I'm literally surrounded by the topic of prayer. That's God's doing, so, pay attention.
Sorry. More from Charles Spurgeon. I think the reason I am drawn to preachers like him and D.L. Moody is because they were what I strive to be. They were truly Spirit-filled men of God who let themselves be used for great things. And they did it un-apologetically. So humor me. You might get something out of it.
Tonight I'll simply quote Spurgeon and let you ponder it and draw your own conclusions. This portion of this sermon is titled, "The condition of a believer who is being prepared for greater honor and wider service." I think this should speak to all of us JGenners. Buckle up!
Is it not a curious thing that, whenever God means to make a man great, He always breaks him in pieces first? There was a man whom the Lord meant to make into a prince. How did He do it? Why, He met him one night, and wrestled with him! You always hear about Jacob's wrestling. Well, I dare say he did; but it was not Jacob who was the principal wrestler: "There wrestled a man with him until the breaking of the day." God touched the hollow of Jacob's thigh, and put it out of joint, before He called him "Israel"; that is, "a prince of God." The wrestling was to take all his strength out of him; and when his strength was gone, then God called him a prince. Now, David was to be king over all Israel. What was the way to Jerusalem for David? What was the way to the throne? Well, it was around by the cave of Adullam. He must go there, and be an outlaw, and an outcast, for that was the way by which he would be made king.
Have none of you ever noticed, in your own lives, that whenever God is going to give you an enlargement, and bring you out to a larger sphere of service, or a higher platform of spiritual life, you always get thrown down? That is His usual way of working; He makes you hungry before He feeds you; He strips you before He robes you; He makes nothing of you before He makes something of you. This was the way with David. He is to be king in Jerusalem; but he must go to the throne by the way of the cave. Now, are any of you going to heaven, or going to a more heavenly state of sanctification, or going to a greater sphere of usefulness? Do not wonder if you go by the way of the cave. Why is that?
It is, first, because, if God would make you greatly useful, he must teach you how to pray. The man who is a great preacher, and yet cannot pray, will come to a bad end. A woman who cannot pray, and yet is noted for the conducting of Bible classes, has already come to a bad end. If you can be great without prayer, your greatness will be your ruin. If God means to bless you greatly, He will make you pray greatly, as He does David, who says in this part of his preparation for coming to his throne, "I cried unto the Lord with my voice; with my voice unto the Lord did I make my supplication."
God wants to use you for greater things. I sincerely want you all to be closer to God and more useful to Him, even if that means a little breaking. So don't forget to pray today.
Happy March 12th. (I'm shameless)
Wednesday, March 11, 2009
"Call unto me..."
This is kinda ripped off from Charles Spurgeon but, as prayer, real prayer, is the topic on the horizon, it is not only fitting but powerful as well.
I was reading Spurgeon earlier tonight, one of his sermons on prayer (he wrote over 3000 of them). The sermon is titled "The Golden Key of Prayer." The Scripture reference is Jeremiah 33:3:
Call unto Me, and I will answer thee, and shew thee great and mighty things, which thou knowest not. (KJV, by the way)
Jeremiah wrote this from a "cold, damp prison floor." But in this verse is a command, "call unto Me," and a promise, "I will answer thee." Jeremiah found out, as many of us have and we all eventually will, that, "God's people have always in their worst condition found out the best of their God. He is good at all times; but He seems to be at His best when they are at their worst."
Spurgeon goes on to write about what things we take to God and how Satan will try to convince us that our issues are trivial and of no importance. He writes:
"(says the devil), If you were in any other position you might rest upon the mighty arm of God; but here your prayer will not avail you. Either it is too trivial a matter, or it is too connected with temporals, or else it is a matter in which you have sinned too much, or else it is too high, too hard, too complicated a piece of business, you have no right to take that before God! So suggests the foul fiend of hell."
I confess that I fall for this all the time. I sometimes see my concerns in light of eternity and think, "That really doesn't matter much. God has bigger things going on." But God loves me and when I take my cares to Him and "cast them upon Him," He hears and will answer.
"Call unto Me - call unto Me. Are you sick? Would you be healed? Cry unto Me, for I am a Great Physician. Does providence trouble you? Are you fearful that you shall not provide things honest in the sight of man? Call unto Me! Are your griefs little yet painful, like small points and pricks of thorns? Call unto Me! Is your burden heavy as though it would make your back break beneath its load? Call unto Me!"
Cast thy burden upon the Lord, and He shall sustain thee; He shall never suffer the righteous to be moved.
It saddens me that we have simplified prayer to a mere wish-list, but complicated it to a rigid, outlined, ritualistic chant . We either doubt our life-altering issues are important enough for His time, or we think He should stop the progress of history to attend solely to our concerns. Pride and/or selfishness, it always comes down to that.
What if we just stopped praying because we want to be comfortable and started praying because He wants us to? What if we made it about Him once and for all? What if our time spent alone with God became more important than our time spent with the things that make us feel okay about ourselves?
"Hours for the world, and moments for Christ! We give our strength and freshness to the ways of mammon, and our fatigue and languor to the ways of God."
The more I think about our "new, fresh way" of doing things, it appears that we haven't found a "new, fresh way." We've re-discovered the way that works because it has always worked. Spurgeon died 120 years ago. And, believe it or not, we've begun to think just like he did. Only the language is different.
Happy hump-day.
I was reading Spurgeon earlier tonight, one of his sermons on prayer (he wrote over 3000 of them). The sermon is titled "The Golden Key of Prayer." The Scripture reference is Jeremiah 33:3:
Call unto Me, and I will answer thee, and shew thee great and mighty things, which thou knowest not. (KJV, by the way)
Jeremiah wrote this from a "cold, damp prison floor." But in this verse is a command, "call unto Me," and a promise, "I will answer thee." Jeremiah found out, as many of us have and we all eventually will, that, "God's people have always in their worst condition found out the best of their God. He is good at all times; but He seems to be at His best when they are at their worst."
Spurgeon goes on to write about what things we take to God and how Satan will try to convince us that our issues are trivial and of no importance. He writes:
"(says the devil), If you were in any other position you might rest upon the mighty arm of God; but here your prayer will not avail you. Either it is too trivial a matter, or it is too connected with temporals, or else it is a matter in which you have sinned too much, or else it is too high, too hard, too complicated a piece of business, you have no right to take that before God! So suggests the foul fiend of hell."
I confess that I fall for this all the time. I sometimes see my concerns in light of eternity and think, "That really doesn't matter much. God has bigger things going on." But God loves me and when I take my cares to Him and "cast them upon Him," He hears and will answer.
"Call unto Me - call unto Me. Are you sick? Would you be healed? Cry unto Me, for I am a Great Physician. Does providence trouble you? Are you fearful that you shall not provide things honest in the sight of man? Call unto Me! Are your griefs little yet painful, like small points and pricks of thorns? Call unto Me! Is your burden heavy as though it would make your back break beneath its load? Call unto Me!"
Cast thy burden upon the Lord, and He shall sustain thee; He shall never suffer the righteous to be moved.
It saddens me that we have simplified prayer to a mere wish-list, but complicated it to a rigid, outlined, ritualistic chant . We either doubt our life-altering issues are important enough for His time, or we think He should stop the progress of history to attend solely to our concerns. Pride and/or selfishness, it always comes down to that.
What if we just stopped praying because we want to be comfortable and started praying because He wants us to? What if we made it about Him once and for all? What if our time spent alone with God became more important than our time spent with the things that make us feel okay about ourselves?
"Hours for the world, and moments for Christ! We give our strength and freshness to the ways of mammon, and our fatigue and languor to the ways of God."
The more I think about our "new, fresh way" of doing things, it appears that we haven't found a "new, fresh way." We've re-discovered the way that works because it has always worked. Spurgeon died 120 years ago. And, believe it or not, we've begun to think just like he did. Only the language is different.
Happy hump-day.
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