REFLECTIONS

“1908 Convention-One Soul a Day

It was about this time that John Hyde laid hold of God in a very definite covenant. This was for one soul a day-not less, not inquiries simply, but a soul saved-ready to confess Christ in public and be baptized in His Name. The stress and strain was relieved. His heart was filled with the peace of full assurance. All who spoke to him perceived a new life and new life-work which this life can never end.

He returned to his district with the confidence; nor was he disappointed. It meant long journeys, nights of watching unto prayer, and fasting, pain and conflict, yet victory always crowing this. What though the dews chilled him by night and the drought exhausted him by day? His sheep were being gathered into the fold, and the Good Shepherd was seeing the travail of His soul and being satisfied. By the end of that year more than four hundred were gathered in.

Was he satisfied? Far from it. How could he possibly be so long as his Lord was not? How could our Lord be satisfied, so long as one single sheep was yet outside His fold? But John Hyde was learning the secret of Divine strength: “The joy of the Lord.” For, after all, the greater the capacity for joy, the greater our capacity also for sorrow. Thus it was with the Man of Sorrows, He could say: “These words have I spoken unto you, that My joy may be in you and that your joy may be full.”

John Hyde seemed always to be hearing the God Shepherd’s voice saying, “Other sheep I have, other sheep I have.” No matter if he won the one a day or two a day or four a day, he had an unsatisfied longing, an undying passion for lost souls. Here is a picture given by one of his friends in India: “As a personal worker he would engage a man in a talk about his salvation. By and by he would have his hands on the man’s shoulders, looking him very earnestly in the eyes. Soon he would get the man on his knees confessing his sins and seeking salvation. Such a one he would baptize in the village, by the roadside or anywhere.”

I once attended one of his conventions for Christians. He would meet his converts as they came in, and embrace them in oriental style, laying his hand first on one shoulder and then on the other. Indeed, his embraces were so loving that he got nearly all to give embraces to Christians, and those too, of the lowest caste.

This was his strong point. Love won him victories.”

-From Praying Hyde-The Life of John “Praying” Hyde  Bridge Publishing  South Plainfield, NJ 1982.

REFLECTIONS

Man's Highest Activity

"When a man is speaking to God he is at his very acme (acme is the highest point; summit; peak). It is the highest activity of the human soul, and therefore it is at the same time the ultimate test of a man's true spiritual condition. There is nothing that tells the truth about us as Christian people so much as our prayer life. Everything we do in the Christian life is easier than prayer. It is not so difficult to give alms...you can have a true spirit of philanthropy in people who are not Christian at all...The same applies also to the question of self-discipline-refraining from certain things and taking up particular duties and tasks. God knows it is very much easier to preach like this from the pulpit than it is to pray. Prayer is undoubtedly the ultimate test, because a man can speak to others with greater ease than he can speak to God. Ultimately, therefore, a man discovers the real condition of his spiritual life when he examines himself in private, when he is alone with God...have we not all known what it is to find that, somehow, we have less to say to God when we are alone than when we are in the presence of others? It should not be so; but it often is. So that it is when we have left the realm of activities and outward dealings with other people, and are alone with God, that we really know where we stand in a spiritual sense, it is not only the highest activity of the soul, it is the ultimate test of our spiritual condition."

­­­­..............

O the pure delight of a single hour

That before Thy throne I spend,

When I kneel in prayer, and with Thee, my God,

I commune as friend with friend

The outstanding characteristic of al the most saintly people that the world has ever known has been that they have not only spent much time in private prayer, but have also delighted in it...The more saintly the person, the more time such a person spends in conversation with God. Thus it is a vital and ail important matter...

This has been true in the experience of God's people throughout the centuries. We find it recorded in the Gospels that John the Baptist had been teaching his disciples to pray. They obviously had felt the need of instruction, and they had asked him...And John had taught how to pray. Our Lord's disciples felt exactly the same need... 'Lord, teach us how to pray.' Undoubtedly the desire arose in their hearts because they were conscious of this kind of natural, instinctive, initial difficulty of which we are all aware; but it must also have been greatly increased when they watched His own prayer life. They saw how He would arise 'a great while before dawn' and go up into the mountains to pray, and how He would spend whole nights in prayer. And sometimes, I have no doubt; they said to themselves, 'What does He talk about? What does He do?' They may have also thought, 'I find after a few minutes in prayer that I come to the end of my words. What is it that enables Him to be drawn out in prayer? What is it that leads to this ease and abandonment?' 'Lord,' they said, 'teach us how to pray.' They meant by this... 'We wish we knew God as You know Him. Teach us how to pray.' Have you ever felt that? Have you never felt dissatisfied with your prayer life, and longed to know more and more what it is truly to pray? If you have, it is an encouraging sign."

-From Martyn Lloyd-Jones's Writings A First Book Of Daily Readings Selected by Frank Cumbers Published by Eerdmans Publishers Grand Rapids, Ml 1970 Pages 59, 68.

REFLECTIONS

“NOT SAVED

"The harvest is past, the summer is ended,

and we are not saved"—Jeremiah 8:20

NOT SAVED! Dear reader, is this your mournful plight? Warned of the judgment to come, bidden to escape for your life, and yet at this moment not saved? You know the way of salvation, you read it in the Bible, you hear it from the pulpit, it is explained to you by friends, and yet you neglect it, and therefore are not saved. You will be without excuse when the Lord shall judge the quick and dead. The Holy Spirit has given more or less of blessing upon the word which has been preached in your hearing, and times of refreshing have come from the divine presence, and yet you are without Christ. All these hopeful seasons have come and gone—your summer and your harvest have past—and yet you are not saved.

Years have followed one another into eternity, and your last year will soon be here; youth has gone, manhood is going, and yet you are not saved. Let me ask you- Will you ever be saved? Is there any likelihood of it? Already the most propitious seasons have left you unsaved: will other occasions alter your condition? Means have failed with you—the best of means, used perseveringly and with the utmost affection—what more can be done for you? Affliction and prosperity have alike failed to impress you; tears and prayers and sermons have been wasted on your barren heart. Are not the probabilities dead against your ever being saved? Is it not more than likely that you will abide as you are till death forever bars the door of hope? Do you recoil from the supposition? Yet it is a most reasonable one: he who is not washed in so many waters will in all probability go filthy to his end. The convenient time never has come; why should it ever come? It is logical to fear that it never will arrive, and that, Felix-like, you will find no convenient season till you are in hell. Oh, bethink you of what that hell is, and of the dread probability that you will soon be cast into it!

Reader, suppose you should die unsaved, your doom no words can picture. Write out your dread estate in tears and blood, talk of it with groans and gnashing of teeth; you will be punished with everlasting destruction from the glory of the Lord, and from the glory of His power. A brother's voice would fain startle you into earnestness. Oh, be wise, be wise in time, and ere another year begins, believe in Jesus, who is able to save to the uttermost. Consecrate these last hours to lonely thought, and if deep repentance be bred in you, it will be well; and if it lead to humble faith in Jesus, it will be best of all. Oh, see to it that this year pass not away, and you an unforgiven spirit. Let not the new year's midnight peals sound upon a joyless spirit. Now, Now, NOW, believe, and live. "Escape for thy life; look not behind thee, neither stay thou in all the plain; escape to the mountain, lest thou be consumed.””

-C.H. Spurgeon 1834-1892