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December 18 Daily Devotional

A First Book of Daily Readings

D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones (selected by Frank Cumbers)

Organize—but pray, pray, pray!

Let us go on with our practical efforts and let us go on with our study, but God forbid that we should rely upon them.... But, in the name of God, let us not stop at that. Let us realize that even that, without the authority and the power of the Spirit, is of no value at all... It does not matter who I am or what I may do: it will get me nowhere. It is the authority of the Spirit that alone avails.

Now this is what grieves me. I very rarely hear any Christians today, even Evangelicals, praying for revival... They pray for their own organized efforts.... When did you last hear anyone praying for revival, praying that God might open the windows of heaven and pour out His Spirit? When did you last pray for that yourself? I suggest seriously that we are neglecting this almost entirely. We are guilty of forgetting the authority of the Holy Spirit... we have forgotten the one thing that can make us effective. By all means let us continue to pray for the particular efforts, for the minister, and his preaching every Sunday, for all essential organizations.... But before it all, and after it all, let us pray and plead for revival. When God sends revival He can do more in a single day than in fifty years of all our organization. That is the verdict of sheer history which emerges clearly from the long story of the Church.

This is the greatest need today, indeed it is the only hope. Let us therefore decide that day by day ... we will spend our time before God pleading for revival.... Let us remind ourselves that the God who in the past has come suddenly and unexpectedly upon the dying Church and has raised her to a new period of life and victory can do the same still, that His arm is not shortened, nor His power in any sense diminished.

Authority, pp. 92–3

 

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