Revival in the Heart

I found this the other day while Lizzie and I were reading Baptist History and I thought it was really good. It’s part of a journal entry of Absalom Waller, pastor of Lower Spotsylvania Baptist Church in Virginia in 1817. His church had become cold to spiritual things and he longed to see revival and records when revival broke out, starting in his own life first.
This scene takes place in a grove of trees where he regularly went to pray, it was also a graveyard where several of his relatives lay.

“While I was thus engaged (praying in the grove) the thought struck me with great force indeed, that the souls of my dear departed children near whose graves I was then kneeling were at that moment in glory, singing the praises of the Lamb of God, who died for the redemption of lost sinners! And that I was surely a most ungrateful wretch, to feel unwilling to spend and be spent in the cause of Christ! I am unable to describe my feelings at that moment; I wept, under a sense of God’s goodness and my own ingratitude – nay more, I fell on my face and cried out, O Lord! Send me, and I will go; I will forsake all for Christ, and try to spend my last breath in exhorting sinners to repent and turn to God.”

What a powerful statement and oh, how we need to see ourselves! I am praying that revival would come to our churches but more specifically to me. I hope maybe this was an encouragement to someone.