Heavenly Springs

Holding Fast The Doctrines of Grace

“The Christian life starts with grace, it must continue with grace, it ends with grace.”

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Thanks to my friend David for sharing this encouraging exchange between D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones and a good friend.   The discourse confirms what is already evident from his legacy. By the renewal of the Holy Spirit, Christ was being formed in this man’s soul.  He writes, “Do not pray for healing. Do not hold me back from the glory.”  Only someone who has passed into a state of justification by grace could utter such words. May the principle of grace, so powerfully at work in Martyn Lloyd-Jones, teach us to depend not on the law, but on the grace of God that is in Christ alone.

My Dear Gerald,                                                             October 29, 1980

How kind of you to write to Bethan [wife of Martyn Lloyd-Jones] and show such loving concern for me – indeed for both of us.

I believe I have told you that had to have my prostate removed four years ago. All went well until last May when I had a recurrence and was operated upon on June 10. Since then I have been going into hospital every three weeks for chemotherapy and stay in from one night to a week. . . . Yours ever, Martyn

 

My Dear Friend,                                                            December 4, 1980

. . . .We have both been passing through new experiences and I am sure that you feel as I do that finally nothing matters but the fact that we are in God’s hands. We and our works are nothing. It is His choosing us before the foundation of the world that matters and He will never leave us nor forsake us. More and more do I see that what we need is simple child-like faith, just to believe His word and surrender ourselves to Him utterly. . . . Yours ever sincerely, D.M. Lloyd-Jones

 

My Dear Philip,                                                               January 20, 1981

. . . .My health is still very much the same and I have not been able to preach or do anything else since the beginning of June. I thank God for all His bountiful goodness to me over the long years, and for all He has graciously allowed me and enabled me to do. My supreme desire now is to testify more than ever to the glory and wonder of His grace. I shall greatly value your prayers that I may be given strength to do so to His glory. I am glad to say that God in a marvelous manner is granting Bethan most remarkable health and vigour. He is indeed a gracious God. . . . Yours ever sincerely, D.M. Lloyd-Jones

 

His mind remained entirely lucid, and he was never confined to bed, but by February 24 he was so weak that he could hardly speak. A few days later his speech was gone. In a shaky hand, he wrote on a scrap of paper for Bethan and the family, ‘Do not pray for healing. Do not hold me back from the glory.’ By smiles and gestures he was able to continue to express himself until the early morning of Sunday, March 1, 1981 the day broke and all shadows fled away.

“This is my final comfort and consolation in this world. My only hope of arriving in glory lies in the fact that the whole of my salvation is God’s work.”

“It is grace at the beginning, grace at the end. So that when you and I come to lie upon our deathbeds, the one thing that should comfort and help and strengthen us there is the thing that helped us at the beginning. Not what we have been, not what we have done, but the grace of God in Jesus Christ our Lord. The Christian life starts with grace, it must continue with grace, it ends with grace. Grace, wondrous grace. “By the grace of God I am what I am.” “Yet not I, but the grace of God which was with me.”

Martyn Lloyd-Jones Letters 1919-1981, Selected with Notes by Iain Murray, Banner of Truth

Martyn Lloyd-Jones On The Church’s Mission

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“The church and the Christian should not be interested only, or even primarily, in the general social effects of salvation, but in the fact that men and women should be brought nearer to God, and should live for his glory. When the church gives the world the impression that she is interested in revival only in order to heal certain moral sores, she is denying her own message. I am not primarily interested in revival in order that the streets of our cities may be cleansed; I am interested in it because I believe that for any man not to glorify God is an insult to God. I know that such a man is held bound, and my desire for him is that he may come to know God and glorify him in his daily life. The church is not interested primarily in the social consequences of irreligion. As I read my history, I see that it was because our fathers and grandfathers made that very error, towards the end of the Victorian era, that Christendom is in its present position. They became so interested in social conditions that they forgot this primary truth. They thought that if everybody was kept in order by certain Acts of Parliament, all would be well. But that is morality, and not Christianity.”

– Sanctified Through the Truth, 17.

Modern Reformation: “Wish List for the 21st Century” Jan./Feb. 2000 Vol. 9 No. 1 Page number(s): 36.

Christ, not feelings

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Well, I am back!  Although, I never actually went anywhere! It was never my intention to make my first post a quote from someone else’s blog.  Not to mention the fact that this is an excerpt from a book I never read, but here it is…

I read this little piece this morning and have been thinking about it all day. I believe that most, if not all  children of God, know what it is to be spiritually depressed. Yet, there is nothing greater than the fact that Jesus, the Son of Man, is sitting on a glorious throne next to the Father, “far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and above every name that is named, not only in this age but also in the one to come.” (Ephesians 1:21).  Allelujia!

My prayer for us today, and everyday, is that we keep our eyes fixed on this everlasting truth: He reigns!

“Do you want to know supreme joy, do you want to experience a happiness that eludes description? There is only one thing to do, really seek Him, seek Him Himself, turn to the Lord Jesus Christ Himself.

If you find that your feelings are depressed do not sit down and commiserate with yourself, do not try to work something up but go directly to Him and seek His face, as the little child who is miserable and unhappy because somebody else has taken or broken his toy, runs to its father or its mother. So if you and I find ourselves afflicted by this condition, there is only one thing to do, it is to go to Him.

If you seek the Lord Jesus Christ and find him there is no need to worry about your happiness and your joy. He is our joy and our happiness, even as He is our peace. He is life, He is everything. So avoid the incitements and the temptations of Satan to give feelings this great prominence at the centre. Put at the centre the only One who has a right to be there, the Lord of Glory, Who so loved you that He went to the Cross and bore the punishment and the shame of your sins and died for you.”

– Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Spiritual Depression, 117-118

HT:  Of First Importance

Your testimony won’t keep you

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“I have always found it depressing to listen to the kind of people who, whenever you meet them, will always for sure tell you the story of their conversion many years ago. They tell you that story every time. I have known people do exactly the same thing with revival….. There is always something about an initial experience that is remarkable and outstanding. And a time of revival is so amazing and wonderful that it is not surprising that people go on talking about it. But, if they give the impression that they have had nothing since that wonderful experience, that ever after they have been walking through a wilderness, and traveling through a desert, then it is absolutely wrong….Their idea of the Christian life is of a dramatic experience, perhaps at the outset, after which they just trudge along, living on the strength of that and partly keeping their eye turned backwards as they go forward. “

Martyn Lloyd-Jones