Daily Devotional

August 26

A First Book of Daily Readings

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

Our strength is our weakness.

When we are converted and saved and become Christian our temperaments do not change; they remain exactly what they were. You do not become somebody else, you are still yourself ... You are always yourself, and, though you become Christian, you are still yourself. You have your own peculiar temperament, your own peculiar characteristics, and the result is that we all have our special problems.

There are certain problems that are fundamental and common to us all, and even our particular problem comes under the general category of sin and the results of the Fall, but it comes to us in different ways.... All members of the Church are not the same, all members of any group, however small, are not the same; we all have certain things about which we have to be particularly and exceptionally careful. Other people are not troubled by these things at all. Ah, yes, but they have other things about which they have to be careful.


The hot-tempered person has to watch that temper very closely, and equally the phlegmatic and lethargic person has to be careful, because he is so flabby in his whole mentality that he tends not to stand when he should stand. In other words, we all have our particular difficulties and they generally arise from our own peculiar temperament which God has given us. I can indeed go further in this context and say that probably the thing we have to watch most of all is our strength, our strong point. We all tend to fail ultimately at our strongest point.

Spiritual Depression, p. 151