BORN
AFTER MIDNIGHT
A.W.
Tozer (1897-1963)
Among revival-minded
Christians I
have heard the saying, “Revivals are born after
midnight.” This is one
of those proverbs which, while not quite literally true, yet points to
something very true.
If we understand the
saying to mean
that God does not hear our prayer for revival made in the daytime, it
is of
course not true. If we take it to mean that prayer offered when we are
tired
and worn-out has greater power than prayer made when we are rested and
fresh,
again it is not true. God would need to be very austere indeed to
require us to
turn our prayer into penance, or to enjoy seeing us punish ourselves by
intercession. Traces of such ascetical notions are still found among
some
gospel Christians, and while these brethren are to be commended for
their zeal,
they are not to be excused for unconsciously attributing to God a
streak of
sadism unworthy of fallen men.
Yet there is considerable
truth in
the idea that revivals are born after midnight, for revivals (or any
other
spiritual gifts and graces) come only to those who want them badly
enough. It
may be said without qualification that every man is as holy and as full
of the
Spirit as he wants to be. He may not be as full as he wishes he were,
but he is
most certainly as full as he wants to be.
Our Lord placed this
beyond dispute
when He said, “Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after
righteousness:
for they shall be filled.” Hunger and thirst are physical
sensations which, in
their acute stages, may become real pain. It has been the experience of
countless seekers after God that when their desires became a pain they
were
suddenly and wonderfully filled. The problem is not to persuade God to
fill us,
but to want God sufficiently to permit Him to do so. The average
Christian is
so cold and so contented with His wretched condition that there is no
vacuum of
desire into which the blessed Spirit can rush in satisfying fullness.
Occasionally
there will appear on
the religious scene a man whose unsatisfied spiritual longings become
so big
and important in his life that they crowd out every other interest.
Such a man refuses
to be content with the safe and conventional prayers of the frost-bound
brethren who “lead in prayer” week after week and year
after year in the local assemblies.
His yearnings carry him away and often make something of a nuisance out
of him.
His puzzled fellow Christians shake their heads and look knowingly at
each
other, but like the blind man who cried after his sight and was rebuked
by the
disciples, he “cries the more a great deal.” And if he has
not yet met the
conditions or there is something hindering the answer to his prayer, he
may
pray on into the late hours. Not the hour of night but the state of his
heart decides
the time of his visitation. For him it may well be that revival comes
after
midnight.
It is very
important, however, that
we understand that long prayer vigils, or even strong crying and tears,
are not
in themselves meritorious acts. Every blessing flows out of the
goodness of God
as from a fountain. Even those rewards for good works about which
certain
teachers talk so fulsomely, and which they always set in sharp contrast
to the
benefits received by grace alone, are at bottom as certainly of grace
as is the
forgiveness of sin itself. The holiest apostle can claim no more than
that he
is an unprofitable servant. The very angels exist out of the pure
goodness of
God. No creature can “earn” anything in the usual meaning
of the word. All
things are by and of the sovereign goodness of God.
Lady Julian
summed it up quaintly
when she wrote, “It is more honor to God, and more very delight,
that we faithfully
pray to Himself of His goodness and cleave thereunto by His grace, and
with
true understanding, and steadfast by love, than if we took all the
means that
heart can think. For if we took all those means it is too little, and
not full
honor to God. But in His goodness is all the whole, and there faileth
right
nought . . . For the goodness of God is the highest prayer, and it
cometh down
to the lowest part of our need.” Yet for all God’s good
will toward us He is
unable to grant us our heart’s desires till all our desires have
been reduced
to one. When we have dealt with our carnal ambitions; when we have
trodden upon
the lion and adder of the flesh, have trampled the dragon of self-love
under
our feet and have truly reckoned ourselves to have died unto sin, then
and only
then can God raise us to newness of life and fill us with His blessed
Holy
Spirit.
It is easy to
learn the doctrine of
personal revival and victorious living; it is quite another thing to
take our
cross and plod on to the dark and bitter hill of self-renunciation.
Here many
are called and few are chosen. For every one that actually crosses over
into
the Promised Land there are many who stand for a while and look
longingly
across the river and then turn sadly back to the comparative safety of
the
sandy wastes of the old life. No, there is no merit in late hour
prayers, but
it requires a serious mind and a determined heart to pray past the
ordinary
into the unusual. Most Christians never do. And it is more than
possible that
the rare soul who presses on into the unusual experience reaches there
after
midnight.
From Free
Grace Broadcaster REVIVAL #166
http://www.mountzion.org/