Author: Michael Catt

This article originally appeared in the Charlotte Observer, 8/17/1930. Copyright “Friends of Vance Havner” 2022

Sometimes when I run across one of these wild, excited revivalists or reformers who thinks he is delegated to save the world and do it right now I think of the patience of the Master.
He came upon the supreme mission of all time, to reveal God in a perfect personality, to live the Ideal Life, to save a world. And He had about 33 years to live.
Did He leap into that task excited and feverish, working night and day, sweating and storming and standing on His head to draw a crowd? Did He go at it on a big business scale with posters and circus tents and an army of experts with a line of lurid sermons to drive the sinners into the fold?
He did not. People were going to hell all around Him then as now. About the same spiritual conditions prevailed. But the Master was not worked into a frenzy. With only 33 year to live He worked until 30 in a little village woodworkers shop with His hammer and saw. Why didn’t He lea out as a boy preacher and set the woods on fire?
Jesus was not in a hurry. He spent those 30 years increasing in stature and knowledge and favor with God and man – in other words, building a character, for He knew that no sermon is effective that has not first gone through the experience of the preacher. If more preachers followed His example there might not be so many of the Ephraim sort which the Bible calls “cakes not turned” – half baked, as it were. I include myself in this line-up for I was a “boy-preacher.”
When Jesus did begin His ministry He “took His time.” Part of the time He worked with the throng; then He went to the hills and quiet places for meditation and prayer. He mixed sociability with solitude. He did not work all the time. He knew that He could do better work if He combined His labors with rest and quietude than if He strained at high pitch relentlessly. He honored the old verse, “Be still and know that I am God.” We make such a fuss the still, small voice is drowned out by our own racket.
I was once a victim of the preacher’s fever. I thought the world had to be saved right now. I advertised myself as speaking 800 words a minute! And at that I said nothing. Then I began to study the Savior’s method. He was not a victim of modern speed and efficiency. He spoke the truth and then let it care for itself. We worry trying to be impressive and convert others instead of letting God speak through us and use the message in His own way. Jesus selected some raw discipline that were anything but efficient. They would have been the despair of a modern business expert. But Jesus simply lived His truth among them and time did its work.
He did not despair because people would not accept Him and His message. He was willing to Leave His work for time to vindicate. Truth does not hurry. But is always arrives.
We must learn no only to labor but also to wait. The Bible advises, “Wait on the Lord.” Some of us are God-chasers, we are perpetually running after God instead of being still while God comes to us.
Don’t hurry. The world cannot be saved in a day. Study the habits of the Master. The frantic and feverish defeat themselves. The Master’s spirit will relieve the friction and tension in your soul.
VANCE HAVNER

This article originally appeared in the Charlotte Observer, 7/201930. copyright “Friends of Vance Havner” 2022

If you are going to be an uplifter, a preacher or reformer, it will pay you to study life as it is and not as books picture it to be. Most messages fail to get across because the speaker does not know life; he has studied in some cloistered spot life as some other recluse thought it ought to be and then has gone forth into the world as it is utterly out of touch with reality.
Sometimes when I listen to some polished professional weaving airy theories before a comfortable audience in snug pews I feel like crying out, “Brother, what do you know about it? Brought up in pleasant environs, trained in your conventional course, then turned out a finished product into a standardized system, do you really know life as it is? Have you ever been down amid the dirt and sweat and grease, the heartache and hunger, the grief and misery of raw and naked reality? Do you know folks as they are, not as books and plays and talkies picture them? Have you ever felt the pulse of humanity, its thrills and tragedies, its sunlight and shadows, its broken dreams and its beautiful longings, its sordidness and sweetness, its filth and fineness-have you ever listened to the heartbeat of the race as most of it actually is?”
The finest writers, preachers, artists are not always those who had most thorough technical training. Indeed, some were pitifully lacking there. Those who best have expressed the heart of humanity are those who have got down into the middle of life with both feet, rubbed elbows with folks as they are, witnessed the complex shadows of experience, the comedy and tragedy of life. They can speak the heart of humanity because they have shared its emotions.
If you wish to be a preacher, it is perhaps well to study theology. It is better to know life. You cannot sit in a cozy corner and do that. Work in a rescue mission awhile. God incognito into the great cities and rub elbows with all classes. Get out on the open road and study people from life. Learn their hopes and fears, their dreams and problems, what God and life and happiness mean to them. You can be in Rome without doing as Rome. One need not drink swill to understand hogs and you do not have to share the vices of men to understand their viewpoint. But get right out into things as they be; you will be angered, shocked, amused, saddened, gladdened; you will be amazed at the virtues of the vicious and the vices of the virtuous. And you will come back to your pulpit with an understanding heart which is better than a smart head.
And you will be following exactly in the steps of the Master, the friend of publicans and sinners. He was no pale recluse in some sheltered nook inventing fair theories of life that would not work. He mixed with the mob, the raw, genuine hash of humanity. He dined with them, walked with them, shared their simple joys and helped them in their sorrows. He liked them because they were exactly what they were and did not hide their failings behind the robes of superficial piety. The only set He could not endure was that Pharassic clan who thought they had religion sewed up in a bag with exclusive control of the puckering string. And He once boldly told them, “The publicans and harlots go into the Kingdom before you!”
What do you know about life? Think over it, brother.
VANCE HAVNER