BYM ONLINE DESK Blessing February 2019 English Emagazine | Page 8

february 2019 | bymonline.org
to do but to save souls. Therefore spend and be spent in
this work. It is not your business to preach so many times;
but to save as many souls as you can; to bring as many
sinners as you possibly can to repentance, and with all
your power to build them up in that holiness, without
which they cannot see the Lord.” (From “The Twelve
Rules” John Wesley).
The practical application of this rule is
demonstrated in the life of Bramwell one of their most
remarkable men. “He was not, as the words are
commonly understood, a great preacher. But if that man
is the best physician who performs the most cures, that is
the best preacher who is the instrument of bringing the
greatest number of souls to God; and in this view Mr.
Bramwell will be entitled to rank amongst the greatest
and best Christian ministers” (Memoir of Bramwell).
John Oxtoby was so used of God that he was able to
say - “I am witnessing daily the conversion of sinners, I
seldom go out but God gives me some fruit.”
It was said of John Smith, one of their most
wonderfully anointed men and the spiritual father of
thousands, that “he ceased to estimate all preaching, and
indeed all ministerial labor except as it produced saving
effects. “I am determined by the grace of God to aim at
souls,” he exclaimed. 'A minister of the Gospel is sent to
turn men from darkness to light, and from the power of
Satan to God!' Of that species of preaching which only
produced intellectual pleasure, he had a holy abhorrence.
Nothing can be more characteristic of the man than his
remark to a friend, on sermons in which power of intellect
or imagination is almost exclusively predominant -
“They achieve nothing, Sir” (Taken from Life of John
Smith).
“If your hearts be not set on the end of your labors,
and you do not long to see the conversion and edification
of your hearers, and do not study and preach in hope, you
are not likely to see much fruit of it. It is an ill sign of a
false, self-seeking heart, that can be content to be still
doing, and see no fruit of their labor” (From the writings
of Richard Baxter).
Then I compared the results of my ministry with
the promises of God. In Jeremiah 23:29, I read: “Is not
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My Word like a Fire, saith the Lord; and like a Hammer
that breaketh the rock in pieces?”And in Ephesian 6:17,
“The Sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God.” But
the more I pondered over it, the more I was convinced
that in my ministry the Word of God was not a Fire, a
Hammer, and a Sword. It did not burn, break and pierce.
There was no execution. Hebrews 4:12, declares that
“the Word of God is quick and powerful, and sharper
than any two edged sword, piercing even to the dividing
asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow,
and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the
heart.”
I had never seen it so. John Wesley saw it. John
Smith was a constant observer of it. David Brainerd
witnessed its sharpness; but I did not. “So shall My Word
be that goeth forth out of my mouth; it shall not return to
me void, but it shall accomplish that which I please, and it
shall prosper in the thing whereto I sent it” (Isa 55:11).
And I knew that this wonderful promise had not been
fulfilled in my preaching. I had no evidence such as Paul,
Bramwell and Charles G. Finney that it did not return
void many and many a time. And I had a right to the
evidence. Was it any wonder that I began to challenge my
preaching?
And not only my preaching, but my prayer life as
well. This also had to be challenged and tested by the
outcome. And I was forced to admit that the confident
assertion of Jeremiah 33:3, “Call unto Me, and I will
answer thee, and show thee great and mighty things,
which thou knowest not,” was not realized in my
experience. The “great and mighty things” were almost
daily witnessed by Evan Roberts, Jonathan Goforth and
others, but not by me. My prayers were not definitely and
daily answered. Hence, John 14:13-14, “Whatsoever ye
shall ask in My name, that will I do,” and “If ye shall ask
anything in My name, I will do it,” was not real in my
case. To me these promises were not vital since I asked
for many things that I did not receive, and this was not
according to the promise.
Thus I came to realize that there was something
radically wrong with my prayer-life. And in reading the
autobiography of Charles G. Finney, I found that he, too,
had experienced the same failure. “I was particularly
struck,” he relates, “with the fact that the prayers that I