(Heb.

11:4)

D. Martyn Lloyd Jones

Died
1st March 1981

 We are sometimes much more concerned to defend what we

think we have always believed, than to find out the truth.

 Faith is a refusal to panic.

 Whenever I see myself before God and realize something of what

my blessed Lord has done for me at Calvary, I am ready to forgive
anybody anything. I cannot withhold it. I do not even want to
withhold it.

 Love is not just a sentiment. Love is a great controlling passion

and it always expresses itself in terms of obedience.

 We should go into His presence as a child goes to his father. We

do it with reverence and godly fear, of course, but we should go
with a childlike confidence and simplicity.

 Human will-power alone is not enough. Will-power is excellent

and we should always be using it; but it is not enough. A desire
 to live a good life is not enough. Obviously we should all have
that desire, but it will not guarantee success. So let me put it
thus: Hold on to your principles of morality and ethics, use your
willpower to the limit, pay great heed to every noble, uplifting
desire that is in you; but realize that these things alone are not
enough, that they will never bring you to the desired place. We
have to realize that all our best is totally inadequate, that a
spiritual battle must be fought in a spiritual manner.

 We should not interpret Scripture in the light of our experience

but we should always examine our experiences in the light of the
teachings of Scripture.

 Even at it's very best and highest ,the joy the world gives is
always contingent.

 The doctrines of the Bible are not a subject to be studied , rather

we should desire to know them in order that having known them
we may not be puffed up with knowledge and excited about our
information ,but may draw nearer to God in worship ,praise and
adoration , because we have seen , in a fuller way that we have
never seen before , the Glory of our wondrous God.

 Prayer, in many ways, is the supreme expression of our faith in

God.

 What is preaching? Logic on fire! Preaching is theology coming

through a man who is on fire. A true understanding and
experience of the Truth must lead to this. I say again that a man
who can speak about these things dispassionately has no right
whatsoever to be in a pulpit; and should never be allowed to
enter one.
 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.

 We must not concentrate overmuch upon our feelings. Do not

spend too much time feeling your own pulse taking your own
spiritual temperature, do not spend too much time analyzing
your feelings. That is the high road to morbidity.

 As Christians we should never feel sorry for ourselves. The

moment we do so, we lose our energy, we lose the will to fight
and the will to live, and are paralyzed.

 There is nothing which so certifies the genuineness of a man's

faith as his patience and his patient endurance, his keeping on
steadily in spite of everything.

 You are either a Christian or you are not a Christian; you cannot
be partly a Christian. You are either "dead" or "alive"; you are
either "born" or "not born".

 In a miracle the laws of nature are not broken- God acts above
them and without them!

 The true hallmark of greatness is simplicity.

 Doctrine must never be determined by our sentiment.

 We all desire to be happy. That is something that is innate in
human nature; nobody wants to be miserable, though I am
aware of the fact that there are people who seem to enjoy being
miserable and some who seem to find their happiness in being
unhappy!

 To dwell on the past simply causes failure in the present. While

you are sitting down and bemoaning the past and regretting all
the things you have not done, you are crippling yourself and
preventing yourself from working in the present. Is that
Christianity? Of course it is not.

 The tragedy is that many of us are living...desperate Christian

life. Sunday comes and we get some strength, and then we lose
some on Monday; a good deal is gone by Tuesday and we wonder
whether we have anything left. On Wednesday it has all gone and
then we exist. Or perhaps refreshment comes in some other way,
some meeting we attend, some friends we meet...Now that is the
old order of things, that is not the new. So our Lord goes on to
put it like this: 'Whosoever drinketh of this water shall thirst
again: but whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him
shall never thirst; but the water that I shall give him shall be in
him a well of water springing up into everlasting life' (verses 13-
14). He puts a well within us. We are not always drawing from
somewhere outside. The well, the spring, goes on springing up
from within into everlasting life. 

 We must listen to ALL that God says ( and not come to the Bible
and pick and choose /accepting this and rejecting that.

 Always respond to every impulse to pray. The impulse to pray

may come when you are reading or when you are battling with a
text. I would make an absolute law of this always obey such an
impulse.
 The Scriptures do grant clearly by their teaching that it is
possible for a Christian to be depressed. Not that they justify
this, but they do recognize the fact.

 Holiness is not something we are called upon to do in order that

we may become something; it is something we are to do because
of what we already are.

 It is not so much that a Christian has come to hold convictions

but rather that convictions have laid hold of him.

 The most vital question to ask about all who claim to be

Christian is this: Have they a soul thirst for God? Do they long
for this? Is there something about them that tells you that they
are always waiting for His next manifestation of Himself? Is their
life centred on Him? Can they say with Paul that they forget
everything in the past? Do they press forward more and more
that they might know Him and that the knowledge might
increase, until eventually beyond death and the grave they may
bask eternally in 'the sunshine of His face?' That I might know
him!

‘Friend, remember that it is better to read 1 quote 10 times

(meditatively) than to read 10 quotes 1 time (superficially).’

Gathered by Totaf.