You do not have, because you do not ask. (James 4:2, ESV)

The other day in Periscope on Prophesy Phil Johnson, a servant of our Lord whose work in Christ I have no problem recommending to the readers of Apprising Ministries, posted our “weekly dose of Spurgeon on his very informative Pyromaniacs blog. It contained this gem from the prince of preachers:

The Holy Ghost does not reveal anything fresh now. He brings old things to our remembrance. “He shall teach you all things, and bring all things to your remembrance whatsoever I have told you.” The canon of revelation is closed; there is no more to be added. God does not give a fresh revelation, but he rivets the old one. When it has been forgotten, and laid in the dusty chamber of our memory, he fetches it out and cleans the picture, but does not paint a new one.

Return And Walk In The Old Ways

O how the Church needs men and women of God who steadfastly hold to this absolute Truth! As I begin researching the infiltration of the Emergent Church and Contemplative Spirituality into the Southern Baptist Convention, and as we listen to some of our Lord’s best voices like John MacArthur telling us the Lord has abandoned this nation, these words above by Spurgeon–as well as those to follow–should be heeded.

At the very small home fellowship where I am pastor we sense that “something is happening in the Spirit.” Not that we claim to know what this even means exactly, but I suspect you sense this as well. I have said on a number of occasions that this generation is no time for Christianity as usual. The devotion below from C.H. Spurgeon is an exhortation to pray, and the Body of Christ does indeed need prayer.

O yes, I do take a lot of flak for being “negative,” but it has been said many times in many ways and in many forums: If one comes to a doctor with a deadly disease and all the doctor does is tell that patient pleasant things having nothing to do with said illness, that patient will die. Do Christians really not sense the “burden” in the Spirit that our Lord’s Church in America is deathly sick?

Should men like me then tell you how polite someone like Brian McLaren seems as he denies the vicarious penal substitutionary atonement and is still considered as evangelical? Or perhaps I should talk about how “cool” Rob Bell is while he infiltrates your evangelical youth groups and encourages people to practice so-called ancient spiritual disciplines which actually began with heretical hermits in the deserts of the east.

No, we didn’t need the “fresh revelation” of the neo-liberal cult of the Emergent Church, but as the Body of Christ we had best heed this call by God to pray. It’s an urgency that you just “feel” inside and can’t quite figure it out. We don’t need to know why our Lord asks us to do something, ours is to answer the call no matter what the cost to us personally.

This devotion by Spurgeon is offered as an exhortation to pray…and when you’ve prayed all you can pray…then pray…

And when He had taken the book, the four beasts and four and twenty elders fell down before the Lamb, having every one of them harps, and golden vials full of odours, which are the prayers of saints. (Revelation 5:8)

“Men ought always to pray” (Luke 18:1). Week by week, month by month, year by year, the conversion of that dear child is to be the father’s main plea. The bringing of that unconverted husband is to lie upon the wife’s heart night and day till she gets it; she is not to take even ten or twenty years of unsuccessful prayer as a reason why she should cease; she is to set God no times or seasons, but so long as there is life in her and life in the dear object of her solicitude,, she is to continue still to plead with the mighty God of Jacob.

The pastor is not to seek a blessing on his people occasionally, and then in receiving a measure of it to desist from further intervention, but he is to continue vehemently without pause, without restraining his energies, to cry aloud and spare not till the windows of Heaven be opened and a blessing be given too large for him to house. But how many times we ask of God and have not because we do not wait long enough at the door!

Oh, for grace to stand foot to foot with the angel of God and never, never, never relax our hold, feeling that the cause we plead is one which we must be successful, for souls to depend on it, the glory of God is connected with it, the state of our fellow man is in jeopardy. If we could have given up in prayer in our own lives and the lives of those dearest to us, yet the souls of men we cannot give up; we must urge and plead again and again until we obtain the answer. (At the Master’s Feet, November 15)