Mrs Colville (continued)

So Mrs Colville returned to England unaware that her faithful door-to-door ministry and her discipling of one young man had, in the instrumentation of the Holy Spirit, become a catalyst for a great Revival in Ulster.  We never know what faithful obedience might produce.

The beauty of older stories is that we can trace them into their future.  We cannot do this for our own.  And so we zip forward to,2016.  That's fairly contemporary for a blog in 2016!

For just a few weeks ago a famed Baptist Church in Edinburgh City Centre moved into its new building.  When I say 'new' I mean 'fresh' because the the building was a former Parish Church.

But what has this to do with Mrs Colville?  It goes like this.  A young woman came to life in Jesus in that Ulster Revival and was so moved by the power of prayer in it that she set about praying for her church in Edinburgh City Centre.  Now what we want to read here is that, a year later, a thousand people came through the door.  The truth is that as the 20th century began and she had been praying for 30 years the church was down to 35 attendees.  

But she had bequeathed to her family the vigour to trust and pursue in prayer.  And so it was that a new pastor arrived.  Joseph Kemp teamed up with a Church Secretary who himself had captured his mother-in-law's vision of revival.  And the rest, as they say is history.

There did indeed become a year when a thousand people were saved at the chapel.  There were prayer meetings that were measured in days not minutes.  And so today it is still possible to buy unwittingly into Mrs Colville's legacy not only as a student in Edinburgh City Centre but in many other places through the world.

Except that of course it is not that this springs from one woman.  She was the trigger but the power was the Lord's.  She did not even believe she was a trigger - but she did believe she was the Lord's!  And that will do.