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(Heb.11:4)

D. Martyn Lloyd Jones

Died

1st March 1981

We are sometimes much more concerned to defend what wethink we have always believed, than to find out the truth.

Faith is a refusal to panic.Whenever I see myself before God and realize something of what

my blessed Lord has done for me at Calvary, I am ready to forgive

anybody anything. I cannot withhold it. I do not even want to

withhold it.

Love is not just a sentiment. Love is a great controlling passionand it always expresses itself in terms of obedience.

We should go into His presence as a child goes to his father. Wedo it with reverence and godly fear, of course, but we should go

with a childlike confidence and simplicity.

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Human will-power alone is not enough. Will-power is excellentand we should always be using it; but it is not enough. A desire

to live a good life is not enough. Obviously we should all have

that desire, but it will not guarantee success. So let me put it

thus: Hold on to your principles of morality and ethics, use your

willpower to the limit, pay great heed to every noble, uplifting

desire that is in you; but realize that these things alone are not

enough, that they will never bring you to the desired place. We

have to realize that all our best is totally inadequate, that a

spiritual battle must be fought in a spiritual manner.

We should not interpret Scripture in the light of our experiencebut we should always examine our experiences in the light of theteachings of Scripture.

Even at it's very best and highest ,the joy the world gives isalways contingent.

The doctrines of the Bible are not a subject to be studied , ratherwe should desire to know them in order that having known them

we may not be puffed up with knowledge and excited about ourinformation ,but may draw nearer to God in worship ,praise and

adoration , because we have seen , in a fuller way that we have

never seen before , the Glory of our wondrous God.

Prayer, in many ways, is the supreme expression of our faith inGod.

What is preaching? Logic on fire! Preaching is theology comingthrough a man who is on fire. A true understanding and

experience of the Truth must lead to this. I say again that a man

who can speak about these things dispassionately has no right

whatsoever to be in a pulpit; and should never be allowed to

enter one.

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The ultimate test of our spirituality is the measure of ouramazement at the grace of God.

We must come back to the soul and to God who made it. We weremade for Him, we are meant for Him, we have a correspondence

with Him, and we will never come to rest until, like that needle

on the compass, we strike that northern point, and there we

come to rest - nowhere else.

We must not concentrate overmuch upon our feelings. Do notspend too much time feeling your own pulse taking your own

spiritual temperature, do not spend too much time analyzingyour feelings. That is the high road to morbidity.

As Christians we should never feel sorry for ourselves. Themoment we do so, we lose our energy, we lose the will to fight

and the will to live, and are paralyzed.

There is nothing which so certifies the genuineness of a man'sfaith as his patience and his patient endurance, his keeping onsteadily in spite of everything.

You are either a Christian or you are not a Christian; you cannotbe partly a Christian. You are either "dead" or "alive"; you are

either "born" or "not born".

In a miracle the laws of nature are not broken- God acts abovethem and without them!

The true hallmark of greatness is simplicity.

Doctrine must never be determined by our sentiment.

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We all desire to be happy. That is something that is innate inhuman nature; nobody wants to be miserable, though I am

aware of the fact that there are people who seem to enjoy being

miserable and some who seem to find their happiness in being

unhappy!

To dwell on the past simply causes failure in the present. Whileyou are sitting down and bemoaning the past and regretting all

the things you have not done, you are crippling yourself and

preventing yourself from working in the present. Is that

Christianity? Of course it is not.

The tragedy is that many of us are living...desperate Christianlife. Sunday comes and we get some strength, and then we lose

some on Monday; a good deal is gone byTuesday and we wonder

whether we have anything left. On Wednesday it has all gone and

then we exist. Or perhaps refreshment comes in some other way,

some meeting we attend, some friends we meet...Now that is the

old order of things, that is not the new. So our Lord goes on to

put it like this: 'Whosoever drinketh of this water shall thirst

again: but whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give himshall never thirst; but the water that I shall give him shall be in

him a well of water springing up into everlasting life' (verses 13-

14). He puts a well within us. We are not always drawing from

somewhere outside. The well, the spring, goes on springing up

from within into everlasting life.

We must listen to ALL that God says ( and not come to the Bibleand pick and choose /accepting this and rejecting that.

Always respond to every impulse to pray. The impulse to praymay come when you are reading or when you are battling with a

text. I would make an absolute law of this always obey such an

impulse.

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The Scriptures do grant clearly by their teaching that it ispossible for a Christian to be depressed. Not that they justify

this, but they do recognize the fact.

Holiness is not something we are called upon to do in order thatwe may become something; it is something we are to do because

of what we already are.

It is not so much that a Christian has come to hold convictionsbut rather that convictions have laid hold of him.

The most vital question to ask about all who claim to beChristian is this: Have they a soul thirst for God? Do they long

for this? Is there something about them that tells you that they

are always waiting for His next manifestation of Himself? Is their

life centred on Him? Can they say with Paul that they forget

everything in the past? Do they press forward more and more

that they might know Him and that the knowledge might

increase, until eventually beyond death and the grave they may

bask eternally in 'the sunshine of His face?' That I might knowhim!

Friend, remember that it is better to read 1 quote 10 times

(meditatively) than to read 10 quotes 1 time (superficially).

Gathered byTotaf.