·
C. H. Spurgeon:
The Blessings of Private Prayer.
Some
have tried to imitate unction by unnatural tones and whines; by turning up the
whites of their eyes, and lifting their hands in a most ridiculous manner.
McCheyne’s tone and rhythm one hears from Scotchmen continually: we much prefer
his spirit to his mannerism; and all mere mannerism without power is as foul
carrion of all life bereft, obnoxious, mischievous. Certain brethren aim at
inspiration through exertion and loud shouting; but it does not come: some we
have known to stop the discourse, and exclaim, “God bless you”, and others
gesticulate wildly, and drive their fingernails into the palms of their hands
as if they were in convulsions of celestial ardor. Bah! The whole thing smells
of the green-room and the stage. The getting up of fervor in hearers by the
simulation of it in the preacher is a loathsome deceit to be scorned by honest
men. “To affect feeling,” says Richard Cecil, “is nauseous and soon detected,
but to feel is the readiest way to the hearts of others.”
·
George Mueller’s
Practice.
It
has pleased the Lord to teach me a truth, the benefit of which I have not lost
for more than fourteen years. The point is this: I saw more clearly than ever
that the first great primary business to which I ought to attend every day was
to have my soul happy in the Lord. The first thing to be concerned about was
not how much I might serve the Lord, or how I might glorify the Lord; but how I
might get my soul into a happy state, and how my inner man might be nourished.…
Before
this time my practice had been, at least for ten years previously, as a
habitual thing, to give myself to prayer after having dressed myself in the
morning. Now, I saw that the most important thing I had to do was to give
myself to the reading of the Word of God, and to meditation on it, that thus my
heart might be comforted, encouraged, warned, reproved, instructed.…
The
first thing I did, after having asked in a few words the Lord’s blessing upon
His precious Word, was to begin to meditate on the Word of God, searching as it
were into every verse to get blessing out of it; not for the sake of public
ministry of the Word, not for the sake of preaching on what I had meditated
upon, but for the sake of obtaining food for my soul. The result I have found
to be almost invariably this, that after a very few minutes my soul has been
led to confession, or to thanksgiving, or to supplication; so that, though I
did not, as it were, give myself to prayer, but to meditation, yet it turned
almost immediately more or less into prayer. When thus I have been for a while
making confession or intercession or supplication, or have given thanks, I go
on to the next words or verse, turning all, as I go, into prayer for myself or
others, as the Word may lead to it.…
By
breakfast time, with rare exceptions, I am in a peaceful if not happy state of
heart.
·
George Mueller’s
Secret.
In
his classic biography, George Mueller of Bristol, A. T. Pierson writes:
A “chance remark”—there is no chance in a believer’s life!—made by the brother at whose house he was abiding at Plymouth, much impressed him. Referring to the sacrifices in Leviticus, he said that, as the refuse of the animals was never offered upon the altar, but only the best parts and the fat, so the choicest of our time and strength, the best parts of our day, should be especially given to the Lord in worship and communion. George Muller meditated much on this, and determined, even at the risk of damage to bodily heath, that he would no longer spend his best hours in bed. Henceforth he allowed himself but seven hours’ sleep and gave up his after-dinner rest. This resumption of early rising secured long seasons of uninterrupted interviews with God, in prayer and meditation on the Scriptures, before breakfast and the various inevitable interruptions that followed. He found himself not worse but better, physically, and became convinced that to have lain longer in bed as before would have kept his nerves weak and, as to spiritual life, such new vitality and vigour accrued from thus waiting upon God while others slept, that it continued to be the habit of his afterlife.
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