The rising of generation xtreme - part 8 in the serialising of Carl Anderson's Changing Of The Guard

God Chooses The Young!

"God calls and uses people of every age but in every generation of time and history His eye is especially upon young people," writes mentor Phil Buekler in a newsletter, "when it was time to silence a blaspheming giant, God chose a teenager named David. When God wanted to deliver Israel from idolatry and the oppression of the Midianites, he called a young man named Gideon. When a nation in exile needed prophetic leadership, God raised up a no-compromise young man named Daniel. When the fullness of time had come for God to become flesh, for a Son to be given, God selected a godly teenage woman named Mary."

The next place to look is from history. I'd like to choose two separate historical examples of young people who made a difference and dared to stand up and be different in their calling: George Whitefield from the 1700's, and Rees Howells from the 1900's. Of course, you can look at dozens of young men and woman throughout history who made an impact before the age of thirty; people like Joan of Arc, George Fox (who founded the Quakers), Jonathan Edwards, and Hudson Taylor, just to name a few, who all were changing the paradigms of how to "do ministry" and impacting their cultures for Christ.

He Loved The World That Hated Him

If you study the revivals of the past five-hundred years, it will be difficult to find a greater example of a young man who advanced the Kingdom more than George Whitefield.

God moved on this young man and breathed the fire of revival into him, and set him aflame for His glory, bringing forth the gospel in power and sign and wonder, and allowing it to burn up any chaff in the way.

His name is all but forgotten now, yet he was the most popular preacher of his time, known in nearly every household in the blossoming colony of America, much as Rev. Billy Graham is known today. He once said, "Let the name of Whitefield perish, that the name of Christ be magnified!" Perish it has in our modern day, all but disappearing from history books.

He began his preaching after a solid conversion experience at the age of twenty, in 1734. In bed at 10 p.m. each evening and awake and in prayer at 4 a.m., his personal devotional life was quite a testimony of his character. A personal friend of John and Charles Wesley, his followers were the first to ever be called, "Methodists" and the name stuck. The Wesley's organized these early believers into "societies" which today we would call "house churches" or "cells" and the Methodist movement within the Anglican church was started. Whitefield pioneered the art of field-preaching, for the simple reason that the ministers of his day disliked him and his message and closed their pulpits from him. So he decided to preach everywhere! And the people came.

He traversed the American colonies on seven great sweeps of preaching and proclaimed the gospel over a thirty-year period, proclaiming Christ sometimes in sermons lasting three hours to whole towns and regions, two or three times a day, seven days a week. Thousands daily and weekly came and hung on his every word as he proclaimed the truth of Christ, His cross, and His judgment throne, and the necessity of a personal conversion
experience. He was called by many the man who was most singly used to bring 'Christ' to the colonies, and awaken sleepy religiosity and spark it into living flames of devotion. One of his lifelong friends was Benjamin Franklin.

He was called the weeping evangelist, as in nearly every sermon he would put down his bible, throw his head back, and weep openly for the sins of the hearers in front of him, and their affront to the truth and holiness of God. The love of Christ poured out of him on their behalf. "You blame me for weeping," he said in 1750, "but how can I help it when you will not weep for yourselves, although your immortal souls are on the verge of
destruction, and for ought I know, you are hearing your last sermon and may never have another opportunity to have Christ offered to you?" The media of his day made fun of him and called him a fool; close friends abandoned him, and yet he kept on in his calling to preach. William Couper once wrote on Whitefield,

"He loved the world that hated him: the tear
that dropped upon his bible was sincere.
Assail'd by scandal, and the tongues of strife,
His only answer was - a blameless life.
Paul's love of Christ, and steadiness unbrib'd,
Were copied close in him, and well transcrib'd;
He followed Paul - his zeal a kindred flame,
His apostolic charity the same."

In 1739 he wrote, "Lord, teach me in all things simply to comply with your will, without presuming to say, even in my heart, 'Why do you?'" This prayer he lived. He went through trial and tribulation, even losing his only son, still an infant, in a carriage accident. That same day he continued preaching instead of attending the funeral, saying, "I remember once Matthew Henry, that old divine, said, 'weeping must not hinder sowing.'" He continued preaching for a decade, converting thousands of people. He was said to have preached from a portable wooden pulpit to two million people during this time. Every time he got knocked down, he got back up and continued throwing punches in the fight of faith. He preached 18,000 sermons.

He died in the middle of a preaching tour on September 30, 1770, and is buried under a church in Newburyport, Massachusettes. In 1994, at the start of my own evangelistic
ministry at age 24, I visited that site, hoping to see his gravemarker. The church was locked that day, so I sat down on the front steps, meditating on this man's life for Christ. At that moment, the Lord seemed to speak in my own heart, "Why seek ye the living among the dead?" It was as if the Lord was saying, "Yes, my servant Whitefield lived boldly and changed his generation for Me, but buried under this church are merely his bones. He is alive with Me now, and his life stands as a witness and a testimony for you to take up the challenge for your own generation, before you too die and they bury your bones in the earth." Jesus said in Revelation 22:12 "Behold, I am coming quickly, and My reward is with Me, to render to every man according to what he has done." Each of you reading must answer the calling in some way as Whitefield did. You never know when the Lord will "come" for you.

When the weary wheels of life stood still at last for him in the autumn of 1770, his lifelong friend Charles Wesley (whom the author of this book is named after) wrote an epitaph which read,