The Little E

Summary

Summary prepared by Acts 2:38 Life from the YouTube recording's caption track, read through the transcript panel — published in summary form; watch the full sermon at the source.

Because of the Times 1997 · The Pentecostals of Alexandria, Alexandria, LA Topics: The Church · Christian Living · Giving

James Kilgore — a Texas district preacher and Houston pastor, son of a pioneer preacher who built churches across Texas — opens by complimenting the message preached before his and naming the one thing he feels the Lord is still working on: unity. A call to repentance at the general conference the Saturday night before had filled the house with weeping, and his own daughter, watching from the balcony, called it one of the most beautiful sights she had ever seen in Pentecost. The harvest, he says, is directly tied to that unity — the church will never reap its full benefit until it comes into that place — and Texas, where he has just preached thirteen sectional conferences, is already tasting the revival spirit of it.

Carrying the load together.

Unity begins with the small carrying their part. He tells of Wallace Wilburn, an old pioneering preacher who crossed the country in the twenties and thirties in a covered wagon with thirteen children, preaching open-air and brush-arbor meetings. When a horse slipped its hoof and had to be put down miles from the next town, Wilburn took the dead horse's collar, put it around his own neck, and walked beside the remaining horse — holding up his part of the load, resting, and getting back in the collar until they reached the place and had a great revival. Some can carry more than others, Kilgore says, but there are no big I's and little U's in this work: the big brother carrying the big load cannot do it without the small one holding up his end.

Scriptures: (none in this movement)

A heart after God.

From there he takes up David — not perfect, fallen about as low as a man could fall, yet a man after God's own heart, because something deep in him kept reaching. David's prayer became Kilgore's own prayer every day: a clean heart created, a right spirit renewed, as the qualification for reaping the harvest of the last days. Spirit and attitude, he says, will be the deciding factors in the field, so politics has to go: the church must learn to forgive one another, trust one another, believe in one another, and rejoice when God blesses someone else — as he watched Terry Black carry on his father Winfred's dedication. We steal God's glory when we heap it on ourselves; the Lord has to be first and last, head of the church and saviour of the body, Lord of all or not Lord at all.

Scriptures: Psalm 51:10

One accord, and the little E.

His text is the first verse of Acts 2: when the day of Pentecost was fully come, they were all with one accord in one place. They were not in a "chord", he says — everybody here is a different chord — but a chord is harmony, and something happens when the body comes into accord: different ministries are recognised instead of criticised, each man with his own ministry blending with the rest. Then he makes the sermon visible. Calling for a six-string guitar, he tunes it on the platform, always coming back to one string: it all depends on little E — if he can get little E right, he can get the others right — and little E, he says, is "little me". His father preached his revivals with a guitar he could not afford to restring, tying and splicing broken strings, leading services on five strings and then four, always working on little E. It took the upper room about ten days of tuning one another up, little E kept right, until the day of Pentecost was fully come and they were with one accord — and he has seen what happens when churches get tuned together: at one summit, eighty-three churches in accord, ten thousand people gathered, and over a thousand receiving the Holy Ghost, with one home missionary's eight men all receiving it after a two-hour drive.

Scriptures: Acts 2:1

David's steps: love, jealousy, and getting even.

What made David a man after God's heart, step by step: he learned to love sheep at risk of his life; that love became love for people — keep loving the brother you think is against you — and love for people became love for the cause, bigger than any man, church, or district, worth stepping into battle for. Loving the cause taught him to deal with jealousy: when the song went up that Saul had slain his thousands and David his ten thousands, jealousy gripped Saul — but the man in accord can hear of a great revival across the world, like Brother Glass's two hundred receiving the Holy Ghost, and say "that's part of me" instead of "did it really happen?" And David had no desire to get even: twice he could have killed Saul and did not — touch not my anointed — and Kilgore applies it to preachers who will cut a brother down over gossip, then turns to his own boyhood, when his father settled the Kilgore boys' fights by making them stand toe to toe until they kissed each other, and to the need of every preacher for a friend he can trust with what is locked in his heart.

Scriptures: (none new in this movement)

Kindness, weeping, and preparing for others.

David, established in his kingdom, remembered his friend Jonathan and asked whether anyone was left of Saul's house to whom he could show kindness for Jonathan's sake. The one found was Jonathan's son — lame from a childhood fall, living in a place of stubble and dry pasture — and David brought him to eat at the king's table, where, his feet under the table, he looked like the rest of the king's sons: a word for everyone labouring unnoticed in a dry place. David could also weep over the death of an enemy, mourning Saul on the mountain where he fell instead of rejoicing — and Kilgore weeps with him over spiritual death, telling of a minister like a son to him who, a week before the general conference, laid his fellowship card on Kilgore's desk and confessed he had failed God; the church's work with the fallen is restoration in meekness, not pushing them down further. Finally David, forbidden to build the house himself, prepared for the one who would: timbers hewn, rock chiselled, everything ready for his son. So the church prepares for others — Kilgore's own congregation entered faith-promise missions giving twenty-five years ago after Billy Cole preached the reward of sacrifice in their church, and has not missed a month since; told on a plane to keep giving the gospel to the world, do more for the poor, and wait for God's supply, they have since bought thirty acres of prime Houston property for a fraction of its worth and received a family's million-dollar gift toward the church they intend to name for what built it: this is the church that missions built. Cast your bread on the waters, he closes, and keep on giving — the reward of sacrifice is to give a little bit more.

Summary scripture index (the exact union of the sections above): Acts 2:1 · Psalm 51:10

Scriptures: (none new in this movement)