Piper on M'Cheyne - On Prayer and Preaching

This is a bit old, as far as the internet goes, but I still can't help but recommend the following resource. It is John Piper's biographical message on Robert Murray M'Cheyne from this year's Desiring God Pastor's Conference.

Among the most helpful aspects of what Piper had to say were his parsing out of M'Cheyne's advice to those ministers who tend towards the more intellectual side of things:

Since the intellectual part of the discourse is not that which is most likely to be an arrow in the conscience, those pastors who are intellectual men must bestow tenfold more prayerfulness on their work, if they would have either their own or their people's souls affected under their word. If we are ever to preach with compassion for the perishing, we must ourselves be moved by those same views of sin and righteousness which moved the human soul of Jesus.

As I sense the time for seminary drawing nearer, I am more and more frequently made aware of my own prayerlessness and the lack of real faith that such prayerlessness manifests. Elsewhere, M'Cheyne says something else that causes this intellectual to pause:

We are often for preaching to awaken others; but we should be more upon praying for it. Prayer is more powerful than preaching. It is prayer that gives preaching all its power. . . .

As I see it, we need men like this - because I would never naturally come to conclusions like this - and yet I know that they are truths which are Biblical and which come from only a few short years of M'Cheyne's experience.

So anyway, as I say - definitely read/watch/listen to Piper's talk on M'Cheyne. It's absolutely worth it.

M'Cheyne Poem Written After Reading Richard Baxter

I have recently started reading Andrew Bonar's biography of Robert Murray M'Cheyney (along with way too many other books). This poem was written in October of 1834 by M'Cheyne after he read Richard Baxter's Call to the Unconverted. The poem is a challenge which I have recently taken to heart, as one of my greatest fears in life is to be of no use to the Kingdom of God.

Though Baxter's lips have long in silence hung,
And death long hush'd that sinner-wakening tongue
Yet still, though dead, he speaks aloud to all,
And from the grave still issues forth his "Call,"
Like some loud angel-voice from Zion Hill,
The mighty echo rolls and rumbles still,
O grant that we, when sleeping in the dust,
May thus speak forth the wisdom of the just.

This emphasis on making an eternal difference was tempered, however, by the sort of self-forgetfulness I especially sense the need to be humbled under. I consider the following quote to be especially convicting:

I need to be made willing to be forgotten. Oh, I wish that my heart were quite refined from all self-seeking! I am quite sure that our truest happiness is not to seek our own, just to forget ourselves and to fill up the little space that remains, seeking only and above all that our God may be glorified. But when I would do good, evil is present with me.