Category Archives: Robert Murray M’Cheyne

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Advice on Prayer Meetings

prayer-meeting-webheader

Oh, how I wish more churches had a regular prayer meeting. Could it be that our shortcomings in piety, worship, and witness have a direct correlation to how few congregations spend time in earnest prayer? I tend to think so.

Studying M’Cheyne has reminded me of the prayer meeting’s significance. He understood concerted prayer to not only be a prerequisite to revival, but also an evidence of revival. One fruit the St. Peter’s revival of 1839–1840 was the commitment to prayer. In December 1840, the Presbytery of Aberdeen appointed a committee to inquire about the revivals taking place throughout Scotland. They wrote to M’Cheyne asking him to answer a series of fifteen questions related to the revival in Dundee. His answers were published later as Evidences on Revivals. He said during the revival “thirty-nine prayer meetings [were] held weekly in connection with the congregation, and five of these were conducted and attended entirely by little children.” After twelve months, M’Cheyne wrote, “I believe the number of these meetings is not much diminished,” although many were more private in nature.

Congregational prayer was something M’Cheyne prioritized from the beginning at Dundee. Not long after his installation at St. Peter’s he began a Thursday night prayer meeting that 800 people attended. He apparently earned a reputation for skill in leading congregational prayer, as Mr. J.T. Just wrote to him asking for advice in conducting prayer meetings.

M’Cheyne begins by saying, “No person can be a child of God without living in secret prayer; and no community of Christians can be in a lively condition without unity in prayer.” A true church is a praying church. And every church can always grow in prayer. Here then are some bits of wisdom M’Cheyne offers.

12 Helps For Prayer Meetings

  • “One great rule in holding them (prayer meetings) is, that they really be meetings of disciples.”
  • “The prayer-meeting I like best is where there is only praise and prayer, and the reading of God’s word.”
  • “Meet weekly, at a convenient hour.”
  • “Be regular in attendance. Let nothing keep you away from your meeting.”
  • “Pray in secret before going.”
  • “Let your prayers in the meeting be formed as much as possible upon what you have read in the Bible. You will thus learn variety of petition, and a Scripture style.”
  • “Pray that you may pray to God, and not for the ears of man.”
  • “Pray for the outpouring of the Spirit on the Church of Christ and for the world; for the purity and unity of God’s children; for the raising up of godly ministers, and the blessing of those that are so already.”
  • “Pray for the conversion of your friends, of your neighbours, of the whole town.”
  • “Pride is Satan’s wedge for splitting prayer-meetings to pieces: watch and pray against it.”
  • “Watch against seeking to be greater than one another; watch against lip-religion.”
  • “Above all, abide in Christ, and He will abide in you.”

Around this time M’Cheyne wrote to his great friend Andrew Bonar asking for more advice on prayer meetings. In the letter, M’Cheyne gives some humorous sanity on a pastors’ prayer meeting he just began. May those of us who minister the gospel remember it: “We began today a ministerial prayer-meeting, to be held every Monday at eleven for an hour and a half. This is a great comfort, and may be a great blessing. Of course, we do not invite the colder ministers; that would only damp our meeting. Tell me if you think this right.” I for one think it right, very right indeed.

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I Am Persuaded

M'Cheyne

A few months before his death, Robert Murray M’Cheyne wrote his Personal Reformation. He began by saying, “It is the duty of ministers in this day to begin the reformation of religion . . . with confession of past sin, earnest prayer for direction, grace, and full purpose of heart.”

He then gives us simple, but challenging insight into how a pastor must go about loving God and loving others.

How to Glorify God and Do Good

M’Cheyne writes, “I am persuaded that I shall obtain the highest amount of present happiness, I shall do most for God’s glory and the good of man, and I shall have the fullest reward in eternity,” by doing three things:

  1. “By maintaining a conscience always washed in Christ’s blood.”
  2. “By being filled with the Holy Spirit at all times.”
  3. “By attaining the most entire likeness to Christ in mind, will, and heart, that it is possible for a redeemed sinner to attain to in this world.”
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5 Truths for Real Revival

Revival Truths

For the last few weeks, I’ve been tinkering away on a paper comparing Jonathan Edwards and Robert Murray M’Cheyne’s defenses of revival. I won’t bore you with the academics of establishing a link between the two men; you’ll just have to trust me on this: no one (outside of Thomas Chalmers) had such discernible influence on M’Cheyne as Edwards.

A Spark and The Sun

On March 20, 1832, M’Cheyne wrote in his diary, “Read part of the life of Jonathan Edwards. How feeble does my spark of Christianity appear beside such a sun! But even his was a borrowed light, and the same source is still open to enlighten me.” This first recorded encounter with the Northampton pastor was powerful enough to cause M’Cheyne to purchase Edwards’ works three months later and begin to read them in earnest. Andrew Bonar, his closest friend, and biographer, remarks, “It was [during his first pastoral charge] . . . that [M’Cheyne] began to study so closely the works of Jonathan Edwards—reckoning them a mine to be wrought, and if wrought, sure to repay the toil.”

M’Cheyne’s toil was repaid in full. I think we can see that in how similar the 1838–1840 revival at St. Peter’s Dundee (described in Evidences on Revival) was to the 1734–1735 awakening in Edwards’ Northampton church (famously defending in A Narrative of the Surprising Work of God). One simple way to trace this is how each man used revival history in his congregation.

In the Faithful Narrative of a Surprising Work of God, Edwards tells his readers, “There is no one thing that I know of which God has made such a means of promoting his work amongst us, as the news of others’ conversion.” M’Cheyne too stoked the fire of awakening by recounting God’s great act in revivals of old during weekday services. I thus ask, “How then might Edwards and M’Cheyne encourage awakening in our own time? How might we pursue similar experiences of revival?” I believe to note and pursue five key commonalities each man emphasized.

5 Truths for Real Revival

Revival is the work of God’s sovereign spirit. Each pastor k he could not manufacture an awakening. There were no “new measures” to be discovered. Instead, a rediscovery of dependence upon God’s Spirit was needed, to see Him move in extraordinary power. Today, particularly in the Western church, temptations to pragmatism lurk in every place. Many ordinary pastors lead stagnated congregations. The bones are dry. But God’s Spirit is no less powerful today than he was in 1734–1735 and 1839–1840. Edwards and M’Cheyne challenge us to be patiently urgent in waiting for the Spirit’s breath to whistle forth a rattling sound through our age’s dry bones.

Revival depends on earnest prayer. Edwards and M’Cheyne each recount how the awakenings came after prolonged periods of prayer. Increased devotion to and delight in prayer became one of the clearest fruits of the Spirit’s work in revival. Pastors today will know an awakening has come—or is on the way—when the weekly prayer meeting is full. Another marker will be when multiple prayer meetings take over the church’s ordinary corporate life. Prayer calls upon the Spirit to begin blowing and keep blowing. M’Cheyne’s convicting conclusion at the end of Evidences on Revival is that only pastors “given to secret prayer” will experience an authentic awakening.

Revival comes through preaching Christ. Preaching is the chariot that brings down Christ to a church’s soul. A heralded Christ is what ignited the revival fires at Northampton and Dundee. Haykin reminds, “The deeply held pneumatological conviction in Edwards (and M’Cheyne’s) Reformed heritage [is] that the Spirit is a Christ-centred and Christ-exalting Spirit.” “Nothing but preaching the pure gospel of the grace of God,” M’Cheyne said, can bring about awakening. Let us then continue to preach Christ—crucified, risen, and ascended—believing it is only when He is lifted up continuously in our sermons that He will draw all men to Himself.

Revival increases the weight of God’s glory. A striking feature of both accounts is how revival brought reverence to the respective congregations. Instances of extreme ecstasy happened, but awful solemnity swallowed them whole. Edwards, with relentless attention, shows how fear and solemnity plowed through sinful hearts to plant salvation’s seed. “There seems to be far more of a solemn awe upon the minds of men than formerly . . . There is far more solemnity in the house of God,” M’Cheyne recounts. Our modern age exalts exuberant authenticity, which surely has a place in Christ’s church. Edwards and M’Cheyne remind us, however, that God also deserves our trembling, reverent worship. When the Spirit falls, He does so with heaviness. God’s glory bears eternal, incomprehensible weight. In awakenings, souls feel its force and respond with reverence.

Revival includes the children. While Edwards and M’Cheyne do tell us how the awakenings touched people from all walks of life, they nevertheless single out one special group: children. God used the youth in each church to raise a cup of gladness and shout a song of praise. Our Savior rebuked those who prevented the children from coming to Him. Let not His rebuke fall on us. In our preaching and pastoring, let us bend the knee and speak with tender hearts. Require not an unreasonable degree of theological or moral assent from your covenant children—they too may find Christ’s blessing.

Imitate Their Faith

In Philippians 3:17 Paul exhorts, “Brothers, join in imitating me, and keep your eyes on those who walk according to the example you have in us.” Jonathan Edwards and Robert Murray M’Cheyne are heroes to whom we should look. M’Cheyne thought Edwards to be a mighty sun in history’s spiritual galaxy. May we, like M’Cheyne, find the star of our life reflecting such absorbing trust in the Spirit who blows wherever He wills.

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A Christ to Love

The Love of Christ

After several months spent swimming in the ocean of pastoral ministry and Ph.D. studies, I’ve feel as though I’m resurfacing with a few weeks off before another semester begins. I’m thus eager to haunt this here blog space once again with greater frequency.

A Spirituality of Trysts

One of the seminars I took this spring was “Theological Foundations of Spirituality” with Dr. Stephen Yuille. It was the first seminar I’ve had that allowed me to write a paper on Mr. M’Cheyne. I thus dove into my research with new earnestness, thinking, “Here’s a sanctioned excuse to work on the dissertation!” I first planned to do something on M’Cheyne’s theology of holiness. But the more I researched, the more I realized his idea of holiness is wrapped up in his understanding of Christ. It’s impossible to make sense of his almost-legendary personal holiness apart from his little-known Christology. So extensive is this correlation that what came out was a paper twice as long as it was supposed to be. The girth is good—I think. (It’s my hoped-for-but-yet-to-be-approved dissertation in seed form.)

One of the matters I try to advance in the paper is M’Cheyne’s view of the means of as “trysts”—secret meetings between lovers. It’s a delight to study M’Cheyne because he’s so immediately practical for ministry. To give you a taste of what I’m discovering, and to hopefully serve you as well, here’s a section from my recent work titled, “A Strangely Sweet and Precious Christ: Christological Spirituality in the Preaching of Robert Murray M’Cheyne.”

A Christ to Love

As mentioned above, M’Cheyne’s pursuit of personal holiness has marveled and humbled many a man. It is wrong however to see that pursuit as the centerpiece of his spirituality. Love to Christ was the pulsating power of his piety. In “The Love of Christ,” on 2 Corinthians 5:14, M’Cheyne not only expounds Christ’s love, but also what that love compels in His people’s life. According to M’Cheyne, God knows our desires for sin regularly outweigh our desires for holiness. Therefore, “He hath invented a way of drawing us to holiness. By showing us the love of his Son, he calleth forth our love.”[1] The love of Christ, according to M’Cheyne, “is the secret spring of all the holiness of the saints.” The reason for holiness and spirituality is crystal clear: “We are constrained to holiness by the love of Christ.”[2]

Most studies on M’Cheyne spirituality center on his diligent use of particular means of grace: Bible reading and prayer. What has not yet been pieced together is how M’Cheyne viewed the means of grace chiefly as vehicles of love. It is in and through these means that Christ’s love comes down, and the church’s love goes up. Nothing better illuminates this reality than how M’Cheyne preferred to talk about communion with Christ. For M’Cheyne, the means of grace are “trysts”—meetings between lovers. Consider the following excerpts from various sermons:

  • “In the daily reading of the Word, Christ pays daily visits to the soul. In the daily prayer, Christ reveals himself to his own in that other way that he doth to the world. In the house of God Christ comes to his own, and says: ‘Peace be unto you!’ And in the sacrament he makes himself known to them in the breaking of bread, and they cry out: ‘It is the Lord!’ These are all trysting times, when the Savior comes to visit his own.”[3]
  • “The Sabbath is Christ’s trysting time with his church. If you love him, you will count every moment of it precious. You will rise early and sit up late, to have a long day with Christ.”[4]
  • “The hour of daily devotion is a trysting house with Christ . . . The Lord’s Table is the most famous trysting place with Christ.”[5]
  • “[Gathered worship] is a trysting place with Christ. It is the audience chamber where he comes to commune with us from the mercy-seat.”[6]
  • “We love everything that is Christ’s (word, prayer, sacrament, fellowship) . . . We love his House. It is our trysting-place with Christ, where he meets with us and communes with us from off the mercy-seat.”[7]

The importance of these selections for understanding M’Cheyne’s spirituality is simple: his pursuit of personal holiness was little more than the pursuit of the Christ he loved. Christ’s love was a glorious truth to be preached and enjoyed. Why then did M’Cheyne famously pray, “Lord, make me as holy as a pardoned sinner can be made?”[8] I would argue he did so because he saw holiness as the maturity of love; it is the highest experience of Christ’s love. “Communion with God; the delighting in Him; loving, adoring, admiring Him;” these are the ordinary desires of a heart redeemed by Christ’s love—these were the ordinary desires of Robert Murray M’Cheyne.[9]

To preach Christ was strangely sweet and precious, M’Cheyne wrote. So sweetly precious was the Savior to this young Scottish preacher that he could not help but let Christ saturate every sermon. He presented Christ’s fullness and freeness in all its glory. Few Christological rocks, if any, did he leave unturned in that theological garden named, “The Person and Work of Christ.” He did, however, sit most comfortably next to those boulders marked, “A Sure Christ,” “A Converting Christ,” “A Captivating Christ, and “A Judging Christ.” His Christology was winsome, romantic, and simple. Here was a Christ of love. Here was a Christ to love.

Alexander Smellie said in his biography of M’Cheyne, “I never knew one so instant in season and out of season, so impressed with the invisible realities, and so faithful in reproving sin and witness for Christ. . . . Love to Christ was the great secret of all his devotion and consistency.”[10] My study of M’Cheyne’s preaching ministry leads me to conclude with a hearty, “Amen.”

[1] M’Cheyne, From the Preacher’s Heart, 52. (emphasis original)

[2] Ibid., 53.

[3] Ibid., 232–33.

[4] M’Cheyne, The Passionate Preacher, 330. Cf. M’Cheyne, Sermons on Hebrews, 32-33.

[5] M’Cheyne, From the Preacher’s Heart, 234. cf., 103.

[6] M’Cheyne, The Passionate Preacher, 28.

[7] Ibid., 33.

[8] Bonar, Memoir and Remains of Robert Murray M’Cheyne, 160.

[9] M’Cheyne, New Testament Sermons, 41.

[10] Alexander Smellie, Robert Murray McCheyne (Fearn: Christian Focus, 1995), 172.

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Personal Reformation In 2016

M'Cheyne

It’s customary on this first day of a new year for many Christians to find fresh challenge from Jonathan Edwards’ famous Resolutions. If you’ve never read them before, go ahead and read them now. You may just find your heart strangely warmed.

There is another model of resolve I think pastors, in particular, should attend to on this day of beginnings: Robert Murray M’Cheyne’s Personal Reformation.

Pursuing Him Until The End

In the last year of his life (M’Cheyne died at 29) M’Cheyne, as Bonar says, “wrote down, for his own use, an examination into things that ought to be amended or changed” in his life and ministry. M’Cheyne introduces his document in this way,

It is the duty of ministers in this day to begin the reformation of religion and manners with themselves, families, etc. with confession of past sin, earnest prayer for direction, grace and full purpose of heart.

I am persuaded that I shall obtain the highest amount of present happiness, I shall do most for God’s glory and the good of man, and I shall have the fullest reward in eternity, by maintaining a conscience always washed in Christ’s blood, by being filled with the Holy Spirit at all times, and by attaining the most entire likeness to Christ in mind, will, and heart, that is possible for a redeemed sinner to attain in this world.

The document has two parts: 1) Personal Reformation, and 2) Reformation in Secret Prayer. The whole thing is only nine pages and worth reading often. On the small chance you can’t get to the original whole, I’ve reproduced his main points below along with some delectable nuggets of counsel and conviction.

Personal Reformation

1. To maintain a conscience void of offense. I am persuaded that I ought to confess my sins more. I think I ought to confess sin the moment I see it to be sin; whether I am in company, or in study, or even preaching, the soul ought to cast a glance of abhorrence at the sin. If I go on with the duty, leaving the sin unconfessed, I go on with a burdened conscience, and add sin to sin.

I ought to confess the sins of my confessions—their imperfections, sinful aims, self-righteous tendency, etc.—and to look to Christ as having confessed my sins perfectly over His own sacrifice.

  • I ought to go to Christ for the forgiveness of each sin.
  • I ought never think a sin too small to need immediate application to the blood of Christ.
  • I must not only wash in Christ’s blood, but clothe me in Christ’s obedience.

2. To be filled with the Holy Spirit. I am persuaded that I ought to study more my own weakness. I ought to have a number of Scriptures ready to be meditated on to convince me that I am a helpless worm. I am tempted to think that I am now an established Christian—that I have overcome this or that lust so long—that I have got into the habit of the opposite grace—so that there is no fear; I may venture very near temptation—nearer than other men. This is a lie of Satan. I might as well speak of gunpowder getting by habit a power of resisting fire, so as not to catch the spark.

  • I ought to labor for the deepest sense of my utter weakness and helplessness that ever a sinner was brought to feel.

It is right to tremble, and to make every sin of every professor a lesson of my own helplessness; but it should lead me the more to Christ. . . . If I were more deeply convinced of my utter helplessness, I think I would not be so alarmed when I hear of the falls of other men.

  • I ought to study Christ as a living Savior more.
  • I ought to study Christ as an Intercessor.
  • I ought to study the Comforter more.
  • I ought never to forget that sin grieves the Holy Spirit—vexes and quenches Him. If I would be filled with the Spirit, I feel I must read the Bible more, pray more, and watch more.

3. To gain entire likeness to Christ. I ought to get a high esteem of the happiness of it. I am persuaded that God’s happiness is inseparably linked in with His holiness. Holiness and happiness are like light and heat.

  • I ought not to delay in parting with sins.
  • Whatever I see to be sin, I ought from this hour to set my whole soul against it, using all scriptural methods to mortify it—as the Scriptures, special prayer for the Spirit, fasting, and watching.
  • I ought to mark strictly the occasions when I have fallen, and avoid the occasion as much as the sin itself.
  • I ought to flee all temptation.
  • I ought constantly to pour out my heart to God, praying for entire conformity to Christ.
  • I ought statedly and solemnly to give my heart to God.
  • I ought to meditate often on heaven as a world of holiness.

Reformation in Secret Prayer

I ought not to omit any of the parts of prayer—confession, adoration, thanksgiving, petition, and intercession.

I ought to pray before seeing any one. I feel it is far better to begin with God—to see His face first—to get my soul near Him before it is near another. . . . In general, it is best to have at least on hour alone with God, before engaging in anything else.

I ought daily to intercede for my own family, connections, relatives, and friends.

I ought to daily intercede briefly for the whole town.

I ought to have a scheme of prayer, also the names of missionaries marked on the map.

I ought to intercede at large for the above on Saturday morning and evening from seven to eight.

I ought to pray in everything.

I ought to pray far more for our Church, for our leading ministers by name, and for my own clear guidance in the right way, that I may not be led aside, or driven aside, from following Christ.

I ought to spend the best hours of the day in communion with God. It is my noblest and most fruitful employment, and is not to be thrust into any corner.

I ought not to give up the good old habit of prayer before going to bed.

I ought to read three chapters of the Bible in secret every day, at least.

I ought on Sabbath morning to look over all the chapters read through the week, and especially the verses marked.

A Life Being Completed

M’Cheyne apparently didn’t complete his rumination on piety and prayer. I’ve often thought, “How true this is of all God’s people!” Is it not true that our pursuit of communion with God and conformity to His Son is always in progress this side of heaven?

May you grow this year in appreciation of the M’Cheyne School mantra: “It’s not great talents God blesses so much as great likeness to Christ.”

 

 

 

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A Personal Prayer List

M'Cheyne

M’Cheyne’s personal prayer diary consisted of five lists. The second list offered eight “heads for prayer.” These headings can easily be adapted for modern ministry and would be quite helpful, I’m sure, to many a pastor’s prayer life.

  1. For an abundant gift of the Holy Spirit.
  2. For the purity and unity of the Church of Christ.
  3. For her majesty the Queen and all in authority under her and for a special blessing upon our country.
  4. That God may raise up in great numbers fit persons to serve in the ministry of his church.
  5. That a blessing may accompany the ministrations of the Word of God, in order that it may have free course and be glorified.
  6. For the propagation of the gospel among the heathen.
  7. For the fulfillment of God’s promises to his ancient people.
  8. For a special blessing on all the members of the Assembly and Church.
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Praying for Pouring

“We may preach publicly, and from house to house; we may teach the young and warn the old, but all will be in vain. Until the Spirit be poured upon us from on high, briers and thorns shall grow. Our vineyard shall be like the garden of the sluggard. We need that Christ should awake; that He should make bare His arm as in the days of old; that He should shed down the Spirit abundantly.” – Robert Murray M’Cheyne

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Stop and Stare

“Ah! there is nothing like a calm look into the eternal world to teach us the emptiness of human praise, the sinfulness of self-seeking, the preciousness of Christ.”- Robert Murray M’Cheyne

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What Should a Pastor Be?

M'Cheyne

No man has influenced my pastoral life and vision more than Robert Murray M’Cheyne. He was a man of ordinary gifting, but of tenacious love for the sufficiency and beauty of Jesus Christ. The more I read him the more I’m convinced few pastors of old are as worthy to hear today as Mr. M’Cheyne (hence why I hope to do my PhD research on him).

26 Traits of a Faithful Pastor

In one morning’s bible reading M’Cheyne meditated on 1 Thessalonians 2 and Paul’s example of ministry to the church at Thessalonica. In a manuscript quarto—think “journal”—M’Cheyne answered the question, “What should a minister be?” from Paul’s instruction. He came up with twenty-six different characteristics of healthy gospel ministry. May these encourage and challenge you:

  1. Bold in our God. Having the courage of one who is near and dear to God, and who has God dwelling in him.
  2. To speak the Gospel. He should be a voice to speak the gospel, an angel of glad tidings.
  3. With much agony. He should wrestle with God, and wrestle with men.
  4. Not of uncleanness. He should be chaste in heart, in eye, in speech.
  5. Not of deceit or guile. He should be open, having only one end in view, the glory of Christ.
  6. Allowed of God to be put in trust. He should feel a steward, entrusted of God.
  7. Not as pleasing men, but God. He should speak what God will approve, who tries the heart.
  8. Neither flattering words. He should never flatter men, even to win them.
  9. Nor a cloke of covetousness. Not seeking money or presents, devoted to his work with a single eye.
  10. Nor of men sought we glory. Not seeking praise.
  11. Gentle even as a nurse.
  12. Affectionately desirous of you. Having an inward affection and desire for the salvation and growth of his people.
  13. Willing to impart our own souls. Willing to suffer loss, even of life, in their cause.
  14. Laboriousness night and day.
  15. To preach without being chargeable, to any of his people.
  16. Holily.
  17. Justly.
  18. Unblameably we behaved among believers.
  19. The daily walk.
  20. Exhorted every one. Individuality of ministry.
  21. As a father. Authority and love.
  22. Thank we God. He should be full of thanksgiving without ceasing.
  23. Should be with his people in heart, when not in presence.
  24. Endeavoured to see you. His people his hope. That which animates him.
  25. And joy. Immediate delight.
  26. And crown of rejoicing. When he looks beyond the grave.