Charismatic Flavour

I just got back from Youth Together. We had one session of worship which, not surprisingly, went on and on! During this, no speaker spoke, yet through the worship loud shouting prayers were belted out, encouraging words were given and as a result mass repentance! The mercy seat was full when the call for salvation was made. At lunch, I felt The Holy Spirit urging me to ask one girl from Victoria what she thought and if she was a Christian. The Holy Spirit had planted a desire in her to become a Christian and I was at the right place at the right time! Praise God! I was even to hook her up with three people to disciple her.

We're receiving more of The Holy Spirit on campus too. A lot of shouting. Brengle would be pleased! He has a whole chapter on Shouting in Helps to Holiness. "Shouting and praising God is to salvation what flame is to fire. You may have a very hot and useful fire without a blaze, but not till it bursts forth into flame does it become irresistible and sweep everything before it. So people may be very good and have a measure of salvation, but it is not until they become so full of the Holy Ghost that they are likely to burst forth in praises to their glorious God at any hour of the day or night, both in private and public, that their salvation becomes irresistibly catching.

This doesn't sound like my experience until a few years ago. However, it is in the foundation of our movement. On May 21, 1879 The Newcastle Daily Chronicle recorded the events at a Salvation Army prayer meeting.

So great was the commotion in the centre of the room, so terrifying was the din that this incidence [four rows upping over], which would have thrown an ordinary congregation into uproar, passed almost unnoticed... Several figures are bent double near the platform, groaning and wringing their hands. The "Hallelujah Lasses" have surrounded them; the tall figure of the proprietor of the "Hallelujah Fiddle" gyrates around them; the sweep is dancing and shouting "Glory be to God;" and the "General" is smiling placidly and twiddling his thumbs.
Penitents! Are these penitents who kneel on the form and wring their hands? Or are they persons struck with the contagion of over-wrought enthusiasm?
As may be seen from what I have written, until pentitents "throw themselves at the feet of Jesus," as it is called, a meeting of The Salvation Army is tolerably sane affair. The fat is at once in the fire, however, when penitents come forward.
Half a-dozen crop-headed youths are praying vociferously, with their faces towards me. Did I say praying? It was vociferous shouting, with closed eyes. Their bodies sway to and fro; their hands are lifted, and brought down again with a thump on the form; they contort themselves as if they were in acute agony.
THe converts retire to their seats with red faces. Let us follow one of them. He is a broad-faced, shock-headed youth, of about twenty. A few minutes since, he was foaming out of a well-developed mouth. Now he is dancing about the floor, shouting "hallelujah" and wringing the hands of all those who will yield their arm to him. Anon he will mount one of the forms, and shout his experience into the middle of the hubbub, which condemns him to remain unheard. Then he will waltz round again, alternately laugh and cry and go through a new course of hand-shaking. He has in fact been converted." - Be a Hero, Campbell & Court.

YOu will know a tree by its fruit. The manifestations I saw this weekend brought upon repentance, faith and Salvation. May God provide the lasting fruit of regeneration! Praise the Lord Great Things He Has Done [shouting]!