“I am more than ever convinced that the trouble with many Christian people is that they do not preach to themselves. We should spend time every day preaching to ourselves, & never more so than when we get on our knees in prayer. By preaching to yourself I mean that, when you are on your knees, and all these thoughts and doubts and uncertainties come crowding in upon you, and your sins rise up against you, and you feel you have no right to pray at all, and that you are almost a cad in doing so – I say, you must first realize where they come from and then begin to remind yourself of the central truths of the Christian faith. You must remind yourself of the great doctrine which we have been considering together. You say: ‘Of course I am a sinner; when the devil told me I was a sinner, he was quite right. He said it to discourage me; but I am going to use it to help myself. Of course I am a sinner! God is holy and I am vile, and I do not realize even yet how vile I am. Well then, how can I pray? How can I go into the presence of God? The answer is, that God Himself has opened the way for me; He has provided it. He has sent His only Son into this world to bear my sins, to die for me. Christ has kept the law for me and has ‘put His own perfect robe of righteousness upon me. With this on me I can go into the presence of God’. Having convinced yourself of that, you gain confidence and begin to pray.
Thus you have solemnly and specifically to remind yourself of what you are, and of what you are doing, also that the God whom you are addressing is the God who has revealed Himself. You have to see the absolute necessity of Christ, and to know that He really covers you in every respect. So with Christ’s righteousness upon you, and Christ with you, you go into the presence of God. John in his First Epistle states it thus: ‘If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness’. He says that in the context of ‘the blood of Jesus Christ which cleanses us from all sin’ (1 John 1:7-9). He goes on to say, ‘If any man sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous, and He is the propitiation for our sins’ (1 John 2:1-2). That is what you say to yourself. You do not wait until a better mood comes; and you do not simply go on talking in spite of your mood or state. You have to say to yourself ‘Although I am a sinner, and though I feel nothing, I believe in the Lord Jesus Christ. I know that I can never fit myself to go into the presence of God; but I believe this record in the Scriptures. I therefore believe, whatever I may feel or not feel, that Christ the Son of God has died for me and my sins; and that therefore I have as much right to go into the presence of God as the greatest saint’.
And then you immediately, thank God for it all – ‘By prayer and supplication with thanksgiving’, says this apostle in teaching the Philippians how to pray (Phil. 4:6). Forget for the moment all your needs and desires, even that particular thing which led you to pray. Before you ever come even to that, just thank God for His love, thank Him for His mercy and compassion, thank Him for sending His Son into a world such as this; thank Him for going to the Cross and dying for you, thank Him for rising again, thank Him for sending the Holy Spirit. Pour out your heart in praise and thanksgiving. Soon you will find freedom; your heart will be moved, and you will know for the first time in your life ‘boldness and access with confidence’. Then pray that God will shed His Holy Spirit abroad in your heart so that you may experience the authentication of all these things.”
Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Unsearchable Riches of Christ: Exposition of Ephesians 3,
Boldness, Access, Confidence
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