Prayer our dealings with others —Martyn Lloyd-Jones

"Prayer is also equally necessary in our dealings with others. That is what is most prominent here, of course. Paul was writing this rich, profound doctrine, and he knows that the Ephesians were going to read and discuss and study it together. But he knows that that is not enough, so he is praying that his teaching of them may be made real to them. And he knows that it never can be made real to them except under the direct blessing of God. The best teaching in the world is useless unless the Holy Spirit takes hold of it and applies it and opens our understanding to it, and gives it a deep lodging place in our whole being. We have already seen in the first chapter how the Apostle had been praying for the Ephesian Christians that ‘the eyes of their understanding might be enlightened’. For if the Holy Spirit did not open ‘the eyes of their understanding’ Paul’s teaching would be quite useless and void.

Let us learn a very practical lesson from this. We all have friends who are not Christians, about whom we are concerned. We are anxious to help them, and we talk to them about these things. We quote Scriptures to them and explain them. We try to show them the Christian attitude and position with respect to present conditions and the whole of life. But I must emphasize that if we leave it at that, it may come to nothing. You cannot reason anyone into the Christian life. You can give the reasons for believing but you cannot reason them into belief. You can put the case before them, but you cannot prove it as if it were a matter of a theorem in geometry. We must realize that while we are instructing them, we must also be praying for them. It is only as the Holy Spirit deals with them and prepares them and opens their understanding that they can receive the truth.

The Apostle is perfectly consistent with his own doctrine. He knew that it was as essential that he should pray for these Ephesians as that he should instruct them by his Epistle. We, likewise, must never forget that instruction and prayer go together. If you are interested in a particular person, and desire his salvation, you must not stop at befriending him, helping him, spending time with him, and putting the truth before him; equally you must pray for him. Indeed I would go so far as to say that unless you are giving more weight to your prayer than to your instruction your work is likely to be a failure.

Note the place that is given to intercessory prayer in the New Testament. It is extraordinary and quite amazing, and is exemplified particularly in the Apostle Paul. Notice, too, how very dependent Paul was upon the prayers of other Christians. In most of his letters he pleads with them to pray for him. He urges them to pray that he may have a door of opportunity, that he may have liberty, and so on. He fully realized his dependence upon the prayers of others."

—Martyn Lloyd-Jones (1972). The Unsearchable Riches of Christ: An Exposition of Ephesians 3 (pp. 110–111). Grand Rapids: Baker Book House.

God's preserving care — Charles H. Spurgeon

"Do we sufficiently praise God for guarding us from disease? I am afraid that his preserving care is often forgotten. Men will go thirty or forty years almost without an illness, and forget the Lord in consequence. That which should secure gratitude creates indifference. When we have been ill we come up to the house of the Lord and desire to return thanks because of our recovery; ought we not to give thanks when we are not ill, and do not need to be recovered? Should it not be to you healthy folk a daily cause of gratitude to God that he keeps away those pains which would keep you awake all night, and wards off those sicknesses which would cause your beauty to consume away like the moth?…

Oh, come let us sing unto Jehovah who hath said,—“I am the Lord that healeth thee” (Exodus 15:26). Do not attribute to secondary means that which ought to be ascribed to God alone. His fresh air, and warm sun, or bracing wind, and refreshing showers do more for our healing than we dream of, or if medicine be used, it is he who gives virtue to the drugs, and so by his own Almighty hand works out our cure. As one who has felt his restoring hand, I will personally sing unto him who is the health of my countenance and my God.”

— Charles H. Spurgeon

To pray is the obvious, natural thing for a child to do — Martyn Lloyd-Jones

"Prayer is something which is expressive of the relationship between the child and the Father. Now I think that is a very important argument. You show me a man who does not pray very much and I will tell you the real problem of that man. It is that he does not know God, he does not know God as his Father. That is the trouble. The problem is not that he is not a moral man, or that he is not a good man. He can be highly moral, he may be very faithful in Christian church work, there may be nothing he is not prepared to do, but if he does not pray, I tell you that the essence of that man’s trouble is that he does not know God as his Father. For those who know God best are the ones who speak to him most of all.
There is no need to prove a thing like this—the little child always speaks to his Father. Have you not often noticed how the child of some great man talks to him freely, while another man going into his presence is nervous. Not so the child; the child speaks freely, because he knows the relationship and so he speaks to his father. And that is why the most saintly people are the ones who pray most; that is why the Lord Jesus Christ prayed more than anybody else, because he knew God in a way nobody else knew him. That, then, is the way to approach this question of prayer. The whole trouble with people who get into difficulties over prayer is that they start at the end instead of at the beginning. You do not start with the desire for answers, you start with adoration, and it is because we forget this all important matter that we tend to get into such perplexities. To pray is the obvious, natural thing for a child to do and there is nothing that expresses more eloquently or more cogently the whole relationship of man to God as prayer. That is the first thing. So, then, I think that the saints and, supremely, our Lord himself, prayed to God, primarily, not to ask for things but to assure their own hearts and to maintain their contact with God and to make certain of their contact and communion with him.
Our whole idea of prayer is false. We think of prayer only as guidance and requests. Now if you were to put that into practice in human relationships you would regard it as insulting. No, the thing the saint wants to know above everything else is that all is well between his soul and the Father. There is nothing the saint delights in more than to know God as his Father. He likes to maintain the contact and communion, to assure his heart before God and in the presence of God. The saint is in this difficult world, there are temptations from the outside and the whole world is against us, and the saint is tried—sometimes he almost despairs. So he goes to God immediately, not to ask this or that but just to make certain that all is well there, that the contact is unbroken and perfect, that he can assure his heart and know that all is well.
That is what our Lord is doing here in John 17, and that is the thing which stands out most frequently in this prayer. Our Lord is assuring his own human heart in the presence of his Father…"

— Martyn Lloyd-Jones (2000). The assurance of our salvation: Exploring the depth of Jesus' prayer for His own: Studies in John 17 (33–35). Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books.

apostolic doctrine ― Martyn Lloyd-Jones

“There is such a thing as apostolic doctrine. I am a preacher for one reason only, and it is that I have believed the apostolic doctrine and teaching. I have no other teaching. I do not stand here to say what I think. I am simply repeating what I find in the Gospel. I am expounding the Scriptures, the apostolic doctrine. But the importance of doing this is seriously questioned today. Indeed, it is not only controverted but ridiculed and dismissed, and I must of necessity deal with this criticism…

My dear friend, have you believed? Have you received this apostolic doctrine? I can test you simply. If you have believed this and received it, you have new life, spiritual life, and that will show itself in this way: You will be hungering and thirsting for more. It will become the greatest interest of your life. You will still be interested in other books, but you will find, as I find and I say this to the glory of God that there are many books I would like to read, but I just do not have the time. I am too busy reading the Bible and books that help me understand it.

Now I am not criticizing the others. I like to read books on history. I like reading biographies. I like reading about music. I like reading about medicine, aspects of science, psychology, philosophy, and so on. But my problem is to find the time. I find life here in this Book. It moves my heart. It melts me. It fills me with righteousness. It strengthens my feeble will. I want this. And men and women who have spiritual life in them, the life of God in their souls, will be like newborn babes, desiring ― the sincere milk of the word‖ that they might grow (1 Pet. 2:2). If you do not have that desire, you are dead. Whether you are a church member or not, if the Bible is still boring, if you find prayer difficult and a task, you are dead, and therefore you have one thing to do: Go to God, repent, confess your sin, tell Him you realize you are dead, and ask Him to give you life anew, to breathe His Spirit upon you and give you new life from among the dead.”

― Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Authentic Christianity

We must pray with love — Fénelon

"We must pray with love. It is love says St. Augustine, that asks, that seeks, that knocks, that finds, and that is faithful to what it finds. We cease to pray to God as soon as we cease, to love Him, as soon as we cease to thirst for His perfections. The coldness of our love is the silence of our hearts toward God. Without this we may pronounce prayers, but we do not pray; for what shall lead us to meditate upon the laws of God if it be not the love of Him who has made these laws? Let our hearts be full of love, then, and they will pray. Happy are they who think seriously of the truths of religion; but far more happy are they who feel and love them! We must ardently desire that God will grant us spiritual blessings; and the ardor of our wishes must render us fit to receive the blessings." — Fénelon

on importance of Bible study and prayer — James Montgomery Boice

"Two things go together in the Christian life: prayer, in which we talk to God, and Bible study, in which God talks to us. Prayer is of great importance. But somebody once said, I think wisely, that when we’re talking to God and God is talking to us, we had better let God do most of the talking. In other words, we should spend most of our time in Bible study…

We as Christians sometimes say, “We want God to bless our church” or “We want God to bless our family” (or our Bible study or nation or whatever it might be). But if we are serious, we must learn that the way God blesses is usually through a study of the Bible—as people come to know what God has written, respond to it, believe it, and proclaim it to other people in the world. If you find yourself in what seems to be a time of waiting or inactivity, redeem the time, as these disciples did. Become a better student—a more knowledgeable student—of the Word of God…

A Spirit-filled church always studies the apostolic teaching. It is a learning church that grounds its experiences in and tests those experiences by the Word of God…

Let’s put that in terms easy to understand: A Spirit-filled church is always going to be a Bible-studying church. Those two things go together… Wherever the church has been greatly blessed, where the Spirit of God has come upon God’s people and the gospel has gone forth in great power and people have responded to it, these have always been ages in which the Bible has been studied carefully. Why? It is because the closer men and women come to God the closer they want to get to where he speaks to their hearts, and that is in the Bible.

What is true of the church is true for individuals also. If you are Spirit-filled, then you will be drawn to this Book. If you are not drawn to this Book, if you do not really want to study it, if you say, “Well, you know, I look at the Bible from time to time, but it seems rather boring to me: it never really does much for me,” you ought to question whether you are really born again. Or if you are born again, you at least ought to question whether you are filled by the Holy Spirit. Because the Holy Spirit, whose chief task is to bear witness to Jesus Christ, inevitably draws the people of God to Jesus through the Scriptures.

This means, among other things, that evangelical, Spirit-filled, Bible-oriented churches should offer many ways for people to get to know the Bible. It must be done through the preaching. In fact, that is the preacher’s chief task: to expound the Word of God. He is to study it and then teach it to others. It may be done through Bible classes and home Bible studies. We are going to see that the early Christians worshiped in their homes. So I am sure they studied the Bible in their homes. If we had been there, we would have said, “They’re having home Bible studies.”

— James Montgomery Boice, Acts: An expositional commentary (57–58).

our prayers and God's answers to our prayers - Martyn Lloyd-Jones

“We all tend to prescribe the answers to our prayers. We think that God can come in only one way. But Scripture teaches us that God sometimes answers our prayers by allowing things to become much worse before they become better. He may sometimes do the opposite of what we anticipate. Yet it is a fundamental principle in the life & walk of faith that we must always be prepared for the unexpected when we are dealing with God... If God were unkind enough to answer some of our prayers at once, & in our way, we should be very impoverished Christians. Fortunately, God sometimes delays His answer in order to deal with selfishness or things in our lives which should not be there. He is concerned about us, & intends to fit us for a fuller place in His kingdom. We should therefore judge every event in the light of God’s great, eternal & glorious purpose.”

- Martyn Lloyd-Jones, From fear to faith

preaching to ourselves every day - Martyn Lloyd-Jones

“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