BETWEEN TWO CITIES

Martyn Lloyd-Jones (1899 – 1981)

Martyn Lloyd-Jones was a Welsh Protestant minister, preacher and medical doctor who was influential in the Reformed wing of the British evangelical movement in the 20th century. For almost 30 years, he was the minister of Westminster Chapel in London. His preaching and writing have been a great inspiration to me over the years. I read his daily devotional, Walking with God Day by Day: 365 Daily Devotional Selections each day on my Amazon Kindle.  On March 29, I read his devotional about our position in Christ. He wrote this:

When you wake up, the first thing you should do (and I need to do the same) is to say to yourself, “I am a child of God. Christ is in me. That old self is gone: I died with Christ. ‘I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me.’ Everything I do today must be in the light of this knowledge.”

Walking with God Day by Day: 365 Daily Devotional Selections, March 29, Martyn Lloyd-Jones and Robert Backhouse, published by Crossway

The Apostle Paul reminds us we are the children of God in his Epistles, for example:

The Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God,

Romans 8:16 (English Standard Version)

Paul makes it clear that our old self is gone, and Christ lives in us.

We know that our old self was crucified with him in order that the body of sin might be brought to nothing, so that we would no longer be enslaved to sin.

Romans 6:6 (English Standard Version)

I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.

Galatians 2:20 (English Standard Version)

I decided to make this affirmation each morning when I awake. 

I am a child of God. Christ is in me. That old self is gone: I died with Christ. ‘I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me.’ Everything I do today must be in the light of this knowledge.

I added it to my Morning Prayers on this blog.

I highly recommend Dr. Lloyd-Jones sermons on the Martyn Lloyd-Jones Trust website:

https://www.mljtrust.org/sermons/

I listened to his over 200 sermons on the Ephesians on my exercise walks. He goes through the book verse by verse. Very rich messages and teaching.  There is an MLJ app on the Apple iPhone and Google Play. I listened to his sermons with my iPhone MLJ Trust App.

I also have read some of his books. My favorite is The Assurance of Our Salvation (Studies in John 17): Exploring the Depth of Jesus’ Prayer for His Own. He has 48 chapters, his sermons on John 17, and the higher Lord’s Prayer, his prayer for the people who the Father has given him, not a prayer for his people but solely for Jesus. This book was life-changing for me. 

Another very good book of his I have read is Spiritual Depression: Its Causes and Its Cure, which Amazon summarizes as follows:

This enduring collection of twenty-one sermons by D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, each originally delivered at Westminster Chapel in London, carefully and compassionately analyzes an undeniable feature of modern society from which Christians have not escaped — spiritual depression.

“Christian people,” writes Lloyd-Jones, “too often seem to be perpetually in the doldrums and too often give this appearance of unhappiness and of lack of freedom and absence of joy. There is no question at all but that this is the main reason why large numbers of people have ceased to be interested in Christianity.”

Believing the Christian joy was one of the most potent factors in the spread of Christianity in the early centuries, Lloyd-Jones not only lays bare the causes that have robbed many Christians of spiritual vitality but also points the way to the cure that is found through the mind and spirit of Christ.

https://www.amazon.com/Spiritual-Depression-Its-Causes-Cure/dp/0802813879/