I Am Doing a Great Work

And I sent messengers unto them, saying, I am doing a great work, so that I cannot come down: why should the work cease, whilst I leave it, and come down to you? NEHEMIAH 6:3

Finney saw many revivals begin. He also saw many of them end, and he thought hard about why. His fifteenth lecture, Hinderances to Revivals, took its text from Nehemiah, who refused to come down from building the wall to talk with his enemies. The lecture that followed it, on the necessity of union, and the lectures to young converts and backsliders at the end of the book, belong together with it. They form Finney’s pastoral wisdom on how the work of God is kept, and how it is lost. Some of it is among the most self-searching writing he ever did.

Why revivals stop

Finney listed more than twenty things that put a stop to revivals, and the list is striking because so few of them are attacks from outside. A revival will cease, he said, when the church believes it is going to cease, or consents to its ceasing. It will cease when Christians become mechanical, and go on using the same words and methods after the warmth has gone. It will cease when they think the work will go on without them, or prefer their own business to God’s. It will cease when those who have worked hardest grow proud of what they have done. It will cease when the church exhausts itself by breaking up all its habits of eating and sleeping and letting the excitement run away with it.

Let us not be weary in well doing: for in due season we shall reap, if we faint not. GALATIANS 6:9

It will cease, he went on, when the church turns to speculating about abstract doctrines with no bearing on practice. When denominations begin to compete for converts. When those who have received great blessing are stingy in return. When brotherly love fails. When self-denial is dropped. When controversy breaks out, including controversy about measures. When the public mind is diverted by other excitements. When the church slanders the revival, or grieves the Spirit in any way.

Endeavouring to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. EPHESIANS 4:3

Repent — including us

What is most impressive about this lecture is that Finney did not only blame his opponents. He did blame them, and sharply; he thought that the continued opposition of the Old School, combined with a bad spirit in the New, could put revivals down. But when he came to say what must be done, he began with ministers, including himself. Those who had opposed revivals must repent. But, he added, “Those who have been engaged in promoting the work must also repent.” If they had been censorious, proud, arrogant or severe, if they had mistaken harsh words for faithfulness, they too must humble themselves. “Let each one repent of his own sins, and not fall out, and quarrel about who is most to blame.”

That is a wise word, and a rare one from a man at the centre of a controversy. Finney also warned that censoriousness on either side hinders revival, and especially among the friends of the work. Opponents, he said, can never stop a revival alone, unless those who promote it get wrong.

Let nothing be done through strife or vainglory; but in lowliness of mind let each esteem other better than themselves. PHILIPPIANS 2:3

Agreed in prayer

In the lecture on union, from Christ’s promise that if two agree on earth as touching anything they ask, it shall be done, Finney argued that unity is more than being in the same room. Christians must agree in their desires, their motives, their faith, their sense of timing, their measures, their way of dealing with sinners and their willingness to labour and persevere. Many prayers go unanswered, he said, because those who offer them were never really agreed. And a few people perfectly united may do more than a large church divided.

Keeping the young converts

Finney was equally concerned for those converted in revivals. He had seen too many fall away, and he blamed their teaching. Do not tell young converts, “You will not always feel as you do now,” he said, as if backsliding were to be expected. Do not teach them to taper off their religion. Tell them they have only begun, and that the path of the just is as the shining light, that shineth more and more unto the perfect day (Proverbs 4:18).

He wanted them taught to distinguish emotion from principle — the passing feelings of the heart from the settled decision of the will to obey God — and to do their duty whether they felt like it or not. He wanted them taught that they had given up the ownership of everything to God, to cultivate a tender conscience, to pray without ceasing, to take Christ and not older Christians as their standard, and to aim at usefulness rather than comfort.

As newborn babes, desire the sincere milk of the word, that ye may grow thereby. 1 PETER 2:2

And in his lecture on backsliding he made a distinction that has helped many. Backsliding in heart, he said, “does not consist in the subsidence of highly excited religious emotions.” Feelings rise and fall. Backsliding is taking back the consecration to God that true conversion involved — leaving the first love and returning to a self-pleasing spirit — and it may happen while every outward form of religion is kept up.

Where care is needed

Finney’s diagnosis is searching, but it rests on an assumption that needs examination: that revival is the normal state in which a church ought to live, and anything less is decline.

He was honest about the strain this caused. He said that anyone who was to keep working in a revival must pass through the process of being broken down and re-converted every few days. That is an exhausting rhythm, and many who tried to sustain it burned out. Finney himself admitted in his first lecture that powerful excitements injure health, and that it would be far better if the church went on steadily in obedience without them.

Scripture certainly knows of seasons of refreshing, and the church should pray for them. But it also knows of steady, ordinary growth through the Word, prayer, the sacraments and fellowship, like a tree planted by rivers of water that brings forth its fruit in its season. Not every quiet season is a backslidden one. Sometimes the fire burns low and hot.

And he shall be like a tree planted by the rivers of water, that bringeth forth his fruit in his season; his leaf also shall not wither; and whatsoever he doeth shall prosper. PSALM 1:3

Keep Finney’s list of hindrances, and his call to repent without quarrelling over blame. But do not measure your church or your soul only by its temperature.

FOR REFLECTION AND ACTION

1. Read through Finney’s list of hindrances and mark any that describe your church — or you.

2. If you have been part of a good work that has cooled, ask whether pride, exhaustion or mechanical habit has crept in.

3. Where there has been conflict, repent of your own part first, without waiting to settle who was most to blame.

4. If you know a new Christian, encourage them to go on and grow, not to expect decline; and teach them to obey whether they feel like it or not.

5. Distinguish between a season of low feeling and a heart that has taken back its consecration. Ask which describes you.

A PRAYER

Lord, You have done great things among Your people, and we have often let the work cease through pride, weariness and quarrelling.

Where I have become mechanical, warm my heart again. Where I have grown proud, humble me. Where I have quarrelled, make me the first to repent.

Keep the young in faith from falling back, and teach them to walk in the light that shines more and more.

And make me like a tree planted by the rivers of water, bearing fruit in its season, whether the season is quiet or glorious. Amen.