Just behind my living room sofa stands a table. On it is what I call decorative clutter—a dried floral bouquet, a ceramic jar, a candy dish, two small lamps, and two framed photos. The one sepia-colored photo is from the 1940s and pictures my grandfather, Ivan Spencer; his second eldest son, Merritt Spencer; and a plow horse.

The ornately-carved mahogany picture frame seems unfitting, for both Ivan and Merritt are in their dungarees and appear quite disheveled. The only ornamental thing in the picture is the U.S. Army service cap pushed back off Uncle Merritt’s forehead.

But I remember the day I decided to place this particular picture within the grip of this decorative frame. I thought then, as I do now, the frame and photo didn’t go together, but I loved the juxtaposition of the two. The picture frame stood like the nicely suited man of God Ivan was to so many who knew and respected him. But the photo told the truth about the man—he was a farmer. Ivan Q. Spencer, founder of Elim Bible Institute and Elim Fellowship, was a cow-milking, plowing, seed-sowing, harvesting farmer.

There’s an old adage that goes something like this—“You can take the boy out of the farm, but you can never take the farm out of the boy.” For Ivan, this was true. He was ever a farmer, preparing for each season and endeavoring to fulfill the agricultural duties associated with it. And as a son of God ever looking for the next move of God, this revivalist continued to sow and reap in the harvest fields of his generation. (That’s the inspiration for the title, Daily Seedings.)

Yes, Ivan was committed to harvest preparation. In 1912, God gave him a vision that helped him stay his course. He saw Spirit-filled people scattered throughout the world. The purpose for “this world-wide diffusion,” as he called it, was for these to “intercede for greater things for the peoples of their respective localities.”

Furthermore, he saw this movement grow in number but not in power. This led to a time of sifting and testing which ultimately led to a glorious outpouring of the Holy Spirit. All of this he saw in his vision.

Ivan Spencer kept always the vision of God’s global harvest field before him. He preached, taught, and lived in preparation for the great end-time harvest that would come as a result of a great end-time revival. As he wrote many years ago:

Not only in the planting season and in harvest but throughout the year; the farmer lives for his fields. He is constantly plowing, fertilizing, seeding, weeding, and finally harvesting. Even his winter months are spent in preparing seed, repairing fences, and in general making things ready for planting. This is his life; this is the thing that makes him a farmer. And he will do it year after year, each time to be rewarded at harvest.

Don’t you want to be rewarded at the harvest? Don’t you want to experience that great end-time revival? I know I do, and I also know both the revival and harvest require preparation of our personal hearts and lives.

We need to nourish our own souls; we need to cultivate and seed the individual soils with the Word of God. What better way to do so than by sowing the Word-reflections of a committed harvester into our hearts.

As you read each daily reading, I trust your life will be impacted for revival and harvest as his words have so impacted mine. May his word-seeds be planted in your heart. May they produce an abundant harvest in your own soul as you labor in the field of souls.

—Edie Mourey

“…one of the early 20th Century’s prophetic voices still speaks today…” — Jack W. Hayford

Reprinted with permission from Daily Seedings: A Devotional Classic for the Spirit-Filled Life by Ivan Q. Spencer (selected and edited by Edie Mourey), Furrow Press, 2008.

For more about Ivan Spencer, see “Following in His Steps” by Edie Mourey.

Edie Mourey is an author, editor, historian, and granddaughter of Pentecostal pioneer Ivan Spencer. In this warm story about her adventure to learn more about her own heritage, she discovered anew how all of us that follow hard after Jesus become part of His legacy.

Americans seem obsessed with discovering their ancestry. With DNA tests promising to unlock the doors to our biological heritage and online research sites equipped to build complex family trees, we are unleashing our inner genealogists to find out who we are and where we came from. And so, we trek to family gravesites and countries of origin. We want to see where our twelfth-great grandfather and grandmother lived, how they lived, and what they did. The closer we can get to mapping their exact footsteps, the more real they become to us. And the more real they become to us, the more meaning or purpose we may find in our existence.

Researching our Pentecostal roots has taken on a similar form. With the arrival of a new millennium, Pentecostalism has hit a century marker. Finally, we have a significant history of the outpouring of the Spirit within our country. Early Spirit pioneers and trailblazers may have passed from the scene as well as many of their immediate progeny, but the third generation is now in senior adulthood with more generations ensuing. Some of these have realized they have a heritage and an inheritance in the things of the Spirit. Thank God they are retelling the stories of their spiritual fathers and mothers. These have grown to understand the importance of knowing the American Pentecostal narrative. Therefore, they have traced and are tracing the steps of their spiritual ancestry so as to grasp who we are as a people and the deeper and fuller purposes of God for us in our day.

Personally, I didn’t go looking for the footsteps of my forebears. I kind of stumbled upon them while doing research for a book I was commissioned to write. At the end of the 1900s—sorry, I had to make this sound authentically historic—I was commissioned by Elim Bible Institute[1] (EBI) and Elim Fellowship (EF) of Lima, New York, to write the “sequel” to the biography of their founder.[2] The original biography was titled Ivan Spencer: Willow in the Wind and was written by Marion Meloon. Seeing Miss Meloon had passed away and being I was one of Ivan Spencer’s granddaughters, I was chosen to complete the project that would commemorate the school’s seventy-fifth anniversary in 1999.

Preparing to conduct research, I visited the campus.[3] As I drove up College Street, I saw this very familiar to me, stately, neoclassical building known as College Hall. The building is impressive with its extensive portico and six scrolled columns running the length of its front. At the time, College Hall housed EBI’s library, and it was there I was introduced to my grandparents, Ivan and Minnie Spencer, in a new and living way.