God says that that is the purpose I want you to see in what is going on. Notice too that he begins by saying to this despised group of returned exiles,
I am going to begin that process with this temple that you are now constructing! Mean as it may seem, it is only the beginning of my coming, unshakable Kingdom.Does that not put significance into what we sometimes think of as minor key work and insignificant work that we do?What happens with intercessory prayer? One of my former colleagues, Dr. Douglas Kelly, wrote a book entitled If God Already Knows, Why Pray? In which he tells of an incident that took place in the Western Highlands of Scotland when he was there. He was visiting an elderly Christian woman who had never had much formal education but she had been schooled in the Holy Spirit. This lady happened to get a very encouraging letter that day. You see, it so happens that many years ago she was a bridesmaid in a friend's wedding. And it was soon after that friend was married that this Christian lady began to pray for her friend’s salvation. Well, time went on, but on this day when Doug Kelly happened to visit her, this lady received a letter from this old friend. In the letter her friend said that God had brought her to a knowledge of the grace of God in Jesus Christ. You see, it was only a little intercessory prayer. This woman had prayed every day for that friend for fifty-three years.
Henry Scougal was a young Scotsman who died about 1678 at the age of 26 from consumption. He wrote a book called The Life of God in the Soul of Man. Sixty years later, a young man at the University of Oxford by the name of George Whitfield, happened to pick up that book written by Henry Scougal, and realized that this was the human instrument that the living God used to awaken him to the fact that in spite of all his prayers, in spite of all his good works, in spite of all his deeds of kindness to the poor, in spite of all the religiosity that he had, in spite of all the services he attended, he was a lost soul. It was Henry Scougal’s book The Life of God in the Soul of Man that the Lord used to bring George Whitfield to Jesus Christ, and then through George Whitfield, to touch thousands in Britain and in the American colonies, and awaken them. Be encouraged, people of God, whatever the limits there are on your work. You do not know what the living God is going to do with the little stuff we offer him, and how he is going to magnify it and put the splashes of glory upon it for his Kingdom. You will be encouraged if you would just see the purpose he has.1
Dale Ralph Davis
6 Car ainsi parle l'Eternel des armées: Encore un peu de temps, Et j'ébranlerai les cieux et la terre, La mer et le sec;