UNBLOCKING THE WELL OF THE LIVING WORD

Each daily devotional below begins with an excerpt from a transcript of Duncan Campbell telling the story of how the 1949 Hebridean revival began. (1)

God Uses Breakers

Duncan Campbell said:-

“…until one night a very remarkable thing happened. They were kneeling in the straw in the barn of a farmhouse, when suddenly one young man rose and read part of Psalm 24: ”Who will ascend the hill of God who will stand in His holy place? He that hath clean hands and a pure heart and he will not lift up his soul to vanity nor sworn deceitfully and he shall receive the blessing of the Lord”, and he shut his Bible and looking down on the minister and the other men who were kneeling there, he said some crude words (not too crude in Gaelic). This is what he said: “It seems to me just so much humbug to be praying as we are praying to be waiting as we are waiting if we ourselves are not rightly related to God. Oh, my dear brother and let’s take that to heart”. He began to pray, “God… are my hands clean? Is my heart pure?” And that man got no further… He fell on his knees and then on his face on the straw and within a matter of minutes, three of the elders fell into a trance. Now, please don’t come to me at the end of the meeting and ask me, what did I really mean by falling into a trance, I cannot answer that question. All I know is that when that happened in the barn… now it happened in the Jonathan Edwards revival remember… that is not by peculiar any means to Lewis… it happened in America… it happened in the 59 Revival in Wales, not the 1900 revival but the 59 revival… But this I can say the moment that happened in the barn, a power was let loose in Barvas that shook the whole of Lewis.”

Micah 2:13 ‘One who breaks open the way will go up before them; they will break through the gate and go out. Their king will pass through before them, the Lord at their head’. The Lord used a ‘breaker’ to break open Argentina into revival. R.E Miller was so dissatisfied that nothing seemed to work when he was pastoring a small church. He describes how he had tried everything: ‘I said to the Lord, “I have tried everything so I guess I’ll try prayer.” He prayed for 6-12 hours a day. He prayed for 6 months. Then he prayed for another 12 months. At the end of that he felt the Lord say that he should have a public meeting to pray from 8pm to midnight every day the next week….At the end the glory of the Lord came down, and they were all baptised in the Holy Spirit. That was the beginning of the great Argentine revival.’(2)

In his book Another wave of revival(3) Frank Bartleman tells the story of the birth in prayer in 1904–06 of the Asuza Street revival in Los Angeles, which marked the global launch of Pentecostalism – the fastest growing religious movement in the world today.(4) It began with the tragic death of Frank’s three-year-old daughter on 22 December 1904.(5) A deep burdenof prayer apprehended Frank Bartleman. He said ‘the depth of revival will be determined exactly by the depth of the spirit of repentance … and this will hold true for all people at all times … the present worldwide Pentecostal manifestation did not break out in a moment like a huge prairie fire and set the world on fire. In fact, no work that God ever does appears in that way. There is a necessary time for preparation.’(6) On 5 April 1906, he prayed for 10 days. ‘On April 18th the terrible San Francisco earthquake came which devastated the surrounding cities and country and 500 lost their lives in San Francisco alone.’ Bartleman said he felt that all hell was being moved to drown out God’s voice in that earthquake.(7) In 1904–06 the Lord was clearly birthing a global revival that took place in the context of much shaking and spiritual opposition.

God uses ‘breakers’ who break open the way. The breaker ‘goes up before them and they pass through the gate and then their king passes before them.’ The Lord is looking for breakers who will break open the way for many different cities and many different lands. There are to be openings in the heavens and God will come down. As someone touches God and He touches them, God can then enable them to have an anointing of a breaker and to ‘go before’, with an unyielding tenacity. The breaker will not let go for he sees everything else as less important. ‘We cannot do more than pray until we have prayed. We can do more than pray, but not until after we pray’ says S.T. Gordon. (8) The two old ladies in Lewes were breakers, R. E Miller was the breaker in Argentina, and Frank Bartleman was the breaker at Azusa Street. Will you be God’s breaker for your town or city?

Lord, raise up breakers for the cities and towns in this country. 2 Samuel 5:20 ‘As waters break out…’ We pray that the ancient wells would be unblocked; for spiritual breakthough, that spiritual waters of life would break out on our dry and thirsty land. Lord, BREAK OUT!

References

(1) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MXIZOSWvXaE

(2) R.E. Miller, Cry for me Argentina, 26-28

(3)Bartleman, F. Another wave of revival.

(4) Anderson, A. An introduction to Pentecostalism.

(5) Bartleman, 7.

(6) Bartleman, 19,42.

(7)Bartleman, 49.

(8) J.B. Yoder, The breaker anointing