Quite often, I find myself wrestling with my lack of faith in prayer. It’s a part of a constant tension that comes between, “if you have faith and do not doubt, you will say to this mountain ‘Move from here to there’ and it will be done” and, “if the Lord wills…” One thing that I find often nags away at me is whether my requests of God are big enough: if fear holds me back from asking what I would, am I doing God a disservice?
One helpful aid in challenging lack of faith and bringing reminders of the abundant greatness of God’s working is reading about what God has done during times of revival. It is here that God shows again and again that not only is He able to do exceedingly above all that we ask or think, but that He actually does so too. It’s with that in mind that I share with you an account recorded by an eyewitness of the Welsh Revival 1904-5:
“I remember one man in particular; he was a notorious character living in the town. He was a superman and I remember him very well. His name was Levi Jarvis and a pugilist of sorts. He and his two brothers were fighters – there was a lot of fighting in those days before the revival and it was a form of entertainment. This man was a terror to the town in particular; he was the biggest man in town. Yet now he was afraid of coming out of his house and was afraid of going out to work with the crowd in the morning. So he used to get up and go out at four instead of five. He was afraid of the revival, he was stricken with terror, and his wife was very concerned about him. She was afraid of him going out of his mind. There was talk of him in the town and there was praying in the church for him. I had heard them pray for Levi, that the terror of the Lord would fall upon him. Now he was afraid of everybody, whereas everybody was afraid of him before this experience.
The revivalist went to see his wife, who was weeping in the house because he was at work. When the revivalist enquired, she said, ‘Oh, I’m afraid he is going out of his mind! He can’t eat; he can’t sleep; I don’t know what is going to happen to him.’ And when the husband came home, his wife said to him, ‘What do you think? R.B. Jones has been to see me today and has been enquiring for you, and they are praying for you.’ Then he replied, ‘Oh! Let me have something to eat and let me wash and let me go to the mountain out of the way.’ There’s a little place not far from the mountain, about a mile and a half to two miles. So, his wife gave him dinner and he slipped away up the mountain.
He was afraid but when he came back from that little place, the Lord had saved him on the mountain. Now he went to the chapel that very afternoon and they say that he came into the chapel with his two hands up, surrendering himself to the Lord. When he came into the chapel, he cried out and asked, ‘Can the Lord Jesus save such a wretch of a sinner as me?’ and the people started to sing and pray, and the minister said, ‘Come along, brother’, and he went into the big pew. He went on his knees in the big pew, and he was saved. How wonderful! People said, ‘Look! Look! That notorious drunkard and fighter, that nasty bitter man. Now he is like a lamb.’
After the revival he continued to the end. He was in his late forties when he was saved, and he continued till his death at the age of eighty. He was always talking about his experience. I had many a chat with him in his old age, and he would say, ‘Come here now, lets talk about the time when the Lord saved me!’”
Great God of wonders! All Thy ways
Are matchless, Godlike and divine;
But the fair glories of Thy grace
More Godlike and unrivalled shine. (Samuel Davies, 1723-1761)
