Don Green Devotion on Prayer

 From Don Green:

Christian friends, what follows from Martin Luther is a critical principle to grasp for your spiritual growth.

The power of prayer is not found in your flawed devotion, effort, eloquence, or many words.

Christ alone is the basis upon which our prayers are heard.

That frees you to speak plainly and directly in the presence of God.

Better to pray five words humbly trusting in the name of Christ than to follow the human rules of 5000 prayer conferences.

And now from Luther. Long live biblical truth. Long live the Reformation:

"Some fail disastrously in prayer. They nullify it, for they utter it merely with their lips and not with their hearts. They will not believe that they are heard until they imagine that they have prayed well and worthily. Thus they build on themselves.

"A prayer is not good because of its length, devoutness, sweetness, or its plea for temporal or eternal goods. Not your zeal, but [Christ and] God's Word render your prayer good.

"Only that prayer is acceptable which breathes a firm confidence and trust that it will be heard because of the reliable pledge and promise of God [found in Scripture alone]."

~ Martin Luther

"And when you are praying, do not use meaningless repetition as the Gentiles do, for they suppose that they will be heard for their many words. So do not be like them; for your Father knows what you need before you ask Him” (Matthew 6:7-8).

The Church is an Anvil

 The triumph of their enemies has never been entire and complete. They have had their "hour," but they have had no more. After the persecution about Stephen, came the conversion of Paul. After the martyrdom of John Huss, came the German Reformation. After the Marian persecution, came the establishment of English Protestantism.-- J.C. Ryle

It belongs to the church of God to receive blows rather than to inflict them -- but, she is an anvil that has worn out many hammers. -- Theodore Beza

Weak as this true Church may appear to the eye of man, it is an anvil which has broken many a hammer in times past, and perhaps will break many more before the end. -- J.C. Ryle

The anvil broke the hammer by bearing all the blows that the hammer could place upon it. The patience of the saints was stronger than the cruelty of tyrants.-- Charles Spurgeon

When you cease from labor, fill up your time in reading, meditation, and prayer: and while your hands are laboring, let your heart be employed, as much as possible, in divine thoughts. -- David Brainerd

Why, these are sham Christians; they are not genuine Christians; they are of the world, and do the things of the world. We may conclude that their hearts and natures are worldly, for if they were spiritual they would love spiritual things, and their hearts would be engaged in spiritual exercises.-- Charles Spurgeon

WE HAVE THAT KIND OF ACCESS.

The only person who dares wake up a king at 3:00 AM for a glass of water is a child. We have that kind of access.

A Few Yards in that Bottomless Pit

When you have felt the wickedness of your own heart to the uttermost


(Robert Murray McCheyne, 1813-1843) "The Lord saw how great man's wickedness on the earth had become, and that every inclination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil all the time."

 Genesis 6:5 "If God places no trust in His holy ones, if even the heavens are not pure in His eyes--how much less man, who is vile and corrupt, who drinks up evil like water!" Job 15:15-16 "The human heart is the most deceitful of all things, and desperately wicked. Who really knows how bad it is?" Jeremiah 17:9


Learn to be humbled far more than you have ever been. None of you has ever been sufficiently humbled under a sense of sin, for the reason that none of you has ever fully seen the plague of your own heart.

There are chambers in your heart you have never yet seen into; there are caves in that ocean you have never fathomed; there are fountains of bitterness you have never tasted.

 When you have felt the wickedness of your own heart to the uttermost, then lie down under this solemn truth: that you have only seen a few yards into a pit that is bottomless; that you carry about with you a slumbering volcano, a heart whose wickedness you do not and cannot know.

 John Berridge:

O heart, heart! You are a mass of foolishness and absurdities--the vainest, foolishest, craftiest, wickedest thing in the world. Yet the Lord Jesus asks me for this heart--woos me for it--died to win it! O wonderful love! Adorable condescension!

 Charles Spurgeon:

There is no wolf or lion or serpent which is so brutish as that beast, man! Men will never value a Redeemer so well as when they have a very clear consciousness of the ruin from which He has redeemed them. Look to the cross, and hate your sin--for sin nailed your Well-Beloved to the tree!

Entertaining is a Clever Trick of Satan

“The devil has seldom done a cleverer thing than hinting to the church that part of their mission is to provide entertainment for the people, with a view to winning them.” C.H. Spurgeon

Compilation

 But my sin was this, that I looked for pleasure, beauty, and truth not in God but in myself and other creatures, and the search led me instead to pain, confusion, and error. -- Augustine

The strength of the good soldier of Jesus Christ appears in nothing more than in steadfastly maintaining the holy calm, meekness, sweetness, and benevolence of his mind, amidst all the storms, injuries, strange behavior, and surprising acts and events of this evil and unreasonable world.-- Jonathan Edwards

Whatever be the kind of tribulation with which we are afflicted, we should always consider the end of it to be, that we may be trained to despise the present, and thereby stimulated to aspire to the future life.-- John Calvin

Surely we are not sufficiently aware of the infinite tenderness of Jesus!-- Charles Spurgeon

The faith of another strengthens ours. The courage of another shames us out of cowardice. The example set by another can double our strength. We are disposed to society both in matters of life and belief.-- Abraham Kuyper

What may happen from our doing right, we have nothing to do with; we are to do right, and take the consequences cheerfully.

—Charles Spurgeon

If a deed done for Christ should bring you into disesteem, and threaten to deprive you of usefulness, do it none the less. I count my own character, popularity, and usefulness to be as the small dust of the balance compared with fidelity to the Lord Jesus.

—Charles Spurgeon

If an act of sin would increase my usefulness tenfold, I have no right to do it; and if an act of righteousness would appear likely to destroy all my apparent usefulness, I am yet to do it.

—Charles Spurgeon

Indifference as to truth and error, good and evil, may be called charity and meekness, but it is not so; and it is displeasing to Christ.

—Matthew Henry

He who is not angry at transgression becomes a partaker in it. Sin is a loathsome and hateful thing, and no renewed heart can patiently endure it.—Charles Spurgeon

Make peace wherever you can; scatter peace with both your hands. Let this be the very air you breathe; let nothing drop from your lip but words of healing, words of tenderness, words which shall abate the strife and noise of this poor distracted world. —Charles Spurgeon

How do you know it is better to escape some troubles than to bear them? Not one of them has befallen you by chance. May you not infer the trial is righteous because of its very Author? Is not His work perfect?...He does all things well. Does He detain you in distress because He does not love you? Yea, He loved you with an everlasting love, and withheld not His own Son from you...Blessed are all they that wait for Him; for it is good for a man not only to hope, but quietly wait for the salvation of the Lord.--William Jay