Daily Devotional

July 08

A First Book of Daily Readings

by D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones (selected by Frank Cumbers)
Sourced from the OPC website

A spiritual check-up

We must learn to ... deal with ourselves faithfully. It is a vital matter in the Christian life....
First and foremost we must really confess what we have done.... We must not spare ourselves.... We must not shield ourselves in any way; we must not attempt to slide over our sin.... We must hold the facts before ourselves deliberately and say, ‘This is what I did; this is what I thought and what I said.’

But not only that. I must analyse this thing ... and consider all that it involves and implies.... We shall never really abhor ourselves unless we do that... we have to particularize and to descend to details. I know this is very painful ... it is not enough just to come to God and say, ‘God, I am a sinner’... the essence of this matter is to get right down to details, to particularize ... to put every detail down before yourself, to analyse yourself.... That is what the masters in the spiritual life have always done. Read their manuals, read the journals of the most saintly people who have adorned the life of the Church, and you will find that they have always done that.... John Fletcher not only asked twelve questions of himself before he went to sleep each night but he got his congregation to do the same. He did not content himself with a cursory general examination; he examined himself in detail, with such questions as: Do I lose my temper? Have I lost my temper? Have I made life more difficult for somebody else? Did I listen to that insinuation that the devil put into my mind, that unclean idea? Did I cling to it or immediately reject it? You go through the day and you put it all before yourself and face it. That is true self-examination. Then we must view it all in the sight of God— ‘before thee’.

Faith on Trial, pp. 69–71

---

“Text reproduced from ‘A First Book of Daily Readings’ by Martyn Lloyd-Jones, published by Epworth Press 1970 & 1977 © Trustees for Methodist Church Purposes. Used with permission.”