Thoughts and Meditations

Personal comments made by David F. Reagan unless otherwise stated

August, 2005

August 31, 2005

Grace in the Presence of God – “God said to the prophet Haggai, ‘According to the word that I covenanted with you when ye came out of Egypt, so my spirit remaineth among you: fear ye not’ (Haggai 2:5). God might well have said to His people of old, ‘For forty years you grieved my Spirit, and yet I never left you! I never left you!’ The daily manna tells us of a Holy Spirit who seals us until the day of redemption. You may grieve Him, you may quench Him, and if you do, He will let you know it—for ‘whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth’ (Hebrews 12:6a)—but He will never leave you! This is the amazing grace of God!” –from The Saving Life of Christ by Major W. Ian Thomas (p.77-78).

Topics: Presence of God, Sealing of the Spirit, Grace

Need to Evangelize the Indians – In 1723, Solomon Stoddard, the grandfather of the famous Jonathan Edwards, published a book called Question Whether God is not Angry with the Country for Doing so Little Towards the Conversion of the Indians? “Stoddard’s tract appeared near the onset of Father Rale’s War and included the point that a mission would be a strategic counter to the Jesuits… Yet Stoddard’s realism on that score was accompanied by a sharp critique of typical English attitudes toward the Indians. Such attitudes, he proposed, might be the chief reason why God had been punishing the country for ‘these three score years.’

“True the Indians might be of ‘a very brutish and sottish spirit.’ Nonetheless, ‘they are of mankind, and so subjects of compassion.’ The colonists should remember that the British were no better. ‘Our fore-fathers…were given up unto as brutish a service of the Devil, as any nation under the sun’ until missionaries had ‘pitied them and brought the Gospel among them.’ A few colonists had attempted Indian missions, but the colony as a whole had done practically nothing. ‘Many men,’ Stoddard railed, ‘have been more careful to make a booty of them, than to give them the practice of religion.’ ” –from Jonathan Edwards: A Life by George M. Marsden (p.117-118). See 1Corinthians 15:34.

August 30, 2005

Called to Preach the Gospel – Isaac Backus, who would become an important American Baptist preacher of Revolutionary times, “heard God’s call on 27 September 1746, when he was praying alone in the woods, and though he protested that he was slow of speech and bashful, nevertheless God answered, ‘Cannot he who formed a man’s mouth make him to speak?’ [see Exodus 4:10-12] It was a basic premise of the ‘new light’ shed by God during the Awakening that true ministers of the Gospel were called to that work by the influence of the Holy Spirit, and external qualifications, such as a college education or a formal ordination by other ministers, were irrelevant. Separates judged that too many ministers preaching in the Standing churches were uninspired and unconverted, hence uncalled.

“God’s summoning of Backus brought him into the system of itinerant revival preachers through which the Separate movement challenged the established order in New England… Most of them were considered illiterate because they were unable to read Greek and Latin. Historians today find in this massive unleashing of an itinerant, vernacular, oral ministry one of the major democratizing forces of the pre-Revolutionary era. Through unlearned, earnest men like Backus a new spirit of religious egalitarianism spread through the American colonies, creating a mass movement that was a prelude to the enthusiasm for independence that united the colonies after 1765. The Separate movement opened the ranks of the ministry to ‘new men’ who spoke their feelings from the heart, rather than the head, to listeners who had never heard the Gospel preached so directly, so forcefully, and in their own language—the language of the common people.” –from The Diary of Isaac Backus: Volume One (p.xviii-xix) edited by William G. McLoughlin.

Topics: Call to Preach, Isaac Backus, Education, Revolutionary War, New Lights

Happiness Not a Spiritual Goal – “We must learn “the principle that Christlikeness is the goal of life, not happiness. The current philosophy around us is that all is well if only people are happy. The great aim of education, science, and government is to give the most temporal happiness to the most people. And even as Christians we have been infected by the spirit of the age so that we bargain with God for happiness. If cross-bearing is Christ’s condition of discipleship, happiness is ours. But it cannot be so.” Our “success or failure as Christians or as Christian workers cannot be measured by whether or not we are at the moment happy. Paul was not always happy, nor was Luther, nor Wesley. But discipleship for them was not happiness; it was faithfulness and usefulness.” –from The Disciplined Life by Richard S. Taylor (p.100). See Matthew 5:4; Romans 9:2; 15:1; 2Corinthians 2:4.

Topics: Happiness, Discipleship

August 25, 2005

Ambition’s Sad Ending – “Take the four greatest rulers, perhaps, that ever sat upon a throne. Alexander, when he had so completely subdued the nations that he wept because there were no more to conquer, at last set fire to a city, and died in a scene of debauch. Hannibal, who filled three bushels with the gold rings taken from the slaughtered knights, died at last by poison administered by his own hand, unwept and unknown, in a foreign land. Caesar, having conquered eight hundred cities, and dyed his garments with the blood of one million of his foes, was stabbed by his best friends in the very place, which had been the scene of his greatest triumph. Napoleon, after being the scourge of Europe, and the desolator of his country, died in banishment, conquered and a captive.” –from New Encyclopedia of Prose Illustrations (p.22). See Job 20:6-7; Obadiah 1:3-4.

Topics: Ambition, Failure

John Bunyan and Music – “The idea that Puritans were opposed to music has, one would have hoped, been scotched for ever by Percy Scholes’s The Puritan and Music. But myths have a way of living on long after they have been disproved. Some Puritans disliked certain types of music in church services, since they believed that polyphony or choral singing, for instance, or the playing of organs distracted the attention of auditors from the intellectual content of worship; but under Puritan rule in the 1640’s ‘music flourished as never before’. Bunyan, like John Owen, played the flute, and Bunyan is said to have made himself a flute out of a chair-leg to play in jail. There survive a metal violin and a cabinet decorated with musical instruments which are believed to have belonged to him.” –from A Tinker and a Poor Man by Christopher Hill (p.261). See James 5:13.

August 24, 2005

Safe in Christ – “There used to be an old battered safe standing on Broadway, in New York, on which was the notice, ‘It stood the test; the contents were all saved.’ It had been in one of the hottest fires New York ever saw, but the old safe had carried its treasures safely through it all. No life so safe as that which is guided and controlled by Christ.” –by J. Ellis from One Thousand Evangelistic Illustrations by Aquilla Webb (p.16). See John 10:28-29.

Topics: Eternal Security, Safety

Hiding Places – James W. Alexander (18-4-1859), a Presbyterian minister from Virginia, said, “The hiding places of men are discovered by affliction. As one has aptly said, ‘Our refuges are like the nests of birds; in summer they are hidden away among the green leaves, but in the winter they are seen among the naked branches.’ ” “He that dwelleth in the secret place of the most High shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty” (Psalm 91:1).

August 22, 2005

Too Much Solitude – “No man can safely isolate himself, either intellectually or in practical matters. The self-trained scholar is usually incomplete. Crochets take possession of the solitary thinker, and peculiarities of character—that would have been kept in check, and might have become aids in the symmetrical development of the whole man, if they had been reduced and modified in society—get swollen into deformities in solitude.” –from MacLaren’s 1024 Best Illustrations (p.16).

August 19, 2005

Let’s Stop Playing Church – “This much is sure: this generation is mesmerized by materialism and tantalized by TV. It is jeopardized by evils no other age has known, and victimized by cruel, malicious propaganda that clouds reality and therefore confuses thinking. The last but not least ingredient of this ‘witches’ brew’ is the religious jackanapes, attracting the crowd to his revival jamboree with the lure of miracles, as a coverup for his itch for gold. What a day!” –from Meat for Men by Leonard Ravenhill (p.125), first written in 1961.

August 15, 2005

Foot-Washing and the Holy Kiss – From a letter written in March, 1796, by the English Baptist pastor and theologian Andrew Fuller: “You, if I am rightly informed, consider the washing of feet, the kiss of charity, etc. as formally binding on all Christians; we do not. We consider neither of them as religious institutes, but merely civil customs, though used by Christ and his Apostles to a religious end, as whatsoever they did, they did all to the glory of God. They were in use both among Jews and Heathens long before the coming of Christ. The one was a necessary service, the other a mode of expressing kindness. We conceive it was the design of Christ by these forms to enjoin a natural interchange of kind and beneficent offices, even so as ‘by love to serve one another.’

“The usual forms of expressing this temper of mind were at that time and in those countries washing the feet, etc. Christ therefore made use of these forms, much the same as he made use of the customary language of a country to convey his doctrines and precepts. But as neither of these forms are ordinarily used in our age and country to express the ideas for which they were originally enjoined, the ground or reason of the injunction ceases, a literal compliance with them would not now answer the original design, but would operate, we conceive, in a very different way.

“It seems to us therefore not only lawful, but incumbent, to substitute such signs and forms as are adapted to convey the spirit and injunction rather than to abide by the letter, since that is become as it were a dead letter, as much so as to disuse the original language of Scripture and translate it into a language that can be understood. He used the forms and customs of his country to express kindness and humility, and we do the same.” –from The Armies of the Lamb: The Spirituality of Andrew Fuller (p.145-146).

Mr. Valiant-for-the-Truth’s Song –

            Who would true valour see

            Let him come hither;

One here will constant be,

Come wind, come weather.

There’s no discouragement

Shall make him once relent

His first avowed intent

To be a pilgrim.

Who so beset him round

With dismal stories

Do but themselves confound;

His strength the more is.

No lion can him fright,

He’ll with a giant fight

But he will have a right

To be a pilgrim.

Hobgoblin nor foul fiend

Can daunt his spirit:

He knows he at the end

Shall life inherit.

Then fancies fly away,

He’ll fear not what men say,

He’ll labour night and day

To be a pilgrim.

August 12, 2005

Big Brother Holds the Door – “Mr. Meyer [the Baptist English preacher, F. B. Meyer] said that one time when he was pastor at Leicester there was a strike. The working people smashed and ruined homes in their riot. One day they threatened to come into a house where there was a big brother riveting shoes in the attic upstairs and a little fellow downstairs. The little fellow feared they were going to break the house open. He went to the stairs and called his big brother. ‘Tom, Tom, they are going to smash this door open! Hurry up and come down.’

“Tom was a strong, well-built man and he came down and put his big body against the door and said: ‘Now, youngster, you go on with your game. All the rioters in Leicester can’t break this door open when brother Tom stands against it.’

“ ‘And so,’ said Mr. Meyer, ‘the Devil often wants to come back into this house of mine, and I am afraid of him and when he comes along and swears he will take me by force, I go to the foot of the ascension ladder and cry: “Christ, Christ, stronger than the strong man armed, make haste and come down. The Devil is going to get me.” And He seems to come,’ said Mr. Meyer, ‘like the lightning flash and puts Himself against the door of my heart and all hell can’t break the door open.’ ” –from One Thousand Evangelistic Illustrations (p.16).

August 11, 2005

Battle of the Wills – “The great sin of man has always been in this direction, a preference of his own will to the will of God; a preference of his own inclinations for God’s obligations. It is the sin of the Church today, and the explanation of her enfeebled and pitiable position in the eyes of the world. When we think we have discovered a short and easy road to success, and have forsaken the Fountain of living waters to hew out to ourselves cisterns [Jeremiah 2:13], we shall always find that our hewing has been labor lost, and that our cisterns are broken and will hold no water.” –from Beyond Humiliation by John Gregory Mantle (p.15).

August 9, 2005

Pioneer Baptist Preacher – Richard Evans (1824-1901) served for over fifty-five years as a Baptist preacher and pastor of numerous churches in the mountain regions of East Tennessee and Western North Carolina. He was never well-known in this world, but he witnessed the conversion of more than 10,000 souls in his lifetime of preaching and baptized over 1,800 converts with his own hands. At Bird Town Baptist Church, “a church of 100 Indians, he was pastor for two years, receiving a larger salary than from many of his white churches. His salary was always small, never more than $25 from a single church, and more often from ten to fifteen dollars a year… Brother Evans has preached to the Cherokee Indians, through an interpreter, has held protracted meetings among them, in the same way and with the same results as among his own people, and has baptized sixty converts from among them. He has been a marvel in his day. He has been a mountain preacher, for the most part, and has revolutionized large districts in Sevier County and Western North Carolina. There are no more moral communities anywhere than the ‘coves’ where ‘Uncle Dickey’ Evans’ voice has sounded out the glad tidings and the note of reform of the gospel message.” –from Tennessee’s Pioneer Baptist Preachers by J. J. Burnett (p.154), written in 1896.

August 5, 2005

Proof of the Divinity of Christ – In his book on Galatians (p.32), James A. Haldane comments on Galatians 1:3, which states: “Grace be to you and peace from God the Father, and from our Lord Jesus Christ.” He says: “We have a conclusive proof of the divinity of Christ in the same things being attributed equally to Him and to the Father. God will not give his glory to another (Isaiah 42:8). He is God alone, and besides Him there is none else; and if Christ were not God over all, he would not be described, as in this place, to be the Bestower of grace and peace.”

Rejoicing in Opposition – George Whitefield gave this testimony in his journal of Sunday, December 10, 1738, shortly after he returned to London from America: “When I was on board the Mary, those particular parts of the Book of Jeremiah, which relate to the opposition he met with from the false prophets, were deeply impressed upon my soul [for example, see Jeremiah 11:19-23]. Now I begin to see the wisdom of God in it; for five churches have been already denied me, and some of the clergy, if possible, would oblige me to depart out of these coasts. But I rejoice in this opposition, it being a certain sign that a more effectual door will be opened, since there are so many adversaries.” –from George Whitefield’s Journals (p.193).

August 3, 2005

Faithfulness of God – “Faithfulness is that in God which guarantees that He will never be or act inconsistent with Himself. You can put that down as an axiom. It is good for you now and good for you when you’re dying. It will be good to remember as you rise from the dead and good for all the eons and millenniums to come. God will never cease to be what He is and who He is. Everything God says or does must be in accord with His faithfulness. He will always be true to Himself, to His works and to His creation.” –from The Attributes of God: Volume Two by A. W. Tozer (p.164). See Deuteronomy 7:9; Lamentations 3:22-23; 1Corinthians 1:9.

Topics: Faithfulness of God

My Heart, My Aching Heart! – Robert Robinson (1735-1790), the English Baptist pastor and author, is best known as the author of the hymn, Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing. In 1787, his life was “interrupted by the death of his favorite daughter, Julia, at the age of seventeen. A tall, beautiful and intelligent girl, Julia was the apple of her father’s eye and he had been smitten to the heart when two years earlier she had going into a decline. All his hopes and fears concerning her health ended on Tuesday evening, 9^th October when, after kissing her sisters, Nancy and Patty, she leaned back on her pillow, murmured, ‘Lord, into thy hands I commend my spirit’, and fell quietly into her last sleep… For a while Robinson’s grief was inconsolable. ‘My heart, my aching heart!’ he cried. ‘Here am I—here,

            As on a lonely building’s top,

              The sparrow tells her moan,

            Far from the tents of joy and hope,

              I sit and grieve alone.’

“The whole family, including his mother, now over ninety, soothed their own sorrow in some measure by their effort to comfort his wounded heart. He was to an extent consoled and cheered two months afterward by baptizing six of his children in the baptistery which he had previously constructed in his own garden and receiving them into church membership.” –from With Freedom Fired by Graham W. Hughes (p.64-65). See Psalm 90:10; Proverbs 15:13; Isaiah 53:3-4.

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