Week 11:
My Record Being Read in Heaven
Let's preview eternity and look at all the apostles and all the saints of all the ages. Look, there's Charles Finney with his amazing revivals. There's William Booth, the founder of the Salvation Army. There's John Wesley. Here are all the great heroic figures we've all read about, and they are all watching while the book is handed down and somebody's going to read the record. Would you volunteer and say, "Well, I'll be happy to read my record to this multitude"?
Suppose I say, "Gabriel, hand me the record for the year of 1724." When I open the book to that year and go to the "B's," I find the name, David Brainerd. He was a young American who died at the age of 28. All he possessed was a cowhide that he wore with a rope tied around it. He used to ride over the Susquehanna River to follow the Indians. David had a severe case of tuberculosis and only weighed about 95 pounds. I remember reading his diary once. He said, "I got up this morning and the Indians were still committing adultery and drinking and beating their tom-toms and shouting like hell itself. I prayed from a half hour after sunrise to a half hour before sunset. There was nowhere to pray in the Indian camp. I went into the woods and knelt in the snow. It was up to my chin." No, he didn't have a heater with him or anything else. He was just there in the frigid snow, tuberculosis and all. He continued, "I wrestled in prayer until a half hour before sunset, and I could only touch the snow with the tips of my fingers. The heat of my body had melted the snow." What amazing intercessory prayer!
Well, God pity us. We can't even get people into our churches to pray, and we have velvet cushions on the seats and nice stuff on the floor so our darling little knees won't get hurt. David Brainerd, Praying Payson of Portland, John Hyde, and Rees Howells - when God puts the fire to their devotional life, I don't think there will be anything lost. It won't be wood, it won't be hay, and it won't be stubble.
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