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Clean Hands and a Pure Heart

It happened on the Hebrides Islands off the western coast of Scotland in 1947. A group of five to seven very godly men had become concerned about their home and country. After working all day, they would go home for dinner and dedicate the evening to their families. Then, around ten o’clock, when they were tired and ready to go to bed, they would walk out into the night and meet together in a lighted barn. There they would pray. For two long years, they went to the barn night after night.

“Oh, God,” they cried out, “do something for our islands.” One night in 1949, two years after they had begun meeting, one of the men gathered at the barn opened his Bible to Psalm 24 and began to read. “Who shall ascend into the hill of the Lord? Or who shall stand in his holy place? He that hath clean hands, and a pure heart” (Psalm 24:3–4 KJV).

Suddenly, the truth hit these men.

“Is it possible,” they asked, “that for two long years we’ve been praying night after night, sacrificially, for the Lord to move on our islands—and yet our hands are not clean? Is it possible our hearts are not pure?”

That night, they prayed the words from the book of James, “Therefore confess your sins to one other and pray for one another that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous person has great power as it is working” (5:16 ESV).

History records that these men left the barn that night and on the way to the village, they topped the hill and looked down the road. There in the ditch, they saw two town drunks on their knees, stumbling and mumbling. As the believers came closer, they realized the two men weren’t drunk at all. They were praying, under conviction of sin, asking God to forgive them.

At 1:30 a.m., lights in the village were on. The people had awakened from their sleep. Dozens of families, realizing their separation from God, had gotten up from their beds in consternation to try to find someone awake with whom they could talk. The people invited Duncan Campbell, the great evangelist from England, to visit their homeland. He came, preached, and great revival broke out—a revival that was born through prayer in a barn.