Welcome the Lord’s Pruning – Bertha Smith

Bertha Smith, a Southern Baptist missionary, left for China in 1917 to serve in the Shantung Province. She served the Lord for 30 years in China, 10 years in Formosa (Taiwan), and 30 years in the United States (her retirement years). She was a strong prayer warrior and was a participant in the Shantung Revival, which was the birth of the underground church in China. If you want to learn how to walk in the Spirit and how to pray for revival, then Miss Bertha is the person to learn from. Her message of prayer and holiness in her book Go Home and Tell has been one of the most life changing messages I have ever read. I encourage you to read both Go Home and Tell, which is out of print, and How the Spirit Filled My Life, which has been reprinted and found for purchase here: http://masterdesign.org/2008/08/how-the-spirit-filled-my-life-by-bertha-smith/. For anyone desiring a closer walk with the Lord, these are a must read.

From Bertha Smith’s book How the Spirit Filled My Life page 79.

All sin must be confessed up-to-date!

No one ever reaches the state where he will not sin anymore. The devil still is around to come at us through sinful human natures which are always trying to rise up and express themselves, even though they should be kept in the place of death. Sins of Spirit-filled people are accidents, never purposely planned. Accidental sins must be transferred from one’s heart to the Lord Jesus Christ at once, trust in his blood for cleansing, again enthrone Christ, and ask the grieved Holy Spirit again to take over and fill. Then the Christian should go as if nothing has happened, except he should be more careful to trust the Lord to keep from such accidents.

After being filled, we have to learn how to walk in the Sprit. The first step is to obey the Lord.

There are past sins against people which must be made right by confessing to them and to others who may know about that sin. When everything is made right, we are ready to walk in the Spirit. Welcome the Lord’s pruning.

One of my seminary professors advised us to have a pruning friend. (She then added, “The Lord will do it if you live closely enough to him and always obey.”)

One of my privileges on the mission field was that of living with Miss Martha Franks. We pruned each other frankly. We prayed together, taking about an hour to name before the Lord in united petition all the people with whom each of us worked, and others whom the Holy Spirit had laid on our hearts.

One day when we were praying, I was convicted of some wrong. I confessed it as sin and cried to the Lord for deliverance from it. When we arose from our knees, Martha looked at me most seriously and said, “Bertha, I must be living far, far from the Lord! It has been a long, long time since the Holy Spirit has convicted me of any sin. Don’t you know that if I were walking closely enough with him, he would be pointing out things in me that he wants to change to make me more like himself?”

I sometimes walk into furniture stores where they have large floor plate mirrors. When I first get a glance of myself in them, I think, “A very nice looking woman!” But the closer I get to the mirror, the more clearly I see myself. When I am right in front of it, the wrinkles and freckles are so prevalent that I want to run out of the building.

Thus we are by our walk with the Lord. Satisfied with self means that we live so far from the Lord that either we cannot see his standard, or we are unwilling to be like him.

Smith, Bertha. How the Spirit Filled My Life. The Master Design, 2008.