The grandest benefactors of the church!

(Charles Spurgeon, "Flowers from a Puritan's Garden" 1883)

"By running and exercising every day, you are the fitter to run in a race. Just so, the oftener you come into God's presence — the greater confidence, and freedom, and enlargement it will bring to your soul."

No doubt by praying we learn to pray; and the more we pray — the oftener we can pray, and the better we can pray. He who prays by fits and starts is never likely to attain to that effectual, fervent prayer which avails much.

Prayer is good,
the habit of prayer is better,
but the spirit of prayer is the best of all.
It is in the spirit of prayer, that we pray without ceasing.

It is astonishing what distances men can run, who have long practiced; and it is equally marvelous for what a length of time they can maintain a high speed after they have once acquired stamina and skill in using their muscles.

Just so, great power in prayer is within our reach, but we must work to obtain it. Let us never imagine that Abraham could have interceded so successfully for Sodom, if he had not been all his lifetime in the practice of communion with God. Jacob's all-night at Peniel was not the first occasion upon which he had met his God. We may even look upon our Lord's most choice and wonderful prayer with His disciples before His Passion, as the flower and fruit of His many nights of devotion, and of His often rising up a great while before day to pray.

A man who becomes a great runner has to put himself in training, and to keep himself in it; and that training consists very much of the exercise of running. Those who have distinguished themselves for speed have not suddenly leaped into eminence, but have long been runners.

Just so, if a man dreams that he can become mighty in prayer just when he pleases, he labors under a great mistake. The prayer of Elijah, which shut up Heaven and afterward opened its floodgates — was one of a long series of mighty prevailings with God. Oh that Christian men would remember this!

Perseverance in prayer is necessary to prevalence in prayer!

Those great intercessors, who are not so often mentioned as they ought to be in connection with confessors and martyrs, were nevertheless the grandest benefactors of the church. But it was only by abiding at the mercy-seat, that they attained to be such channels of mercy to men.

O Jesus, by whom we come to God, seeing You have Yourself trodden the way of prayer, and never turned from it — teach me to remain a suppliant as long as I remain a sinner, and to wrestle in prayer so long as I have to wrestle with the powers of evil. Whatever else I may outgrow, may I never dream that I may relax my supplications.

"Devote yourselves to prayer, being watchful and thankful." Colossians 4:2

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"Do not be hasty in word or impulsive in thought to bring up a matter in the presence of God."Ecclesiastes 5:2

Lessons for the Christian's Daily Walk
Devotional and Practical Meditations
on the Book of Ecclesiastes

George Mylne, 1859

"Do not be hasty in word or impulsive in thought to bring up a matter in the presence of God."Ecclesiastes 5:2

Of yourself, my soul, you are incapable of prayer. By nature you are far from God, how could you pray? If something must be said, your native powers can furnish words. But if the Spirit does not move you — it is not prayer. None but the Spirit's voice can speak to God. None but the Spirit's mind can reach his ear. "The Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groans that words cannot express. And he who searches our hearts knows the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints in accordance with God's will." Romans 8:26-27

Why does the Spirit dwell in you? To be the framer of your thoughts — the organ of your speech — to God: that you in Him, and He in you, might think the thoughts, and think the language of prayer. To pray without the Spirit, is the same as thinking without a mind, or speaking without the power of speech. Bright thoughts; well-rounded sentences; the flow of sentiment, and earthly sympathies — what are they? They come not from the Spirit — and they do not lead you to God.

What has the Spirit thought? What has the Spirit said, within you? Your life, your heart, your thoughts — must be centered in the Spirit. In Him you pray. In Him you praise. In Him alone you are a living thing. Without Him, while you live, you are spiritually dead.

My soul, whence all your waverings in prayer; resolves half formed, and forthwith given up; playing with sacred duties; uttering many things, but feeling not? Whence all your parleyings with conscience; pleading for grace, yet half-afraid to have it; striving against sin, yet longing to indulge it; praying against some idol, yet hugging it all the while. Whence your discomfort after prayer; conscious of not having dealt with God? Is it not this — the mind has thought — the lips have moved — without the Spirit? Why did you speak without Him? Better be silent altogether — than run before his motions.

In private prayer, fret not, though waiting times be long — though often you leave the throne, and not a word be spoken. What could you say? The Spirit spoke not. You could not but be silent.

UNCTION: Heaven's Knighthood

UNCTION: Heaven's Knighthood

By E.M. Bounds

      Unction comes to the preacher, not in the study, but in the closet. It is heaven's distillation in answer to prayer. It is the sweetest exhalation of the Holy Spirit. It impregnates softens, cuts and soothes. It carries the Word like dynamite, like salt, like sugar; makes the hearer a culprit or a saint, makes him weep like a child and live like a giant; opens his heart and his purse as gently, yet as strongly as the spring opens the leaves.

      This unction is not the gift of genius. It is not found in the halls of learning. No eloquence can woo it. No industry can win it. No clergies hands can impart it. It is the gift of God -the signet set to His own messengers. It is Heaven's knighthood given to the chosen true and brave ones who have sought this anointed honor through many an hour of tearful, wrestling prayer.

      Earnestness is good and impressive. Genius is gifted and great. Thought kindles and inspires, but it takes a diviner endowment, a more powerful energy then earnestness or genius or thought - to BREAK the chains of sin, to WIN estranged and depraved hearts to God to repair the breaches, and restore the Church to her old ways of purity and POWER! Nothing but this holy unction can do this. Unction is the anointing of the Holy Ghost, separating unto God's work and qualifying for it. Without this unction there are no true spiritual results accomplished.

      Unction may be simulated. There are many things that look like it, there are many results that resemble its effects; but they are foreign to its results and to its nature. The fervor or softness excited by a pathetic or emotional sermon may look like the movements of the divine unction, but they have no pungent, penetrating, heartbreaking force. No heart-healing balm is there in these surface, sympathetic, emotional movements. They are not radical, neither sin-searching nor sin-curing.

This divine unction is the one distinguishing feature that separates true gospel preaching from all other methods of presenting truth. It backs and interpenetrates the revealed truth with all the force of God. It illumines the Word, and broadens and enriches the intellect, and empowers it to grasp and apprehend the Word. It qualifies the preacher's heart, and brings it to that condition of tenderness, of purity, of force and light that are necessary to secure the highest results. This unction gives to the preacher liberty and enlargement of thought and soul - freedom, fullness, and directness of utterance that can be secured by no other process.

      Without unction on the preacher the gospel has no more power to propagate itself than any other system of truth. This is the seal of its divinity. Unction in the preacher puts God in the gospel. Without the unction, God is absent, and the gospel is left to the low forces that the ingenuity, interest, or talents of men can devise to enforce and project its doctrines.

      It is in this element the pulpit often fails than in any other element. Unction is the consecration force, and its presence the continuous test of consecration. It is this divine anointing on the preacher that secures his consecration. It is this divine anointing on the preacher that secures his consecration to God and his work. Other forces and motives may call him to the work, but this only is consecration. A separation to God's work by the power of the Holy Spirit is the only consecration recognized by God as legitimate.

      The divine unction, this heavenly anointing is what the pulpit needs and must have. This divine and heavenly oil put on it by the imposition of God's hand must soften and lubricate the whole man - heart, head, spirit - until it separates him with a mighty separation from all earthly, secular, worldly, selfish motives and aims, separating him to everything that is pure and Godlike. It is the presence of this unction on the preacher that creates the stir and friction in many a congregation. The same truths have been told in the strictness of the letter, but no ruffle has been seen, no pain or pulsation felt. All is quiet as a graveyard.

Another preacher comes, and this mysterious influence is on him; the letter of the Word has been fired by the Spirit, the throes of a mighty movement are felt. It is this unction that pervades and stirs the conscience and breaks the heart. Unctionless preaching makes everything hard, dry, and, dead. This unction is not a memory or an era of the past only; it is a present, realized, conscious fact. It belongs to the experience of the man as well as to his preaching. It is that which transforms him into the image of his divine Master, as well as that by which he declares the truth of Christ with power. It is so much the power in the ministry as to make all else seem feeble and vain without it, - and by its presence to atone for the absence of all other feebler forces.

      This unction is not an inalienable gift. It is a conditional gift, and its presence is perpetuated and increased by the same process by which it was at first secured; by unceasing prayer to God, by impassioned desires after God, by estimating it, by seeking it with tireless ardor, by deeming all else loss and failure without it.

       EXCERPTED FROM, POWER THROUGH PRAYER

Fainting

Sermons from the Psalms, 5 - Fainting

By Clovis G. Chappell


"I had fainted, unless I had believed." Psalm 27: 13


Clovis G. Chappell: 

HERE is a man who realizes that he has had a very close call. He has just succeeded in traversing a bit of rugged road that threatened to work his ruin. More than once had his knees gone weak. More than once had the whole world seemed to grow black about him. Again and again had he been on the point of toppling over in a dead faint. But when he was reeling in his tracks and ready to fall, there was one firm staff that did not break in the grip of his clutching fingers. There was one solid wall against which he leaned that he found amply able to bear all the weight he could put upon it. That wall was faith. So he won through; but as he looks back over it all he declares with humility: "I had fainted, unless I had believed."


I

Now fainting is one of the most common and deadly foes that you and I have to face. We know from our own experiences what it is and something of the havoc that it works. Sometime ago I was preaching in a church that was greatly overcrowded. Suddenly a gentleman who was standing in the rear of the building toppled over with a dull thud. The moment before he fainted he was, to all appearances, an eager and interested worshiper. He was making a worth-while contribution to the service. But as soon as he had fainted all this was over. There was no use to give him a hymn book; he would not sing. There was no use to pass him the collection plate; he could not give. There was no use to call him to prayer; he could not pray. There was no use to preach to him; he could not listen. Not only so, but four other men who had also been making their contribution to the service had to leave in order to look after him. Thus, by his fainting, he not only ceased to be an asset, but became a positive liability.

But for every one who faints physically there are literally scores who faint spiritually. How many such do we have in all our churches! Once they could be counted upon to be in their places at every service. Once the whole moral tone of the community was purified, in some measure, through their efforts. But all this is passed. The fires of their enthusiasm have gone out. Their interest has become listlessness. They are no longer a help, but a positive hindrance. They are no longer life-giving, they rather lie like huge stones across the mouth of the sepulcher where God is trying to raise some needy Lazarus from the dead. And this is the case, not because they have become openly antagonistic to the Church. It is the case not because they are vicious or flagrantly corrupt. It is rather the case because they have fainted.

A few years ago, over in a staid old city of Virginia, a lovely young couple stood before the altar to be married. They were of sufficient prominence socially for the event to be one of importance, not only to themselves, but to their community. All went well till the minister was about in the middle of the ceremony. Then his voice suddenly faltered, his ritual dropped from his fingers, and he himself toppled over into the palms. And there stood the embarrassed couple only half married. I rejoice to say that this minister was not so far gone that he could not be restored. Friends took him into the open air, and he was at last able to see his task through, "and they lived happily ever after."

But such tragedies do not always end so fortunately. In fact, because of our proneness to faint, our lives and our world are cluttered up with half-finished tasks. There are beautiful pictures that we never quite paint, books that we throw aside when we have written only the preface. There are fine goals from which we turn back when our pursuit has only begun.

Near a certain Southern city there stood for years a very expensive building called "The Pink Palace." It was constructed of beautiful pink marble that had been brought from a distance of hundreds of miles. But in spite of all the wealth and labor that had been expended upon this palace, in spite of the beautiful material of which it was builded, it was not a poem, as it was surely meant to be. It was only a windowless ruin. This was the case because the builder fainted and gave over his task before he brought it to completion.

While I was pastor in Washington, D. C., I was sent one summer to the Panama Canal Zone on a preaching and lecturing tour. Here and there, as we crossed the isthmus, I noticed great heaps of machinery that were slowly sinking into the mud and rusting away. Upon asking about these worthless heaps I was told that they had been left there by the French. Then I remembered that the French had undertaken to dig the canal and join these two seas. To that end they expended much money and not a few lives. But they did not see the task through. This was the case, not because they had proved the enterprise to be either undesirable or impossible, but rather because they fainted before their dream came true.

So we might go on endlessly. For of all cause of failure in every department of life there is none more sure than fainting. No wealth of opportunity, no gift of ability, even to the point of genius, can save us if we yield to this temptation. Had you and I been present when that famous race between the hare and the tortoise was run, who of us would have staked anything on the leaden-footed tortoise? But it was he that won, not because of his fleetness of foot, but because of his staying powers. Much of Thomas Edison's success is no doubt due to his keenness of intellect, but still more is due to his ability to hang on to the track of a dream with the tenacity of a bloodhound till he has made it a reality. If lack of opportunity and lack of ability have slain their thousands, fainting has slain its tens of thousands.

Since this is the case it is not to be wondered at that the writers of the Bible warn against fainting again and again. No more is it a matter of wonder that, when they seek to show us the religious life at its very best, staying power, a stubborn refusal to faint, is one of its prominent characteristics. Possibly the finest word, for instance, that they have to say of Moses is that he endured (Heb. 11:27). There was opposition, there was disappointment, there was bitter heartache, but he endured. Such staunchness, they felt, could only be accounted for in terms of God. So they said: "He endured as seeing him who is invisible."

And they keep looking back to this same sturdy quality in Abraham. He had been lured into the unknown by a great dream that seemed destined never to come true. God had promised him much, but long years had slipped by and nothing had come of it. Springtime had gone, summer had gone, autumn had gone, and the gray days of winter were rapidly flying past. Still the promised heir had not come. But this stanch soul never gave up, never believed for a moment that God was going to let him down. "He staggered not at the promises," (Rom. 4:20) writes Paul with evident admiration. And refusing to faint, he at last realized his dream.

Don’t Get Too Familiar with the Bible

by Peter Krol


EXCERPT


Unexamined familiarity will prevent you from looking at the Book. Because such familiarity crowds out curiosity, it imperceptibly stiffens necks, hardens hearts, and deafens ears. Familiarity may lead us to assume things that are not in the text, and it may blind us to things that are.

READ FULL ARTICLE HERE

The love of Christ which surpasses knowledge!

(Alexander Smellie, "The Secret Place" 1907)

"The love of Christ which surpasses knowledge!" Ephesians 3:19

No love stoops like Christ's love. It abandoned place and prospects and power — to save me! It traveled from the heights of Heaven, to the depths of sinful earth. God, pure and holy, chose voluntarily to make His home with me a sinner!

The sole qualification I need to commend myself to Him is not my conviction of worth, but my conviction of worthlessness —my knowledge that I am devoid of goodness and holiness! Then, when I confess myself penniless — He will invest me with His treasures. He banishes no self-destroyed and forlorn and penitent man outside the pale of His grace. His love stoops!

No love suffers like Christ's love. The test of affection is its willingness to suffer sacrifice and pain for another. Never has any affection stood the test like the love of Jesus.

"It is certain," one writes, "that not for one hour on earth, was our Lord without the anguish of His passion." And at last He made the supreme offering of His life for me. Such bitterness, such dereliction, such unspeakable sorrow — there were in my Savior's death. For me He bore the hiding of His Father's face on Calvary. It is an unfathomable pre-eminence of grief. It is a horror of great darkness which I may not pierce. His love suffers!

No love gives like Christ's love. Love is always giving. But when was there human love with such wealth to bestow, and such willingness to communicate it — as the love of Christ? In simple fact, He imparts nothing less than Himself to me! The most unholy, the most tempted, the most despairing — cannot desire anything more sufficient. His love gives!

And no love lasts like Christ's love. The truest and tenderest earthly love says farewell to its beloved in death. And too often, even on this side of the grave, doubts insinuate themselves, and suspicions arise, and covenants are snapped and broken. It is not so with the love of Christ. Neither things present nor things to come, the demands of today and the contingencies of tomorrow — chill that great heart of love! Christ's love is like Himself — eternal and unchangeable. His love lasts!

Does not His wondrous love deserve my whole soul and body — all that I have, and all that I am? Nothing is stranger, and nothing more sad, than that, bathed in Christ's love — I should be so indifferent, so forgetful, so cold!

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Don't bite the stick!

(Charles Spurgeon, "Flowers from a Puritan's Garden" 1883) 

"As children will thank the tailor, and think they owe their new clothes to him rather than to their parent's bounty — so we often look to the instrument of blessing, and thank that instead of God."

Second causes must never be made to stand before the First Cause. Friends and helpers are all very well as servants of our Father — but our Father must have all our praise.

There is a similar evil in the matter of trials and afflictions. We are apt to be angry with the instrument of our affliction — instead of seeing the hand of God over all, and meekly bowing before it.

It was a great help to David in bearing with the railing Shimei — when he saw that God had appointed this provocation as a chastisement. He would not allow his hasty captains to take the scoffer's head, but meekly said, "Let him alone, and let him curse, for the Lord has bidden him."

When a dog is struck — he will bite the stick! If he were wise, he would observe that the stick only moves as the hand directs it. Just so, when we discern God in our tribulations, we are helped to be quiet and endure with patience.

Let us not act like silly children, but trace matters to their fountain-head, and act accordingly. May the Spirit of wisdom make us understand.

"He is the LORD; let Him do what is good in His eyes." 1 Samuel 3:18

"Naked I came from my mother's womb, and naked I will depart. The LORD gave and the LORD has taken away — may the name of the LORD be praised." Job 1:21

"Shall we accept good from God, and not trouble?" Job 2:10

"When times are good, be happy; but when times are bad, consider: God has made the one as well as the other." Ecclesiastes 7:14

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