Buy New Ponies

Are you familar with the Welsh revival? Phenomenal move of God in 1904-1907, led by a young man named Evan Roberts and a small group of young people. Lots of cool stories came from it, and it literally changed the course and shape of the nation (I’m going to share a specific story here in a moment. Google “welsh revival” and you’ll find some cool stuff!

I stumbled across one story that hit me…. Jumped out at me, if you will.

When revival hit the nation, a lot of things changed. Churches filled up, and bars and strip clubs emptied out. Citizens and workers were getting saved and changed.

A big industry in the nation was coal mining (Robert’s father was a coal miner as well). One way that the coal miners would transport the mined coal was on carts pulled by ponies, and the miners would yell commands at the ponies to get them to start and stop. The words of choice? Foul language and cuss words. They would get the ponies to act by yelling foul words at them.

But then…

Revival changed things. The hearts of the coal miners turned towards God – no longer did they want to yell cuss words. In fact, they refused to.

Picture this – You have ponies that have been trained to haul coal, and the only words they know to respond to are cuss words. Then you have coal miners who won’t yell cuss words! Therefore…they were left with ponies who couldn’t work!

The only action they could take was to get rid of the old ponies!

247-prayer.com says it like this:

Once the revival started at Moriah Chapel, coal miners were being converted and could frequently be heard singing hymns and praising God in the mine. As a result of the miners’ salvation experiences, the pit ponies (ponies that carried coal out of the mine in carts) no longer understood the commands of the miners because they were only used to obeying curse word commands. Since the coal miners no longer used bad language, the pit ponies were no longer responding to their commands! The coal mine owner was forced to buy new pit ponies so they could be trained to respond properly to the coal miners’ new language.

Wow – how cool is that!!

So my question, my challenge is this: What is in my life right now, that if God swept in, would be rendered useless?

Do I need to buy new ponies?

Luke.