Great Quotes: Martyn Lloyd-Jones

"In a situation of crisis, the New Testament does not immediately say, "Let us pray." It always says first, "Let us think, let us understand the truth, let us take a firm hold of the doctrine." Prayer may be quite useless and quite void. . . . Prayer is sometimes an excuse for not thinking, an excuse for avoiding a problem or a situation. Have we not all known something of this in our personal experience? We have often been in difficulty and we have prayed to God to deliver us, but in the meantime we have not put something right in our lives as we should have done. Instead of facing the trouble, and doing what we knew we should be doing, we have prayed. I suggest that at a point like that, our duty is not to pray but to face the truth, to face the doctrine and to apply it. Then we are entitled to pray, and not until then." Life in Christ: Studies in 1 John (Crossway,2002), 16.