Hi, my friends! I hope that you have had a very Merry Christmas!
I love this time of year – the days between Christmas Day and New Year’s Day. It seems to be a week that hangs in the balance between what has been and what is to come… A week of memories, of planning, of gatherings, of cleaning up and packing up, and opening up new pages in calendars and journals… A clean slate of three hundred and sixty five wide-open days to use and fill as we see fit.
Do you want to grow closer to the Lord in the new year?
Do you need a personal revival?
Do you want to be able to see where God is working in and through your life?
If so, these blessings can begin by going humbly to the Cross – with a holy expectancy that God can and will meet you there. And this is exactly the process that you’ll be taken through if you prayerfully delve into the short but powerful book, The Calvary Road by Roy Hessian.
The author’s own words in the preface to this booklet:
In April, 1947, several missionaries came at my invitation to an Easter Conference which I was organising. I invited them to come as speakers, because I had heard that they had been experiencing Revival in their field for a number of years, and I was interested in Revival. What they had to say was very different from much of what I had associated with Revival. It was very simple and very quiet. As they unfolded their message and gave their testimonies, I discovered that I was the neediest person in the conference and was far more in need of being revived than I had ever realised. That discovery, however, only came slowly to me. Being myself one of the speakers, I suppose I was more concerned about others’ needs than my own. As my wife and others humbled themselves before God and experienced the cleansing of the precious Blood of Jesus, I found myself left somewhat high and dry–dry just because I was high. I was stumbled by the simplicity of the message, or rather the simplicity of what I had to do to be revived and filled with the Spirit. When others at the end of the conference testified of how Jesus had broken them at His Cross and filled their hearts to overflowing with His Holy Spirit, I had no such testimony.
It was only afterwards that I was enabled to give up trying to fit things into my doctrinal scheme, and come humbly to the Cross for cleansing from my own personal sins. It was like beginning my Christian life all over again. My flesh “came again like that of a little child,” as did Naaman’s when he was willing to humble himself and dip himself in Jordan. And it has been an altogether new chapter in life since then. It has meant, however, that I have had to choose constantly to die to the big “I,” that Jesus might be all, and constantly to come to Him for cleansing in His precious Blood. But that is just why it is a new chapter.As my wife and others humbled themselves before God and experienced the cleansing of the precious Blood of Jesus, I found myself left somewhat high and dry–dry just because I was high. I was stumbled by the simplicity of the message, or rather the simplicity of what I had to do to be revived and filled with the Spirit. When others at the end of the conference testified of how Jesus had broken them at His Cross and filled their hearts to overflowing with His Holy Spirit, I had no such testimony. It was only afterwards that I was enabled to give up trying to fit things into my doctrinal scheme, and come humbly to the Cross for cleansing from my own personal sins. It was like beginning my Christian life all over again. My flesh “came again like that of a little child,” as did Naaman’s when he was willing to humble himself and dip himself in Jordan. And it has been an altogether new chapter in life since then. It has meant, however, that I have had to choose constantly to die to the big “I,” that Jesus might be all, and constantly to come to Him for cleansing in His precious Blood. But that is just why it is a new chapter.
At that time my wife and I had been issuing a little paper which we called “Challenge,” in which we were seeking to lead young Christians into a deeper experience of the Lord Jesus. It was natural, then, that in the following issue we should put down what God had shown us. We simply put down in print the Message of Revival as it had come to us… The connection of all this with the present little book is that this book is simply a collection of some of those numbers of “Challenge.”
…One last thing needs to be said about the necessary attitude of heart of the reader. If God is to bless him at all through these pages, he must come to them with a deep hunger of heart. He must be possessed with a dissatisfaction of the state of the Church in general, and of himself in particular–especially of himself. He must be willing for God to begin His work in himself first, rather than in the other man. He must, moreover, be possessed with the holy expectancy that God can and will meet his need. If he is in any sense a Christian leader, the urgency of the matter is intensified many times over. His willingness to admit his need and be blessed will determine the degree to which God can bless the people to whom he ministers. Above all he must realise that he must be the first to humble himself at the Cross. If a new honesty with regard to sin is needed among his people, he must realise it must begin with himself. It was when the King of Nineveh arose from his throne and covered himself with sackcloth and sat in ashes as a sign of his repentance, that his people repented.
Let not, however, those readers who are not leaders be tempted to look at those who are and wait for them. God wants to begin with each one of us. He wants to begin with YOU.
May God bless us all.
Roy HESSION.
January, 1950.
If this sounds like something you desire for your own life, you can obtain a FREE copy the book through Amazon here,
OR you can download the PDF version for FREE here. {The PDF version can be opened and read on your electronic readers, or in ibooks, or on your computer, or printed out to hold in your hands. 🙂 }
AND… if you want to get the MOST from this study, for around $3.99 you can purchase (in book form or in e-book form) The Calvary Road Study Guide-Workbook (linked here). It has brought a whole new dimension to studying through this book and to the piercing of the secret places of my heart with God’s Word. OR, this is a different, but FREE Study Guide to go along with each portion of the book.
If you’re still not sure this journey is for you, you can read what others had to say about this book on Amazon here.
I’m doing one chapter a day and am looking forward to heading into 2015 fully bowed at the foot of the Cross. As in the past, I expect that every day the Lord will draw me closer through the searching and cleansing of His Word, and I will experience revival. That’s what I long for… for me and for you too, my friends. If Revival is your heart’s cry, I pray that you’ll find it on the Calvary Road.
Just thought I’d pass this along with love~
