Revival (Section 1) Vital Keys To Revival (From Charles Finney Revival Lectures) Series

Fallow ground is ground, which has once been tilled, but which now lies

waste, and needs to be broken up and mellowed, before it is suited to receive grain. (Charles G. Finney)

A. What is it to break up the fallow ground?

To break up the fallow ground, is to break up your hearts, to prepare you minds to

Bring forth fruit unto God.

B. How is the fallow ground to be broken up?

1. It is not by any means of direct efforts to feel. No man can make himself feel

this way, merely by trying to feel.

2. We can command our attention to it, and look at it intently, till the proper

feeling arises. Let a man who is away from his family bring them up

before his mind, and will he not feel? But it is not by to himself: "Now I will feel deeply for my family."

A man can direct his attention to any object, about which he ought to feel and wishes to feel, and in that way he will call into existence the proper emotions.

Proverbs 23:7 "For as he thinketh in his heart, so is he:" I believe this

is not a moments worth of thought, but a state of mind.

3. If you mean to break up the fallow ground of your hearts, and make your

minds feel on the subject of religion, you must go to work just as you

would to feel on any other subject. Instead of keeping your thoughts on everything else, and then imagining that by going to a few meetings you will get your feeling enlisted, go the common- sense way to work, as you would on any other subject.

4. If you mean to break up the fallow ground of your hearts, you must begin by

looking at your hearts: examine and note the state of your minds and see

where you are.

C. You must set yourself to work to consider your sins. You must examine yourselves

. 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. Go over them as carefully as a merchant goes over his books; and as often as a sin comes before your memory, add it to the list. 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.

D, Sins of Omission pg 38 * Read them one by one slowly allowing time for thought.

*Again

"If my people, which are called by my name, shall humble themselves and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways, then will I hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and will heal their land." II Chronicles 7:14

To turn from our wicked ways doesn't just mean to repent of our sins. Hitherto,

we have repented of our acts, now we need deliverance from our ways.

(Mario Murillo)

Hebrews 12:1 "let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which doth so easily

beset us, and let us run with patience the race that is set before us,"

Weight -- whatever is prominent, protuberance, bulk, mass