DAY 14 : Breaking Up the Fallow Ground - Part 3

By Charles Finney

Charles Finney, one of the greatest revivalists of our nation’s history, lived during the time of the 2nd Great Awakening. Much of the success of the revival was due to Finney’s thorough and uncompromising approach to repentance.

“Break up your fallow ground, for it is time to seek the LORD, till He comes and rains righteousness upon you.”

-   Hosea 10:12

DEVOTIONAL

In breaking up your fallow ground, you must remove every obstruction. Things may be left that you may think little things, and you may wonder why you do not feel as you wish to in religion, when the reason is that your proud and carnal mind has covered up something which God required you to confess and remove.

Break up all the ground and turn it over. Do not balk it, as the farmers say; do not turn aside for little difficulties; drive the plow right through them, beam deep, and turn the ground all up, so that it may all be mellow and soft, and fit to receive the seed and bear fruit a hundred fold.

When you have gone over your whole history in this way, thoroughly, if you will then go over the ground the second time, and give your solemn and fixed attention to it, you will find that the things you have put down will suggest other things of which you have been guilty, connected with them, or near them.

Then go over it a third time, and you will recollect other things connected with these. And you will find in the end that you can remember an amount of your history, and particular actions, even in this life, which you did not think you should remember in eternity.

Unless you do take up your sins in this way, and consider them in detail, one by one, you can form no idea of the amount of your sins. You should go over it as thoroughly and as carefully, and as solemnly, as you would if you were just preparing yourself for the judgment.

As you go over the catalogue of your sins, be sure to resolve upon present and entire reformation. Wherever you find any thing wrong, resolve at once, in the strength of God, to sin no more in that way. It will be of no benefit to examine yourself, unless you determine to amend in every particular that you find wrong in heart, temper, or conduct.

If you find, as you go on with this duty, that your mind is still all dark - cast about you, and you will find there is some reason for the Spirit of God to depart from you. You have not been faithful and thorough. In the progress of such a work you have got to do violence to yourself (to your sinful nature), and bring yourself as a rational being up to this work, with the Bible before you, and try your heart till you do feel. You need not expect that God will work a miracle for you to break up your fallow ground. It is to be done by means.

PRAYER RESPONSE:

(Disclaimer: Some of what Charles Finney shares may seem blunt or initially offensive to our modern sensibilities.  However, if we will maintain an open and humble heart, the Lord can use it to bring great freedom and breakthrough in our lives!  Just as the Word of God can be piercing and sharp, just as He cuts deep [at times] in order to heal us, let's allow these points of repentance to cut deep - and to surrender what He brings to mind. 

Remember on many occasions, Jesus was very direct and blunt in His words - but they all flowed from the truth, out of love and an invitation to restoration!  Pray for the grace and desire to see the whole truth, and to remain unoffendable personally.)

Self-examination consists in looking at your lives, in considering your actions, in calling up the past, and learning its true character. Look back over your past history. Take up your individual sins one by one, and look at them... It will be a good thing to take a pen and paper, as you go over them, and write them down as they occur to you.

General confessions of sin will never do. Your sins were committed one by one; and as far as you can come at them, they ought to be reviewed and repented of one by one. 

6. NEGLECT OF THE MEANS OF GRACE

When you have suffered trifling excuses to prevent your attending meetings, have neglected and poured contempt upon the means of salvation, merely from disrelish of spiritual duties.

7. THE MANNER IN WHICH YOU HAVE PERFORMED THOSE DUTIES…

...want of feeling--want of faith--worldly frame of mind--so that your words were nothing but mere chattering...When you have fallen down upon your knees, and said your prayers, in such an unfeeling and careless manner, that if you had been put under oath five minutes after you left your closet, you could not have told what you had been praying for.

8. YOUR WANT OF LOVE FOR THE SOULS OF YOUR FELLOW-MEN

Look around upon your friends and relations, and remember how little compassion you have felt for them.  You have stood by and seen them going right to hell, and it seems as though you did not care if they did.  How many days have there been, in which you did not make their condition the subject of a single fervent prayer, or even an ardent desire for their salvation?

9. YOUR WANT OF CARE FOR THE LOST

Perhaps you have not cared enough for them to attempt to learn their condition; perhaps not even to take a Missionary paper.  Look at this, and see how much you do really care for the lost, and set down honestly the real amount of your feelings for them, and your desire for their salvation.

Measure your desire for their salvation by the self-denial you practice, in giving of your substance to send them the Gospel.  Do you deny yourself even the hurtful superfluities of life, such as tea, coffee, and tobacco?  Do you retrench your style of living, and really subject yourself to any inconvenience to save them?  Do you daily pray for them in your closet?  Do you statedly attend the monthly prayer gathering?

Are you from month to month laying by something to put into the treasury of the Lord, when you go up to pray?  If you are not doing these things, and if your soul is not agonized for the poor benighted lost souls, why are you such a hypocrite as to pretend to be a Christian?  Why, your profession is an insult to Jesus Christ!

(Take a pen and paper [or phone] and write down the things the Lord brings to mind.  We will continue to add to this, in the coming daily times of repentance.)

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