David Wilkerson - A call to anguish

The transcript of David Wilkerson - A call to anguish

The following is the transcript of Rev. David Wilkerson's message titled a call to anguish. Rev. Wilkerson went on to glory last year, but his message rings even truer today than when he first gave it. Are there any real soldiers on the fence, waiting, willing, to take heed of this call?

The actual message is available on Youtube:

but I posted this transcript for those that might not be able to watch it due to a weak internet connection.

And I look at the whole religious scene today and all I see are
the inventions and ministries of man and flesh.
Its mostly powerless.
It has no impact on the world.
And I see more of the world coming into the church and impacting the church,
rather than the church impacting the world

I see the music taking over the house of God
I see entertainment taking over the house of God

An obsessing with entertainment in God's house
A hatred of correction and a hatred of reproof
Nobody wants to hear it anymore.

Whatever happened to anguish in the house of God?
Whatever happened to anguish in the ministry?
Its a word you don't hear in this pampered age

Anguish means extreme pain and distress.
The emotions so stirred that it becomes painful.
Acute, deeply felt inner pain because of conditions about you, in you, or around you.
Anguish.

Deep pain.

Sorrow.

Agony of God's heart.

We've held onto our religious rhetoric and our revival talk but we've become so passive.
All true passion is borne out of anguish.
All true passion for Christ is borne out of a baptism of anguish.

You'll search the scripture and discover that when God determined to recover a ruined situation...
He would share his own anguish for what God saw happening to his own church and his own people
And He would find a praying man and He would take that man and literally baptize him in anguish.

You find it in the book of Nehemiah
Jerusalem is in ruins
How is God going to deal with it, how is God going to restore the ruin?
Folks, look at me, Nehemiah wasn't a preacher, he was a career man
This was a praying man
God found a man who would not just have a flash of emotion
Not just some great, sudden burst of concern and then let it die
He said No. "I broke down and I wept and I mourned and I fasted. Then I began to pray night and day".
Why didn't these other men, why didn't they have an answer?
Why didn't God use them in restoration, why didn't they have a word?
Because there was no sign of anguish!
No weeping!
Not a word of prayer!
Its all ruin!

Does it matter to you today?
Does it matter to you at all that God's spiritual Jerusalem, the church, is now married to the world?
That there is such a coldness sweeping the land?
Closer than that...does it matter about the Jerusalem that is in our own hearts?
The sign of ruin that is slowly draining spiritual power and passion.
Blind to lukewarmness, blind to the mixture that is slowly creeping in.
That's all the devil wants to do - get the fight out of you and kill it!
So you won't labor in prayer, you won't weep before God in prayer.
You can sit and watch television and your family goes to hell!

There is a great difference between anguish and concern
Concern is something that begins to interest you,
you take an interest in a project or a cause or a concern or a need
I want to tell you something I have learnt all my years,
over 50 years in preaching
If it is not born in anguish
If it is not born by the Holy spirit
Where what you saw and heard of the ruin that drove you to your knees,
took you down into a baptism of anguish where you began to pray and seek God

I know now
Until I am in agony...
Until I have been anguished over it...
And all our projects, all our ministries, everything we do...
where are the sunday School teachers that weep over kids they know
are not hearing and going to hell
A true prayer life begins at the place of anguish

You see, if you set your heart to pray,
God's going to come and start sharing his heart with you.
Your heart begins to cry out -
Oh God your name is being blasphemed.
Holy Spirit is being mocked.
The enemy is out trying to destroy the testimony of the Lord's faithfulness
And something has to be done
There is going to be no renewal, no revival, no awakening,
until we are willing to let him once again break us.

Folks its getting late, and its getting serious.
Please don't tell me, don't tell me you're concerned...
when you're spending hours in front of internet or television.
Come on.

There are some that need to get to this altar and confess
"I am not what I was, I am not where I am supposed to be,
God I don't have your heart or your burden,
I've wanted it easy. I've just wanted to be happy.
But Lord, true joy comes out of anguish".
There is nothing of the flesh that can give you joy.

I don't care how much money, I don't care what kind of new house, there is absolutely nothing physical that can give you joy.
It is only what is accomplished by the Holy Spirit when you obey him and take on His heart

Build the walls around your family
Build the walls around your own heart
Make you strong and impregnable against the enemy
God that's what we desire.