Archive for the ‘Prayer’ Category
Fight!
Posted in Ordinary Means Ministry, Prayer, Prayer Meetings on April 14, 2025| Leave a Comment »
Sinclair Ferguson on prioritizing prayer meetings
Posted in Ordinary Means Ministry, Prayer, Prayer Meetings on November 30, 2024| Leave a Comment »
“Remember what all the manuals that teach effective work practices tell you to do? Do the difficult things first. Give them priority. My own experience, for what it is worth, is that disciplined, faithful attendance at corporate prayer times can slowly transform them into some of the best and most important meetings you attend. Apart from other considerations, the privilege of hearing the burdens on the hearts of Christian friends is a better way to get to know them than having coffee with them! In no other context in life will you hear the kind of speech that is expressed when believers share their needs and desires with God. The quickest way to get into the heart of a church is to gather with it when it turns to prayer.”
From Devoted to God’s Church.
Bonar, panting and pleading for prayer
Posted in Experimental Religion & the Cure of Souls, Ordinary Means Ministry, Practice of Piety, Prayer, Prayer Meetings on October 9, 2024| Leave a Comment »
The following quotes are from Andrew Bonar’s (1810-1892) Diary and Letters.
“We must continue in prayer if we are to get an outpouring of the Spirit. Christ says there are some things we shall not get, unless we pray and fast, yes, ‘prayer and fasting.’ We must control the flesh and abstain from whatever hinders direct fellowship with God.”
“It is considered by most these days to be a form of legalism but fasting is a spiritual practice that God honours and is commanded in scripture. Are we desperate enough for God to move in our lives? Sometimes this requires desperate measures that might require some sort of sacrifice.”
“God will not let me get the blessing without asking. Today I am setting my face to fast and pray for enlightenment and refreshing. Until I can get up to the measure of at least two hours in pure prayer every day, I shall not be contented. Meditation and reading besides.”
“How easy it is to give up and not persevere. I believe this is a big fault in my life, having not the desire and earnestness like Jacob to grab God in a sense and not let go until He blesses me.”
“We have not been men of prayer. The spirit of prayer has slumbered among us. The closet has been too little frequented and delighted in. We have allowed business, study or active labor to interfere with our closet-hours. And the feverish atmosphere in which both the church and the nation are enveloped has found its way into our prayer closets.”
“Why is there so little forethought in the laying out of time and employment, so as secure a large portion of each day for prayer? Why is there so much speaking, yet so little prayer? Why Is there so much running to and fro to meetings, conventions, fellowship gatherings and yet so little time for prayer’? Brethren, why so many meetings with our fellow men and so few meetings with God?”
“This is such and important aspect of our relationship to God. To set aside time not to read the bible, not to sing songs. But to just quietly seek God’s face alone in the private.”
“O brother, pray; in spite of Satan, pray; . . . rather neglect friends than not pray; rather fast, and lose breakfast, dinner, tea, and supper – and sleep too – than not pray. And we must not talk about prayer, we must pray in right earnest. The Lord is near. He comes softly while the virgins slumber.”
M’Cheyne’s advice for prayer meetings
Posted in Christian Conduct, Practice of Piety, Prayer, Vital Godliness on July 13, 2020| Leave a Comment »
“No person can be a child of God without living in secret prayer; and no community of Christians can be in a lively condition without unity in prayer. In Daniel’s time you see how it was. (Dan. ii. 17, 18.) You see what Jesus said to his disciples on it (Mat. xviii. 19), and what a sweet promise of his presence and a gracious answer he connects with meeting for prayer. You see how it will be in the latter day (Zech. vii. 21), when meetings for prayer, or, at least, concerts for prayer, shall be held by different towns. One great rule in holding them is, that they be really meetings of disciples. If four or five of you, that know the Lord, would meet together regularly, you will find that far more profitable than a meeting open to all. In an open meeting you are apt to become teachers, and to be proud. In a secret meeting you feel all on a level, poor and needy, seeking water. If a young man, acquainted with any of you, becomes concerned about his soul, or a lively Christian is visiting any of you, these may be admitted; but do not make your meeting more open. (more…)
Fasting & prayer during COVID-19
Posted in Fasting & Days of Fasting, Prayer, Uncategorized on March 28, 2020| Leave a Comment »
The following is a list, though not exhaustive, of Reformed & Presbyterian bodies who either have observed a day of fasting & prayer during the COVID-19 crisis or who have appointed and/or commended one. If we cannot coordinate our days, perhaps we may be encouraged that we are not alone when we take our part “on the wall.”
“Therefore also now, saith the LORD, turn ye even to me with all your heart, and with fasting, and with weeping, and with mourning: and rend your heart, and not your garments, and turn unto the LORD your God: for he is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and of great kindness, and repenteth him of the evil. Who knoweth if he will return and repent, and leave a blessing behind him; even a meat offering and a drink offering unto the LORD your God” (Joel 2:12-14)?
[Updated 4/18 @ 5:49 p.m. EDT]
Wednesday, March 25. ARP Canadian Presbytery.
Wednesday, March 25. RPCNA Pacific Coast Presbytery.
Lord’s day, March 29. Free Church of Scotland (Cont.). [Statement from the Public Questions, Religion and Morals Committee.]
Wednesday, April 1. Various Heritage Reformed Congregations (HRC) & Free Reformed Congregations (FRC). [Prayer and Fasting Outline, with help from Th. Boston.]
Saturday, April 4. The Midwest Presbytery (RPCNA). [Full communication & helpful suggestions.]
Thursday, April 2 or 9. RPCNA Synod.
Wednesday, April 8. OPC Presbytery of the Southeast.
Monday, April 6. Calvary Presbytery (PCA). [Days of Fastings RPCNA]
Saturday, Ajpril 18. Several congregations in the Presbyterian Reformed Church (PRC).
I’ve also heard from / about some individual OPC congregations who have observed fasts.
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[Image above, “Nineveh Repents“]
Prayer & performance
Posted in Chalmers Audio Library, Missiology, Natural Theology, Practice of Piety, Prayer, Thomas Chalmers, Uncategorized on January 15, 2020| Leave a Comment »
Another addition to the Chalmers Audio Library. A tremendous address! Little wonder that Wilberforce once wrote of him, “All the world is wild about Chalmers.” If this sermon doesn’t drive you to your prayer closet, what will?
On introducing eternity in mixed company
Posted in Light of Eternity, Prayer, Thomas Chalmers on February 28, 2019| Leave a Comment »
“February 15th, 1813. — I know not a more serious drawback to mixed society than the exclusion of all conversation about the one thing needful ; and it comes to be a seriousquestion, How are you to get the better of it? Are you to lift your testimony against it? This zeal would prompt; but we are also called to walk in wisdom toward those that are without. There must be a way of introducing the topic, so as to make a useful impression, so as to conciliate prejudice, so as to win, if possible, rather than repel. I confess it is to me a thing beset with many difficulties, and I fear thatan unmanly shame may have some share in it. It is certainly wrong to disguise it from others that you look uponeternity as your uppermost concern. Disguise this, and you add the sanction of your example to their exclusive indulgence in the frivolities of time — you add to the multitude of stumbling-blocks or offenses which lie in the way of others. It is delightful that there is a promise annexed to the prayer for wisdom; and I know not a more delicate subject for the application of wisdom than the one I am now insisting on.”
-Thomas Chalmers, from his private journal
The debt of prayer
Posted in Ordinary Means Ministry, Practice of Piety, Prayer, Puritans & Puritanism, The Sacred Ministry, Vital Godliness on December 28, 2018| Leave a Comment »
“Prayer is a debt: ‘God forbid that I should sin in ceasing to pray for you,’ saith Samuel; [1 Sam 12:23] and in regard of our particular parishes, a bond, a specialty: ‘We are bound to thank God always for you,’ 2 Thess 1:3. The minister’s prayers, as well as his parts [abilities], are the common stock of the parish, in which all have a share.”
-George Swinnock (1627-1673)
Willison on public fasting
Posted in Church of Scotland, Fasting & Days of Fasting, Prayer on July 10, 2017| Leave a Comment »
“And, I am sure, it is not much for our safety, that national and provincial fasts are so much neglected, when Providence so loudly calls us to the work of humiliation and prayer; when sin is arriving to so great a height, when clouds of wrath are gathering so fast; when all Europe is threatened with blood and confusion, and when destructive divisions and schisms are ready to break out among us at home; and O, do not these frightful appearances proclaim it to be a proper season for us to meet, and fast, and mourn, and see is we can weep our hearts into one lump, and, by our united prayers, prevail with God, for Christ’s sake, to ‘spare his people, and not give his heritage to reproach;’ or else, that he will prepare us to meet him, when coming in the way of his judgments? And, if judgment begin at the house of God, what shall be the end of these that obey not the gospel? O that God, in his mercy, may awaken us in time to think on these things!”
-John Willison of Dundee (1680-1750)
The power of prayer & the unformity of nature: a fast-day sermon on the outbreak of cholera, 1832
Posted in Audio Resources, Chalmers Audio Library, Divine Providence, Fasting & Days of Fasting, Prayer, Thomas Chalmers on October 17, 2014| Leave a Comment »
Below is a tremendous sermon Thomas Chalmers preached on the scourge of cholera in Britain in the year 1832. In it, we see God as the First Cause hearing and answering prayer either lower or higher up on the chain of secondary causes. Masterful. And also instructive as the world watches the vicious spread of Ebola. Listen to the sermon here. And access more titles I’ve recorded by Thomas Chalmers.
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ON THE CONSISTENCY BETWEEN THE EFFICACY OF PRAYER AND THE UNIFORMITY OF NATURE.
“Knowing this first, that there shall come in the last days scoffers, walking after their own lusts, and saying, Where is the promise of his coming ? for since the fathers fell asleep, all things continue as they were from the beginning of the creation” (2 Peter 3:3-4).
The infidelity spoken of in our text, had for its basis the stability of Nature, or rested on the imagination that her economy was perpetual and everlasting-and every day of Nature’s continuance added to the strength and inveteracy of this delusion. In proportion to the length of her past endurance, was there a firm confidence felt in her future perpetuity. The longer that Nature lasted, or the older she grew, her final dissolution was held to be all the more improbable-till nothing seemed so unlikely to the atheistical men of that period, as the intervention of a God with a system of visible things, which looked so unchanging and so indestructible. It was like the contest of experience and faith, in which the former grew every day stronger and stronger, and the latter weaker and weaker, till at length it waswholly extinguished ; and men in the spirit of defiance or ridicule, braved the announcement of a Judge who should appear at the end of the world, and mocked at the promise of His coming.
But there is another direction which infidelity often takes, beside the one specified in our text. It not only perverts to its own argument, what experience tells of the stability of Nature ; and so concludes that we have nothing to fear from the mandate of a God laying sudden arrest and termination on its processes. It also perverts what experience tells of the uniformity of Nature; and so concludes that we have nothing either to hope or to fear from the intervention of a God during the continuance or the currency of these processes. Beside making Nature independent of God for its duration, which they hold to be everlasting, they would also make Nature to be independent of God for its course, which they hold to be unalterable. They tell us of the rigid and undeviating constancy from which Nature is never known to fluctuate; and that in her immutable laws in the march and regularity of her orderly progressions, they can discover no trace whatever of any interposition by the finger of a Deity. It is not only that all things continue to be as they were from the beginning of creation-causes and effects following each other in wonted and invariable succession, and the same circumstances ever issuing in the same consequents as before. With such a system of things, there is no room in their creed or in their imagination for the actings of a God. To their eye Nature proceeds by the sure footsteps of a mute and unconscious materialism; nor can they recognise in its evolutions those characters of the spontaneous or the wilful, which bespeak a living God to have had any concern with it. He may have formed the mundane system at the first: He may have devised for matter its properties and its laws: but these properties, they tell us, never change; these laws never are relaxed or receded from. And so we may as well bid the storm itself cease from its violence, as supplicate the unseen Being whom we fancy to be sitting aloft and to direct the storm. This they hold to be a superstitious imagination, which all their experience of Nature and of Nature’s immutability forbids them to entertain. By the one infidelity, they have banished a God from the throne of judgment. By the other infidelity, they have banished a God from the throne of providence. By the first, they tell us that a God has nought to do with the consummation of Nature ; or rather, that Nature has no consummation. By the second, they tell us that a God has nought to do with the history of Nature. The first infidelity would expunge from our creed the doctrine of a coming judgment. The second would expunge from it the doctrine of a present and a special providence, and the doctrine of the efficacy of prayer.
Read the entire sermon below:
West Port Experiment 