One of the best things in starting a new year is the chance to start afresh with a new yearly devotional book. I must admit, I’m much better at starting these than finishing them, but they are there throughout the year, specifically dated so you can always pick up right where you’re supposed to be. Over the last few years I’ve worked most of the way through C H Spurgeon’s Morning and Evening and Cheque Book of the Bank of Faith (there are even links to these in the sidebar to your right), Matthew Henry: Daily Readings, and Voices From The Past: Puritan Devotional Readings. Late last year I picked up yet another new one to work through this year, George Whitefield: Daily Readings.
Another good thing about the new year is the ability to refocus. That’s what Sunday’s entry in the new Whitefield book did for me – it helped me refocus on the value of prayer in my life. Here’s what he had to say.
“Praying for others will fill your hearts with love one to another. He that every day heartily intercedes at the throne of grace for all mankind cannot but be filled with love and charity towards all. The frequent exercise of love in this manner, will insensibly enlarge your heart, and make you a partaker of that exceeding abundance, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord! Envy, malice, revenge, and such-like hellish tempers, can never long harbor in a gracious intercessor’s breast; but he will be filled with joy, peace, meekness, long-suffering, and all other graces of the Holy Spirit. By frequently laying his neighbor’s wants before God, he will be touched with a fellow-feeling of them; he will rejoice with those that do rejoice, and weep with those that weep. Every blessing bestowed on others, instead of exciting envy in him, will be looked on as an answer to his particular intercession, and fill his soul with joy unspeakable and full of glory. Abound, therefore, in acts of general and particular intercession; and when you hear of your neighbor’s faults, instead of relating them to, and exposing them before others, lay them in secret before God, and beg of him to correct and amend them. When you hear of a notorious sinner, instead of thinking you do well to be angry, beg of Jesus Christ to convert and make him a monument of free grace. You cannot imagine what a blessed alteration this practice will make in your heart, and how much you will increase day by day in the spirit of love and meekness towards all!
From “George Whitefield: Daily Readings“, edited by Randall J Pederson, published by Christian Heritage. Copyright © 2010 by Randall J Pederson
