J. D. Jones

“ I make bold to say that to the man who has learned the true secret of prayer there are no unanswered prayers. It is the man who has forgotten the true order who complains of unanswered prayers. It is the man who has thought more of his own personal desires than of the glory of God who complains that Heaven is deaf to his cry. The man who has learned to seek first the kingdom of God, who sincerely desires that God’s will may be done, that man never talks about unanswered prayers. ”

“ This is the only prayer for me, for you, for all men, “Father, Thy will be done.” We wish for success in life, but because such a success might prove a curse and not a blessing, we must add, “Nevertheless, not my will but Thine be done.” We pray for freedom from bereavement and sorrow, but because such discipline may result in truest blessedness, we add, “Nevertheless, not my will but Thine be done.” We pray for peace and comfort and quietness, but because struggle and conflict may be necessary, in order to make us strong, we add, “Nevertheless, not my will but Thine be done.” ”

“ We shall mend matters only by making God a reality, and the final establishment of right and justice, and joy will come only when He is enthroned as King. But you may say to me, “Is not God King now? Is not the world His? Are not all men in His hands?” That is perfectly true! I do not forget that the earth is the Lord’s, and the fulness thereof, the world and they that dwell therein. It is my joy and strength to remember that in spite of all the bluster and brave show made by the forces of evil, the Lord God omnipotent reigneth! ”

“ There are stains upon us—black and deep and foul; but the blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanseth us from all sin. Just as the snow descends from heaven and hides all the grime and filth of earth underneath its mantle until the whole surface is one pure glistening white, so God will let His mercy cover us; He will clothe us in righteousness until every stain is covered and we stand forth whiter than snow. God was in Christ reconciling the world unto Himself, not reckoning unto them their trespasses. The Cross proclaims that there is forgiveness with God. ”

“ Life is not worth having if God’s face is turned away from us. Life is not worth having if our sins interpose themselves like a black frowning cloud between us and the Eternal Light. To make life worth living, life must be made happy and blessed and peaceful, and before life can be made happy that barrier of sin must be removed, and we must walk in the light of God’s countenance. The prayer for bread is a prayer for life—for mere existence. ”

“ Frequent usage may have dimmed our perception of its sweet simplicity, and its soaring spirituality. There is the danger of its becoming on our lips a mere form of words. There is the danger of its becoming, instead of a real, throbbing, living prayer, a cold, heartless, formal utterance.
The next best thing to saying a new thing, is to say an old thing in a new way. Originality consists not so much in discovering new truth, as in making old truth real and vital. The painter does not invent the beauty of nature which he depicts on his canvas, he simply brings it out and makes it visible. ”

“ The Bible is a book of the future, and the spring-time, and the dawn. You will not find its pages taken up with regrets for the Eden which has been lost; it looks forward to a better Eden still to come. It does not spend its time in bewailing the sunshine that has disappeared from the earth; it rather bids men wake and watch that they may be ready to greet the still more glorious day which is about to break. For as you read the Bible, what do you discover? You discover one glowing promise after another given by God; you find hope ever waxing stronger ”

“ But the kingdom of God is justice—strict, level, even-handed justice. When His kingdom comes, tyranny, oppression, wrong shall cease; men shall do right out of love for their righteous King.
The kingdom of God is peace. Peace between men, peace between nations. All strife and mutual distrust shall be for ever buried, and the noise of war shall be heard no more, but men shall beat their swords into plough-shares and their spears into pruning hooks. Hate and enmity shall die. “The wolf and the lamb shall lie down together, and the lion shall eat straw like the ox. ”

“ I have not been able to translate into language the half of the beauty and glory I myself have seen in it. You must find out for yourselves, by experience, the joy and peace it can bring into life. This name is ours to use; the love implied in it is ours to enjoy. Not one of us need go through life alone; not one of us need be orphaned and poor; not one of us need carry a troubled anxious heart. ”

“ Oh, the world is full of temptation. Every lot has its own fierce tests for character. Business life has its temptations; home life has its temptations. The life of hard grinding toil has its temptations; the life of ease and leisure has its temptations also. Never a day passes but in some way or other an appeal is made to our lower, baser nature, and we are urged to yield. The old Greek legends speak of the syrens—creatures half women, half fish—who lived upon the rocks and could sing the most ravishing songs. ”

“ Shall we continue in sin, that grace may abound? God forbid! for by every sin of ours we crucify the Lord afresh, and put Him to an open shame. The programme of the Christian life is not sin and pardon, sin and pardon, sin and pardon, day after day, month after month, year after year. The programme of the Christian life is pardon, sanctification, holiness. After pardon comes the daily struggle with sin, until its power in our souls is broken, and we come off more than conquerors, through Him who loved us. ”

“ But while God is King of the world de jure, He is not King de facto. His kingship is nominal—not real and effective; for there are parts of the world over which God cannot be said to rule. There are multitudes of men who are in rebellion against Him, and who refuse to acknowledge His authority. God’s writs do not run. His law is not obeyed. His will is not done.
And here we come across that solemn and awful power which is the prerogative of manhood—the power of resisting the will of God. Nature obeys God’s will. ”

“ Yet there is beauty in the daisy, and a glory in the buttercup. It is only familiarity that has made us blind. We should think them beautiful perhaps if they were as rare as orchids. And even as it is, we need only listen to a lover of flowers as he describes to us the delicacy and beauty of the daisy and the buttercup, to realise that even these—the commonest flowers that bloom—reveal something of the glory of God. Probably there is no form of words so absolutely and universally familiar as the Lord’s Prayer. ”

“ You do not make a man a member of this kingdom by baptising him, or enrolling him among the adherents of a church, or by calling him a Christian. Men must have their hearts changed, they must be born again. They must be willing to render glad obedience to their Father King before they become members of this kingdom. Force may increase the numbers of a sect, it cannot add one to the membership of the kingdom. The sword may compel a man to change his name; it can never compel him to change his heart! Oh no; it is not by the sword that God’s kingdom will come. ”

“ Oh, yes, human life is beset with temptation. No one is exempt from it. No moment of the day is free from it. Incitements to sin abound. Invitations to enter the broad way meet us at every turn. Why is it parents are so anxious, when their children are sent for the first time to fight life’s battles for themselves in a large town? I will tell you. It is because they know that temptations abound. There is temptation in the glare and false gaiety of the public-house. There is temptation in every painted shameless face seen upon our streets. ”

“ Now all the misery of the world is due to the fact that man abused his freedom, that he chose not to obey, but to dis-obey. What was the first sin? An act of disobedience; and that act of disobedience brought in its train a multitude of woes. I want you to remember that vice is not here by God’s will; lust is not here by God’s will; strife and malice and envy are not here by God’s will; war and bloodshed and slaughter are not here by God’s will; misery and poverty and shame are not here by God’s will. They are here by man’s will, because man set up his own will in opposition to that of God. ”

“ Why, though you had the wealth of the Rothschilds, you would still be as dependent upon God for mere bread as the meanest pauper in Christchurch workhouse. For consider for a moment the facts of the case. All wealth in the last resort depends upon the produce of the soil. In these days, when civilisation is so complicated, this is a fact we are always in danger of overlooking and forgetting; but it is a fact, nevertheless, all wealth in the last resort depends upon the produce of the soil—the simple necessaries of life. ”

“ Every single sin is a trespass, a transgression, and overstepping of the bounds. The Bible looks at sin from the standpoint of prudence, and stigmatises sin as folly—the most stupendous and senseless of all follies. The sinner is a man who, for a few moments of delirious excitement, barters away his immortal soul. The Bible looks at sin from the standpoint of God, and sin then becomes disobedience, or, as in the text quoted from Matthew, it becomes “debt.” ”

“ To take a spark to green wood would not do very much harm. But to bring temptation upon us is like applying flame to dry shavings or a match to gunpowder. The attack of temptation from without is made formidable by the weakness and treachery within. It is because we know our own weakness, it is because we know how liable we are to break down under any severe test, that we pray, “Bring us not into temptation.” I am simply stating a matter of fact and observation when I say that there is in all of us a bias toward sin, an inclination toward evil. ”

“ Oh, this is a kingdom of love! God wants to be King not because He is Creator, but because He is Father. He wants men to be obedient to Him not under the pressure of force, but under the sweet constraint of love. ”

“ How forcibly such a fact preaches the truth of our dependence upon God! Rich and poor alike depend for very life upon the harvest God shall give. “Give us this day our daily bread” is a prayer for us all. It is a prayer for Job in his prosperity quite as much as for Job in his adversity. It is a prayer for Joseph amid the well-stocked granaries of Egypt quite as much as for Jacob face to face with starvation in Caanan. It is a prayer for rich and poor, for the man who has his thousands as well as the man who has not a shilling; for we are all pensioners upon the bounty of God ”

“ Those who have parted with some loved one, who have seen father or mother, or husband or wife or child, hidden from them in the dark cold grave, and who come home again to miss the well-loved face and familiar voice—they need grace to say, while their hearts are aching and their eyes are full of tears, “Thy will be done.” ”

“ It is at the foot of His Cross our sins are to be buried. Christ the sinless one is the Lamb of God. He hath borne our griefs and carried our sorrows, and the Lord hath laid on Him the iniquity of us all. This is the Gospel. There is a debt against us we can never hope to pay. But God for Christ’s sake will cancel it. There are sins which crush us with their weight and burden, but God for Christ’s sake will take them all away. ”

“ He is a God for every day, and for the common events of every day. Our God is, shall I say, a Master of detail. He cares not simply for the movements of worlds and the policies of nations. He notes the fall of a sparrow, and He counts the very hairs of our head. Nothing is too small for God to notice; the commonest affairs of the commonest life are matters of concern to Him.
“Give us this day our daily bread.” ”

“ There are depths of love in God, unrealised as yet by the best of us. I know a valley in South Wales, which outwardly is not much to look at, but in its bosom are buried vast treasures, and men who have digged beneath the surface have found there boundless 58wealth. The deeper we penetrate into the nature of God, the more loving, the more gracious we shall find Him to be. Therefore, press on to know Him, until you come to feel that God is your passion and your joy, that in earth, in heaven, you want none but Him. By so doing, you will be hallowing God’s name. ”