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:-

“My dear people, do you good folk understand what revival means? Have you a conception of what it means to see God working? The God of miracles; sovereign, supernatural moving in the midst of men and hundreds swept into the kingdom… Oh, that we might see it… Now, my time is gone, but, you ask, what are the fruits of it? I have already said they knew nothing of backsliding and that is true. I could count on my 5 fingers all who have dropped off from the prayer meetings… You see, in Lewis, and in the highlands generally, you would no more believe that you are a Christian, than believe the devil was a Christian… if you don’t attend the prayer meetings… and I certainly agree with them… When a soul is born again… suddenly there is created a hunger to be among the praying people of God… and the prayer meetings become crowded. You couldn’t find a parish in Lewis today that hasn’t 5 prayer meetings. Local press stated, during the movement, that there are more people attending the prayer meetings now, than attended public worship on a communion Sunday… That is true… Well, that is one of the outstanding features relative to the fruit that remains. And from those prayer meetings… now, get a hold of this… a movement has begun now… that is sweeping through Lewis… among the teenagers. Among young men and young women, that some time ago, would be making their way to the town, to the pictures, or to the dance, or to the drinking houses in the town… but today, in their scores… Now, I’m not saying it’s revival; not in the sense that we witnessed it some years ago… But, in parishes tonight, you will find perhaps half a dozen prayer meetings in progress. They are in the church and from the churches they go to have a bite of supper and then to houses here and there, to wait upon God until 2 o’clock in the morning. And in those prayer meetings, young people, teenagers, are coming, sailing their way to Christ… I was talking to Miss Bangle recently and she had a story to tell, perhaps she will tell you all about it; that is if we let her go. I said to Mr Maxwell, “If we will let Miss Bangle go, if you can give us half a dozen other Miss Bangles… we will welcome them with open arms, in the work of the mission in pagan England”… Well, that may drop a seed somewhere… It is true, the movement continues. Perhaps another feature relative to the fruits – the number of men and women… gone into full-time service in the ministry and in foreign fields.

One of the last things Duncan Campbell before he died was invest his time telling stories of the Lewis Revival to the YWAM School of Evangelism in Lausanne Switzerland. Lynn Green was a student on that School of evangelism. He tells how Duncan Campbell’s stories impacted him.(2) Lynn was invited by Loren Cunningham to join him to travel to a few churches in Iowa, in the USA, but in the end, Loren was unable to go. Lynn was now preaching on his own with no training and no previous experience. He knew it did not go well. He asked the pastor if he could stay awhile. Lynn said, “We (had) an evening meeting with the youth of his church. What followed was way beyond what I could have imagined. Towards the end of that youth meeting, the Holy Spirit gently fell on the dozen young people who remained, and they all came to a recognition that they needed a saviour. Over a period of three weeks, several hundred young people came to faith. They were driving in from towns around the region as the news spread by word of mouth and through the local newspaper. I had stumbled upon a “thin place”, a specific location where the veil between heaven and earth has become “thin”. I had heard about this happening before, because of Duncan Campbell, who had been a teacher in my School of Evangelism a few months earlier. From his teaching, I knew that somewhere, someone must have prayed until the veil was thinned out. For example, prior to the Hebrides revival, two elderly ladies engaged in sacrificial prayer until they received assurance from heaven that a breakthrough had been secured. Then Duncan Campbell arrived, and the presence of God grew powerfullycs and people were spontaneously converted. It was reported that fishermen, coming into port, experienced conviction of sin as they neared the island. On the fortieth anniversary of that trip to Iowa, we discovered that the intercessor in Iowa was a lady in a nursing home. She suffered from multiple sclerosis. The light of Jesus shone from her. She instructed the nursing staff to wake her early each day so she could get through her daily prayer list. “Thin places” don’t develop in some arbitrary manner. Jesus instructed us again and again in the Gospels to keep on praying; to not give up; to cry out day and night; to fast and pray until our prayers are answered.”

Lord teach me to prepare the way of the Lord through sacrificial prayer until your presence saturates my town, my church, or my nation. Teach me how to pray… that fruit might remain.

References

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

(2) Green, L. How I stumbled into a thin place https://lynngreen.blog/2021/06/11/3157/ ( paraphrase)