Enthusiasm in Religion — "Be Fervent in Spirit"

California, 1915

Dr. J. Harvey Deere, pastor of the First Baptist church, spoke to a capacity house yesterday morning on "Enthusiasm in Religion." He chose as his text Romans 12:11, "Be fervent in Spirit, serving the Lord." Several applications for membership followed the message. He announced that he would speak next Sunday on the subject, "How may I know I am saved?"

In part the pastor said: There is a vast difference between a teakettle full of hot water, and a teakettle filled with cold water. The first may run over, the latter never will. And when Paul says, "Be fervent in spirit" he is arguing for the boiling over Christian life. I am not reading this into his words. It is there, as the Greek makes plain, so don't be afraid of being enthusiastic in your faith. Unreservedly are you devoted to your home and your business and your city, and your pleasures and your politics. It ought to be so. But are not your church and your Christ and your hope worth more than all else?

Don't be afraid of boiling over in your religion. Hot-handed, fiery-spirited, blazing-faced devotees the church needs. Sorry I am that a friendly critic came so near the truth when he said: "There are few inherently important things that create less sensation of any sort than the average church." The revival fires we must strive to keep burning.

Don't be afraid of getting too warm in your religion. "I had never thought of Christ being enthusiastic," said a friend recently. But He was. Once He got so enthusiastic that His friends said, "He is beside himself." His enemies said, "He has a devil. He is mad." The truth is, nothing seems so crazy as enthusiasm to a man incapable of feeling it.

Don't feel that you must apologize for putting yourself into your religion. The apostles were fiery men. Peter was aflame at Pentecost. John and James were called "Sons of Thunder." If there was a lethargic temperament in the apostolic company it was that of Thomas; but even Thomas was so passionately devoted to Jesus that in a crisis in the Master's life he said to his comrades, "Come, let us go and die with him."

The church will have money enough to pay its bills and keep its self-respect. The church will have no empty pews and it will sweep through the community with the power of the Niagara. And the church will become magnetic in its influence, overmastering in its spirit, unimpeachable in its life when her members dare, like the apostles of old, become a set of enthusiasts for the Christ.

—The Fresno Morning Republican, Fresno, CA, Oct. 18, 1915, p. 2.