Archive: The Touch of God
Hungering after the presence of God will bring the church back to Life.
By Sandy S. Kirk
“I felt like the dead sent to raise the dead,” groaned John Wesley after fruitless attempts to convert the lost. Yet isn’t this the cry of the United Methodist Church today? In the midst of a dying world, sadly we must admit: We feel like the dead sent to raise the dead! “We are wasting away like a leukemia victim when the blood transfusions no longer work,” laments Bishop Richard Wilke in his book, And Are We Yet Alive? (Abingdon). Former church history professor, Gerald Anderson, reports that at the rate we are losing members, by the year 2045, the number of United Methodists left in this nation will be a whopping—two!
John Wesley, however, refused to be complacent about his own spiritual deadness. He was hungry for a witness of the Spirit, the assurance of his salvation, a touch from God in his heart. A healthy spiritual appetite urged him onward in his search for God.
What about us? Do we have a healthy spiritual hunger for the presence of God? If not, perhaps this is one reason for the dryness in the church today.
In his book A Thirst for God, Sherwood Wirt explains this sad but profound truth: “When we are physically hungry and miss a meal, our appetite becomes ravenous. But if time passes and we receive no spiritual food, we may lose our appetite for it. … Malnutrition sets in and we cease to care. ”
Could malnutrition be destroying the United Methodist Church today and we have ceased to care? If so, how can a robust spiritual hunger be restored? Augustine gave the answer: “I tasted and it made me hunger and thirst: You touched me, and I burned to know Your peace.”
You see, in physical hunger, we eat and our hunger is satisfied. But in spiritual hunger, we taste and our hunger becomes voracious. The more we eat, the hungrier we become. As St. Bernard said, “We taste of Thee, the Living Bread, and long to feast upon Thee still: We drink of Thee, the Fountainhead, and thirst our souls from Thee to fill.”
This was the kind of hunger that drove John Wesley. The presence of God was missing from the church of his day, most of all from his own life, and he was panting after God with all his heart. His throat was parched for the living water, and he knew—the same God who creates the thirst will quench it with himself.
One can feel the aching dryness of his soul as he cries, “I felt like the dead sent to raise the dead, a Judas sent to cast out devils, a lion in a den of Daniels. I could only pray in my despair: ‘Oh, thou Savior of men, save me from trusting in any thing but Thee! Draw me after Thee! Let me be emptied of myself, and then fill me with all peace and joy in believing.”‘
Charles Wesley’s Search for God
John was not alone in this questing after God; his brother Charles also had an insatiable thirst for God’s presence. Like John, Charles had returned from a disappointing trip to America, and he too was desperately hungry for God.
On Pentecost Sunday, May 21, 1738, Charles awoke with a sense of great expectancy bubbling within him. With all his might he prayed, “Oh, Jesus, You have said, ‘I will come to you.’ You have said, ‘I will send him, the Comforter, unto you.’ You have said, ‘My Father and I will make our abode with you.’ You are God, who cannot lie. I wholly rely upon your most true promise. …”
And this is the secret.
Charles was not asking for wealth or healing or power or gifts or anointing. He was asking for Christ himself. Later he wrote, “In me a quenchless thirst inspire, a longing, infinite desire; and fill my craving heart. Less than Thyself O do not give; in might Thyself within me live; come all Thou hast and art. ”
Indeed, this was the highest kind of prayer. He was asking God for God. With a yearning heart, he was knocking on the door of heaven, asking continually for the promise of the Father, the blessed Holy Spirit.
This is the prayer God waits to hear, for on that same night something amazing happened to Charles, who had been deathly ill and was staying in the home of a godly mechanic and his sister.
On the same day he had prayed so fervently for the Holy Spirit, the mechanic’s sister received a dream from the Lord, and was commanded to tell Charles he would recover in body and soul. For two days she struggled with the message as it surged and burned in her spirit. Finally, after her brother’s prodding, she went to Charles’ room and thundered, “In the name of Jesus of Nazareth, rise and thou shalt be healed of thine infirmities!”
When Charles realized these words were from Christ himself, though spoken through a human vessel, he reached out to Jesus with his whole heart and took hold of the promise. Like a bucket scooped down into a fathomless well, he dipped into the wells of salvation and drank deeply of the heavenly waters. And in that one divine moment, Charles Wesley was born again.
The next day the power of God came upon Charles and led him into deep intercessory prayer for his brother John. As he prayed, the Lord’s presence was so strong, he said, “I almost believed the Holy Spirit was coming upon him.”
And indeed he was! Within 48 hours of this earnest intercession, the power of God fell mightily upon John. May 24, 1738, John Wesley entered that obscure little room on Aldersgate Street in London, and as the powerful words of Martin Luther were being read, the Holy Spirit fell upon him and ignited the flame of Christ within his heart forever.
The Holy Spirit is Our Wesleyan Heritage
God touched John and Charles Wesley with his Spirit, and their lives burst into flames that eventually spread throughout all of England. We need that touch today. It is our heritage.
Without the literal presence of the Holy Spirit in the church, like faith without works, we are dead. Charles Spurgeon explained, “Without the Spirit of God we can do nothing. We are as ships without wind or chariots without steeds. Like branches without sap, we are withered. Like coals without fire, we are useless. As an offering without the sacrificial flame, we are unaccepted.”
Yes, we need to seek the fullness of God’s spirit, like John and Charles Wesley, until we find Him. Wrote Bishop Wilke, “The wind of the Spirit, ah, that is what we need most. … We cannot baptize only with water or we die. We must baptize with fire and the Holy Spirit.”
“He Touched Me”
I sat in a meeting with a group of Methodists one night 20 years ago. I had been earnestly seeking to be filled with the Holy Spirit for months. That day a deep, cleansing wave of repentance had swept through my heart and prepared me for what was getting ready to happen.
As the people joined in the hymn, “He Touched Me,” I was silently and desperately praying, ” O Come, Lord Jesus! Come, Lord Jesus. … ”
I didn’t realize at the time that this is the prayer God waits to hear. But suddenly, the Holy Spirit came upon me and flooded my spirit. I felt as though every fiber of my being had been awakened and filled with God’s presence. Waves of his love coursed through my heart, and desire for God’s word ignited in an instant.
That touch from God changed my life forever, but I made a terrible mistake. Fifteen years passed before I learned the importance of asking continually to be refilled with God’s Spirit. Said Dwight L. Moody, “A great many think that because they have been filled once, they are going to be full for all time. But oh, we are leaky vessels! We have to be kept under the fountain all the time in order to stay full.”
Let’s End the Debate and Pray!
It’s time to be done with the divisive debate over “when ” we are filled with the Holy Spirit. The question is: are we being filled now?
We need to invite the Holy Spirit to come and fill us afresh every day. Then we need to invite God to come to our bone-dry and languishing churches. Like John and Charles Wesley, we need to pray,” Breathe, O breathe Thy loving Spirit into every troubled breast!”
If the heavens seem shut, if rains of revival are not falling upon the church, we need to do just what God said to do in times like this:
“When I shut up the heavens so that there is no rain … 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 will I hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and heal their land ” (II Chronicles 7:13-14).
This is not a time to pack our bags and abandon ship. It’s a time to humble ourselves at the wounded feet of Christ; to seek his presence in prayer; to repent of our loss of spiritual appetite, and ask the Lord to open heaven and rain the spirit of revival upon the church. Said Charles Spurgeon, “Death and condemnation is preferable to a church that is not yearning after the Spirit, crying and groaning until the Spirit has worked mightily in her midst.”
Won’t you join with Methodists all over this world to pray, “O come Holy Spirit! Breathe upon our malnourished hearts until we can feast once again on the presence of God in the church. Then at last we will be like a church—risen from the dead, bursting with God’s life, and bringing that living bread to a hungry, dying world.”
Sandy S. Kirk is a freelance writer and contributing editor to Good News. She is a Bible teacher and the wife of R.L. Kirk, pastor of St. Luke’s UM Church in Lubbock, Texas.
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