Give yourselves to prayer and the ministry of the Word. If you do not pray, God will probably lay you aside from your ministry, as He did me, to teach you to pray.
Robert Murray M'CheyneRead
I ought to spend the best hours of the day in communion with God. It is my noblest and most fruitful employment, and is not to be thrust into any corner.
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes prioritizing time spent in spiritual reflection and communion with God as a vital and noble pursuit.
Robert Murray M'Cheyne highlights the importance of dedicating one's best time to connect with God, viewing this spiritual communion as not only the highest calling but also the most productive use of one's hours. He suggests that such spiritual engagements should not be relegated to the peripheries of our lives but should be central to our daily existence, reflecting their significance in personal fulfillment and moral development.
In practice
In a sermon discussing the importance of prayer and meditation.
Give yourselves to prayer and the ministry of the Word. If you do not pray, God will probably lay you aside from your ministry, as He did me, to teach you to pray.
I ought to pray before seeing any one. Often when I sleep long, or meet with others early, it is eleven or twelve o'clock before I begin secret prayer. I feel it is far better to begin with God-to see His face first, to get my soul near Him before it is near another.
Rose early to seek God and found Him whom my soul loveth. Who would not rise early to meet such company?
Live near to God, and so all things will appear to you little In comparison to eternal realities.
If I could hear Christ praying for me in the next room, I would not fear a million enemies.
The greatest need of my people is my own holiness.
I learned that the search for God is a Dark Night, that Faith is a Dark Night. And that’s hardly a surprise really, because for us each day is a dark night. None of us knows what might happen even the next minute, and yet still we go forward. Because we trust. Because we have Faith.
The accusing spirit, which flew up to heaven's chancery with the oath, blushed as he gave it in; and the recording angel as he wrote it down dropped a tear upon the word and blotted it out forever.
Who are you? You don't belong to the police?' 'I am better than the police,' said Poirot. He said it without conscious arrogance. It was, to him, a simple statement of fact.
Reason is a faculty far larger than mere objective force. When either the political or the scientific discourse announces itself as the voice of reason, it is playing God, and should be spanked and stood in the corner.
The world outside existed in a kind of darkness; and we inquired about nothing.
In a war without aim, you tend not to aim. You close your eyes, close your heart. The consequences become hit or miss in the most literal sense.
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