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Thoughts and Meditations - May Archive |
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Thoughts and Meditations
Personal comments made by David F. Reagan unless otherwise stated
May, 2005
May 27, 2005
Christ is Precious - On September 29,
1764, the day before his Blackfriars' probation sermon, William Romaine
had just returned to London after visiting his sister. Having preached
at Bradford, Powsey and other places: "Jesus has travelled with me, and
been with me of a truth. O what have I experienced of his love since I
left you! He has not only let me taste that he is precious, but he has
made me also live upon his grace. He lets me have nothing but love,
free, rich love; and my very physic is given by and tastes of his love,
and always works greater love in me to him: so that Jesus is become
exceeding dear to me."-from An Iron Pillar by Tim Shenton (p.13).
May 25, 2005
Prayer is to be answered - We have much fine writing and learned talk about the subjective benefits of prayer; how prayer secures its full measure of results, not by affecting God, but by affecting us, by becoming a training school for those who pray. We are taught by such teachers that the province of prayer is not to get, but to train. Prayer thus becomes a mere performance, a drill-sergeant, a school, in which patience, tranquility and dependence are taught. In this school, denial of prayer is the most valuable teacher. How well all this may look, and how reasonable soever it may seem, there is nothing of it in the Bible. The clear and oft-repeated language of the Bible is that prayer is to be answered by God; that God occupies the relation of a father to us, and that as Father He gives to us when we ask the things for which we ask. The best praying, therefore, is the praying that gets an answer. –from The Reality of Prayer by Edward M. Bounds (p.18-19).
The Uprooted Pew - In Revivalism and Separatism in New England, 1740-1800 by C. C. Goen (p.43-44), we read of certain Scotland separates who informed their pastor that they could not abide the "want of Gospel Preaching in the clear Demonstration of the Spirit and of Power." "Such men left the "cold, dry husks" of the "morality preachers" to seek sounder doctrine from those who proclaimed "free grace." They withdrew in the manner of the Connecticut layman who had his own way of expressing disapprobation of clerical error:
May 19, 2005
Prayer of Faith - In Behind the Ranges (p.97), author Mrs. Howard Taylor tells of a letter that J. O. Fraser sent to members of his prayer circle. “The Lord has taught me many things lately in regard to the spiritual life. In fact my own spiritual experience has undergone some upheavals during the past twelve months. Not the least important thing I have learned is in connection with the prayer of faith. I have come to see that in past years I have wasted much time over praying that was not effective prayer at all. Praying without faith is like trying to cut with a blunt knife – much labour expended to little purpose. For the work accomplished by labour in prayer depends on our faith: “according to your faith,” not labor, “be it unto you.”
I have been impressed lately with the thought… that people fail in praying the prayer of faith because they do not believe that God has answered, but only that He will answer their petitions. They rise from their knees feeling that God will answer some time or another, but not that He has answered already. This is not the faith that makes prayer effective. True faith glories in the present tense, and does not trouble itself about the future. God’s promises are in the present tense, and are quite secure enough to set our hearts at rest. Their full outworking is often in the future, but God’s word is as good as His bond and we need have no anxiety. Sometimes He gives at once what we ask, but more often He just gives His promise (Mark 11:24). Perhaps He is more glorified in this latter case, for it means that our faith is tried and strengthened.”
Wonder of a Book - “The paradox of the Bible is this: At the same time it is the most comforting and the most discomforting book in the world. It lifts up the lowly and casts down the proud. The Word succors the suffering as a mother hugs a weeping child; but it also slaps us in the face. It says those who are alive are dead, but those who are dead “in Christ” are alive. This Wonder Book repels men, yet it draws men. It offers men hope, yet it casts them into despair. It says men who have everything have nothing, yet those who have nothing (but Christ) have everything. It declares that men who say they “know” do not know, and the men who the world says know nothing can triumphantly say, “We know that we have passed from death unto life.”” –from Meat for Men by Leonard Ravenhill (p.89).
May 18, 2005
Focusing on the Sermon - “Some preachers concentrate exclusively on their sermons. Even the prior call to holiness is by-passed. Charles Spurgeon tells of the most extreme case, the man who “preached so well and lived so badly, that when he was in the pulpit everybody said he ought never to come out again, and when he was out of it, they all declared he never ought to enter it again”.” –from The Sacred Anointing: The Preaching of Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones by Tony Sargent (p.127)
Hero Worship – “We are tutored in these days to hero worship. In every walk of life we become “fans,” and that is not less true in the area of Christian activity. There are those in whose lives there is manifestly evident the mighty unction and power of God. They are transparently genuine. The hand of God is upon them. They speak with an authority that God honors. Lives are transformed. Those spiritually dead are raised to life again. Defeated, helpless, useless, barren Christians are transformed into useful vehicles of divine life. Wherever they go it seems that there is a touch of glory about their path, and we admire them and applaud-but we stand back as though this were to be the monopoly of the few, as though they have a special call upon the grace of God, and as though this were something not for the common run of men. We say in our hearts, “There is a bush that burns! I would like to be a bush like that, but I am just a heap of ashes!” And that is as far as it gets.
You discuss the burning bush with others! You admit that it is an amazing thing, and maybe you invite others to come and look at the phenomenon, but you have resigned yourself to be nothing more than what you are-a heap of ashes! It has never dawned on you that you could be anything different, so you have to make the best of a bad job in your own little desert! You resign yourself to sit on the balcony among the spectators, just to be average, a spiritual nonentity!” –from The Saving Life of Christ by Major W. Ian Thomas (p.65-66).
May 17, 2005
Christ at the Center – “A feature of Paul’s epistles is the way in which they immediately introduce the reader to the person of the Lord Jesus Christ. True preaching must have Christ at its centre. Spurgeon’s aim in handling any text was to make tracks to the Lord Jesus and his Cross. As all places in Britain can be linked into a route that enables the traveler to reach London, so the preacher will take every opportunity to move his argument from the circumference to the centre. He will bring the hearer to the Lord.” –from The Sacred Anointing: The Preaching of Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones by Tony Sargent (p.121).
Barren River Association - A most interesting statement is found in the "Articles of Faith of the Barren River Association". The articles were adopted in 1830. Article number 1 states "We believe that the scriptures of the Old and New Testaments, as translated by the authority of King James, to be the words of God, and is the only true rule of faith and practice." Apparently the King James only crowd has been around longer than the critics want to admit.
May 16, 2005
In Him We Live – Gerhard Tersteegen (1697-1779), the German pietist, wrote this beautiful hymn entitled “In Him We Live:”
In Him we live, In Him we move; Seek not Thy God afar; He is not prisoned in a height Above sun, moon, and star. But Thou through strange, dark lands hast strayed And wandered far from Him; And therefore He, O soul, to thee Is distant and is dim.
Lord, I was in the far-off land, I loved from Thee to stray, And when unto myself I came, A swine-herd far away, One moment—then the welcome sweet, The kiss, the Father’s home; Far-distant was the distance; To Thy bosom I am come.
God’s Delight in Our Prayers – “God’s requirement that we pray is a testimony of His love and compassion toward us. If He had only said, ‘Let Me hear in the time of trouble or need, and that is enough,’ He would have abundantly shown His concern and goodness. However, to show His pleasure in us, as a father does his affection to his child when he is sending him abroad, He gives us this charge: ‘Let me hear from you every day, though you have no particular business.’ He shows that ‘the prayer of the upright is his delight” (Proverbs 15:8); it is music to His ears. “Christ says to His dove, ‘Let me see thy countenance, let me hear thy voice; for sweet is thy voice, and thy countenance is comely’ (Song 2:14). And it is to the spouse, the church, that Christ speaks in the close of that song of songs: ‘Thou that dwellest in the gardens, the companions hearken to thy voice: cause me to hear it’ (Song 8:13). What a shame it is to us that God is more willing to be prayed to and more ready to hear prayer than we are to pray!” –from Experiencing God’s Presence by Matthew Henry (p.13).
May 15, 2005
Need or Call? – “I sometimes have an uneasy feeling about certain missionary conventions and the missionary challenge to which we have become accustomed. You hear one speaker after another committing you to the task, claiming your life for this mission field or for that. ‘The need,’ all too often it is said, ‘constitutes the call’! There are a thousand needs, but you are not committed to these. You are committed to Christ, and it is His business to commit you where He wants you. No man or woman on earth has the right to commit any member of the body of Jesus Christ to any task or to any field; that is to usurp the authority of the head of the body, Jesus Christ Himself. ‘But now hath God set the members every one of them in the body, as it hath pleased him’ (1Corinthians 12:18).” –from The Saving Life of Christ by Major W. Ian Thomas (p.62). Church Discipline – “For many years now we have been panicky about any kind of church discipline for fear of losing people. But we have lost them anyway. I wonder how many might have been saved if a little loving but firm discipline had been applied at the right time in the right way.” –from The Disciplined Life by Richard S. Taylor (p.78).
May 12, 2005
Affliction 101 – “Affliction is a school of virtue; it corrects levity, and interrupts the confidence of sinning.” –by Frances Atterbury (1662-1732). Praying by the Will of God – 1John 5:14 states, “And this is the confidence that we have in him, that, if we ask any thing according to his will, he heareth us.” “But how do I know that I am praying by the will of God? Every true attempt to pray is in response to the will of God. Bungling it may be and untutored by human teachers, but it is acceptable to God, because it is in obedience to His will. If I will give myself up to the inspiration of the Spirit of God, who commands me to pray, the details and the petitions of that praying will all fall into harmony with the will of Him who wills that I should pray.” –from The Reality of Prayer by Edward M. Bounds (p.12).
May 11, 2005
Resisting Discouragement – In Behind the Ranges (p.97), author Mrs. Howard Taylor tells the story of J. O. Fraser and his work as a missionary among the Lisu people in Southwest China. In 1914, Fraser suffered some serious setbacks to a work that looked promising. He wrote: “If such a thing had happened a year ago, it would have driven me down to depths of depression. I have given way to discouragement, dark discouragement, far too much in the past. Now I know rather better, and thoroughly agree with the assertion, ‘all discouragement is of the devil.’ Discouragement is to be resisted just like sin. To give way to the one is just as bad and weakens us as much as to give way to the other. God has wonderfully sustained me through this trial, and to Him be all the praise when I say that not for one instant has it disturbed my peace or radiant faith in the risen and ascended Lord… God has enabled me to trust Him more than ever before, to rejoice in Him more than ever before, and to believe more than ever before for a work of grace among the Lisu.” Benefit of Illustration – “There can be no doubt, that, for the purpose of teaching, one illustration is worth a thousand abstractions. They are the windows of speech; through them truth shines; and ordinary minds fail to perceive truth clearly, unless it is presented to them through this medium.” –by E. P. Hood from One Thousand Evangelistic Illustrations (p.15).
May 10, 2005
Faith in All Knowledge – “There is more of belief than reason in the world. All instructors and masters in sciences and arts, require, first a belief in their disciples, and a resignation of their understandings and wills to them. And it is the wisdom of God to require that of man, which his own reason makes him submit to another which is his fellow-creature. He, therefore, that quarrels with the condition of faith, must quarrel with all the world, since belief is the beginning of all knowledge; yea, and most of the knowledge in the world, may rather come under the title of belief, than of knowledge; for what we think we know this day, we may find from others such arguments as may stagger our knowledge, and make us doubt of that we thought ourselves certain of before…
“All knowledge in the world is only a belief, depending upon the testimony or arguings of others; for, indeed, it may be said of all men, as in Job 8:9, ‘We are but of yesterday, and know nothing.’ Since, therefore, belief is so universal a thing in the world, the wisdom of God requires that of us which every man must count reasonable, or render himself utterly ignorant of anything.” –from The Existence and Attributes of God: Volume 1 by Stephen Charnock who lived from 1628 to 1680 (p.572). Tough in the Right Places – “Be very zealous in God’s cause, and meek and yielding in your own. Be content to lie at the footstool, that the honor of God may have the throne. I recommend to you the great example of our blessed Saviour: He was a lamb in his own cause and a lion in His Father’s. He who could be scourged and not open his mouth could open it in holy indignation and scourge the buyers and sellers out of the temple. He submitted to be called ‘Beelzebub’ (impostor), and whatever opprobrious terms a rancorous heart could vomit upon Him. But in the cause of His God and Father, He could thunder and flash fire in the face of the most obdurate conscience.” – from Practical Godliness: The Ornament of All Religion by Vincent Alsop (p.45).
May 9, 2005
Life Through the Spirit – “Too much emphasis cannot be placed on the fact that, since God has proposed the impossible rule of life and provided the sufficient Spirit, the believer’s responsibility is thereby changed from being a struggle of the flesh to being a reliance on the Spirit. Grace thus introduces a new problem for the believer’s life which is wholly foreign to every aspect of the law. It is the problem of the adjustment of the heart to the holy presence of the Spirit, and of maintaining the unbroken attitude of dependence on the Spirit. The new principle of achievement consists in getting things accomplished in the believer’s life and service by trusting the power of Another, rather than by trusting the energy of the flesh.” –from Grace: The Glorious Theme by Lewis Sperry Chafer (p.207-208).
Knowledge Without Obedience – “Growing in notions of truth without answerable practice is another thing that indwelling sin makes use of to bring the souls of believers unto a decay. The apostle tells us that ‘knowledge puffeth up,’ 1Corinthians 8:1. If it be alone, not improved in practice, it swells men beyond a due proportion; like a man that hath a dropsy, we are not to expect that he hath strength to his bigness; like trees that are continually running up a head, which keeps them from bearing fruit. When once men have attained to this, that they can entertain and receive evangelical truths in a new and more glorious light or more clear discovery than formerly, or new manifestations of truth which they knew not before, and please themselves in so doing, without diligent endeavours to have the power of those truths and notions upon their hearts, and their souls made conformable unto them.” –from The Works of John Owen: Volume 6 – Temptation and Sin (p.301).
May 7, 2005
Only One Soul – “Chrysostom observeth… God hath given man two eyes, two ears, two hands, two feet, that the failing of one may be supplied by the help of the other…but one soul—if that miscarry, there is no remedy. Nebuchadnezzar lost his reason, and that was restored; David lost his wives, children, and goods, and yet they were recovered; nay, Lazarus lost his life, and was revived; but for the loss of the soul no power can recover it, no price can redeem, no pearls, no, not the whole world, can recompense its loss.” –from The Works of George Swinnock: Volume 1 (p.53).
Saturated with the Gospel – “Let us, dear brethren, try to get saturated with the gospel. I always find that I can preach best when I can manage to lie a-soak in my text. I like to get a text, and find out its meaning and bearings, and so on; and then, after I have bathed in it, I delight to lie down in it, and let it soak into me. It softens me, or hardens me, and does whatever it ought to do to me, and then I can talk about it. You need not to be very particular about the words and phrases if the spirit of the text has filled you; thoughts will leap out, and find raiment for themselves. Become saturated with spices, and you will smell of them; a sweet perfume will distil from you, and spread itself in every direction; --we call it unction.” –from An All-Round Ministry by C. H. Spurgeon (p.124-125).
May 6, 2005
Secret of All Ministry – “The true secret of all ministry is spiritual power. It is not man’s genius, or man’s intellect, or man’s energy; but simply the power of the Spirit of God. This was true in the days of Moses, and it is true now. ‘Not by might, nor by power, but by my spirit, saith the Lord of hosts’ (Zechariah 4:6). It is well for all ministers to bear this ever in mind. It will sustain the heart and give constant freshness to their ministry. A ministry which flows from abiding dependence upon the Holy Ghost can never become barren. If a man is drawing upon his own resources, he will soon run dry. It matters not what his powers may be, or how extensive his reading, or how vast his stores of information; if the Holy Ghost be not the spring and power of his ministry, it must, sooner or later, lose its freshness and its effectiveness.” –from Notes on the Pentateuch by C. H. Mackintosh (p.498).
An Awful Weapon in the Hand of God – Robert Murray McCheyne (1813-1843) gave this advice to preachers: “Get your texts from God—your thoughts, your words, from God…It is not great talents God blessed so much as great likeness to Jesus. A holy minister is an awful weapon in the hand of God. A word spoken by you when your conscience is clear, and your heart full of God’s Spirit, is worth ten thousand words spoken in unbelief and sin.” –from The Company of Preachers b David L. Larsen (p. 422).
May 5, 2005
Only One Soul – “Chrysostom observeth… God hath given man two eyes, two ears, two hands, two feet, that the failing of one may be supplied by the help of the other…but one soul—if that miscarry, there is no remedy. Nebuchadnzzar lost his reason, and that was restored; David lost his wives, children, and goods, and yet they were recovered; nay, Lazarus lost his life, and was revived; but for the loss of the soul no power can recover it, no price can redeem, no pearls, no, not the whole world, can recompense its loss.” –from The Works of George Swinnock: Volume 1 (p.53). Saturated with the Gospel – “Let us, dear brethren, try to get saturated with the gospel. I always find that I can preach best when I can manage to lie a-soak in my text. I like to get a text, and find out its meaning and bearings, and so on; and then, after I have bathed in it, I delight to lie down in it, and let it soak into me. It softens me, or hardens me, and does whatever it ought to do to me, and then I can talk about it. You need not to be very particular about the words and phrases if the spirit of the text has filled you; thoughts will leap out, and find raiment for themselves. Become saturated with spices, and you will smell of them; a sweet perfume will distil from you, and spread itself in every direction; --we call it unction.” –from An All-Round Ministry by C. H. Spurgeon (p.124-125).
May 4, 2005
Secret of All Ministry – “The true secret of all ministry is spiritual power. It is not man’s genius, or man’s intellect, or man’s energy; but simply the power of the Spirit of God. This was true in the days of Moses, and it is true now. ‘Not by might, nor by power, but by my spirit, saith the Lord of hosts’ (Zechariah 4:6). It is well for all ministers to bear this ever in mind. It will sustain the heart and give constant freshness to their ministry. A ministry which flows from abiding dependence upon the Holy Ghost can never become barren. If a man is drawing upon his own resources, he will soon run dry. It matters not what his powers may be, or how extensive his reading, or how vast his stores of information; if the Holy Ghost be not the spring and power of his ministry, it must, sooner or later, lose its freshness and its effectiveness.” –from Notes on the Pentateuch by C. H. Mackintosh (p.498).
An Awful Weapon in the Hand of God – Robert Murray McCheyne (1813-1843) gave this advice to preachers: “Get your texts from God—your thoughts, your words, from God…It is not great talents God blessed so much as great likeness to Jesus. A holy minister is an awful weapon in the hand of God. A word spoken by you when your conscience is clear, and your heart full of God’s Spirit, is worth ten thousand words spoken in unbelief and sin.” –from The Company of Preachers b David L. Larsen (p. 422). Memory Forgotten But Asleep With Jesus – “We shall sleep none the less sweetly, though none be talking about us over our heads. The world has a short memory, and, as the years go on the list that it has to remember grows so crowded that it is harder and harder to find room to write a new name on it, or to read the old. The letters on the tombstones are soon erased by the feet that tramp across the churchyard.” –from MacLaren’s 1024 Best Illustrations 9p.12-13).
May 3, 2005
Let Me Die Climbing – “On this side of eternity there is no finality to the Christian experience. Certainly ‘if we walk with the Lord in the light of His Word, what a glory He sheds on our way!’ in the light of Jesus’ glory and grace, the things of God become strangely clear. Though there are many adversaries, glorious peaks of revelation can be scaled by the ardent soul. But even so, heaven has not yet issued credit cards for grace. There is a price to be paid for spiritual growth. As long as we tread this terrestrial ball, none can say in matters of spiritual travel, ‘I have arrived.’ Our spiritual horizons are ever receding.” –from Meat for Men by Leonard Ravenhill (p.81).
Tis Time to Live – “The son of Crabbe gives, in the biography of the poet, a brief scene in the last days of Wesley: ‘At Lowestoft, one evening, all adjourned to a Dissenting chapel to hear the venerable John Wesley on one of the last of his peregrinations. He was exceedingly old and infirm, and was attended, almost supported, in the pulpit by a young minister on each side. The chapel was crowded to suffocation. In the course of the sermon he repeated, though with an application of his own, the lines from “Anacreon:”—
Oft am I by woman told, Poor Anacreon! Thou grow’st old: See, thine hairs are falling all; Poor Anacreon! How they fall!
Whether I grow old or no, By these signs I do not know; By this I need not to be told ‘Tis time TO LIVE, if I grow old! “My father was much struck by his reverend appearance and cheerful air, and the beautiful cadence he gave to these lines; and, after the service, he was introduced to the patriarch, who received him with benevolent politeness.” –from New Encyclopedia of Prose Illustrations (p.20).
May 2, 2005
Frontier Revival – The Baptist preacher John Taylor (1752-1835) tells of revival in a frontier outpost in present-day West Virginia in the spring of 1776: “We met about thirty or forty people and began about the time designed. I went forward. There was nothing visible while I was speaking. Redding [another preacher] dwelt on the awful subject of a Judgment to come. The first appearance was a young lady who began to weep and tremble, sitting by her grandmother. The old lady for some time strove to stop her. At length she began to tremble herself, as if the Judge was at the door. From thence the effect spread through the whole house with solemn groans and lamentations; till at length a woman the name of Clark dropt on her knees in the middle of the house with the greatest appearance of agonizing guilt. And perhaps she did not leave that position for the space of three hours. When Redding stopped speaking, the only remedy I had to prevent [my] hallowing [hollering] with all my might was to vent the tender feelings of my heart by exhortations and feeling invitations to those apparently broken-hearted creatures. Whether Mrs. Clark had ever concerned about her soul before, I disremember [forget]; but she obtained deliverance from her guilt before she left her knees. “We had quite forgotten all the meetings that were ahead of us, and our worship continued perhaps six hours in prayers, praise, and exhortations among the people. I do not recollect that we took any sustenance before we left the place, for the family where the meeting was [conducted] seemed two [too] much affected to think of anything but the salvation of their souls. I solemnly surveyed the house a little before we started, and it is a fact that the floor of it was as wet with the tears of the people as if water had been sprinkled all over it.” –from Baptists on the American Frontier by John Taylor (p.133-134).
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