The sun that melts the wax also hardens the clay

Lord, it’s dark here.

We long for your light:

Bright-shining, life-giving goodness.

Might revival be possible?

Help our hearts to yield.

The sun that melts the wax also hardens the clay.

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I came across the last sentence, ‘The sun that melts the wax also hardens the clay’, in Arthur Wallis’s classic book on revival: ‘Rain From Heaven’. Wallis doesn’t credit anyone for the sentence, but I’ve since discovered various memes that attribute it to C.H. Spurgeon or state that it is an African proverb. Perhaps both are true.

In ‘Rain From Heaven’, Wallis writes of the need to prepare ourselves for revival by repenting and consecrating ourselves. Not everyone will be ready for revival when it comes, and some might become critical of the Holy Spirit’s work. Hence, we may be described as wax or clay. What a challenge.

On the penultimate page of ‘Rain from Heaven’, Wallis writes that revival ‘will be a time of shaking as the Spirit of God brings adjustment to dislocated members of the body’. Given the name of this blog, I love any reference to ‘dislocated’, and the idea of the church being one body again inspires me to pray for revival even more.

Since listening to Malcolm MacDonald speak on revival at New Wine this summer, I have been preoccupied with the topic. I went on to read his latest book on the subject and then carried out my own investigation into a revival that occurred here in Belgium in the area where I currently live. Incredibly, Vincent Van Gogh was also a preacher here. I love the Christian history of this place.

Let me know if you, too, are challenged by the thought of responding to the light and Spirit of God as either wax or clay; I’d love to hear from you.

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DislocatedChristians exists to create and support a community of like-minded people. I’ve described myself as Dislocated because I sometimes struggle to understand how God wants me to be in the world, but not of the world. I also move house a lot!

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