All with One Accord (Donald Gee) - Deal Pentecostal Church

God with powers that are renewed in health and vigour. Our
danger is not from revival but from revivalism, where
deliberate attempts are made, and methods are used, to work
up certain outward features of revival. For the mentally ill
true revival brings healing balm, but revivalism can easily
aggravate their disease. The mentally sick need peace, not
excitement.
The mentally ill make tremendous demands upon our
patience and compassion. As one aspect, some of us receive
frequent letters that reveal a mental condition only slightly
abnormal in the writers. Often is little more than a quite
inordinate desire to serf out numerous requests for prayer or
utter strange things. With others the more gravely disordered
mind is made apparent by a conviction that the one who
writes destined to be some great one in the religious realm for
the casting out of demons, or preaching to vast multitudes, or
the sole instrument for a world-wide revival. We are all
familiar with the religious crank who has become mentally
obsessed with some doctrinal hobby that he can never leave
alone. I suppose it is not easy to draw the line between mental
weakness and culpable error or stupidity. The waste paper
basket is the kindest resting place for some effusions.
Leaders of Pentecostal meetings need great tact and patience
when the mentally unstable invade their borders, for such
persons find in many of our meetings just that opportunity
for disordered self-expression that they crave. The leader of a
meeting need have no scruples in dealing kindly but firmly
with one who is mentally abnormal as distinct from a believer
who is sane but unruly or untaught. In neither case must they
be allowed to wreck the public testimony of a meeting for the
sake of misguided "liberty." On the other hand we must
guard our priceless heritage of true liberty by the Spirit of the
40