Andrew Fuller and Prayer, or Lack of it.

Isn't it amazing that Andrew Fuller (1754-1815), the great strict  and Particular Baptist preacher, who was born in Cambridgeshire and settled in Kettering, England.  He contended for the faith, and restated Calvinist theology for the Particular Baptist churches, and founded the Baptist Missionary Society.. Why this was done was because Calvin's theology was not baptistic, but reformed.  

This great man confessed on his death-bed how little he prayed.  And so sad.  But the man was truthful.  Perhaps he spent more time in his books than before the Lord in humble prayer.  I think we can all confess to the same wrong priority!  It is good to do the one thing but without leaving the other undone!  I think this is a very timely warning to all reformed men (and women).  I wonder if this is also true of all the great reformed men in the church today! I know I went through a stage when prayer was a duty. In my preaching during my "high ortho" days, I depended much more on my preparation than on the Lord's unction.  Thankfully, that is all different now, but I, too, am ashamed at my lack of earnest, pleading, prevailing prayer to the living God.  I wish I was a much better man of prayer than I am.  I can put the matter right, but there is that something inside me that resists the need to seek the Lord's face.  

I am humbled by Martin Luther, I think it was, who looked at his very full diary one day and resolved that he will have to spend at least four hours in prayer.  That humbles me into the dust!  What a fraud I am in the light of this! 

A Faith Ministry

This ministry is a faith ministry, and one in which I am delighted to be involved.  My international congregation is growing by the week, and the gospel of Jesus Christ is being published abroad on a daily basis.  Time zones do not affect this work, or where the readers are on the earth is of no account.

I trust that the ministry of this website is being blessed by the Lord to your soul, and that you are both challenged and encouraged, taught and corrected by what you read.

May God bless you richly.

O God, in Heav'n Enthroned, We Bow

O God, in heav'n enthroned, we bow
Before Your majesty
And worship You, the Holy One,
Who had my soul set free.

To look to You, most gracious Lord,
Is what I want to do,
And hear from You, the living God
Of grace and mercy true.

Your love to me, dear Father God,
Is precious, rich and free.
For You had thoughts of peace for me
In past eternity.

How can I ever thank You, Lord,
For dying for my sin?
And how can I, my Saviour God
Show you my thoughts within?

I'll give to You, Lord Jesus Christ,
All that I am to use
In Your glad service, rich and free,
As You would care to choose.

And for Your glory, blessed Lord,
Which is my great chief end,
To live and work and even die
To preach the sinner's Friend.

But, Lord, I am so weak and faith,
I need Your grace within
To strengthen me that I may point
To Him Who died for sin.

Oh, Let me Spirit power receive
That I may serve aright;
And for Your Name's sake let me live
To show Your image bright.

Tune: (1)  Crimond
         (2)  By cool Siloam's shady rill

We Long to Know Your Blessing

We long to know your blessing
O Lord, upon our land;
We long to know your mercy
Upon us where we stand.
For we are weak and sinful,
Our hearts are cold and sad.
And we can see no need for
Revival, life or God.

We long to know Your blessing
O Christ upon our church;
We long to know Your mercy
O light us like a torch
To shine bright in the darkness
Of this world's awful sin;
To show the sinner Jesus
Who makes him pure within.

We long to know Your blessing
Dear Christ, upon our souls;
We long to know Your mercy
Which only makes us whole.
For we are low and lifeless,
Our spirits need Your power;
O come and resurrect us
In this decisive hour.

O send Your Holy Spirit
Lord, Saviour, from above,
That He might overwhelm us
With Grace and Power and love.
Oh, do not turn away, Lord,
Oh, do not pass us by;
But come in and revive us,
Exalt us to the sky.

Tune:  The church's one foundation

God Coming To Visit? No Way!

God coming to visit his people is not always a pleasant or comfortable experience. Thankfully, He often comes to bless, encourage, support, uplift, etc. The fact that He does this is a demonstration of His marvellous grace and abundant mercy.
 

But when God comes by His Holy Spirit into His church, things can never be the same ever again. If things do not change within the church, is He really present and working in her? Can the holy God be among His people by the Holy Spirit and the church to feel at ease, comfortable? Is this remotely possible?

Where the church feels the impact of God’s presence with her, the heart cry from many is, “Where can I flee from your presence?” (Ps.139:5,7). This is extraordinary! This is simply astonishing! We have it recorded in Scripture that God’s people wanted away from Him; they wanted nothing to do with Him; and wanted to flee from Him as fast and as far as their feet can carry them.

And it is the same today. When God by His Holy Spirit returns to His backslidden church, there are ructions. This is inevitable. Divisions occur between members, and between members and the minister; believers are set against each other, and the Spirit of God is aggrieved. When God comes, things happen. And often these things are not what we want or expect. But God is the sovereign Lord over His church. The Greek word from which we drive our English word, ‘church,’ means ‘belonging to the Lord.’ The church is His, and He has the right to visit it whenever and however and wherever He pleases.

But when you think about it, this is but a faint picture of what it will be like when Christ comes to visit His church in the future. In fact, anytime He comes to visit His church, this will happen. There will be “wars and rumours of wars” within her ranks. It will be said of our backslidden church what was said by John when Christ came to earth, “He came unto His own, but His own did not receive Him,” (Jn.1:11,12). Christ is not welcome in His church, which He redeemed with His own blood. Even at the end of the first century Jesus said through John to the church at Laodicea, that He was actually standing outside the door of the church, knocking to get in. The church had shut Him out! Incredible! Unbelievable!

Targeted by the Devil.

This has been one of those days that I would sooner forget!  There was an awful attack of the evil one against me, which left me with a sore stomach, feeling low, conscious of an enemy attack.  They come, you know.  And they're fierce.  Satan, like Jesus, knows our every weakness.  He knows when we are vulnerable.  He knows how to attack us at our weakest point. 

But he's a defeated enemy. And defeated enemies know they are defeated because their power base is small.  They no longer have any authority over people, even though they still attack them.  They show their teeth from time to time. But they are defeated.  Did you know that they only place where politicians put the enemy they claim to have defeated into government, is in Northern Ireland?  And we are sending emissaries out to other countries to tell them to do the same. 

God hasn't done that to Satan, has He?  He has banished him forever.  Satan does not rule in God's Kingdom. He has no place in His realm.  His true place is the bottomless pit - HELL.

And the moment you realise that truth, that moment the freedom comes.  We are liberated afresh. By that Imean that we realsie that we are the liberated children of God. Hallelujah!

What is "An Uncontroversial Ministry?"

Dr John Stott wrote, Christ was a controversialist - and necessarily so.  Every true Gospel minister will, by definition and by default, be a controversialist, not because he has a message which is nothing if it is not controversial.

The problem, is, as I see it, that the church has become so like the world that it is stunned, indeed traumatised (shocked), when a message that is so unlike the world is preached.  Our problem is our message - the world hates it.  Our message has a traumatising effect on worldly church members; but it should also 'shock' believers into facing reality.  

In today's spiritually aenemic church, bringing the Gospel into it is like pouring new wine into old wine skins.  because the new wine is so full of vibrancy, it will burst the old wine skins.  Similarly, when the Gospel of God is brought into a spiritually hardened and set church, the result is inevitable.  And we ought to rejoice when we see the effects of God's Gospel upon the churches today. If we were preaching the Gospel, which is the power of God unto salvation for everyone who believes, and it was received well in the church, ought we not to be deeply alarmed?  If a worldly church were to welcome the Gospel of God's Son, then there is something seriously wrong with the preaching and the message.  Where we see spiritual turbulence which leads to ecclesiastical turbulence, we should rejoice that something new has definitely come into God's church. 

But isn't it so sad that the Gospel is viewed as a 'new' thing within many churches today!  It is seen as something foreign, something to resist, something that is to be opposed and got rid of. 

Here's the big point!  Nothing but a new message in a dead church can bring about new life in dead sinners, nothing!  It takes something revolutionary to get people's attention - and the Gospel can do that exceedingly well.  Why is this?  because it is not of this world.  If it were, people would accept it; but it is not of this world.  It came from another world.  And it takes people to another world!  

But it is controversial.  How could it be otherwise!  And those who herald it are controversialists!  Praise God for every controversial preacher who is this solely because of his biblical messages!