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March 10 Daily Devotional

A First Book of Daily Readings

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

_________ March 22?? He is waiting to bless We must come [to prayer] with the simple confidence of a child. We need a child-like faith. We need this assurance that God is truly our Father, and therefore we must rigidly exclude any idea that we must go on repeating our petitions because it is our repetition that is going to produce the blessing. God likes us to show our keenness, our anxiety, and our desire over a thing. He tells us to "hunger and thirst after righteousness" and to seek it; He tells us to "pray and not to faint"; we are told to "pray without ceasing." Yes, but that does not mean mechanical repetitions; it does not mean believing that we shall be heard for our "much speaking." ... It means that when I pray I know that God is my Father, and that He delights to bless me, and that He is much more ready to give than I am to receive, and that He is always concerned about my welfare.... I must see God as my Father who has purchased my ultimate good in Christ and is waiting to bless me with His own fullness in Christ Jesus. So ... in confidence we make our requests known to God, knowing He knows all about it before we begin to speak.... But we must not come with doubtful minds; we must know that God is much more ready to give than we are to receive.... O the blessings that are stored at the right hand of God for God's children. Shame on us for being paupers when we were meant to be princes; shame on us for so often harboring unworthy, wrong thoughts of God in this matter. It is all due to fear and because we lack this simplicity, this faith, this con­fidence, this knowledge of God as our Father. If we but have that, the blessings of God will begin to fall upon us and may be so overwhelming that with D. L. Moody we shall feel that they are almost more than our physical frames can bear and cry out with him, saying, "Stop, God!" God is able to do for us exceeding abundantly above all that we can ask or think. Let us believe that and then go to Him in simple confidence. Studies in the Sermon on the Mount, ii, pp. 31-2

Fall to rise

There are certain simple principles about which we must be quite clear before we can ever hope to enjoy this Christian salvation. The first is conviction of sin. We must be absolutely clear about our sinfulness. Here I follow the method of the Apostle Paul and raise an imaginary objection. I imagine someone saying at once: "Are you going to preach to us about sin; are you going to preach about conviction of sin? You say your object is to make us happy; but if you are going to preach to us about conviction of sin, surely that is going to make us still more unhappy. Are you deliberately trying to make us miserable and wretched?" To which the simple reply is, "Yes!" That is the teaching of the great Apostle in these chapters.* It may sound paradoxical—the term does not matter—but beyond any question, that is the rule, and there are no exceptions.

You must be made miserable before you can know true Christian joy. Indeed the real trouble with the miserable Christian is that he has never been truly made miserable because of conviction of sin. He has by-passed the essential preliminary to joy; he has been assuming something that he has no right to assume.

Let me put it again in a Scriptural statement. You remember the aged Simeon standing with the infant Lord Jesus Christ in his arms? He said a very profound thing when he said, "This Child is set for the fall and for the rising again of many in Israel."

There is no rising again until there has been a preliminary fall. This is an absolute rule, and yet this is the thing that is being so sadly forgotten by so many today and assumed by as many more. But the Scripture has its order, and its order must be observed if we are to derive the benefits of the Christian salvation. Ultimately the only thing which is going to drive a man to Christ and make him rely upon Christ alone is a true conviction of sin.

Spiritual Depression, pp. 27-8

*Romans 1-4.



“Text reproduced from ‘A First Book of Daily Readings’ by Martyn Lloyd-Jones, published by Epworth Press 1970 & 1977 © Trustees for Methodist Church Purposes. Used with permission.”

Comments on D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, A First Book of Daily Readings

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