How is Your Prayer Life?
David Martyn Lloyd-Jones (1899—1981) was a Welsh Protestant minister, preacher, and medical doctor who was influential in the Reformed British evangelical movement in the 20th century. For almost 30 years, he was the minister of Westminster Chapel in London.
In many ways, Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones is responsible for the resurgence of interest in the Puritans we are experiencing in the late 20th, early 21st centuries. Learn more about his life and legacy here.
“Some people have called Edwards the Last Puritan. I refer to Martyn Lloyd-Jones as maybe the last of the Puritans—because he embodied not only that theology, but he embodied that devotion.”
― Paul Washer, Logic on Fire: The Life and Legacy of Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones
Lloyd-Jones writes more on the vital importance of prayer in his book, Studies in the Sermon On the Mount:
Prayer is beyond any question the highest activity of the human soul. Man is at his greatest and highest when upon his knees he comes face to face with God.
When a man is speaking to God he is at his very acme. It is the highest activity of the human soul, and therefore it is at the same time the ultimate test of a man's true spiritual condition. There is nothing that tells the truth about us as Christian people so much as our prayer life. Everything we do in the Christian life is easier than prayer. It is not so difficult to give alms--the natural man knows something about that, and you can have a true spirit of philanthropy in people who are not Christian at all. Some seem to be born with a generous nature and spirit, and to such almsgiving is not essentially difficult.
The same applies also to the question of self-discipline--refraining from certain things and taking up particular duties and tasks. God knows it is very much easier to preach like this from a pulpit than it is to pray. Prayer is undoubtedly the ultimate test, because a man can speak to others with greater ease than he can speak to God. Ultimately, therefore, a man discovers the real condition of his spiritual life when he examines himself in private, when he is alone with God.