the floorboards, from where it ran along an electrical flex into the main-door flat underneath, dripping off the end of the living room light-fitting. The police would find the unconscious Mrs Angus a few hours later amidst the damp fragments of a broken tea-set, and once revived she would swear never to let her clairvoyant sister-in-law bring the ouija board round again, before phoning a Catholic priest to come out and exorcise the place. And so what if she was C of S, when it came to this sort of thing, nothing less than a Tim would do.

Again, Love is accompanied with trouble, when it misseth a suitable return of affection. Love is the most valuable thing we can bestow, and by giving it, we do, in effect, give all that we have; and therefore it must needs be afflicting to find so great a gift despised, that the present which one hath made of his whole heart, cannot prevail to obtain any return. Perfect love is a kind of self-dereliction, a wandering out of ourselves; it is a kind of voluntary death, wherein the lover dies to himself, and all his own interests, nor thinking of them, nor caring for them any more, and minding nothing but how he may please and gratify the party whom he loves. Thus he is quite undone, unless he meets with reciprocal affection; he neglects himself, and the other hath no regard to him: but if he be beloved, he is revived, as it were, and liveth in the soul and care of the person whom he loves; and now he begins to mind his own concernments, not so much because they are his, as because the beloved is pleased to own an interest in them: he becomes dear unto himself, because he is so unto the other. But why should I enlarge in so known a matter? Nothing can be more clear than that the happiness of love depends on the return it meets with: and herein the divine lover hath unspeakably the advantage, having placed his affection on him whose nature is love, whose goodness is as infinite as his being, whose mercy prevented us when we were his enemies, therefore cannot choose but embrace us when we are become his friends. It is utterly impossible that God should deny his love to a soul wholly devoted to him, and which desires nothing so much as to serve and please him; he cannot disdain his own image, nor the heart in which it is engraven. Love is all the tribute which we can pay him, and it is the sacrifice which he will not despise.

FEBRUARY 22 Ready for Change “If my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and I will forgive their sin and will heal their land.” 2 CHRONICLES 7:14 NIV How we yearn for the “good old days.” Many of us remember our childhood years with nostalgia about a kinder, gentler time. We think that things were much better then. King Solomon might have thought the same thing when this verse was given to him at the dedication of the temple. The verse is a call for revival. Revival doesn’t have to be a corporate event. Sometimes, it needs to be personal. The statement is conditional: if we will meet the requirements on our end, we can be sure that God will move on His end. Sovereign God, I come to You wanting revival in my life. I humble myself before You, understanding

Early morning daily prayer meetings became common, as did nights of prayer throughout Korea.  Now over a million gather every morning around 5 a.m. for prayer in the churches.  Prayer and fasting is normal.  Churches have over 100 prayer retreats in the hills called Prayer Mountains to which thousands go to pray, often with fasting.  Healings and supernatural manifestations continue.  Koreans have sent over 10,000 missionaries into other Asian countries.  Korea now has the largest Presbyterian and Methodist churches in the world, and has four of the world’s seven largest Sunday church attendances. 

Our concern,” Jimmy wrote in the DU brochure, is with how our city has been disintegrating socially, economically, politically, morally and ethically. We are convinced that we cannot depend upon one industry or any large corporation to provide us with jobs. It is now up to us—the citizens of Detroit—to put our hearts, our imaginations, our minds, and our hands together to create a vision and project concrete programs for developing the kinds of local enterprises that will provide meaningful jobs and income for all citizens. To engage Detroiters in the creation of this vision, DU embarked on a campaign for open government in the city, issuing a series of leaflets calling on citizens to examine the whole chain of developer-driven megaprojects with which Young had tried and failed to revive the city (including Poletown and the People Mover) and to assume responsibility for envisioning and implementing alternative roads of development based on restoring neighborhoods and communities. During the debate over casino gambling Young had challenged his opponents to come up with an alternative, accusing us of being naysayers without any solutions of our own. Jimmy welcomed the challenge. There was nothing he liked better than using crisis and breakdown as an opportunity for renewal and transformation. His forte was devising solutions that were visionary and at the same time so down-to-earth that people could almost taste them. For more than fifteen years he had been writing and talking about the crisis developing in our cities and the need to redefine work, especially for the sake of our young people. In October 1986, at a meeting in Oakland, California, which the Bay Area NOAR sponsored to present “a vision of 21st century neighborhoods and communities,” Jimmy had declared that it was now “idealistic” to expect the government or corporations to do the work that is needed to keep up our communities and to provide for our elementary safety and security. Multinational corporations and rapid technological development have turned our cities into graveyards. “Efficiency in production,” he argued, “can no longer be our guiding principle because it comes at the price of eliminating human creativity and skills and making millions of people expendable.” He continued: “The residue of the last 100 years of rapid technological development is alienation, hopelessness, self-hate and hate for one another, and the violence which has created a reign of terror in our inner cities.

The original purpose of the Church was to be a meeting place between God and man, not a glorified “bless me” club or a receiving place where man comes solely to receive from God. Church was not created as a spiritual bless-me trough where we can roll in the anointing and pig out. Church was created for you to give something of yourself to Him. If

Since we humans are meaning-makers to the core, such a powerful experience demands an explanation. In an evangelical conversion context like a revival meeting or missionary work, religious interpretations of the snapping experience are provided both before and after it occurs.

A Prayer While You Wait. May God visit you with patience in your season of waiting. May the barren landscape of your adversity become the fertile soil of new growth. May the God of grace revive your spirit and give you back your laughter. May you find God with you in your pain and trustworthy as you wait. May the one who restores what's been taken, meet you in the desert and journey with you to the other side. Amen.

If you are renewed by grace, and were to meet your old self, I am sure you would be very anxious to get out of his company.” ― Charles H. Spurgeon

Medieval authoritarianism began to dissolve with the Renaissance. But on the Continent, its political counterpart, medieval feudalism, was not seriously threatened before the French Revolution. (The Reformation had only strengthened it.) The fight for the open society began again only with the ideas of 1789; and the feudal monarchies soon experienced the seriousness of this danger. When in 1815 the reactionary party began to resume its power in Prussia, it found itself in dire need of an ideology. Hegel was appointed to meet this demand, and he did so by reviving the ideas of the first great enemies of the open society, Heraclitus, Plato, and Aristotle. Just as the French Revolution rediscovered the perennial ideas of the Great Generation and of Christianity, freedom, equality, and the brotherhood of all men, so Hegel rediscovered the Platonic ideas which lie behind the perennial revolt against freedom and reason. Hegelianism is the renaissance of tribalism. The historical significance of Hegel may be seen in the fact that he represents the ‘missing link’, as it were, between Plato and the modern form of totalitarianism. Most of the modern totalitarians are quite unaware that their ideas can be traced back to Plato. But many know of their indebtedness to Hegel, and all of them have been brought up in the close atmosphere of Hegelianism. They have been taught to worship the state, history, and the nation.

Despite John R. Rice’s dislike of the Klan, he was the son of his father, a Southerner born and bred. He had grown up in a culture bathed in the ideology, politics, and religion of race. He had been taught as a child that God ordained the subordination of some races and the superiority of other races. He was born in Gainesville, Cooke County, Texas, only three decades after the end of the Civil War, and he had been raised 110 miles west of Gainesville in Dundee, Archer County, a place where only white people lived. He had never attended school with a person of color, other than, perhaps, when he briefly attended graduate school at the University of Chicago. He had attended only segregated churches with white congregations, and there is no evidence that any black person ever heard him preach in a revival meeting or at one of the churches he pastored during the first two decades of his career.

Stealing from the World Away Attending church is a countercultural experience: we need to counteract the influence of the popular culture in our lives. When we go to church, we’re participating in a global weekly network of a billion people who are doing the same thing at the same time. We’re participating in an ancient practice that goes back to the origins of the church and to the beginning of the creation. And we’re involved in a habit the Bible says is increasingly vital as time draws to a close. Regular church attendance honors the rhythm of life that God established, the worship that Scripture ordains, the spiritual family that Christ has formed, and the mission for which we’re placed on this planet. Here’s a hymn by Ray Palmer (born November 12, 1808) about retreating once a week to worship with the saints of God. NOVEMBER 12 Stealing from the world away, We are come to seek Thy face; Kindly meet us, Lord, we pray, Grant us Thy reviving grace. Yonder stars that gild the sky Shine but with a borrowed light: We, unless Thy light be nigh, Wander, wrapped in gloomy night. Sun of righteousness! dispel All our darkness, doubts and fears: May Thy light within us dwell, Till eternal day appears. Warm our hearts in prayer and praise, Lift our every thought above; Hear the grateful songs we raise, Fill us with Thy perfect love. . . . not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together. – Hebrews

The revival movement was responsible for a tremendous spread of Christianity among slaves in the South. Slaves came in their thousands to camp meetings organized mainly by Baptists and Methodists, where they listened to the same sermons, succumbed to the same transports of emotion, and pledged themselves to the same spiritual renewal as white revivalists. At times white slave owners were known to undergo conversion at a revival meeting and then decide to free their slaves.

Are we still a Church capable of warming hearts? A Church capable of leading people back to Jerusalem? Of bringing them home? Jerusalem is where our roots are: Scripture, catechesis, sacraments, community, friendship with the Lord, Mary and the apostles…. Are we still able to speak of these roots in a way that will revive a sense of wonder at their beauty?”7 Pope Francis, meeting with the bishops of Brazil, July 28, 2013

1801 - August: Cane Ridge, North America (Barton Stone)   Impressed by the revivals in 1800, Barton Stone (1772-1844), a Presbyterian minister, organised similar meetings in 1801 in his area at Cane Ridge, north‑east of Lexington.  A huge crowd of around 12,500 attended in over 125 wagons including people from Ohio and Tennessee.  At that time Lexington, the largest town in Kentucky, had less than 1,800 citizens.  Presbyterian, Methodist and Baptist preachers and circuit riders formed preaching teams, speaking simultaneously in different parts of the camp grounds, all aiming for conversions.   James Finley, later a Methodist circuit rider, described it:    The noise was like the roar of Niagara.  The vast sea of human being seemed to be agitated as if by a storm.  I counted seven ministers, all preaching at one time, some on stumps, others in wagons and one standing on a tree which had, in falling, lodged against another. ...  I stepped up on a log where I could have a better view of the surging sea of humanity.  The scene that then presented itself to my mind was indescribable.  At one time I saw at least five hundred swept down in a moment as if a battery of a thousand guns had been opened upon them, and then immediately followed shrieks and shouts that rent the very heavens.

THE MEANS OF GOSPEL RENEWAL While the ultimate source of a revival is the Holy Spirit, the Spirit ordinarily uses several “instrumental,” or penultimate, means to produce revival. EXTRAORDINARY PRAYER To kindle every revival, the Holy Spirit initially uses what Jonathan Edwards called “extraordinary prayer” — united, persistent, and kingdom centered. Sometimes it begins with a single person or a small group of people praying for God’s glory in the community. What is important is not the number of people praying but the nature of the praying. C. John Miller makes a helpful and perceptive distinction between “maintenance” and “frontline” prayer meetings.1 Maintenance prayer meetings are short, mechanical, and focused on physical needs inside the church. In contrast, the three basic traits of frontline prayer are these: 1. A request for grace to confess sins and to humble ourselves 2. A compassion and zeal for the flourishing of the church and the reaching of the lost 3. A yearning to know God, to see his face, to glimpse his glory These distinctions are unavoidably powerful. If you pay attention at a prayer meeting, you can tell quite clearly whether these traits are present. In the biblical prayers for revival in Exodus 33; Nehemiah 1; and Acts 4, the three elements of frontline prayer are easy to see. Notice in Acts 4, for example, that after the disciples were threatened by the religious authorities, they asked not for protection for themselves and their families but only for boldness to keep preaching! Some kind of extraordinary prayer beyond the normal services and patterns of prayer is always involved.

were banished and chased away, except a few, as bats before the light of the sun. Some few of the hearers present, who were mostly communicants, returned home under strong convictions;” and their conversation was one of the greatest means of spreading the concern through the town. At a private meeting at his own house one evening in November, Mr Cotton read Mr Edwards’

Christians decide that revival should not be limited to a special church service, meeting, or certain flavor of spirituality. Revival as an event will not suffice anymore. Events come and go, but a people who keep the fire of God burning on the altar of their hearts actually carry this fire within them…wherever they go. At this point, the fire becomes transferrable.

You and I will never meet God in revival until we first meet Him in brokenness.

A few things that revival is not: Revival is not a series of special meetings at church. Revival is not what a church does a few times a year to simply draw in new converts (although we celebrate true conversions when they take place). Revival is not about the unusual, physical manifestations that tend to happen when people are “touched by the Holy Spirit.” Great Christian author A. W. Tozer made this most relevant observation about praying for revival: “Have you noticed how much praying for revival has been going on of late—and how little revival has resulted? I believe the problem is that we have been trying to substitute praying for obeying, and it simply will not work.

WE have little idea of just how dependent we have become on human means. If we don’t spend thousands of dollars advertising our special rallies and activities we can hardly draw a crowd. Without extensive mailings, only a handful of people will be interested in our Gospel activities and products. In our media-soaked society, we have found it necessary to resort to full-color magazine displays, catchy marketing phrases, massive bumper sticker campaigns, and special celebrity guests at our meetings. And while none of this is necessarily sinful or wrong, it is surely symptomatic of one thing: We don’t have revival fire in our midst! The Holy Spirit is not drawing the crowds.

It was a meeting characterized by a perpetual series of interruptions and disorderliness. It was a meeting characterized by a great continuity and an absolute order.

It was a meeting characterized by a perpetual series of interruptions and disorderliness. It was a meeting characterized by a great continuity and an absolute order. You say, “How do you reconcile these things?” I do not reconcile them. They are both there. I leave you to reconcile them. If you put a man

In this village I attended three meetings on Sunday two and a half hours in the morning, two and a half hours in the afternoon, and two hours at night, when I had to leave to catch the train. At all these meetings the same kind of thing went on, the same kind of congregations assembled, the same strained, intense emotion was manifest. Aisles were crowded. Pulpit stairs were packed and, mirabile dictu! two-thirds of the congregation were men and at least one-half young men.

The most extraordinary thing about the meetings which I attended was the extent to which they were absolutely without any human direction or leadership. “We must obey the Spirit,” is the watchword of Evan Roberts, and he is as obedient as the humblest of his followers. The meetings open—after any amount of preliminary singing while the congregation is assembling—by the reading of a chapter or a psalm. Then it is go as you please for two hours or more.   And the amazing thing is that it does go and does not get entangled in what might seem to be inevitable confusion. Three-fourths of the meeting consists of singing. No one uses a hymnbook. No one gives out a hymn. The last person to control the meeting in any way is Mr. Evan Roberts. People pray and sing, give testimony or exhort as the Spirit moves them. As a study of the psychology of crowds I have seen nothing like it. You feel that the thousand or fifteen hundred persons before you have become merged into one myriad-headed, but single-souled personality.   You can watch what they call the influence of the power of the Spirit playing over the crowded congregation as an eddying wind plays over the surface of a pond. If anyone carried away by his feelings prays too long, or if anyone when speaking fails to touch the right note, someone—it may be anybody—commences to sing. For a moment there is a hesitation as if the meeting were in doubt as to its decision, whether to hear the speaker or to continue to join in the prayer, or whether to sing. If it decides to hear and to pray the singing dies away. If, on the other hand, as usually happens, the people decide to sing, the chorus swells in volume until it drowns all other sound.

Some mistakenly assume that a prayer meeting needs to be spontaneous and unstructured in order to be Spirit-filled and dynamic. Spontaneity is usually birthed in structure. Without structure, there is no direction or vision for where you want to go. One of the problems we have all experienced with prayer meetings is feeling purposeless in our prayer efforts. If there is no system, order, or clear plan for a prayer meeting, it is easy for even the most “spiritual” people to pray for about ten minutes, and afterward feel bored. However, when you start with a plan, you have clear purpose in how to move forward.

Do We Need a Eulogy or a Birth Announcement? Like most African-Americans my age and older, I have been touched by the virtue and disturbed by the failures of the African-American church. I have had some of the richest times of celebration and praise in local black churches. And I’ve also experienced some of the most perplexing and discouraging situations in this same institution. It was an African-American preacher who vouched for me when I was facing criminal charges as a rising junior in high school, making all the difference in my future. And it was the membership of a black Baptist congregation that nearly poisoned my love for the church when, as a new Christian, I witnessed the “brawl” of my first church business meeting. The preaching of the church gave me biblical tropes and themes for building a sense of self in the world. But a low level of spiritual living among many African-American Christians tempted me to believe that everything in the Black Church was show-and-tell, a tragic comedy of self-delusion and religious hypocrisy. I left the Black Church of my youth and converted to Islam during college. I became zealous for Islam and a staunch critic of the Black Church. I welcomed much of the criticisms of radicals, Afrocentrists, and groups like the Nation of Islam. I cut my teeth on the writing and speaking of men like Molefi Kete Asante, Na’im Akbar, Wade Noble, and Louis Farrakhan. The institution that helped nurture me I now deem a real enemy to the progress of African-Americans, an opiate and a tool of white supremacy. I had experienced enough of the church’s weakness to reject her altogether. The immature and undiscerning rarely know how to handle the failures of its heroes, to evaluate with nuance and critical appreciation. That was true of me before the Lord saved me. In July 1995, sitting in an African Methodist Episcopal Zion (AMEZ) church in the Washington, DC, area, a short, square, balding African-American preacher expounded the text of Exodus 32. With passion and insight, he detailed the idolatry of Israel and exposed the idolatry of my heart. As he pressed on, more and more I felt guilty for my sin, estranged from God, and deserving of God’s holy judgment. Then, from the text of Exodus 32, he preached Jesus Christ, the Son of God who takes away the sin of the world and reconciles sinners to God. He proclaimed the cross of Jesus Christ, where my sins had been nailed and the Son of God punished in my place. The preacher announced the resurrection of Christ, proving the Father accepted the Son’s sacrifice. Then the pastor called every sinner to repent and put their trust—not in themselves—but in Jesus Christ alone for righteousness, forgiveness, and eternal life. It was as if he addressed me alone though I sat in a congregation of eight thousand. That morning, under the preaching of the gospel from God’s Word, the Spirit gave me and my wife repentance and faith leading to eternal life. I was a dead man when I walked into that building. But I left a living man, revived by God’s Word and Spirit.

Some types of fall not only bitterness equivalent bitter death it some drops of eye drops and some heart and some drops of memory which fall from eye drops after stages of shock, surprise and indignation, contempt and failed attempts to justify the choice of this type of fall. Either fall heart it follows the stages of love, beautiful dream and the sense of loss and regret and failed attempts to revive the feelings died. Either the fall of memory it starts after stages of recollection and nostalgia after bitter battles with oblivion resulting desire to adhere to spectra events ended. And often the downfall of memory is the last stages of the fall is the kindest types fall. Not necessarily that which falls from your eyes falling from your heart or you fall from your heart falls from your memory. Every fall the causes that may not be affected by or affect the other type of fall, some falling from your heart, but still retains clean landscapes in your eyes into your oversized bead to a sense of inflated respect they treated with discretion. Gratitude for the high capacity to retain his image color in your eyes while amtsah the image from your heart. This type of humans makes a frequency yourself whenever his ticket ... U k RA either great suffering. It is while falling from your eyes a man but not falling from your heart and remain in abeyance between the fall and fall of the eye and heart remain solely a victim feelings of annoy t h b e, but you yourself t h t s and maybe his disdain over your love. And that memory as a way to pick up most of the faces that meet her that may not mean you order something, the fall of memory is the kindest types fall for the last stages of their fall from you, which falls from the memory remains in the heart and in the eye of one b t how beautiful that we find ourselves in warm places in their hearts and their eyes, but the most beautiful is to preserve the purity of these places, and if we let us not fall fall day eye ..! Because after the spill, all clean surfaces contaminated