I often rack my brain trying to figure out why some Sundays at worship are better than others. Martyn Lloyd-Jones has perhaps the best word on this I have read:
Let me make a personal confession. This kind of thing has often happened to me in my ministry. Sometimes God has been gracious on a Sunday and I have been conscious of exceptional liberty, and I have been foolish enough to listen to the devil when he says: 'Now, then, you wait until next Sunday, it is going to be marvelous, there will be even larger congregations.' And I go into the pulpit the next Sunday and I see a smaller congregation. But then on another occasion I stand in this pulpit laboring, as it were left to myself, preaching badly and utterly weak, and the devil has come and said: 'There will be nobody there at all next Sunday.' But thank God, I have found on the following Sunday a larger congregation. That is God's method of accountancy. You never know. I enter the pulpit in weakness and I end with power. I enter with self-confidence and I am made to feel a fool. It is God's accountancy. He knows us so much better that we know ourselves. He is always giving us surprises. You never know what He is going to do. His book-keeping is the most romantic think I know of in the whole world. (Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Spiritual Depression, 131)
GB
0 comments:
Post a Comment