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July 18 - July 27, 2019
people should rather endure to be trod upon than to fall into debate and discord one with another.”
If only we love one another and pray for one another, there will be success. God will not disappoint us.
It is one of the most humiliating things in the present day to see how God’s family is divided up.
Nothing will silence unbelievers and those opposed to Christianity as quickly as Christians everywhere being united.
The Holy Spirit is grieved, and there is little power where there is no unity.
Thomas Brooks said: As a painted fire is no fire, a dead man no man, so a cold prayer is no prayer. In a painted fire there is no heat, in a dead man there is no life; so in a cold prayer there is no omnipotency, no devotion, no blessing. Cold prayers are as arrows without heads, as swords without edges, as birds without wings; they pierce not, they cut not, they fly not up to heaven. Cold prayers do always freeze before they get to heaven. Oh that Christians would chide themselves out of their cold prayers, and chide themselves into a better and warmer frame of spirit, when they make their
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“The object in believing is God, and Christ as Mediator. We must have both to found our faith upon. We cannot believe in God, except we believe in Christ. For God must be satisfied by God and by him that is God must that satisfaction be applied, the Spirit of God, by working faith in the heart, and for raising it up when it is dejected.”
John Owen said, “There is nothing that can lie in the way of the accomplishment of any of God’s promises, but it is conquerable by faith.”
Bishop John Charles Ryle has described Christ’s intercession as the ground and sureness of our faith with this illustration. “The bank note without a signature at the bottom is nothing but a worthless piece of paper. The stroke of a pen confers on it all its value. The prayer of a poor child of Adam is a feeble thing in itself, but once endorsed by the hand of the Lord Jesus, it avails much.” [7]
Some people think God does not like to be troubled with our constant coming and asking. The only way to trouble God is not to come at all.
Nothing is more pleasing to our Father in heaven than direct, unrelenting, and persevering prayer.
All true prayer must be offered in full submission to God. After we have made our requests known to him, our language should be, “Thy will be done.” A thousand times over, I would rather have God’s will be done than my own.
I am afraid sometimes we think of prayer in an altogether opposite way, as if by praying we persuaded or influenced our Father in heaven to do whatever comes into our own minds, and whatever would accomplish our foolish, weak-sighted purposes. I am quite convinced that God knows more about what is best for me and for the world than I can possibly know, and even though it were in my power to say, “My will be done,” I would rather say to him, “Thy will be done.”
Rutherford said, “Who knows the truth of grace without a trial? Oh, how little gets Christ of us, but that which he wins (to speak so) with much toil and pains! And how soon would faith freeze without a cross! How many dumb crosses have been laid upon my back, that had never a tongue to speak the sweetness of Christ, as this has!”
“I desire now to make no more pleas with Christ,” Rutherford said. “Verily he has not put me to a loss by what I suffer; he owes me nothing; for in my bonds how sweet and comfortable have the thoughts of him been to me, wherein I find a sufficient recompense of reward! How blind are my adversaries who sent me to a banqueting house, to a house of wine, to the lovely feasts of my lovely Lord Jesus, and not to a prison, or place of exile!”
Let our prayers, then, be for Christ’s sake. If we want our sons and daughters converted, let’s pray that it be done for Christ’s sake. If that is the motive, our prayers will be answered. If God gave up Christ for the world, is there anything he won’t give us? If he gave Christ to the murderers and blasphemers, and the rebels of a world lying in wickedness and sin, what wouldn’t he give to those who go to him for Christ’s sake? Let our prayer be that God may advance his work, not for our glory – not for our sake – but for the sake of his beloved Son whom he has sent.
Let’s remember that when we pray we ought to expect an answer. Let’s be looking for it.
Moody once said, “Some day you will read in the papers that D. L. Moody, of East Northfield, is dead. Don’t you believe a word of it! At that moment I shall be more alive than I am now. I shall have gone up higher, that is all – out of this old clay tenement into a house that is immortal; a body that death cannot touch, that sin cannot taint, a body fashioned like unto His glorious body. I was born of the flesh in 1837. I was born of the Spirit in 1856. That which is born of the flesh may die. That which is born of the Spirit will live forever.”
