Quotes from the Life and Ministry of Robert Murray M’Cheyne

These are quotations from a Foundations Class I taught at Grace Fellowship Church on March 08, 2020. 

"Oh, to have Brainerd's heart for perfect holiness - to be holy as God is holy - pure as Christ is pure - perfect as our Father in heaven is perfect."

“It is a good thing to be shown much of the deceitfulness and desperate wickedness of your heart, provided it lead you to the Lord Jesus, that He may pardon and subdue it.”

“Now do not look so long and so harassingly at your own heart and feelings.  What will you find there but the bite of the serpent?... Look to Christ… Look to Him and live. You need no preparation, you need no endeavours, you need no duties, you need no strivings, you only need to look and live… Do not take up your time so much with studying your own heart as with studying Christ’s heart.  ‘For one look at yourself, take ten looks at Christ!’” 

“Only believe. Give unlimited credit to our God.”

“I sometimes think that a great blessing may come to my people in my absence.  Often God does not bless us when we are in the midst of our labours, lest we shall say, ‘My hand and my eloquence have done it.’  He removes us into silence, and then pours ‘down a blessing so that there is no room to receive it;’ so that all that see it cry out, ‘It is the Lord!’  This was the way in the South Sea Islands. May it really be so with my dear people!”

1. The Gospel, properly applied, is the only way to deal with our sin.

“I often pray, ‘Lord, make me as holy as a pardoned sinner can be made.’”

“I am persuaded that I shall obtain the highest amount of present happiness, I shall do the most for God’s glory and the good of man, and I shall have the fullest reward in eternity, by maintaining a conscience always washed in Christ’s blood…”

“I feel, when I have sinned, an immediate reluctance to go to Christ.  I am ashamed to go. I feel as if it would do no good to go – as if it were making Christ a minister of sin, to go straight from the swine-trough to the best robe – and a thousand other excuses; but I am persuaded they are all lies, direct from hell. John argues the opposite way – ‘If any man sin, we have an advocate with the Father;’ Jeremiah 3:1 and a thousand other scriptures are against it. I am sure there is neither peace nor safety from deeper sin, but in going directly to the Lord Jesus Christ.  This is God’s way of peace and holiness. It is folly to the world and the beclouded heart, but it is the way.”

2. The Gospel, properly applied, is a wrecking ball to pride.

“A minister will make a poor saviour in the day of wrath.  It is not knowing a minister or loving one or hearing one… that will save.  You need to have your hand on the head of the Lamb for yourselves… I fear I will need to be a swift witness against many of my people in the day of the Lord, that they looked to me, and not to Christ, when I preached to them.”

“I really believed that my Master had called me home, and that I would sleep beneath the dark green cypresses of Bouja till the Lord shall come… and my most earnest prayer was for my dear flock, that God would give them a pastor after his own heart.”

3. The Gospel, properly applied, will make God more important than sleep.

“Do everything in earnest; if it is worth doing, then do it with all your might. Above all, keep much in the presence of God. Never see the face of man till you have seen His face who is our life, our all.”

"Rose early to seek God and found Him whom my soul loves. Who would not rise early to meet such company?”

“I must first see the face of God before I take on any duty.”

“We must be drinking the living water from the smitten rock or we cannot speak of its refreshing power.”

“It is not great talents that God blesses so much as great likeness to Jesus. A holy minister is an awful weapon in the hand of God.”

4. The Gospel, properly applied, will make you pray.

“No person can be a child of God without living in secret prayer; and no community of Christians can be in a lively condition without unity in prayer.”

“What would my people do if I were not to pray?”

“If you do not pray, God will probably lay you aside from your ministry, as He did me, to teach you to pray.”

“I have been often brought very low, but it has been always good for me…”

“When I was laid aside from the ministry, I felt it was to teach me the need of prayer for my people. I used often to say, Now God is teaching me the use of prayer…”

“Pray to be taught to pray.  Do not be content with old forms that flow from the lips only. Most Christians have need to cast their formal prayers away, to be taught to cry, Abba.”

“Alas, we do not weary God now with our wrestlings, but with our sins.”

"If I could hear Christ praying for me in the next room, I would not fear a million of enemies. Yet the distance makes no difference; He is praying for me."

5. The Gospel, properly applied, will make all people precious in your sight — even the least of these.

“Think this, little children, you are the pride of your mother’s heart, but have gone astray from the womb, speaking lies. Little children who are fond of your plays, but are not fond of coming to Jesus Christ, who is the Saviour of little children, the sword will come on you also.”

“It is high time you seek the Lord. The longest lifetime is short enough… Oh, if you had to stand as often as I have beside the dying bed of little children – to see their wild looks and outstretched hands, and to hear their dying cries – you would see how needful it is fly to Christ now. It may be your turn next.  Are you prepared to die?  Have you fled for refuge to Jesus? Have you found forgiveness?”

“The greatest want in the religion of children is generally sense of sin…; we are so often deceived by promising appearances in childhood.”

"Use a few spare half-hours in seeking after the lambs on the weekdays."

6. The Gospel, properly applied, will make you an evangelist, or at least cause you to do the work of one.

“Do not be satisfied without conversion.”

“What has the world done for you, that you love it so much? Did the world die for you? Will the world blot out your sins or change your heart? Will the world carry you to heaven? No, no!  You may go back to the world if you please, but it can only destroy your poor soul… Have you not lived long enough in pleasure? Come and try the pleasures of Christ – forgiveness and a new heart. I have not been at a dance or any worldly amusement for many years, and yet I believe I have had more pleasure in a single day than you have had all your life.  In what? You will say. In feeling that God loves me – that Christ has washed me – and feeling that I shall be in heaven when the wicked are cast into hell. ‘A day in thy courts is better than a thousand [elsewhere]’ (Psalm 84:10)… If you die without Christ, you cannot come back to be converted and die a believer – you have but once to die. Oh, pray that you may find Christ before death finds you!”

"The world will say you are an innocent and harmless girl; do not believe them. The world is a liar. Pray to see yourself exactly as God sees you…"

"Every wave of trouble has been wafting you to the sunny shores of a sinless eternity.  Only believe.  Give unlimited credit to our God.”

“If our neighbour’s house were on fire, would we not cry aloud and use every exertion… Oh, shall we be less earnest to save their never-dying souls, than we would be to save their bodies?”

7. The Gospel, properly applied, will make a good pastor

 “I see a man cannot be a faithful minster until he preaches Christ for Christ’s sake, until he gives up striving to attract people to himself and seeks only to attract them to Christ.”

“Few people know the deep wells of anxiety in the bosom of a faithful pastor.”

“But oh, study universal holiness of life! Your whole usefulness depends on this. Your sermon on Sabbath lasts but an hour or two, – your life preaches all the week.  Remember, ministers are standard-bearers. Satan aims his fiery darts at them. If he can only make you a covetous minister, or lover of pleasure, or a lover of praise, or a lover of good eating, then he has ruined your ministry forever. ‘Ah! Let him preach on fifty years, he will never do me any harm.’ Dear brother, cast yourself at the feet of Christ, implore His Spirit to make you a holy man. ‘Take heed to thyself and to thy doctrine.’”

“See how Paul laid out his strength in confirming the disciples. Be a helper of their joy. Do not rest till you get them to live under the pure, holy rules of the gospel.”