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)

Duncan Campbell said:-

"Then the minister turned and said well “I’m sure Mr Campbell that you are tired and you must be longing for your supper and supper will be ready for you in the manse. Well, I wonder if you would address the meeting in the Parish church on the way to manse to show yourself to the people. There will be a fair congregation, I am not saying a great number, anything between 2 and 3 hundred. You see there is a movement among us. It will interest you dear people that I never got that supper because I didn’t arrive at the manse until 5:20 in the morning. I went to the church, now this is the interesting bit… because it deals with the outbreak of God in supernatural power… the God of miracles revealing Himself in revival. I preached in the church to a congregation of about 300 and there was I would say, a good meeting, a wonderful sense of God; something I had a not known since the 1921 movement in mid Argyll. But nothing really happened and I pronounced the benediction and I’m walking down the aisle and this young man came to me and said, “Nothing has broken out tonight but God is hovering over us and He will break through any moment.” Well, I must be perfectly honest, I did not feel anything, but here was a man who was much nearer to God than I was. Well, he knew the secret. I was moving down the aisle and the congregation was moving out and they were all out now, just this man and myself and he lifted up his two hands and started to pray, “God you made a promise to pour water on the thirsty and floods on the dry ground. And you are not doing it… and he prayed, prayed and he prayed again until he fell again on the floor into a trance… He is lying there and I am standing beside him for about five minutes and then the door of the church opened and the session clerk came in… ”Mr Campbell, something wonderful has happened, revival has broken out… Will you come and see the crowd (11 o’clock)? And I went to the door and there must have been a congregation of between 600 and 700 people gathered around the church."

Lou Engle in ‘Digging the wells of revival’ says God’s covenants are covenants of divine passion initiated with those who have moved his heart. He suggests that when praying for a particular nation for revival we should ‘find stories of men and women of faith who have covenanted with God in years gone by for that piece of territory, and we should tug on God’s heart strings by reminding him of those lovers of God who devoted themselves to Him on the altar of love,’(2) for that land. Let’s remind the Lord of the covenant He made with Kenneth Macdonald for the youth in the Isle of Lewis.

Lord, pour out water on the thirsty land again. For you are a covenant- keeping God. You answered the prayers of two elderly women on the Isle of Lewis in 1949, and poured water on a thirsty land. Let there be another youth awakening on the British Isles. May the floodgates of heaven be opened on our generation of young people today.

References

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

(2) L.Engle, Digging the wells of revival, 64