Thoughts and Meditations

Personal comments made by David F. Reagan unless otherwise stated

April, 2005

April 30, 2005

Surrender to the Message – “The message and the messenger cannot be separated. The proclamation and the proclaimer intertwine. There is a sense in which true preaching requires the message to be incarnated in the man. The great violinist, Yehudi Menuhin, was once asked the reason behind his genius. He offered a one-word explanation—surrender. The violinist surrenders to the violin. Thus, the preacher surrenders to the message. The delivery becomes the only thing in the world for him at that time. This sort of preaching, though prepared in the head, has, on delivery, to flow from the heart.” –from The Sacred Anointing: The Preaching of Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones (p.121).

Our Limited Freedom – A. W. Tozer in The Attributes of God: Volume Two (p.151-152) illustrates man’s limited freedom of will. Suppose, he says, “a ship leaves New York City bound for Liverpool, England, with a thousand passengers on board. They’re going to take a nice, easy journey and enjoy the trip… After they leave New York and wave to the people on shore, the next stop is Liverpool. That’s it… They are out floating around on the ocean. What do they do? Is everyone bound with chains, with the captain walking around with a stick to keep them in line? No. Over here is a shuffleboard court, over there is a tennis court and a swimming pool. Over here you can look at pictures; over there you can listen to music. The passengers are perfectly free to roam around as they please on the deck of the ship. But they’re not free to change the course of the ship. It’s going to Liverpool no matter what they do… And yet, they’re perfectly free within the confines of that ship.

April 28, 2005

Girls Fit to Marry – John Mason Peck (1789-1858), the Baptist frontier preacher, grew up in Litchfield, Connecticut. In his journal, he explained how the young men of the time “had a method they shrewdly believed made them intelligent with regard to the girls of the neighborhood who were ‘fit to marry.’ Daughters were trained to follow the footsteps of the mother. The dairy, the poultry, and the garden afforded ample proofs of their industry and skill. Mothers were investigated. We are given to understand that young men who called at homes for a specific purpose became adroit in finding out the domestic habits and qualities of each mother under inspection before they committed themselves to the daughter… No girl raised on a farm was fit to marry, our diarist contended, until her bedding, clothing, window curtains, towels, table-cloths, and every article of domestic manufacture, were made with her own hands in quantities sufficient for respectable housekeeping.” –from Vanguard of the Caravans by Coe Hayne (p.9-10).

Repose in Thee – Here are some verses of a hymn by Gerhard Tersteegen (1697-1769), the Reformed Prussian hymnist. This one was translated into English by John Wesley.

            Thou hidden love of God, whose height,

              Whose depth unfathomed, no man knows,

            I see from far Thy beauteous light,

              And inly sigh for Thy repose;

            My heart is pained, nor can it be

              At rest till it finds rest in Thee.

            Tell me, O God! If aught there be

              Of self, that wills not Thy control;

            Reveal whate’er impurity

              May still be lurking in my soul!

            To reach Thy rest and share Thy throne,

              Mine eye must look to Thee alone.

            Ah no! I would not backward turn;

              Thine wholly, Thine alone I am!

            Thrice happy he, who views with scorn

              Earth’s toys, for Thee his constant flame!

            O keep, that I may never move,

              From the blest footsteps of Thy love!

            Each moment draw from earth away,

              My heart, that lowly waits Thy call;

            Speak to my inmost soul, and say,

              “I am thy Love, thy God, thy All!”

            To feel Thy power, to hear Thy voice,

              To taste Thy love, be all my choice.

April 27, 2005

Not a Day Without Prayer – Psalm 5:3 states, “My voice shalt thou hear in the morning, O LORD; in the morning will I direct my prayer unto thee, and will look up.” The Bible commentator Matthew Henry wrote a book called Experiencing God’s Presence. In it (p.11), he says: “Although Psalm 5:3 may be taken as a promise that God will hear our prayers, it is also to be taken as David’s promising God a constant attendance upon Him in the way He has appointed. ‘My voice shalt thou hear’; that is, I will speak to You. Because You have inclined Your ear to me many a time, therefore I have taken up a resolution to call on You at all times, even to the end of my time. Not a day will pass without Your hearing from me.”

April 26, 2005

Songs in the Heart – In the early 1700’s, many towns and villages in Germany experienced a spiritual awakening that brought the people closer to God. One of the visible results of the awakening was the part singing played in the lives of the people. “Professor Melchior tells us of Mulheim, ‘If songs were heard in the workshops or the fields they were not profane songs, but sacred—either the Psalms of David, or hymns from the hymnbooks… I always know, when I have been traveling about, that I am getting back to Mulheim…for I hear the singing everywhere.’

“It has been truly said, that from the time that the people of God came out of the house of bondage from the land of Egypt, every time of deliverance and of refreshing has been marked by songs of praise. When the light broke in upon the German convents of the Middle Ages, when Huss and Luther preached the glad tidings from Heaven, when the Huguenots were aroused in the Cevennes to make their glorious stand for the Gospel of Christ, when the Methodists were sent forth through the dead towns and villages of England, ‘then,’ as Goebel writes, ‘did the life and freshness of Christian life break forth in glorious songs and hymns, which told the wonders of that heavenly life in clear and lovely music.’ ” –from Recluse in Demand: Gerhard Tersteegen (p.7-8).

April 21, 2005

Son of Thunder – Evangelist Gilbert Tennent (1703-1764), though little known today, powerfully influenced the First Great Awakening in America. The more famous George Whitefield said of the preaching of Tennent: “I never before heard such a searching sermon. He convinced me more and more that we can preach the Gospel of Christ no further than we have experienced the power of it in our own hearts. Being deeply convicted of sin, by God’s Holy Spirit, at his first conversion, he has learned experimentally to dissect the heart of a natural man. Hypocrites must either soon be converted or enraged at his preaching. He is a son of thunder, and does not fear the faces of men.” –from Gilbert Tennent, Son of Thunder by Milton J. Coalter, Jr.

April 20, 2005

Seeking Recognition – “Even in our most devoted service, what a seeking there is, perhaps unconsciously, to be something in the estimation of others: some secret desire, some undetected wish, even by our very service to be greater here. The very gifts of God and the power of His Spirit are sought the better to give us a place in this world. Thus are our very graces used to obtain for us glory, not of God, but of those around us. Surely this is one of the reasons why God can trust us with so little, for with His gifts we build up our own name, instead of His name. But how unlike all this to our Master; yea, how unlike even to His apostles! ‘Neither of men,’ says Paul, ‘sought we glory, neither of you, nor yet of others” (1Thessalonians 2:16). This is our calling, not only to be nothing in the world, but to be willing to be nothing even among our brethren; to take the nearest place to Him who has indeed taken the lowest.” –from The Law of the Offerings by Andrew Jukes (p.96-97).

Divine and Human in Christ – “Athanasius makes the burning bush to be a type of Christ’s incarnation (Exodus 3:2): the fire signifying the Divine nature, and the bush the human. The bush is a branch springing up from the earth, and the fire descends from heaven; as the bush was united to the fire, yet was not hurt by the flame, nor converted into fire, there remained a difference between the bush and the fire, yet the properties of the fire shined in the bush, so that the whole bush seemed to be on fire. So in the incarnation of Christ, the human nature is not swallowed up by the Divine, not changed into it, nor confounded with it, but so united, that the properties of both remain firm: two are so become one, that they remain two still: one person in two natures, containing the glorious perfections of the Divine, and the weaknesses of the human. The fullness of the Deity dwells bodily in Christ (Colossians 2:9). –from The Existence and Attributes of God: Volume 1 by Stephen Charnock (p.562).

April 19, 2005

Save the Furniture; Lose the Child – “A woman was once very busy in fetching out of her burning house her pictures and her choicest pieces of furniture. She had worked a long while, toiling hard to save her little treasures; when, on a sudden, it came to her mind that one of her children was missing. The child had been left in the burning house; and when the mother rushed back again, that chamber had long ago been consumed, and the child had, doubtless, perished. Then did she wring her hands, and bitterly bewail her folly. She seemed to curse every bit of furniture that she had saved, and wished that she had not saved it, because, by looking after such poor stuff, she had lost her child.” So many go through life saving that which does not matter at the expense of the true treasures. –from An All-Round Ministry by C. H. Spurgeon (p.115-116).

Three Kinds of Persecutors – In John Bunyan’s book, The Holy War, reference is made to the persecution of true believers by the forces of the devil, who is called Diabolus. “The Bloodmen, from whom Diabolus raises 15,000 men for his second army, signify persecution generally; and since persecution is Antichristian, Giant Pope is one of their captains. But Bunyan was careful to point out that persecutors are of three types. ‘One sort of them…did ignorantly what they did.’ After defeat, those who ask for mercy are pardoned. ‘Another sort…did superstitiously what they did,’ They sound more like papists; the few who ‘could be brought to see their evil…and asked mercy receive it. ‘The third sort…did what they did out of spite and implacableness.’ They are bound over for trial, being incorrigible.” –from A Tinker and a Poor Man by Christopher Hill (p.247).

April 18, 2005

Forgotten Preacher of Germany – “Ernest Christoph Hochmann von Hochenau (1600-1721) was a prince among evangelists in the early period of pietism… Hochmann von Hochenau became the mightiest preacher of repentance at the turn of the century, a tremendous witness of Jesus Christ, full of zeal, martyr spirit, and compassion for souls. Largely forgotten by posterity, abused for Jesus’ sake, often imprisoned and branded as a heretic and fanatic, he was a God-blessed witness of the Gospel, through which many of his contemporaries came to know Jesus Christ as Saviour…

“For twenty-two years (1699-1721), von Hochenau preached wherever there was opportunity – in homes, schools, churches, or out in the open. In many places there were conversions… Although he suffered much for Christ’s sake, was arrested thirty times, and spent many years in prison, von Hochenau wrote to a friend: ‘If I had a thousand lives, I should gladly use them all for my Saviour.’… Central to von Hochenau’s message were the boundless grace and love of God and the call to repentance. He proclaimed the whole Christ – Christ for us, and Christ in us.” –from History of Evangelism by Paulus Scharpff (p.36-37).

Lancelot Andrewes – He was one of the chief translators and moving forces behind the King James Bible of 1611 and he was a world of contradictions. Lancelot Andrewes was one of the most powerful men in England but he spent five hours each morning in private devotions, mostly in prayer. “Everybody reported on his serenity, the sense of grace that hovered around him. But alone every day he acknowledged little but his wickedness and his weakness. The man was a library, the repository of sixteen centuries of Christian culture, he could speak fifteen modern languages and six ancient, but the heart and bulk of his existence was his sense of himself as a worm…

“How does such humility sit alongside such grandeur? It is a yoking together of opposites which seems nearly impossible to the modern mind. People like Lancelot Andrewes no longer exist. But the presence in one man of what seem to be such divergent qualities is precisely the key to the age. It is because people like Lancelot Andrewes flourished in the first decade of the seventeenth century – and do not now – that the greatest translation of the bible could be made then, and cannot now.” –from God’s Secretaries: The making of the King James Bible by Adam Nicolson (p.32-33).

April 15, 2005

Afflictions and Consolations – “Afflictive sorrows and exalting comforts divide our whole lives between them, yet both of them are capable of glorifying God. James 5:13: ‘If any man be afflicted, let him pray.’ Prayer under affliction witnesses that we believe our God to be good and gracious in it; that He can support us under it, can do us much good by it, and deliver us from it. ‘But if any be cheerful, let him sing psalms.’ Since God has divided our lives between affliction and consolations, let us divide them between prayer and praise.” –from Practical Godliness: The Ornament of All Religion by Vincent Alsop (p.36).

Art Thou Born Again? – John Berridge (1716-1793) was well-known as an evangelical English preacher. “His preaching had a ‘rustic homeliness.’ His main points were boldly underlined. Tall and thin in appearance, he had an iron constitution, but at the end he was alone, blind, and deaf. Yet, Berridge testified, ‘Lord, if I have thy presence and love, that sufficeth.’…

April 13, 2005

Pampered Children – “A mother arose very early every morning in order to have sufficient time to prepare seven different breakfasts for her husband, son, and five daughters, all of whom had personal tastes which must be pleased. The son and father were off to work first; then when the five feminine meals were ready, the harried mother would call her daughters, who were still lounging in bed.

“Years passed. The old mother, now a widow, found it necessary to live with her children, all of them married. But they didn’t want her. Bickering over whose turn it was next, they passed her from one to the other. Finally they rationalized their consciences into putting her into an old people’s home, where she was left to vegetate, with an occasional hurried visit. She didn’t live long. It was claimed that she died of a broken heart.

“She had devoted herself unstintingly to her children, because she had so pathetically wanted to be loved and appreciated. But unlimited pampering was the wrong method, as it dried up the springs of gratitude, and staunched the flow of natural affection.” –from The Disciplined Life by Richard S. Taylor (p.71-72).

April 12, 2005

Magnifying Trifles – “Affection, like melancholy, magnifies trifles; but the magnifying of the one is like looking through a telescope at heavenly objects; that of the other, like enlarging monsters with a microscope.” –by Leigh Hunt (1784-1859).

Aim High – “In all regions of life a wise classification of men arranges them to their aims, rather than their achievements. The visionary who attempts something high and accomplishes scarcely anything of it, if often a far nobler man, and his poor, broken, foiled, resultless life, far more perfect than his who aims at marks on the low levels and hits them all. Such lives as these, full of yearning and aspiration, though it be for the most part vain, are

            “Like the young moon with a ragged edge

             E’en in its imperfection beautiful.”

--from MacLaren’s 1024 Best Illustrations (p.11).

April 9, 2005

Call for Prayer Soldiers – “One great risk in praying is that sometimes God takes us at our word. Then will come the test. I am amazed that men, who at the call of their nation lovingly kiss their wives and leave home possibly for years, shrink back at the call of Christ. For natural warfare men will leave home for years, but to fight against principalities and powers, they cannot leave home one night a week for the church prayer meeting!” –from Meat for Men by Leonard Ravenhill (p.78).

Gospel Preaching – “It is astonishing, after all the preaching that there has been in England, how little the gospel is understood by the mass of men. They are still children, and have need to be told the A B C of the gospel of Christ. Keep most to those themes, brethren, which are most soul-saving, --to those which are practically useful to the people. Keep close to the cross of Christ. Point continually to the atoning sacrifice, and to the doctrine of justification by faith, which, when preached aright, are never preached without the Divine approbation. Every truth is important, let it have its due place; but do not suffer any secondary truth to take you away from the first.” –from An All-Round Ministry by C. H. Spurgeon (pl.115).

Presbyterian Immersion – In 1693, the Presbyterian Joseph Boyse from Ireland published Sacramental Hymns. “It contains forty-one pieces by Boyse, one by George Herbert, and two by Simon Patrick; and in the baptismal hymn immersion is the only mode recognized.” This and other evidence points to the fact that earlier Presbyterians (Anglicans too) recognized immersion as the proper mode of baptism. –from The English Hymn by Louis F. Benson (p.87).

April 8, 2005

Every Text Its Just Meaning – “My endeavor is to bring out of the Scriptures what is true and not to trust in what I think may be there. I have a great jealousy on this head, never to speak more or less than I believe to the mind of the Spirit in the passage which I am expounding… I love the simplicity of the Scriptures and I seek to receive and inculcate every truth precisely in the way it is set forth in the sacred volume… Reading one’s own ideas into Scripture is not preaching God’s truth.” –by Charles Simeon from The Company of Preachers by David L. Larsen (p.402).

April 7, 2005

Law of the Tramp Dog – “A stray spaniel once pretended to ‘adopt’ us. He was a fine, healthy, friendly specimen. After trying without success to find an owner, we designated ourselves as such by buying a dog license, a fine collar, and a leash. Legally he was ours. He was openly identified as ours—the license on the collar proclaimed the fact. But we soon learned that only the continued restraint of the leash would prevent his compulsive wanderings. After several days of such restraint, during which time we would feed him well and pet him and play with him, we would be confident that he was now cured of his wanderlust and would stay home. But the moment he was free from ‘law,’ off he would bound down the street to play with another dog, completely deaf to our commanding and coaxing. Only hunger would bring him home. Finally, even that failed, and he went for good, license and all. The law had chained him but had not changed him. In fact the law had more quickly and decisively revealed what he really was at heart—a tramp dog.” –from The Disciplined Life by Richard W. Taylor.

Memories of Past Sins – “Where suggestion becomes desire, desire becomes intent, and the intent becomes an act—the act becomes memory and that memory is hung like a picture upon the wall of your imagination, in the picture gallery of your mind. When later in your thoughts you wander through the picture gallery, you see the memory on the wall, and this memory itself becomes a suggestion, and this suggestion becomes desire, and this desire may become intent, and if this intent becomes an act, you will then have hanging on the wall two memories, and the process can begin all over again with double force!

“Do you see the principle? That is why every time you commit sin, you make it easier to commit another sin, because every time you commit sin, you are making ‘an altar to sin’ (Hosea 8:11a). Every sinful memory stimulates sinful desire, encourages sinful intent, and another sinful act which will become yet another sinful memory, until your mind gets polluted… [I]f you do not walk in the power of God the Holy Spirit, if your life is not abandoned to the indwelling sovereignty of Jesus Christ, then all the promises of victory in the Bible, all the promises of power by the Holy Spirit and of divine vocation will simply be texts, printed on so much paper—impersonal and irrelevant! Your mind will be filled only with memories of that which has been true to your experience in the bitterness of defeat.” –from The Saving Life of Christ by Major W. Ian Thomas (p.55-56).

April 6, 2005

Why Are They Not Better? – In the early 1800’s, the chief of the Cherokee Indians who were located in southeastern Tennessee was Yonaguska (Drowning Bear). “Yonaguska, six-foot-three, handsome, a good orator and a conservative who clung to the religion of his ancestors, was an outstanding chief. When someone brought a copy of the book of Matthew to read to Yonaguska’s people, he asked that it be read to him first. Having heard it, he said dryly, ‘Well, it seems to be a good book. Strange that the white people are not better, after having had it so long.’ ” –from Valley So Wild  by Alberta and Carson Brewer (p.66).

April 5, 2005

Horse Stealing – Baptist pioneer preacher John Taylor tells of an incident that occurred close to the year 1775. “A fine-looking, young man the name of Smith, of good family, was baptized by myself here. It was thought when baptized that he would soon make a preacher but, by getting into bad company and following on, was since hanged at Richmond, in Virginia, for the sin of horse stealing, though [he] gave strong evidence (while in prison and at the place of execution) that he was a man of grace. Poor man! What is he? [What is] even good Hezekiah when left to himself?” –from Baptists on the American Frontier edited by Chester Raymond Young (p.124).

Convicted by an Earthquake – “Jesse Lee Hickman was of German extraction, and was born of Methodist parents, in Soulsbury, N.C., in 1786. His parents emigrated to Kentucky the same year, and settled in Bourbon County… In 1810 a series of earthquakes commenced in the Mississippi Valley frequently occurred with great violence. Many people regarded the fearful phenomena as the threatenings of Divine vengeance against them, for their great wickedness. Hickman was among the sinners who was deeply convicted of his sins. Some of his friends feared he would die of remorse. But after several months, he obtained a joyous hope in Christ and was baptized into the fellowship of Bethlehem Church in Allen County, in 1811, by Zechariah Emerson. After a few months, he was licensed to exercise his gift, and, within a year or two, was ordained to the ministry.” He served as pastor of several Baptist churches in Kentucky before he died on March 23, 1850. –from Pioneer Baptist Church Records of South-Central Kentucky by Cawthorn and Warnell (p.156-157).

April 4, 2005

Haystack Prayer Meeting – In the summer of 1806 at Williams College in Connecticut, a revival of hearts in some of the students led to weekly prayer meetings. “One hot, sultry Saturday, the overcast sky looked threatening and only five men appeared: three freshmen—[Samuel J.] Mills, James Richards, and Harvey Loomis, and two sophomores—Francis L. Robbins and Byram Green. Meeting in the grove, their conversation turned upon Asia, which they had been studying in Jedidiah Morse’s geography textbook. They were fascinated by the East India Company’s work in opening up that closed and unknown continent. As they discussed the immorality, ignorance, and misery of those unevangelized lands, Mills proposed sending the gospel to light the darkness. He became intense, enthusing, ‘We can do it, if we will!’ Each agreed except Harvey Loomis, who felt a venture into such lands futile and dangerous…

“The dark clouds continued to roll, accompanied by thunder and lightening. Mills suggested that they seek shelter under a haystack in the meadow, continuing their discussion and prayer. Crouching under the rick’s overhang, each except Loomis engaged in prayer, Mills praying last and in his exuberance petitioning the Lord to ‘strike down the arm, with the red artillery of heaven, that shall be raised against a herald of the cross.’ Then they sang the last stanza of an Isaac Watts hymn:

            Let all the heathen writers join

              To form one perfect book;

            Great God, if once compared with thine

              How mean their writings look!”

This haystack revival began the push in America to reach out to the world through missionary work. Soon, Luther Rice would join the group. In a few years, Luther Rice and Adoniram Judson would be heading toward Burma. Both would soon be Baptists and both would make missionary history in their own ways. –from Luther Rice: Believer in Tomorrow by Evelyn Wingo Thompson (p.35).

George Whitefield as Doctor Squintum – The great English evangelist George Whitefield (1714-1770) had a defect in his appearance that gave ammunition to his enemies. “Due to neglect on the part of his nurse at a time when he had the measles, he contracted a permanent misfocus of his eyes. This does not seem to have been serious enough to be termed cross-eyes. But during the days of his ministry it afforded his detractors a point of ridicule, and he was long referred to among the riff-raff of London as ‘Doctor Squintum’.” –from George Whitefield: Volume 1 by Arnold Dallimore (p.45-46).

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