The Altar of Revival

In a way it could be said that I grew up at altars.  This is simply a way of saying I have knelt at more than one of them.  My earliest memories of being in church include kneeling at an altar at the end of Sunday night worship to pray with the rest of the folks who were kneeling around me.  I suppose what I learned from them was that it was alright to kneel at the altar and good to pray.  There would be many other altars in my life.  I was not one to respond to any and every altar call, but I made my way forward for my share of them.    

As I watch the reporting of the Asbury Revival which is now in its sixth day, I think about the altar there in Hughes Auditorium where the Holy Spirit is at work.  I think about it because I knelt at it one Tuesday afternoon back in 1970 during a similar outpouring of God's Holy Spirit.  When I knelt that day I knew what it meant to be a disciple of Jesus.  I had made that decision some years earlier.  On that afternoon when there was snow on the ground outside, my heart was warmed by the Spirit in such a way that the fire has been present now for a life time.  Back then folks around me talked about such moments as a moment of being filled with the Spirit.  

As I arose that day and went forward I came to understand it was not so much about what happened in a moment as what happens in a life time.  As the years have come and gone and I have walked with that memory, I know that the issue then and the issue now is, and always has been and will always be, submission to the purposes of the Holy Spirit. I did not arise that cold afternoon as one who would walk perfectly, but as one who walked conscious that the only walk worth walking was the one which spoke of obedience to God and submission to the will of His Spirit.  I am forever grateful for the memory of kneeling at that altar and I am deeply grateful for the life it has enabled me to live.