Many years ago my late wife and I heard that Gipsy Smith was corning to the town of Dewsbury in Yorkshire, on a certain Tuesday, to conduct afternoon and evening meetings in a large church in that town. We had never heard this popular preacher, so we planned to attend the afternoon gathering.
My older reader’s wil1 remember this outstanding Evangelist who drew huge
crowds wherever he went. I have never heard another preacher quite like him. He
always boasted of being a real gipsy, whose life and home had been completely
transformed by the power of God. He was so utterly genuine and sincere, that
when he began to preach, you could feel the love of God flowing from the pulpit
to the pew. His sermons were the overflowing of a full and rich experience of
God's amazing grace. He was an absolute master in the art of painting word
pictures. His great store of anecdotes and true gipsy experiences, so
dramatically told, made you feel you were living the incident with him. His
lovely simple ministry in song was perhaps the most effective that I can
remember. There was nothing strikingly outstanding about his singing, but
somehow, under the anointing of the Holy Spirit, the words he sang reached many
a heart with the glorious message of salvation. Somebody once said, 'Little is
much, if God is in it'.
Perhaps I am a bit of a square, but it seems to me, that the God who ordained
the simplicity of the Holy Communion service, still loves us to use the simple
things and 'things which are not', even the ordinary singing of a gipsy, to
accomplish His divine purpose. Gipsy Smith loved to sing a song which some of us
still remember.
Wonderful, Wonderful Jesus
In my heart He implanted a song,
A song of deliverance, or courage and strength,
In my heart He implanted a song.
My good wife and I arrived at the church in Dewsbury some twenty minutes before the service was due to commence, only to find the building almost full to capacity. We were not able to sit together; there were only one or two odd seats in various parts of the church. It was a great meeting and although it was nearly many years ago, I still vividly recall one of the preacher's dynamic stories.
When the Gipsy was a boy and the caravan moved from place to place, he always loved to have a little garden of his own. As soon as the caravan came to rest in some new spot, he would mark out a selected Square, carefully dig over the soil, and then edge the garden with suitable stones. He would then run off to the nearest wood, gather a bunch of the loveliest flowers he could find and return to stick them in the prepared garden. The garden would look beautiful for a little while, but as soon as the sun became powerful in the sky, the flowers would quickly wilt and die. "Why did this happen?" he asked that great congregation. Then he answered his own question. "Because they had only been stuck in, they had never been born in."
Then came the great moment of that service, a moment I shall never forget as long as I live. The preacher, normally so loving and gentle in his manner, became very direct and almost severe. He embraced his entire congregation with a sweeping gesture of the arm and said in an atmosphere charged with the power of the Holy Spirit, "Some of you here today have been stuck in church membership; you have been stuck in the choir or stuck in the Sunday School; some of you have been stuck in the diaconate, but you have never been born into the family of God". What a hush came over the people. You could hear a pin drop. Tears filled the preacher's eyes and with all the love and passion of his being, he stretched out his hands towards the congregation in a great closing appeal.
"Friends" he said, "you must be born into God's family". Jesus said, "Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God". He urged the people to forsake dead formal religion and to become a new creation by the personal acceptance of the Lord Jesus as Saviour. The Bible says, "If any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new" (2 Corinthians 5:17).
You will not be surprised when I tell you that scores of folk made the all important decision that afternoon. I wonder dear reader if you have only been stuck in the church, or have you been born into the family of God?
Jesus said, "Marvel not that I said unto thee, ye must be born again" (John 3:7).