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About the Book
"The Clear Message of Grace" by Ryan Rufus explores the concept of grace in Christianity, emphasizing the unconditional love and forgiveness offered by God. Rufus discusses how a clear understanding of grace can transform one's relationship with God and others, leading to a life of freedom, joy, and purpose. The book challenges traditional legalistic beliefs and encourages readers to embrace the liberating message of grace.
Smith Wigglesworth
Smith Wigglesworth was born in 1859 to a very poor family. His father did manual labor, for very little pay. Smith himself went to work at the age of six to help with the family income. At six he was pulling turnips and at seven he was working in a woolen mill twelve hours a day. His parents did not know God, but Smith hungered in his heart to know Him. Even as a youngster he would pray in the fields. His grandmother was the critical Christian in his life. She was a Wesleyan Methodist and would take Smith to meetings with her. At one of these meetings there was a song being sung about Jesus as the lamb and Smith came into the realization of God's love for him and his decision to believe Christ for his salvation was decided that day. He was immediately filled with the desire to evangelize and led his own mother to Christ.
Smith has various church experiences as he was growing up. He first went to an Episcopal church and then at thirteen a Wesleyan Methodist church. When he was sixteen he became involved in the Salvation Army. He felt deeply called to fast and pray for lost souls. He saw many people come to Christ. At seventeen a mentor shared with him about water baptism and he decided to be baptized. The Salvation Army was experiencing a tremendous level of the power of God in those days. He describes meetings where "many would be prostrated under the power of the Spirit, sometimes for as long as twenty-four hours at a time." They would pray and fast and cry out for the salvation of fifty or a hundred people for the week and they would see what they had prayed for.
At eighteen Smith left the factory and became a plumber. He moved to Liverpool when he was twenty and continued to work during the day and minister during his free time. He felt called to minister to young people and brought them to meetings. These were destitute and ragged children, whom he would often feed and care for. Hundreds were saved. Smith was often asked to speak in Salvation meetings and he would break down and weep under the power of God. Many would come to repentance in those meetings through this untrained man. At twenty-three he returned back Bradford and continued his work with the Salvation Army.
In Bradford Smith met Mary Jane Featherstone, known as Polly, the daughter of a temperance lecturer. She left home and went to Bradford to take a servants job. One night she was drawn to a Salvation Army meeting. She listened to the woman evangelist, Gipsy Tillie Smith, and gave her heart to Christ. Smith was in that meeting and saw her heart for God. Polly became an enthusiastic Salvationsist and was granted a commission by General Booth. They developed a friendship, but Polly went to Scotland to help with a new Salvationist work. She eventually moved back to Bradford and married Smith, who was very much in love with her.
The couple worked together to evangelize the lost. They opened a small church in a poor part of town. Polly would preach and Smith would make the altar calls. For a season, however, Smith became so busy with his plumbing work that his evangelistic fervor began to wane. Polly continued on, bringing Smith to conviction. One day while Smith was working in the town of Leeds he heard of a divine healing meeting. He shared with Polly about it. She needed healing and so they went to a meeting, and Polly was healed.
Smith struggled with the reality of healing, while being ill himself. He decided to give up the medicine that he was taking and trust God. He was healed. They had five children, a girl and four boys. One morning two of the boys were sick. The power of God came and they prayed for the boys and they were instantly healed. Smith struggled with the idea that God would use him to heal the sick in general. He would gather up a group of people and drive them to get prayer in Leeds. The leaders of the meeting were going to a convention and left Smith in charge. He was horrified. How could he lead a meeting about divine healing? He tried to pass it off to someone else but could not. Finally he led the meeting and several people were healed. That was it. From then on Smith began to pray for people for healing.
Smith had another leap to make. He had heard about the Pentecostals who were being baptized in the Holy Spirit. He went to meetings and was so hungry for God he created a disturbance and church members asked him to stop. He went to prayer and prayed for four days. Finally he was getting ready to head home and the vicar's wife prayed for him and he fell under the power of God and spoke in tongues. Everything changed after that. He would walk by people and they would come under the conviction of the Holy Spirit and be saved. He began to see miracles and healings and the glory of God would fall when he prayed and preached.
Smith had to respond to the many calls that came in and gave up his business for the ministry. Polly unexpectedly died in 1913, and this was a real blow to Smith. He prayed for her and commanded that death release her. She did arise but said "Smith - the Lord wants me." His heartbroken response was "If the Lord wants you, I will not hold you". She had been his light and joy for all the years of their marriage, and he grieved deeply over the loss. After his wife was buried he went to her grave, feeling like he wanted to die. When God told him to get up and go Smith told him only if you "give to me a double portion of the Spirit – my wife’s and my own – I would go and preach the Gospel. God was gracious to me and answered my request.” His daughter Alice and son-in-law James Salter began to travel with him to handle his affairs.
Smith would pray and the blind would see, and the deaf were healed, people came out of wheelchairs, and cancers were destroyed. One remarkable story is when He prayed for a woman in a hospital. While he and a friend were praying she died. He took her out of the bed stood her against the wall and said "in the name of Jesus I rebuke this death". Her whole body began to tremble. The he said "in the name of Jesus walk", and she walked. Everywhere he would go he would teach and then show the power of God. He began to receive requests from all over the world. He taught in Europe, Asia, New Zealand and many other areas. When the crowds became very large he began a "wholesale healing". He would have everyone who needed healing lay hands on themselves and then he would pray. Hundreds would be healed at one time.
Over Smith's ministry it was confirmed that 14 people were raised from the dead. Thousands were saved and healed and he impacted whole continents for Christ. Smith died on March 12, 1947 at the funeral of his dear friend Wilf Richardson. His ministry was based on four principles " First, read the Word of God. Second, consume the Word of God until it consumes you. Third believe the Word of God. Fourth, act on the Word."
The Dying World Outside My Window
“What a mystery,” wrote Horatius Bonar, “the soul and eternity of one man depends upon the voice of another.” What a mystery, I then thought, that I do not speak more. I gazed out of my window. Three houses stood across the street. Of two, I had to ask myself, Who lives there? What were they doing as I read and prayed? Although I had not yet met them, I knew much about them. They — whoever they were — like me, had been born in sin. They, like me, had souls. They, like me, careened irreversibly towards eternity. They, like me, were tempted to ruin their souls, blinded and energized to do so by unseen spiritual forces. And they, like me, lived deceitfully mundane lives upon a thread floating between heaven and hell, now and forever. As I looked at the homes which sheltered eternal beings, I realized that my voice had not yet traveled across the street. Even though I knew news that they desperately need to hear and a “him” that they were made for (Colossians 1:16), my voice had not bothered to make its way to speak to them, befriend them, and share with them the most necessary message to ever grace human ears: the gospel of Jesus Christ. What a mystery, that the soul and eternity of one man depends on the voice of another — and that the voice upon which souls depend would be so terribly silent and unconcerned. To the Highways and Hedges It is not an overstatement that souls depend upon us to speak. How will they believe if they never hear (Romans 10:14)? “It is not an overstatement that the world depends upon the church to speak.” Each one of us has a part to play; each has work of the ministry to accomplish (Ephesians 4:11–12). Standing far below the electing love of God, you and I muster our courage to knock on doors, to invite neighbors for dinner, to reason with them about God, sin, and Jesus Christ — his cross and resurrection. We all have people to tell the bad news of their condemned standing before a holy God, and the good news of amazing grace that God, in the gospel of his Son, is reconciling sinners to himself. What kind of man — and I stare at him in the mirror more often than I like — could so calmly smile and wave, laugh and chitchat with his dying neighbor, and yet rarely get around to opening my mouth to witness to the authority, love, and mercy of Jesus Christ? Devils wink as sinners perish. Demons dance as the lost submerge undisturbed. Saints, as we see them in Scripture and church history, do not join them, masking their indifference with tutored speech about God’s sovereignty to excuse inactivity. They weep, they fast, they pray. They walk across the street, they share their very lives and this great news, this only news of reconciliation with God. They speak the name — the only name given under heaven — by which we must be saved. As ambassadors of Christ, they implore the lost, “Be reconciled to God!” (2 Corinthians 5:20). They happily go to the highways and hedges of this fallen world, and compel them to come into the Master’s great banquet (Luke 14:23). When you look out your window, when you scroll through your text conversations, when you sit down at the dinner table, or enjoy laughter with friends, do they know? Have they heard? What else should we discuss if not this? But oh, how much do we discuss instead of this. Beyond Personality Types Some do not speak because you are not as profitably given to the verbal exercise as your extroverted brothers and sisters. What comes fluently, naturally, effortlessly for others requires great toil and courage for you. For whatever reason, speaking to strangers is very uncomfortable — your throat clenches in protest, you become short of breath, you grow very self-conscious. Perhaps you replay embarrassing moments early in life, when you seemed to speak English as a second language. Thus, this part of our Christian calling, speaking the good news to others, comes to you with dense clouds and a darkness to be felt. Though you are not the mouth of the Body, your voice — and perhaps especially your voice — is needed, my brother or sister. Your words, rarer and thus less inflated, can do what those whose words are voluminous cannot do as easily: come with weight. We need your testimony to the steadfast love of God. Consider less what your sweaty hands and rapid pulse has to say about you, or how Myers-Briggs describes you. Let God dictate who you are and how you see yourself. Who You Are Who are you? You are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. Once you were not a people, but now you are God’s people; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy. (1 Peter 2:9–10) Once you were less than nothing. A child of Satan, a spiritual harlot, a rebel defying the living God. You wallowed in the blood of your fallen father, Adam, without hope and without God in the world. But he, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved you — a love unsought, unreturned, undeserved — made you alive together with Christ. And this excellent Christ, not considering his equality with God something to be grasped, became poor so that you might be rich — died so that you might live (2 Corinthians 8:9). “Have we forgotten the wonder and privilege of bringing the power of God for salvation to lost souls?” And he made us a people — his people. And he gives us a voice, a purpose: to proclaim his excellencies. We, so seemingly unimpressive and nonthreateningly normal — saints with normal jobs in normal neighborhoods — carry the spectacular message next door and across the street: Christ has died for the forgiveness of sins for all who repent and believe the gospel. This gold lies in jars of clay. We must let it out. We must speak, and go on speaking. It depends not on what our strengths are nor on what personalities we possess — it matters who Christ has made us to be. And he has made us his chosen race, his royal priesthood, his holy nation of people who are satisfied in his excellencies — and can’t stop talking about them. Any Sweeter Work? Have I, have you, have we, forgotten the wonder and privilege of bringing the power of God for salvation to lost souls? Do we now count it a burden? Spurgeon asks each one of us, [We who are] sent on so sweet a service as the proclaiming of the gospel, how can we tarry? What, to tell the poor criminal shut up in the dungeon of despair that there is liberty, to tell the condemned that there is pardon, to tell the dying that there is life in a look at the crucified One — do you find this hard? Do you call this toil? Should it not be the sweetest feature of your life that you have such blessed work as this to do? To speak of him and live lives of love that do not blaspheme his holy name — do we not feel that this is a very small response to such a great salvation? Jesus was slaughtered in the garbage heap outside the camp so that we might go out to him and “continually offer up a sacrifice of praise to God, that is, the fruit of lips that acknowledge his name” (Hebrews 13:15). “What a mystery,” wrote Horatius Bonar, “the soul and eternity of one man depends upon the voice of another.” What a mystery indeed. Let’s not deprive our neighbors of ours this year, but resolve to send out our voices as light into the darkness, proclaiming the excellencies of Jesus Christ. Article by Greg Morse Staff writer, desiringGod.org
