Let us stop dictating to the Holy Spirit.

Because the blessed Spirit of God is wounded in the house of His friends, the church languishes and fails to “bring forth” while sinners go carelessly down the broad road to hell.

How familiar is this pattern becoming! A blessed messenger tells in a quiet conservative manner something of the mighty workings of the Spirit. The hush of God is over the gathering. They the chairman’s closing remarks throw cold water over it all. He intimates to the believers that they must not expect- nor even desire- such unusual manifestations of deity.

Many do not want their beautiful, cut-and-dried programs upset. They want everything to go according to time and pattern. Such people should read the Book of Acts on their knees for warning. They will see how again and again the Spirit is limited and suppressed by a disobedient church. His greatest battle is to break through the convention of the church and upset its carefully calculated plan of evangelism.

Some say they are afraid of wild fire and thus must suppress anything that is not on the planned program. Now, we do not deny the possibility of the flesh; we detest and deplore any cheap playing upon the people’s emotions by psychological tricks from the preacher. We do not deny also the possibility of Satan’s seeking to counterfeit the workings of God in the heart of revival. We have experienced this in our own ministry, but we have also discovered that the Holy Spirit is more powerful than the work of soulish believers or the work even of demons.

In the true manifestation of revival the Spirit works mightily upon the consciences- and consequently the emotions- of the people. Such scenes of emotions and seeming confusion have never failed to call forth strong and disapproving criticisms at such times. Witness Jonathan Edwards’ masterly vindications of the supernatural workings of God in his ministry. See Murray McCheyne standing before his brethren in The Church of Scotland to give an account of the unusual happenings during the revival in his church. Surely it is scarcely reasonable to expect that men and women should NOT have their emotions affected to an unusual degree when the Spirit of God is present in an extraordinary manner. In defense of the upsetting of our ordinary routine, Jonathan Edwards says: “I do not think this is confusion or unhappy interruption, any more than if a company should meet in a field to pray for rain and should meet in a field to pray for rain and should be broken off from their exercise by a plentiful shower. Would to God that all the public assemblies in the land were broken off from their public exercises with such confusion as this next Lord’s day! We need not be sorry for breaking the order of meetings by obtaining the end for which that order is directed. He who is going to fetch a treasure may not be sorry if he is stopped by meeting the treasure in the midst of his journey!”