Broken And Poured Out

Pastor, do you preach your sermons to yourself? You should, because you need to hear the Word of God more than your congregation does!

If you are going to speak the living Word of God to others, you need to be a pure vessel for God’s use. You need to allow the Holy Spirit to break you and pour you out. Consider these words from Smith Wigglesworth—

WigglesworthYou cannot take people into the depths of God unless you have been broken yourself. … God wants to bring you forth as a flame of fire with a message from God, with a truth that will disturb the powers of satan, and with an unlimited supply for every needy soul.

How important it is for all God’s ministers to be continually in prayer and constantly feeding on the Scriptures of Truth. … None of you can be strong in God unless you are diligently and constantly listening to what God has to say to you through His Word. You cannot know the power and the nature of God unless you partake of His inbreathed Word.

Oh, if I could only stir you up to see that, as you are faithful in the humblest role, God can fill you with His Spirit, make you a chosen vessel for Himself, and promote you to a place of mighty ministry in the salvation of souls and in the healing of the sick. Nothing is impossible to a man filled with the Holy Spirit. The possibilities are beyond all human comprehension. When you are filled with the power of the Holy Spirit, God will wonderfully work wherever you go.

(From his book On Healing, emphasis added)

14 Quotes From “Smith Wigglesworth On Healing”

Wigglesworth HealingI hope these quotes from Smith Wigglesworth On Healing will excite you to read this book. If you’d like to read my book review, please click here.

“Never listen to human plans. God can work mightily when you persist in believing Him in spite of discouragement from the human standpoint. … I am moved by what I believe. I know this: no man looks at the circumstances if he believes.”  

“There are times when there seems to be a stone wall in front of us. There are times when there are no feelings. There are times when everything seems as black as midnight, and there is nothing left by confidence in God. What you must do is have the devotion and confidence to believe that He will not fail, and cannot fail. You will never get anywhere if you depend on your feelings. There is something a thousand times better than feelings, and it is the powerful Word of God. There is a divine revelation within you that came when you were born from above, and this is real faith. To be born into the new kingdom is to be born into a new faith.”

“You must be yielded to the Word of God. The Word will work out love in our hearts, and when practical love is in our hearts, there is no room to boast about ourselves. We see ourselves as nothing when we get lost in this divine love.”

“You can never pray ‘the prayer of faith’ (James 5:15) if you look at the person who is needing it; there is only one place to look, and that is to Jesus.”

“Hard things are always opportunities to gain more glory for the Lord as He manifests His power. Every trial is a blessing. … The hardest things are just lifting places into the grace of God.”

“The Master does not want us to reason things out, for carnal reasoning will always land us in a bog of unbelief. He wants us simply to obey.”

“You must come to see how wonderful you are in God and how helpless you are in yourself.”

“May God help us to see this truth. We cannot be ‘to the praise of His glory’ (Ephesians 1:12) until we are ready for trials and are able to triumph in them.”

“God is never tightfisted with any of His blessings.”

“Jesus was manifested in the flesh to destroy the power of the devil (1 John 3:8). What does that mean? It means this: He is God’s example to show us that what God did for and in Jesus, He can do for and in us.”

“The reason the world is not seeing Jesus is that Christian people are not filled with Jesus. They are satisfied with attending meetings weekly, reading the Bible occasionally, and praying sometimes. … It is an awful thing for me to see people who profess to be Christians lifeless, powerless, and in a place where their lives are so parallel to unbelievers’ lives that it is difficult to tell which place they are in, whether in the flesh or in the Spirit.”

“There is no such thing as the Lord’s not meeting your need. There are no ifs or mays; His promises are all shalls. ‘All things are possible to him who believes’ (Mark 9:23).”

“Faith is just the open door through which the Lord comes. Do not say, ‘I was saved by faith’ or ‘I was healed by faith.’ Faith does not save and heal. God saves and heals through that open door. You believe, and the power of Christ comes.” 

“I clearly see that we ought to have spiritual giants in the earth, mighty in understanding, amazing in activity, always having a wonderful testimony because of their faith-filled activity. I find instead that there are many people who perhaps have better discernment than the average believer, better knowledge of the Word the the average believer, but they have failed to put their discernment and knowledge into practice, so the gifts lie dormant.”

Smith Wigglesworth On Healing (book review)

Wigglesworth HealingWhenever I read Smith Wigglesworth’s sermons, my faith is challenged to reach farther than it’s ever reached before! In this collection of messages entitled Smith Wigglesworth On Healing, once again I found myself wanting so much more of God!

Wigglesworth didn’t write his books, he preached them. This plumber-turned-preacher was one of the most faith-filled dynamos I’ve ever heard from. On page after page he confronted me with how much more there is to experience in my relationship with God, and then backed it up with his own personal experiences. In this particular book, the focus is on people who were physically healed (including Wigglesworth himself) from diseases which perplexed doctors. Time and again I found myself saying, “Yes! I want to see this today!”

If you want to give your faith a boost to believe God for miracles, I can think of no better preacher to read than Smith Wigglesworth.

Counting Down 2012: #4 God’s Word Is…

I am counting down the top 5 posts that I wrote in 2012, as determined by the number of views during this year. The 4th most read post is: God’s Word Is….

“Never compare this Book with other books. Comparisons are dangerous. Never think or say that this Book contains the Word of God. It is the Word of God. It is supernatural in origin, eternal in duration, inexpressible in value, infinite in scope, regenerative in power, infallible in authority, universal in application, inspired in totality. Read it through. Write it down. Pray it in. Work it out. And then pass it on.” —Smith Wigglesworth

Lord, I Need Your Anointing!

How miserable to try to preach a sermon if God’s anointing is not on it! The most gifted speaker’s words sound hollow without God’s help. The most educated theologian’s thoughts are mere babbling without the Holy Spirit’s aid. All your hours of pastoral study are utterly wasted unless the power of Christ is present.

Pastor, let these wise words soak in…

I know that it is dreadful work to be bound to preach when one is not conscious of the aid of the Spirit of God! It is like pouring water out of bottomless buckets, or feeding hungry souls out of empty baskets. A true sermon such as God will bless no man can preach of himself; he might as well try to sound the archangel’s trumpet.” ―Charles Spurgeon

“Keep yourself full to the brim in reading; but remember that the first great Resource is the Holy Ghost Who lays at your disposal the Word of God. The thing to prepare is not the sermon, but the preacher.” ―Oswald Chambers

“Apart from divine help, the enterprise of a Christian minister is only worthy of ridicule. Apart from the power of the Eternal Spirit, the things which the preacher has to do are as much beyond him as though he had to weld the sun and moon into one, light up new stars, or turn the Sahara into a garden of flowers. We have a work to do concerning which we often cry, ‘Who is sufficient for these things?’ and if we be put to this work but have not your prayers, and in consequence have not the supply of the Spirit, we are of all men the most miserable.” ―Charles Spurgeon

The character of our praying will determine the character of our preaching. Light praying will make light preaching. …The preacher must be preeminently a man of prayer. His heart must graduate in the school of prayer. In the school of prayer only can the heart learn to preach.” ―E.M. Bounds

“If you preachers lose your compassion, you can stop preaching, for it won’t be any good. You will only be successful as a preacher if you let your heart become filled with the compassion of Jesus. ―Smith Wigglesworth

Present Tense

Listen to the podcast of this post by clicking on the player below, and you can also subscribe on AppleSpotify, or Audible.

I never want my best days to be in my past.

I don’t want things I’ve learned to become old.

I don’t want nostalgia for God’s moving and provision in my life to be greater than my current joy in His moving and provision.

I don’t want to live in the past tense, but always in the present tense.

For Christians there is a danger in reflecting more on the past than on the present. God says He is the I AM, not the I WAS. He wants to do something new in you and I today—present tense.

I love what Smith Wigglesworth said:

“Beloved, don’t forget that every day must be a day of advancement. If you have not made any advancement since yesterday, in a measure you are a backslider. There is only one way for you between Calvary and the glory, and it is forward. It is every day forward. It is no day back. It is advancement with God. It is cooperation with Him in the Spirit. … If we live on the same plane day after day, the vision is stale; the principles lose their earnestness. But we must be like those who are catching the vision of the Master day by day.”

This is my prayer: Jesus, let me catch the vision of You again today. Let my vision always be present tense.

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God’s Word Is…

“Never compare this Book with other books. Comparisons are dangerous. Never think or say that this Book contains the Word of God. It is the Word of God. It is supernatural in origin, eternal in duration, inexpressible in value, infinite in scope, regenerative in power, infallible in authority, universal in application, inspired in totality. Read it through. Write it down. Pray it in. Work it out. And then pass it on.” —Smith Wigglesworth

Book Reviews From 2011

Here is the complete list of books I read in 2011. Click on each title to be taken to my review…

7 Habits Of Highly Effective Teens

A Collection Of Wednesdays

A Treasury Of A.W. Tozer

Abandon The Ordinary

Average Joe

Be A People Person

Be The People

Biblical Ethics

Biblical Psychology

Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy

Bringing Sons Unto Glory

Chazown

City On Our Knees

Costly Grace

Doing Virtuous Business

Elite Prayer Warriors

Enemies Of The Heart

Experiencing The Spirit

Fasting

For Men Only

From The Library Of A.W. Tozer

Galileo

Generation iY

George Washington Carver

Get Off Your Knees And Pray

Go For Gold

God Is The Gospel

Has God Spoken?

Home And Away

How The Mighty Fall

How To Read The Bible

How To Win Friends And Influence People

I Knew Jesus Before He Was A Christian

In Visible Fellowship

Leadership Gold

Leadership Is Dead

Leadership Prayers

Lee: A Life Of Virtue

Letters From Leaders

MacArthur: America’s General

Max On Life

Me, Myself & Bob

Never Surrender

Night

On The Verge

Peach

Plugged-In Parenting

Radical Together

Remember Why You Play

Say It With Love

Secure Daughters, Confident Sons

Sherman: The Ruthless Victor

Smith Wigglesworth On Faith

Soul Work

Soulprint

Stuff Christians Life

Sun Stand Still

The Blessing Of Adversity

The Church In Exile

The Heart Of A Great Pastor

The Hour That Matters Most

The Next Christians

The Seed

Toxic Committees & Venomous Boards

untamed

Upside

Wandering In The Wilderness

We Shall See God

Whale Done

What The Bible Says About The Holy Spirit

Why God Won’t Go Away

Why Great Men Fall

You Were Born For This

Looking forward to sharing more great reads with you in 2012! Let me know if there are any books you would like me to review.

Smith Wigglesworth On Faith (book review)

He may have a funny-sounding name, but—wow—can this man ever preach!

Smith Wigglesworth didn’t sit down to write a book, he just preached this book. In fact, Smith didn’t even read other books; he only read the Bible. So to read a Smith Wigglesworth book is really to “listen” to his power-packed sermons.

From 1900 to 1940, Smith traveled around the United States, speaking at various locations. His sermons are a heavy dose of Scripture, accented with frequent interpretations of a message in tongues from the Holy Spirit. So Smith Wigglesworth On Faith is a collection of faith-building sermons preached over a four decade time span.

If you want to have your faith (re)ignited, you can’t go wrong by listening (I mean: reading) these sermons. Highly, highly recommended!

How Do You Feel About Today?

A friend’s status update on Facebook this morning read:

(Me having a chat with the day): Listen here, Day, I gotta lot of stuff to get done, so don’t get any ideas. And btw it’s going to take more than missing homework and wetted beds to stop me! Muahahahaaa!

This reminded me of a conversation the old preacher Smith Wigglesworth had with an acquaintance:

“How do you feel today, Smith?” the friend asked.

“I never ask Smith how he feels,” Wigglesworth replied. “I tell Smith how he feels.”

Great advice from both my friend and Smith Wigglesworth: Don’t wait until you feel like doing something before you do it. Tell your Day how it’s going to go—and then tell yourself how you’re going to feel about it—and then just do it!

Carpe diem! Seize the day and make it a good one!