Chapter 46
Good Monday Morning to this week 46 of 2021
Moreover, I will give you a new heart. I will put a new spirit within you. I will remove the stony heart from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. I will put My Ruach within you. Then I will cause you to walk in My laws, so you will keep My rulings and do them. Then you will live in the land that I gave to your fathers. You will be My people and I will be your God.
Ezekiel 36 26-28
Yesterday evening I was reminded by an old friend of my dad how greatly he was inspired by Martin Loyd Jones while doing training in London. Yes, I remember a lot later of all the books still on my Dads bookshelf. Maybe it influenced my theology as well!
In one of Dr Martyn Lloyd-Jones sermons “A new Heart,” he elaborates : Man’s greatest need is not that he should become wealthy or emotionally fulfilled. Man’s greatest need is to be made right with God.
David Martyn Lloyd-Jones (1899–1981) was a Welsh Protestant minister and medical doctor who was influential in the Calvinist wing of the British evangelical movement in the 20th century. For almost 30 years, he was the minister of Westminster Chapel in London.
This is something that happens to you: it is God dealing with you, and God acting upon you by His Spirit; it is something you become aware of rather than what you do. It is thrust upon you; it is presented to you and almost forced upon you constantly in this way.
It is a kingdom which is to come, yes. But it is also a kingdom which has come. “The kingdom of God is among you” and “within you.” The kingdom of God is in every true Christian. He reigns in the Church when she acknowledges Him truly. The kingdom has come, the kingdom is coming, the kingdom is yet to come. Now we must always bear that in mind. Whenever Christ is enthroned as King, the kingdom of God is come, so that, while we cannot say that He is ruling overall in the world at the present time, He is certainly ruling in that way in the hearts and lives of all His people
The ultimate test of our spirituality is the measure of our amazement at the grace of God.
We must come back to the soul and to God who made it. We were made for Him, we are meant for Him, we have a correspondence with Him, and we will never come to rest until, like that needle on the compass, we strike that northern point, and there we come to rest – nowhere else.
Our supreme need, our only need, is to know God, the living God, and the power of His might. We need nothing else. It is just that, the power of the living God, to know that the living God is among us and that nothing else matters… I say, forget everything else. Forget everything else. We need to realize the presence of the living God amongst us. Let everything else be silent. This is no time for minor differences. We all need to know the touch of the power of the living God.
Wishing you an inspiring as you continue to know this God along with the mystery of Him living in us.
Philemon