14. Prayer Meeting's
Over
AS I WAS WRITING notes one day, murmuring occasional half-phrases as my pencil flew to keep up with my thoughts, Miss Mears said suddenly, "What was that?"
I looked up surprised. "Consecrated Christians," I replied.
"Oh," she said, "I thought you said, 'complicated Christians'!"
We thought for a brief moment and then we both shrieked with laughter. The more we thought of the implications, the harder we laughed. We both agreed that maybe there was truth in that, and perhaps "complicated Christian" was what we ought to say. So you can ask yourself the question, "Are you a complicated Christian or a consecrated Christian?"
How many times have I heard, "How does Miss Mears do it? What makes her tick? What's her secret? There's no one like Miss Mears!" In a sense, Miss Mears doesn't do anything except to let the Lord work through her. She lifts up Christ in complete consecration in everything she does.
I have never heard a person say more constantly than Henrietta Mears, "Well, I don't know. I just don't know what to think. We'll have to pray about it. We'll have to see what the Lord wants. It's hard, isn't it, to know what to do? We'll just have to trust the Lord for the answer!"
Miss Mears feels that every Christian should have the joy and peace and fullness of the abundant life and claim every promise of God. This has been Miss Mears' "secret" in her ministry but it certainly
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has been no secret, for she has tried to let everyone in on it. She preaches a Christian life as one that brings happiness, success, the abundant life, a life that contains the greatest beauty, the highest criterion of loveliness and all things beautiful. Her ministry has been a fast and furious search to find out the good things that God has promised to His children. She doesn't want to miss a promise and she doesn't want anyone else to miss one either.
If I would present a caricature to describe Miss Mears it would be of her holding her Bible close to her eyes, her hands eagerly turning the pages, then pointing to a verse as she says in great delight and enthusiasm, "Here's another promise God has given us; oh, let's use this to the very fullest. Have you got one there? Well, let's use that one, too. Here's another promise! Let's claim this. If we don't use His promises to the fullest then Christ will have died in vain. Come on, young people, here is a glorious promise and I know it works! Here you are; take it, it's yours! You've never known such joy! Come on, parents, here is the great spiritual heritage to pass on to your children. Come on, Sunday school teachers, we have the greatest work, the greatest privilege, the greatest Saviour and Teacher of all, the very Son of the great Living God. Here are the blessings of God overflowing upon us. Let's get into the very best place to receive all we can. I want the best God has to offer. I want the most He can give, for if it's what the Lord wants to give me I want what the Lord has for me. I only want what He wants to give, and I want to give everything I have back to Him."
That is why everyone flocks to her; but before the promises, there must be the meeting with Christ as Saviour and Lord, where self is crossed out with the Cross of Christ. Miss Mears points to the promises, then points to the Cross: "This is the way, walk ye in it!" She points out, "Young people don't want anything in their lives that doesn't work. They want reality, they want results and they want a reason for living. Christ is reality, Christ gives results, Christ is the reason for living."
She picks up her Bible. "Listen; this is what I told my leaders this morning. Look over in the eighth chapter of Deuteronomy. This is where we, as Christians, should be living," and she opens her Bible and reads, her voice underlining the significant words in exuberant emphasis, words tumbling over each other in eager enthusiasm: " 'Therefore thou shalt keep the commandments of the Lord thy God, to walk in his ways, and to fear him. For the Lord thy God
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bringeth thee into a good land, a land of brooks of water, of fountains and depths that spring out of valleys and hills; A land of wheat and barley, and vines, and fig trees, and pomegranates; a land of olive oil and honey; A land wherein thou shalt eat bread without scarceness, thou shalt not lack anything in it; a land whose stones are iron, and out of whose hills thou mayest dig brass. When thou hast eaten and art full, then thou shalt bless the Lord thy God for the good land which he hath given thee . . . .And when thy herbs and thy flocks multiply, and thy silver and thy gold is multiplied, and all that thou hast is multiplied; Then thine heart be lifted up and thou forget the Lord thy God who brought you forth out of the land of Egypt, from the house of bondage . . . But thou shalt remember the Lord thy God: for it is he that giveth thee power to get wealth, that he may establish his covenant which he swore unto thy fathers, as it is this day.' "
She closes her Bible. "I would go on knowing more and more of God's promises. Christians should live in the abundance of God's words. Our greatest sin is in not believing what God says. Most Christians live lives of spiritual poverty because they will not believe the extent of God's promises. They ask for some little thing here and there when God really has promised to shower them with answers to their needs, that they may lack for nothing. Naturally there are conditions of obedience to God's laws and will, and we should not ask amiss to fulfill it on our own lusts. But as long as it is for His glory and for the feeding of the multitudes, there is nothing God will not grant. Instead of living niggardly lives, Christians should be living up to His promises of the 'abundant life,' 'joy unspeakable,' 'more than conquerors.' Everything about the Christian life is positive."
How many will vividly remember a typical picture of "Teacher" standing beside the beautiful, peaceful little "Mears Lake" at Forest Home, feet planted sturdily on the sand, with the dramatic beauty of the mountains in the background, as she speaks to the adult conference at the traditional "Galilean Breakfast"; there in the very midst of the evidence of which she speaks, she says in her confident, inspiring manner, "Claim the promises of God!"
It must be very obvious to every reader by this time that Miss Mears' spiritual platform has been the complete commandment of Christ: "And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto me." That is the only reason for her spiritual success: she has presented the person of Christ as companion, as Saviour, as Lord,
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as the answer and as the way of salvation. She has presented the abundant Christ, the doorway to all the promise of God.
She depends upon God for everything; she expects everything from God. If it is to glorify the Lord, she thanks Him for the answer even before her prayer is ended; and her confidence is contagious.
She presents Christ with a very demanding program, the highest standard of excellence possible; she uses everything that is attractive. She points out that Christ has promised spiritual success if we do things in His name, so if anyone falls short in attaining spiritual success, Miss Mears knows that we have failed, not God. She has boundless enthusiasm: "God in her," and infectious joy. She looks not at what has been done, but at what there still is to do. She does not believe in separation from the world and then a dreary wandering in the wilderness; rather she believes in separation unto God and unto all the abundance that He has in store for Christians.
She is absolutely dedicated to keeping things Christ-centered and if anything is derogatory, or slipshod, or lacking in any way, she is inexorable in her demanding judgment. If she did not have this discipline of the spirit, this discipline of human nature, much of the positive approach would be completely ineffective. It is this combination that has given Miss Mears' Christian program such strength: the positive approach and the discipline of the spirit. As she puts it, "There is a time to cut across the stream of events, the flow of conditions, a time to oppose, a time to challenge, a time to chastise, to bring the results that must be there to lift up Christ most effectively. There is a time to praise, a time to encourage, a time to reward but always we should take the time to thank the Lord for His blessings to us."
She has let nothing stand in her way. She has not isolated herself by denomination, nationality, or the confines of established procedure. She has not drawn away or detoured timidly around those who did not hold with her conservative theology, but has exultantly, fearlessly, gone galloping full steam ahead whenever she had the chance. She has never hedged in her spiritual program by emphasizing what not to do, but rather has opened up the sphere of all eternity by indicating all the things that can be done. She has made the prospect of Christian consecrated living so thrilling, so exciting, so joyous, that everyone goes charging behind her, not wanting to miss a single spiritual joy that lies in the promised land.
Many Christians present Christ, but you have to hack down the great barriers and peculiar tenets of their Christian interpretation
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before you can find that Christ. Instead of lifting up Christ, they have buried Him beneath the trappings of their individual idiosyncrasies, national heritages and prejudices; they lift up everything else they have to offer, and which first they insist you accept, before they present Christ. Usually, when you finally reach the place where they have buried Christ, and the tomb is opened, you find that He has risen and has departed from that place. Miss Mears has simply presented a risen Christ.
I am glad that Miss Mears came from a Baptist family and has served so dynamically in a Presbyterian church. I am glad that she served in the little Methodist churches in the small Minnesota towns where she had her first teaching experience; I am glad her great-grandfather was a Quaker. I am glad she kept Forest Home Christian Conference Center open and available to all denominations who would draw near to Christ, and that she did not keep the grounds isolated to her particular church, or to that church's particular denomination. I am glad she wrote Sunday school material that could be used by any Christ-centered denomination. I am glad she cut across all professional barriers in teaching the name of Christ, that she did not limit herself by any set definition of a man's need as determined by material condition, intellectual status, or barrier of age, so that she was free to take Christ to the wealthy, to the discouraged missionaries, to the poverty-stricken, to the actors in Hollywood, to the intellectually brilliant, to the college mind, to the little child, or to the aged. She has never circumscribed her program with, "I will take the Gospel only to skid row, or Timbuktu, or only to the Sunday school pupils within my church." I am glad she was not only interested in building a strong program for her particular time on earth, but that she has built well, so that it will last even unto the coming of the Kingdom.
I am left with one thought: "I am glad!" And it is joined by a mighty chorus that swells up from the uttermost parts of the world, "We are glad that Miss Mears touched our lives and lifted up Christ, the risen Saviour, the abundant Christ, the Triune God, the Father Almighty, and Jesus Christ, His Son, and the Holy Spirit."
And everybody says, "Amen!" And the great "Amen" echoes from pulpits in churches the length and breadth of the land where Miss Mears' spiritual sons are in the ministry; it echoes from thousands upon thousands of homes where the children and families have been under Miss Mears' teaching; it echoes from churches around the world where her Sunday school materials have helped to create Christ-centered
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Sunday schools; it echoes from mission stations that weave a web around the world in Africa, India, Formosa, China, Japan, Alaska, where the decisions for vocational Christian service were influenced by Miss Mears. The great "Amen" that comes from all corners of the world echoes on earth and reaches heaven and re-echoes throughout heaven. Her Christian challenge will echo forever in our hearts.
Miss Mears is concluding her lesson at prayer meeting: "Remember, all God wants you to be is a little copper wire hooked up to His great power plant. He will let His will, His power, flow through you. But the only way you can get connected to the power plant of God the Father is through Jesus Christ, His Son. Then the power of the Holy Spirit will work through you. So you don't have to strive to do big things, or work and busy yourself in your own strength. Just be a little copper wire for the Lord to use. Remember, we are men and women of destiny. We can say with Esther that we have 'come to the kingdom for such a time as this.' In closing, I would just ask you to say with the Apostle Paul, 'Lord, what will you have me to do?' Don't be concerned with anyone else, don't worry about what someone else is or isn't doing for the Lord; this is a personal matter between you and your Lord. 'Lord, what will you have me to do?' " She bows her head in prayer. "Dear Heavenly Father, bless these dear hearts, and help us all to be exactly what You want us to be, to do that perfect work which You have for us to do, in that place of power which is where You want us to be . . . Now while your heads are bowed, in the quiet of your own heart, make this your prayer tonight, 'Lord, what will you have me to do?' May that be the constant prayer of your heart as you go through life . . . in Jesus' name, Amen. Good-night and God bless you."
Prayer meeting is over. But as we ask ourselves that question in our hearts, and answer the question in lives dedicated to God in Christian service, the prayer meeting will be over but our Christian life will begin, and the effect of Miss Mears' ministry for Christ will never end: "Lord, what will you have me to do?"
Amen!
