one thing
I prayed multiple times today that God would make me a man of prayer. If I could be remembered for one thing in life, it would be that. Not how much money I had or how intelligent I was. Not even how sound my theology was or how well I knew the Bible, as important as those two things are. No, I want to be a man of prayer more than anything else.
I have looked carefully over the lives of God’s saints in the Bible. I cannot find one of whose history much is told us, from Genesis to Revelation, who was not a man of prayer. I find it mentioned as a characteristic of the godly, that they ‘call on the Father’ (1 Pet. 1:17), or ‘on the name of Jesus Christ our Lord’ (1 Cor. 1:2). Recorded as a characteristic of the wicked is the fact that they ‘call not upon the LORD’ (Psa. 14:4).
I have read the lives of many eminent Christians who have been on earth since the Bible days. Some of them, I see, were rich, and some poor. Some were learned, and some unlearned. Some of them were Episcopalians, and some Christians of other names. Some were Calvinists, and some were Arminians. Some have loved to use a liturgy, and some to use none. But one thing, I see, they all had in common. They have all been men of prayer.
—J. C. Ryle, A Call to Prayer
daily reading
| December 19, 2024 |
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| Deut. 24; Ps. 114–115; Isa. 51; Rev. 21 |
| WCF 23; WLC 153-160; WSC 82-84 |
| The Nicene Creed |