It is really wonderful to be up in the front row when everybody is singing with all their hearts. I am not sure if you can appreciate it on the back row, but up here it is quite a wonderful worship together.
I am just curious tonight. Two questions before we really begin: How many are here for the first time this year? I mean, this is your first year here. Just raise your hands so we can see. Well, there are a number of you here. That is wonderful.
Second question: How many of you who are here tonight are under thirty years old? Raise your hand.
Well, now. Okay. I noticed the brothers were really looking around for sisters at that point.
Could we turn tonight to Psalm 126? Psalm 126, one of the Songs of Ascents.
When the Lord brought back the captive ones of Zion,
We were like those who dream.
Then our mouth was filled with laughter,
And our tongue with joyful shouting;
Then they said among the nations,
“The Lord has done great things for them.”
The Lord has done great things for us;
We are glad.Restore our captivity, O Lord,
As the streams in the South.
Those who sow in tears shall reap with joyful shouting.
He who goes to and fro weeping, carrying his bag of seed,
Shall indeed come again with a shout of joy, bringing his sheaves with him.
Then we will look at our verse for this weekend, Galatians 4:19.
My children, with whom I am again in travail until Christ is formed in you.
Then one more from Colossians 2. These Scriptures are all becoming familiar by now. I think every brother is reading from these verses—Colossians 2:1.
For I want you to know how great a struggle I have on your behalf, and for those who are at Laodicea, and for all those who have not personally seen my face, that their hearts may be encouraged, having been knit together in love, and attaining to all the wealth that comes from the full assurance of understanding, resulting in a true knowledge of God’s mystery, that is, Christ Himself, in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.
The word there in the Greek is agonizō—agony, the actual word from which we get “agony.” “I want you to know how great an agony I have on your behalf.”
Our Father, we come to You tonight, and our spirits are so overjoyed as we sing these songs of Your Son: everything in Jesus, and Jesus everything.
Lord, we ask that You would restore and renew, rekindle our hearts in first love for Jesus, that we might be in full agreement with You, our Father. As we gather tonight and speak of this mystery of spiritual travail, help us, Lord, not only to hear words, but to respond and say, “Here am I; send me.”
As we come toward these last days, and Your eyes look to and fro about the earth for those willing to stand with You, we thank You, Lord, that we could gather at this important time. We pray that You would teach us by Your Spirit, in whom we depend. We pray all these things in Jesus’ precious name. Amen.
I know some of you have not been here for all of the ministry. It has been a wonderful time already. Last night, I tried to introduce this subject of spiritual travail by talking about the very positive nature of spiritual travail, because it has a glorious end and a glorious beginning.
Then I tried to mention, as an encouragement, the higher ground we find ourselves on when we are involved in spiritual travail. Finally, I mentioned the broader ground we find ourselves upon, because we find that we are not alone in our travail. Indeed, there are seven thousand also who are praying, who are burdened, desiring the same things of God.
Our brother this morning shared so wonderfully with us how we are the fruit of His travail. Indeed, he led us into the very travail of our Lord Jesus. It was a wonderful message.
Then Ernie, this afternoon, shared Paul’s heart and all of those references in his epistles to the struggle and travail that he felt in his heart. Ernie really only mentioned some of them; there were many more. Paul was such a man, living this life of spiritual travail.
We read verses such as Galatians 4 and Colossians 1, and I wanted to read these again just to show that here is Paul living on that higher plane in spiritual travail. He is in an agony.
Isn’t it interesting how expanded Paul’s heart is because he is in an agony, praying for those he has not even seen? Most of us do not even pray for those we love and know, and here is Paul in an agony for those he has not yet seen.
Of course, he is related to them because brothers he knows have gone out to Colossae and preached the gospel, and so on and so forth. I am not saying he is not connected at all. But he felt as if he were the father of this young group. He was wrestling that they would be perfected in Christ and know the fullness of Christ, especially as he had heard reports of some of them swerving from the faith through philosophy and all kinds of things.
There is Paul, just wrestling away. It is a wonderful position he is on. It is even more amazing when you understand that he is in jail. There is really not much he can do. It is not as if his spiritual travail is a ministry in which he is going around preaching.
He is in jail, but he has found the release. As he says, “You can lock me up, but you can never lock up the word of God.”
So he sends out letters that are just absorbed with Christ, believing that these letters will have an impact on the believers. Boy, they send those prayers on wings of prayer.
There he is daily in his cell. I do not know whether he wrote lists like my wife always does, or whether he just prayed for various companies of believers as they came to his heart. I do not know. But he was wrestling.
Those saints in Colossae and Laodicea—another place he had never been—it made no difference. They are God’s kids. They have got to be perfected. Isn’t that wonderful?
There he is in a place where we would say, “Ah, poor Paul. His ministry is over.” Here is Paul wrestling away, because spiritual travail is not limited to time and place. It is such a wonderful living ministry.
The reason I bring all of that up is because there is an important lesson to learn: spiritual travail is not a teaching.
You have noticed nobody has given you the one, two, three, four—except me tonight. But up until this time, there has been no fool to try it, because it is a mystery. There is spiritual travail. How does the Lord lay hold of somebody like that, and then somebody lay hold of the Lord? There is a mystery there, you know.
It is deep in the creation, and it is deep in the heart of God. Who can speak about it? It certainly is not a teaching, and it is not a ministry.
Now, we like titles. But just as we do not have people—at least not in the assembly that I know—whom we say, “Oh yes, they are the overcomers. They have a ministry of overcoming.” Who can say that?
And who can say, “Well, you know what? I am a travailer. That is my ministry. I am a travailer. I fold chairs and travail. I have two—twofold ministry.” No, you see, because spiritual travail is not a ministry.
Spiritual travail is a life given to the Lord. It is a life. As are all things in church, church is a life in Christ, and it involves this travail.
Our dear brother Stephen shared some wonderful things this morning, many that I am thinking about and appreciating so much. But one of the things I feel he made clear to us is that every human being on the face of this earth will go through travail. It is because of this fallen world.
It is a travail to go to work. It is a travail to work with dishonest people. It is a travail to be shortchanged or cheated. It is travail all the time. Just life is a travail. Come to New York City—travail city.
But we, as the Lord’s people, can turn that travail into spiritual travail. Often, in fact, the Lord uses our travail that turns into futility to bring us into spiritual travail.
As a matter of fact, I am going to be so bold as to say that I cannot think of any other reason you are here, other than that you love the Lord—or else you are crazy. Too many meetings, too little time, five minutes out of breakfast—but you are here because you love the Lord.
So I want to prophesy something: thus saith the Lord, you will know spiritual travail.
Your only choice is how long you delay before you give yourself to the Lord. That is one reason I asked how many young people we have here.
If we had a truly sorrowful moment here tonight, it would be that I could ask people in this audience over thirty, and there would be a good two dozen who could stand up here and tell you how many years they wasted following the travails of the world that ended up in nothing.
How many started their own businesses? How many moved out somewhere and got into the wilderness? How many tried this, and how many went wrong over there? The testimony would be waste, futility, emptiness—until I gave myself to the Lord, and He gave me a useful travail instead of purposeless travail.
I cannot imagine a woman travailing for nine months and then finding out she is not pregnant.
But that is exactly what Solomon says in Ecclesiastes. All of your travail, and your groaning and striving, ends up in futility. The word in Hebrew literally means emptiness. The doctor says, “Sorry, you are not pregnant.”
Of course, I also cannot believe those women who go to the doctor and say, “I am having some gastric distress,” and he says, “Get on the table; you are going to have a kid.” Can you imagine somebody carrying a baby for nine months and not knowing it? These are true stories—at least it says so in the Inquirer.
Listen: because you love the Lord, and more importantly because He is your Lord, you will know spiritual travail.
Even from the youngest of days, you can know such travail. There are amazing men of God, and we read their biographies sometimes. There are some who, from the moment they were saved, saw Jesus the Savior and that so-great salvation in such a way that it gave them a hunger for souls that became a labor and a travail through their lives.
I know one brother who told Ernie and me that he cannot go to sleep until he has led somebody to the Lord. He was absolutely sincere. Isn’t that amazing?
Men like Charles Finney, from the moment he was saved, had a burden for souls. That is a travail, and it is just one example of how we enter in. But how did he have such a vision? Only the Lord can do these things.
Tonight I want to share three things—for the sleepy ones. That is all of you; I can see.
First, what are the characteristics of those we find in the Word of God who are involved in spiritual travail? There are characteristics that are true for you and me, for the most part, but I want to give you a little checklist: five characteristics of those involved in spiritual travail.
Second, perhaps we will share some words on how this matter of spiritual travail begins on a higher level, in a fuller way, in our lives.
Third, what is the key element in effective spiritual travail? With those questions before us, I come now to this list of characteristics.
The first one is in Luke 1:38.
And Mary said, “Behold, the bondslave of the Lord; may it be done to me according to your word.” And the angel departed from her.
The first characteristic we see in those engaged in spiritual travail is that they are available. I know that is very obvious. All five of these characteristics are very obvious, but it needs to be said.
Here she was, a virgin girl. When the angel came and said, “You are going to have a child,” she said, “How can this be?” Then he said, “The Holy Spirit will overshadow you, and you will have a child born of God.”
Imagine this travail she is about to enter into. It is not the usual travail at all, yet it is the travail of holding this child through the period of pregnancy and then giving birth.
“Behold, the handmaiden. Be it done to me according to Your will.” There are so many people with great ability, but the Lord always looks for availability.
There are many people chasing and running, and He cannot seem to get them alone long enough to meet with them. But Mary was available. For Isaiah: “Here am I. Send me.” Availability.
A little footnote to availability is this: the Lord looks for consecrated availability.
Before Isaiah ever said, “Here am I, send me,” the angel had to come and touch his tongue with the coals of purification. Consecration.
The Lord is always looking for young people, and older ones, who are consecrated before Him. They are available: “I am a living sacrifice. I present my body to You, Lord. What would You have me to do?”
Then the Lord comes one day and says, “I want you to do this,” and you say, “Here am I. Send me.” Availability.
I ask with each of these: Are you available to the Lord? Have you presented yourself to Him? This is the first characteristic.
The second characteristic is found in Psalm 131.
O Lord, my heart is not proud, nor my eyes haughty;
Nor do I involve myself in great matters, or in things too difficult for me.
Surely I have composed and quieted my soul;
Like a weaned child rests against his mother,
My soul is like a weaned child within me.
O Israel, hope in the Lord from this time forth and forever.
The second characteristic of those the Lord uses in spiritual travail is this: they are satisfied with the Lord.
The picture is of a weaned child upon the mother’s breast, not at all searching for food—satisfied. Satisfied with salvation, satisfied with His grace, satisfied with His peace, satisfied with His blessings.
Oh, are you satisfied? I remember a famous gospel song they always used to sing:
I am satisfied,
I am satisfied,
I am satisfied with Jesus.But the question comes to me,
As I think on Calvary:
Is my Savior satisfied with me?
I remember the first time I saw this big old gospel preacher singing that song. It brought tears to my eyes because I could see how much he loved Jesus. He was so satisfied.
David says, “I am like a weaned child.” All those big issues I used to worry about—whether Obama was going to win the Nobel Peace Prize—whatever. Now I lean on Jesus’ breast and say, “Lord, I am satisfied with You.”
Many of our assemblies try to gather on the Lord’s Day, and there is a discipline we try to maintain. It is very tough for us, but when we come together to break bread, let us be satisfied with the Lord.
Let us not begin by saying, “Oh, Lord, we are so happy to come to You, and by the way, Lord, I need help about something.” We try to say, “Lord, we are satisfied with You.” Sometimes in saying that, we realize how great our salvation is.
There is a great robber of our availability with the Lord, and that is sometimes even a false sense of continual neediness. This world has wrecked us into such a psychological state that some people are so needy that it is all me, me, me, me.
But do you not see? To live on higher ground, we have to come to a place of satisfaction. Of course, we always have things, but the Lord says that if you seek His kingdom and His righteousness, all these things will be added unto you.
The Lord has to bless us and bless us and bless us until we finally realize that He does take care of us. Isn’t this true? Oh, it is so true. But are you satisfied with Jesus? This is a very important place to come to.
The third thing we find is from Philippians 3. Ernie mentioned this passage. I will read one verse, Philippians 3:14.
I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.
The third characteristic of those useful to the Lord in spiritual travail is that they are pressing on to know the Lord Himself.
It is that wonderful song of A. B. Simpson written out in our lives: once it was the blessing I sought; now it is the Blesser. Once I wanted to be filled with the Spirit and have gifts of the Spirit; now I want Him.
There comes a crossover point in a Christian’s life, and it will come to all of our lives. The things of Christ are so wonderful—all the gracious things we have received—but there is a knowing of Christ that begins to preoccupy us.
We find ourselves pressing on after Him, and this becomes so important for the rest of our lives. Are you pressing on to know Him, or are you still looking for the accoutrements—the accessories—of the Christian life?
“Oh, if I could just have some peace. Oh, if I could just have some financial blessing,” and so on and so forth. Of course, the Lord does bless us, keep us, and deliver us. But behind all these things, we need to see the Lord Himself.
You remember how the people out on the Galilean plain loved to receive bread from the Lord Jesus, but they could not see that He was the Bread. As we receive blessings from the Lord, at some point we have got to look through them and say, “Ah, it is You, Lord. You were behind that gift,” and run after Him.
This is an important issue, and with young people it can be a straining point. Even young people who grow up in the church grow up with two feelings: first, that they are really undeserving; second, that they have a duty to thank the Lord for all He has done.
But third, they are actually afraid to truly get to know Him. They are timid. They are shy about it. Their prayers are always, “Oh Lord, I am so unworthy.” It is as if they timidly run in, even in worship times: “Oh Lord, I am somewhat worthy. I just want to tell You I love You.” Then they are gone.
We can understand that. Who here feels worthy of our salvation? There is no issue there. But there comes a time when, in the assurance of His grace and His love for you, you no longer need to be timid.
You no longer say, “I know He loves me, and I know I should love Him more, but I really do not want to get too close because He might nuke me. He might grab me in some way. I am afraid He might do something. Oh, I do not want to be a missionary to Africa.”
So we just kind of creep in. I remember, as a child, in the Museum of Natural History in New York, my father took me to one particular exhibit. They had one called the salt lick.
There are certain springs that have a lot of salt in the water, and when they dry, they leave salt on the ground. The animals in the African Serengeti need that salt to live.
My father told me there was kind of a neutral ground at the salt lick, where the lion and the gazelle would both come very tentatively, on one side or the other, lick the salt they needed, and leave.
I often feel that when I see young people. You are licking the salt, and tentatively at that. But why do you not jump into the whole thing? Say, “Lord, I love You. No holds barred. I am Yours completely. Take me, use me, and I am going to stay in Your presence even if You nuke me.”
That is a liberating moment, and it takes a while, does it not? Come on, admit it: as a Christian, it takes a while to come there. You are tentative the first few years. You are sure that everybody else is happy, saved, and doing well, but you are still a dreadful sinner and the Lord knows it.
If you get near enough, something is going to happen. No, no, no. Come on. Not only satisfied—now you are pursuing the Lord.
Here is Paul again. He is in prison. He still has time. He does not have far to run in jail, but he is pressing on to know the Lord.
The fourth characteristic is found in Colossians 2:19. This vessel that the Lord would use is a maturing vessel.
And not holding fast to the head, from whom the entire body, being supplied and held together by the joints and ligaments, grows with a growth which is from God.
There is a growth which is from God, and it takes a while to mature. Notice that I did not say the characteristic is that they are mature, but that they are maturing.
Surely the analogy applies: a mother must be mature enough to bear a seed, nourish the seed with her body, and then give birth to a child. You cannot go up to a two-year-old little girl and say, “Have a kid.” They are potentially a mother, but they have to grow up and mature.
The same is spoken of men, in the sense of being spiritual fathers, which John speaks about in his letter. A spiritual father takes his sons and daughters and wants to teach them, bringing them into sonship, maturity, responsibility, and productivity in the kingdom and house of God.
You have to be a father to do that. Even if it is your favorite son and he is five years old, you cannot say, “Okay, son, here are the keys. Take over the business.” They are just not ready yet.
We cannot force people into something. You cannot force children to grow up fast. But the greater problem is that we sometimes try to make ourselves grow faster, and we usually do damage in the process.
Who was the great pianist? Was it Mendelssohn who fixed some device for his fingers to make his ring finger work better? Was it Schumann? It was somebody, and he ruined his hand in the process, trying to make himself faster by some external mechanical device.
No, there is a growth which is from God. We need to let young people grow up. There is a process, is there not? They have to be established. They have to be blessed. They have to learn God is faithful. They have to see God answer prayer. They have to know God forgives them a thousand times. Then they are ready for something more.
This brings us to the fifth characteristic. Sometimes, when the Lord begins to bring spiritual travail to people, He breaks the vessel. Sometimes He looks for a broken vessel.
Who is useful to the Lord? A horse that has never been sat upon—a wild stallion? No, it is the broken horse that is useful to the Lord.
Here is a Scripture in Isaiah 57:14–15.
And it will be said, “Build up, build up, prepare the way, remove every obstacle out of the way of My people.”
For thus says the high and exalted One
Who lives forever, whose name is Holy,
“I dwell on a high and holy place,
And also with the contrite and lowly of spirit
In order to revive the spirit of the lowly
And to revive the heart of the contrite.”
A broken vessel—the Lord would use. Our young people, I am glad to say, are often such pretty seeds. When I go to different youth conferences, we have many young people who know the Bible, are squeaky clean, have a good moral life, and are disciplined because we have disciplined them.
Those are those Chinese recitals Ernie was talking about. We have some wonderful seeds among our young people.
But in the end, if a seed keeps running around trying to decide where it wants to be planted, the Lord has to break that. It is only when the seed falls into the ground and dies that true life can issue.
As wonderful as the many seeds we have here tonight may look, it is when you give yourself fully to the Lord, right where you are for now. If you are in school, give yourself to the Lord at school. The Lord will bless you, and you will be fruitful wherever you are.
Do not keep holding yourself back as a seed. The Lord wants to use you, and so He breaks us. What does a broken vessel mean? That is a whole message in itself, is it not? But it at least means this: you have lost the argument.
You are not actually broken if the Lord tells you to do something and you say you cannot do it because you are unworthy, because that is still you.
A broken vessel is when the Lord says, “I want you to do something,” and you say, “Behold, the bondslave of the Lord. Do according to Your will.”
Do you have an argument with God? A broken vessel says, “Yes, Lord.” It is very simple. It is not a question of whether you feel you are worthy. He asks us to do something, and we say, “Yes, Lord.”
These are the characteristics we find in the Scriptures as we see Moses, Daniel, and various others. I wanted to give you that little checklist so that you could ask your own heart:
Do not try to break yourself. The travail of life will break you, and so the Lord has His vessels.
The second matter we want to take up very simply tonight is this: How does the Lord begin this process of travail in our lives? How does He implant that seed that begins to lay hold of us with some kind of burden, enabling us to begin to lay hold of the Lord on this higher ground of spiritual travail?
Ernie this afternoon said there are no coincidences. So my first point is that there is a sovereign coincidence, meaning the Lord has arranged something.
There is a sovereign coincidence of two things that happen in your life. The first is a blessed seeing of the Lord unveiled in a certain way.
The second is that you see, in your own circumstances, the utter contrast with what you just saw in the Lord. That brings a groan into your life.
The first aspect is vision. We see something. The Lord reveals something to us. How precious. “Oh, I have seen the church,” we say. “I have seen the Lord is coming back.”
Then we look at our circumstance and our situation, and there is such utter contrast between what we see and what we are living in that it causes us to groan. How can we not groan?
If Romans 8 is true and we see our destiny, does it not make you groan when you look at who you are now? There is a disparity that must make us groan. That is the very nature of spiritual travail.
When God’s loving plans come down and touch the hearts of independent, rejecting men, there is a groan. When God came into the garden and Adam and Eve were hiding, there was a groan. Did you hear it? “Adam, Adam, where are you?”
God has such loving plans for His people, but we are so Christ-rejecting, so independent. “No, not right now, Lord.” We are so disrespectful of His will. It is a groan on this earth, even in the house of God.
He would do so much and show us so much, but we do not even realize it. We live in a fool’s paradise. We think we are okay.
That is why the Lord has to open our eyes to something wonderful from His heart. When we see that, then we realize our estate.
Elijah stood before the Lord, and when he saw the Lord, the King of kings, the true King of Israel, his heart was broken when he had to go out of his closet and look at Ahab. What an utter contrast: the Lord—Ahab; King—king.
So he was burdened and said, “Lord, what do we do?” The Lord said, “No rain. I will show you who is King.” He began to live in travail for the restoration of the kingdom.
If we do not see something great in the Lord, everything is fine down here on earth. Under the sun, everything is well—it is just the way it is. But when we see something of the Lord, things begin to change.
Travail comes out of a blessed vision of the Lord. We see the Lord, His Body, the church, the kingdom, and Him in His glory. We only see in part, but what we see is part of a glorious whole.
The result is that as we look at our present circumstances, it causes us to groan.
I began this evening by reading Psalm 126. I think you all know the story. When the children came back from captivity, they came back to Jerusalem and had a celebration service: “We cannot believe it. How did the Lord set us free? We thought we were going to be in Babylon forever, and then suddenly one day the king says, ‘Okay, everybody go home.’”
They are jumping up and down: “Boy, the Lord has done great things.” The nations around say, “Boy, the Lord has done great things.” He delivered us from our captivity. Praise God! What a Deliverer. What a God. He brought us back.
In the process, this saint who wrote this song looked into their hearts and said, “Well, the Lord has delivered us out of captivity, but we still have captivity in us.”
“Oh, Lord, restore our captivity. Here we are in the land and we are experiencing drought. All we have is a little bit of seed. What do we do, Lord?” They began to groan.
Isn’t this the story of our lives so often? We see the Lord’s great deliverance. The Lord took us out of the world, but He did not take the world out of us yet. There is a groan, and there is a travail.
Our dear songwriter said, “He that goes forth weeping, bearing precious seed, shall doubtless come again rejoicing.” But now there is a laying down of seed. Now there is a travail that there would be fruitfulness within Judea, and not merely deliverance.
When we get saved, is it not great? We got saved from hell, saved from the world, saved from sin. It is so great.
But after a while, do you not look into your life and say, “What is this drought going on? I am not so satisfied as I used to be. I am singing the same songs, but it is more la, la, la. Let me have a new song. That one is kind of old.”
Isn’t it marvelous? Think of the mercy of the Lord. How does He help us enter into His heart? He shows us His heart, and then He says, “Now look around.”
Down through the history of the church there have been great moments like that. You have all heard the story of Count Zinzendorf and the Moravians.
Two tremendous things they are known for are that they were pioneers in missions, and they sent out so many of their own as missionaries. They even gave their own people into slavery that they might reach the slaves.
When the Holy Spirit came down upon them in 1727, on August 13, they began to pray, and they prayed for one hundred years nonstop.
Every hour of the day, at least two people were in the little prayer tower, which, if you visit Herrnhut, Germany, is still there to this day. One hundred years of unceasing prayer. It is amazing what happened.
If you read the story, you find that Count Zinzendorf had a vision of the Lord. It became one of the mottos of the Moravians:
His wounds,
Our healing.
What he saw—this was his actual vision—was that if we would step into the wounds of the Lord, others would be healed.
They came to this idea: “We will sell ourselves into slavery, suffering in the wounds, and bring salvation and healing to others. If we suffer, others will be saved.” This was their concept.
I do not want to discuss the theology of this, but they believed that the fellowship of His sufferings was abiding in the wounds of the Lamb of God. They always sang about that.
I have a Moravian hymnbook, even to this day. It has eight hundred and fifty songs in it. Many are about the wounds of the Lamb. This was Count Zinzendorf’s vision.
Out of that they sent missionaries, sacrificing their lives. Of course, it bore fruit. If you are willing to lay down your life, others will know eternal life. This was their mission.
Out of that vision of the Lord Jesus, they suddenly saw a world that was dying and needed healing. They went out on that basis.
In the nineteenth century, there was the Keswick movement in Great Britain. The Keswick movement came out of vision.
In those days there was clarity about salvation, but there was a need for practical holiness. Frankly, the church was saved but not sanctified.
Some brothers and sisters from here and there saw a revelation that had not been clear for many years: the indwelling life of Christ is the basis of our holiness. It is His life lived in us, not our own.
This is what they saw in Keswick. They began to preach this practical righteousness, and it brought forth life on the other side. It touched churches that had been preaching the gospel but did not know holiness.
Oh, the indwelling life of Christ—our holiness. In the Keswick Convention, every week they have a night where they preach on the exchange life: Christ’s life for our life. This was their understanding of how we could attain holiness.
The third one I will mention is our dear brother Sparks. I recently read Shaped by Vision, a biography about him.
This brother was one of the rising stars in the pulpit ministries of England. Around the turn of the century, they very much prized great preachers—Spurgeon, F. B. Meyer, G. Campbell Morgan, and others such as these.
Brother Sparks was one of these emerging men, with an expository gift and an ability to speak to large conventions and groups. He spoke at Keswick and in various places. He had tremendous expository understanding of the Word of God.
But one day God opened up a vision of the immensity of Christ, and it absolutely spoiled Brother Sparks.
He left that whole future and met with a group of people, traveling around for most of his life and ministering to small groups of people who wanted to hear about the dimensions, centrality, fullness of Christ, and the object of God’s desire.
He began to speak things that people, I do not know, may never have heard before. But that vision of who Christ was spoiled him for the ministry of being a hot speaker to whom many came to hear wonderful doctrines and expositions.
That is not what the Christian life is all about. It is to know the immensity of Christ and have Him worked out in our lives. What a vision our brother saw. What a travail he entered into.
We have something here of which we need to beware. If we talk about church vision, God’s purpose, the soon coming of the Lord, and the recovery of the testimony—if we talk about these things and they do not produce a groaning within—then, dear brothers and sisters, it is just a teaching.
These are not teachings. This is the heart of God.
His desire for His church, His desire for the recovery of the testimony, the coming of the Lord, and the preparation of the bride—these are God’s heart desire. There is a groan behind every one of these words.
When we hear them and they do nothing to us, it is a teaching. Unless we learn it more deeply, we run the danger of becoming gospel-hardened.
I have spoken in many different kinds of groups, churches, and camps in my lifetime. But I want to tell you that the place that makes me groan most is where I have had to speak in front of gospel-hardened people.
I have gone to churches and church camps where I preached to people who had known the gospel since they were this high. They disrespect it, make fun of it, and make light of it. I tell you, I just groan.
One time I went to a youth camp. This is the truth. The kids were so rebellious and absolutely uncontrolled that, in the middle of my second message, ten minutes in, I said, “That is it. I am not speaking to this group.” I went back to my cabin and started praying.
It took them about twelve hours, but those kids broke down and started weeping. We had a great meeting and a time of consecration as a result. But I would not have it. It was sheer disrespect to talk about the Lord Jesus and see people making fun of Him and carrying on as they did. It was wrong. I could not take it anymore.
We need to be careful too. If tomorrow morning we sing “Maranatha,” and it does not touch some string and chord within us with longing and travail, then it has just become a song.
Surely that song was written under greater groaning than that. It is so easy to know the words and not know the reality.
It is such a blessing to be here with Ernie and share, because Ernie and I have known each other for forty-three years. We went to seminary together, and we went to a seminary that did not teach any of this kind of stuff.
I never heard what spiritual travail was. I had no idea what it was—or church life. Forget it.
But we were reading books. People would hand us books, sort of like undercover people. They would slip us The Normal Christian Life and The Normal Christian Church Life.
I was reading this stuff, and it all made sense. It was perfect. One time I brought it up to my professor. He said, “Ha! Stuff baloney. First of all, that guy believes in body, soul, and spirit. Anybody knows it is body and soul.”
I got confused every time I asked the professor what was going on. But meanwhile, Ernie and I were reading this illegal literature.
When I got out of seminary and became a minister, I began to teach the teachings. I taught the fullness of Christ, the normal Christian life, church vision, and all those things.
A little church was being formed in North Carolina, and I was pastoring this group. It was really wonderful. Everybody said, “Oh, such a wonderful message.” People were coming to receive teaching from the Word. It was wonderful.
But we had a problem: the tires were leaking. What I mean by that is, if I got sick and could not speak for a couple of weeks, the congregation was cut in half.
Then, if I showed up, I pumped the tire back up and people came. Unfortunately, I also had a twofold role. I was the leader of worship. Me and my guitar led the worship.
When I was there leading worship, everybody worshiped. Praise God. When I was not there, people were not worshiping. They were not coming.
I came back and blew up the tires: “Shh, shh, shh, shh, shh.” Now I am building the church, and I am teaching the teachings. Everybody is liking the teachings, but they are not getting it.
I am saying, “But do you not see?” They say, “Yeah, yeah, it is wonderful. It is wonderful. Jesus, yeah—cool.”
Then my zero hour came. I was up in what was called the Church on the Hill, because it was a rented house up on a hill. Everybody called it Raleigh Church on the Hill.
Down in the valley there was a house, and in that house were some Catholic charismatics—questionable from the start.
But once a month, this brother, Stephen Kaung, would go and speak to these Catholic charismatics. When I was not busy up on the hill, they invited me to come and hear Brother Stephen.
I went down there to listen to him. He was supposedly going through the Bible: Judges one week, Ruth the next week, 1 Samuel. One week, he took a whole book. Every book talked about the flesh, the cross, and the resurrection life.
Down there in that house of Catholic charismatics, every time he spoke, there was almost audible groaning. Oh!
I was one of the biggest groaners. This guy was killing me. I would go back up the hill, and everything was fine. I would go back down there, and he was killing me, because everything he said was true.
The more I saw of Christ and the cross—which he spoke—Christ crucified was his message. He did not preach Bible chapter by chapter. He preached Christ crucified. Do not let him tell you he was doing Bible study. He preached Christ crucified, and I tell you, he was slaying me every time I went.
You see, I saw what he was saying, and I saw up on the hill that I was pumping it up myself. I saw the groanings of the beginnings of the church down in the valley, and I saw something completely manufactured up on the hill.
I left what was up on the hill, and my wife, kids, and I went down and joined that despicable group in the valley. We continued to receive life and life.
It is not just a question of seeing something wonderful. It is only travail when you see it in terms of your own context. The Lord brings us into such a coincidence that we might see these things together.
Perhaps at some point in your life, the Bible became a Christ-filled Bible.
We can study the Bible. There is a lot to study: doctrines, propositional truth, and all kinds of things. But when you see a Christ-filled Bible—when the Holy Spirit reveals Christ in the Scriptures—every book of the Bible becomes filled with Jesus. There He is. “He is in Zephaniah?” Yes.
When God gives you a Christ-filled Bible, and then you go to a Bible study at work with other Christians, all munching sandwiches and studying the Word, you share truths from that Christ-filled Bible. They say, “Do not share that stuff. We want to know how to be happy in your marriage, the one, two, threes of witnessing, and so on.”
If God has given you a Christ-filled Bible, and that does not give you a groan when you meet other Christians who do not know a Christ-filled Bible, I do not know what will.
How wonderful that so many people are saved. But I am telling you, what most people are eating is dust off the floor, and you have a Christ-filled Bible. Does that not make you groan when you meet your brothers and sisters? They are truly your brothers and sisters.
If we find such, we must groan and ask the Lord, “Oh God, give me opportunity. Help me to share something of the fullness of Christ.” Many of you have found such opportunities on your jobs, at school, and elsewhere. The Lord begins to open the eyes of one person at a time.
Or perhaps you go to a conference sometime, and the Lord fills you with conference vision and conference blessings. There was a time when you were together with the saints, and you wished the meeting would not stop. You were crying and worshiping; it was so wonderful.
Then you have to go back home to the assembly you are in. Maybe it is a church in decline, a group with compromised doctrines, pastors running off with the organist, or some such state of the church. Does that not cause us to groan?
Every time the Lord shows us something of Himself, honestly, I yearn and long that others could know it. It is too good not to give away. Yet people are so unreceptive.
Have you ever tried to share with somebody and they say, “What are you talking about? Quit talking about that stuff. That is spooky. Spiritual travail? I am not interested in that stuff.”
Some people want all the good times. Even in the church now, people say, “It is all good.” Oh no, it is not. If we want to grow up, there is a travail—what the Lord has on His heart to show to people in various places.
The Lord gives you a vision of something wonderful, but He also makes you aware of the context you are in. It makes you say, “Woe is me. Oh, Lord, look at our state and look at what You are saying. This is the reality and truth; this is our appearance.”
Groaning and travail are what should result. So what do we do? Do not get depressed. Enter into travail.
You have a choice of getting depressed, as Solomon did: “Vanity of vanities, all is vanity.” People can be involved in a wonderful assembly, and it goes sour, it goes bad, and the enemy gets in and stirs things up. People say, “That is it. No more of that stuff.”
A person who does that walks away from something that is a reality in the Lord. I am sorry, but they are going to live in a semi-depression the rest of their lives. You cannot walk out on the Lord.
I am not saying they do not have to leave a place, but I am saying you do not just quit. How can you quit? The Lord’s life is in you. This is the One who never leaves you. If you sin, He still does not leave. If you quench, He still does not leave.
He is still groaning there. Until we find release for that groaning and exercise it, we will not get anywhere. We will be stuck. Some people get stuck for a couple of years, wasting time, until finally they decide, “You know what? I am going to get into the Lord about this thing.”
Here are three simple things. First, bring the matter into the closet and inquire of the Lord. You need to lay hold of the Lord.
Do you know why you have that burden—that sense of travail? It is because the Lord has laid hold of you. Now you need to get into your closet, lay hold of the Lord, and say, “Lord, I see it, and I am dissatisfied. I see it and sense the contrast. I see it and sense the disparity. Lord, what do we do?”
Come before Him and lay hold of the matter before the Lord.
Second, search the Scriptures in order to find clarity in the Word. What is going on? What is the fuller truth? So many times we see something wonderful, but we see it in part.
We need not only to be in our closet laying hold of the Lord, but also to be searching the Word with that question before us: “Lord, what about this that I see? What about this that I see around me? Lord, show me in Your Word.”
God is faithful. He will show you in His Word a way of putting words to a groan. Sometimes, when the Lord lays hold of us, we do not even know how to speak words to describe the agony.
The Lord will give us words as we wait before Him and search the Scriptures.
Third, bring this matter from the closet into the house of prayer with other brothers and sisters, where you can get through on the matter. There you can talk, agree together, and lay your lives before the Lord together—that you are going to live according to what you have seen and not according to our way or tradition.
When the Lord lays hold of your heart and there is a sense of burden and travail within, do not waste that burden. Do not just get depressed about it. Do not say, “There is nothing I can do. Here I am out in this desert. There are no saints around me that I know of who really have a Christ-filled Bible and see the immensity of Christ.”
Do not just get depressed. Come before the Lord about it. “What should I do? Lord, do You want me to move? Do You want me to do something in my home? Do You want me to meet over there? Lord, what do You want me to do?” I do not know, but He has a way.
If you will take up this matter before Him, the Lord gives you strength. Even with a spiritual burden, the Lord gives you strength to do your job and do it well—to go to work every day, accomplish the tasks you are given, come home at night, and wrestle with the Lord.
This is our life. It may seem like a contradiction, but we cannot endure spiritual travail unless we are satisfied with Jesus.
That is why I say spiritual travail is not depression. Check yourself: Are you happy with the Lord? Do you love Him? Do you find Him your consolation, your comfort?
Then you have a burden. Take hold of that thing and pray before the Lord concerning it. It is not depression.
You will find, as you pray and exercise, that the Lord relieves you of the pressure. Then you get about your work. Then He lays it back upon you at another time, and you pray. Then He lifts it, and you go about your work.
That is our life before the Lord. We live in two worlds, and we are citizens of heaven. Spiritual travail is what can bring life as we pray together.
I finally come to the third part, which is very simple. It is a one-word answer: What is the key element in effective spiritual travail? What makes spiritual travail so effective? Why does the Lord have us in this time of groaning and anguish?
The key is this: it is in waiting that the Lord accomplishes His purpose. Waiting before the Lord. Waiting for the Lord to answer.
The Lord gives us a strong desire in our heart, and we pray. Then we wait.
If you notice the brothers and sisters mentioned in Hebrews 11, those commended for the testimony of their faith, their faith was tested in their waiting. Abraham received the promise and waited and waited and waited and waited. That was the faith approved as righteousness.
In the very waiting, a number of things happen in our life. We have this burden, we bring it to the Lord, and we wait. Then He gives us a little something more, and we wait. What happens in this process?
It purifies us, first of all.
Impatience is an impurity of the self-life. Let me say that again: impatience is an impurity of the self-life. You want something now.
We are so used to giving up when we come before the Lord about something and He does not answer immediately. How impatient we are.
Think, in contrast, of how patient God is, how patient our Lord Jesus is, waiting for His bride.
He will teach those willing to learn the lesson of patience: waiting, purified in patience, simplified in patience.
We also have to be clarified in patience, because our initial desire is sometimes partly right and partly in need of adjustment. Before the Lord, He gives us another Scripture, another something, and it clarifies. We wait some more. Then He gives us something else, and it clarifies. Waiting is so important.
There are so many Scriptures on God waiting and man waiting, but we do not need to go into them now. Let me just end with three final considerations.
Waiting gives value to what you are waiting for. How much do you really want something? Are you actively waiting before the Lord for it?
The most precious key to waiting is this: it is as we are waiting before the Lord that we truly get to know the Lord.
Waiting before the Lord is not inactivity. It is not merely sitting there in dead silence. As we wait before the Lord with these burdens in our heart, the Lord reveals His mercy to us. He reveals His love to us. He shows us His ways. He shows us our ways.
He humiliates us, and He exalts Himself. In all of this waiting, there is a transformation that goes on in our life.
Waiting before the Lord—did you ever realize how valuable that is? It is hard when you are twenty-one to realize the value of waiting. But once you get older, you realize that the Lord makes us wait for anything.
Some of you have a great desire in your heart for this or that, and the Lord has you waiting. Do not be depressed. Wait before Him and discover more of His ways.
I will close with three Scriptures from the end of the Bible regarding waiting, because it is such a key matter. In James 5, there is an exhortation we need to hear from our brother James. At least in my translation, his word is: “Be patient.”
James 5:7–11:
Therefore be patient, brethren, until the coming of the Lord.
The farmer waits for the precious produce of the soil, being patient about it, until it gets the early and late rains.
You too be patient; strengthen your hearts, for the coming of the Lord is near.
Do not complain, brethren, against one another, so that you yourselves may not be judged; behold, the Judge is standing right at the door.
As an example, brethren, of suffering and patience, take the prophets who spoke in the name of the Lord.
We count those blessed who endured.
You have heard of the endurance of Job and have seen the outcome of the Lord’s dealings, that the Lord is full of compassion and is merciful.
Oh, be patient. In waiting for the Lord to come, the Lord wants us to be before Him, asking Him to come, waiting for Him to come, and learning about Him as we wait for Him to come.
Then, at the end of 1 Peter, the very next book, we see 1 Peter 5:10.
After you have suffered for a little while, the God of all grace, who called you to His eternal glory in Christ, will Himself perfect, confirm, strengthen, and establish you. To Him be dominion forever and ever. Amen.
Oh, how we need to wait a little while and suffer before Him a little while. Then the Lord reveals Himself, strengthens us, and perfects us in the process.
The final one, of course, is the very important passage in Revelation 12, where once again we find a woman travailing in childbirth.
I do not know much about travailing for childbirth, but I have a wife who had three sons. All I know is that her period of pregnancy was a year and nine months. That is to say, the last week was a year; the rest of the time was nine months.
The agony of just before you are going to give birth is more than men ever want to know. If you talk to somebody who is just about ready to have a child, you find out their day has really elongated. Every uncomfortable moment is measured in the very slow ticking of the clock.
But that is what is necessary to come to full term and bear a healthy baby. It takes a long time in travail.
At the end of time, we have these tremendous signs which John sees in Revelation 12.
A great sign appeared in heaven: a woman clothed with the sun, and the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars; and she was with child; and she cried out, being in travail and in pain to give birth.
Then another sign appeared in heaven: behold, a great red dragon having seven heads and ten horns, and on his heads were seven diadems.
And his tail swept away a third of the stars of heaven and threw them to the earth.
And the dragon stood before the woman who was about to give birth, so that when she gave birth he might devour her child.
And she gave birth to a son, a man child, who is to rule all the nations with a rod of iron; and her child was caught up to God and to His throne.
The woman fled into the wilderness, and Satan was full of rage. The story goes on; you know that story.
Here is this travail for the man child to be raptured to heaven. What a tremendous travail. You see the great stakes involved, because Satan is waiting to snatch up and destroy that which is to be born of life from the heart of God.
Yet we see that when the moment came, the man child was snatched up to heaven. I wonder how close this Scripture is to today.
I wonder if you feel this soon coming of the Lord and these end-time things coming to pass. I wonder when this man child will be brought to birth and snatched away. These things we do not know.
Certainly, when we read such Scriptures, we should sense something within us that says, “Oh, Lord, may this happen soon.” Because as soon as that happens, then, of course, comes the endgame.
I want the Lord to be happy with His world: a new heaven and a new earth built along His lines of righteousness, love, and truth. I am looking forward to that day.
In the end, one reason we travail is this: every blessing we have, every enjoyment of the Lord and of life, is still incomplete without our Lord here with us. Do you feel that way?
I tell you, the Lord has blessed me so much. I want Him here. It is just not complete. We are having a party, but He has not shown up yet.
Even tomorrow, as we break bread together, surely there is something in our heart that says, “Lord, we do not care about making another dime or doing another thing if You could come.”
There is something dissatisfied in all of us until He comes back. There are some things left undone. There are those top stones that need to be put in, only by His coming.
So we wait. So we yearn. So we long.
May the Lord help us. May He find among young people and old those who are willing to enter into such a longing for His coming and for all of these purposes. Let us pray.
Hallowed be Thy name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.
Oh, such a will from such a heart, with such entire love. Such a crowning of Your Son. Such a wonderful day, so soon ahead. O Lord, grant us that longing.
Even in the midst of all our doings, do not let us be deceived that this is good enough. In the end, it is futility unless the Lord shows up and sets things aright.
O Lord, at times this world vexes our soul. There is so much evil that goes on. At other times, we seem to live in apparent ease. But the fact of the matter is, You are groaning for us.
Lord, we want to return and say, “Lord, here is Your bondservant. Do according to Your will.”
O Lord, raise up those who have been so blessed and seen so much, that there would be a groaning deep within, that others may enter into such wonderful fullness.
May that be the propelling motive of our conversation with those we know at work, at home, and at school. Lord, we commit these things into Your hands.
Again, when all is said and done, it is a great mystery. Show us Thyself, and we will groan for more.
We pray in the name of our Lord Jesus. Amen.