Category: Doctrine

A Thick Crust

~ A Prayer Life ~ 7 Comments

Familiarity with the form of religion, while we neglect its reality, has a fearfully deadening effect on the conscience. It brings up by degrees a thick crust of insensibility over the whole inner man. None seem to become so desperately hard as those who are continually repeating holy words and handling holy things, while their hearts are running after sin and the world.

~ J.C. Ryle (1816-1900)

Leave It With God

~ A Prayer Life ~ 4 Comments

If you take your problem to God, leave it with God. You have no right to brood over it any longer … If you have committed your problem to God and go on thinking about it, it means that your prayers were not genuine. If you told God on your knees that you had reached an impasse, and that you could not solve your problem, and that you were handing it over to him, then leave it with him. Do not go to the first Christian you meet and say, ‘You know, I have an awful problem; I don’t know what to do.’ Don’t discuss it. Leave it with God, and go on to the watch-tower. This may not be easy for us. We may have to be almost violent in forcing ourselves to do this. It is none the less essential. We must never allow ourselves to become submerged by a difficulty, to be shut in by the problem. We must come right out of it .. We have to extricate ourselves deliberately, to haul ourselves out of it, as it were, to detach ourselves from it altogether, and then take our stand looking at God – not at the problem.

~ Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones (1899-1981)

A Peculiar Beauty

~ A Prayer Life ~ 2 Comments

“For I determined not to know anything among you except Jesus Christ and Him crucified.”

~ 1 Corinthians 2:2 (NKJV)

“There is a peculiar beauty in the Apostle’s expression, not only to preach Christ, but Christ crucified. There were a thousand excellencies in Christ Paul had learnt, and on which he had often dwelt, with holy rapture. But the cross included all. There Paul fixed his eye, his heart, his whole soul. And, what he felt so truly blessed, to himself, he longed to communicate to all the Lord’s people. Christ crucified, was peculiarly suited, to poor sinful men. It was worthy of all acceptation! Reader! how little do those men know of the plague of their own heart, who preach aught beside!”

~ Hawker’s Poor Man’s Commentary

Of Divine Providence

~ A Prayer Life ~ Leave a comment

“God the good Creator of all things, in his infinite power and wisdom doth uphold, direct, dispose, and govern all creatures and things, from the greatest even to the least, by his most wise and holy providence, to the end for the which they were created, according unto his infallible foreknowledge, and the free and immutable counsel of his own will; to the praise of the glory of his wisdom, power, justice, infinite goodness, and mercy.”

~ London Baptist Confession of Faith 1689 V.I

The Lord’s Portion

~ A Prayer Life ~ Leave a comment

“For the LORD’s portion is His people…”

~ Deuteronomy 32:9 (NKJV)

It is amazing to think of all the things God could delight in, He is abundantly pleased to delight in His people. The Creator of heaven and earth has no greater love, joy or delight than to pour out His care and affection over the people whom He has chosen for Himself. This concern is seen in no fuller glory than when God’s own beloved Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, died that sacrificial death that allows us the high privilege, that allows us, those who come by faith, to become the Lord’s portion.

Amen

The Imago Dei

~ A Prayer Life ~ 3 Comments

After God had made all other creatures, he created man, male and female, with reasonable and immortal souls, rendering them fit unto that life to God for which they were created; being made after the image of God, in knowledge, righteousness, and true holiness; having the law of God written in their hearts, and power to fulfill it, and yet under a possibility of transgressing, being left to the liberty of their own will, which was subject to change.

~ London Baptist Confession of Faith 1689 VI.II