This summer I’ve been thoroughly enjoying the second volume of Ian Murray’s biography of Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones.
MLJ, the much-loved Welsh preacher and longtime minister of London’s Westminster Chapel, is considered one of the finest preachers of his generation and is a force to be reckoned with! It’s been a special experience to read about this man’s life, to encounter him up close, follow his footsteps, learn his opinions, and traverse his convictions.
So today I’d like to share 3 quotes from MLJ that I’ve come to love.
Take time to be holy
An oft-repeated phrase of his, MLJ understood this inconvenient truth about the Christian life.
Holiness takes work.
It’s not something you drift into.
Holiness requires discipline, patience, and much time. To grow in Christ-likeness, we all must do the costly work of cultivating holiness. There’s no shortcut or cheat code.
So “take time to be holy.”
I pray daily for revival
Revival is a word that can get thrown around without much thought to what it actually means.
At its core, revival is this: a unique outpouring of the Holy Spirit on a sizeable group of people. Revival is a special experience where the fullness of God is poured out on people viscerally and abundantly.
It’s a unique gift that God has chosen to bestow at certain points in history. And something MLJ longed to see sweep across England in his own day.
Revival is also something we should long for—and pray for—in our own day too.
Where there is a dogfight a crowd always comes
At one point, MLJ was frustrated with a fellow minister who was gaining a large platform from “contendings and tirades.”
This minister defended his platform by responding that what he was saying must be good because his book sales kept increasing. In reply, MLJ said, “Where there is a dogfight a crowd always comes.”
This lesson is perhaps more true now than ever.
In our social media age, many Christians have amassed large followings from holding controversial opinions and regularly getting into debates around them. They relish in public controversy and love to be in the middle of it. Since something in human nature loves a fight, they get more followers the more they foray into controversial waters.
These people are less interested in God’s glory and more concerned with there own. So we must never mistake large crowds with faithfulness to Jesus.
As Kierkegaard's once noted, "the more people, the less truth.”