Praying with Whitefield and Piper

I'm praying today with Whitefield and Piper for God to raise up these kind of preachers and that I'll be one of them.

Whitefield wrote:
Yea…that we shall see the great Head of the Church once more . . . raise up unto Himself certain young men whom He may use in this glorious employ. And what manner of men will they be? Men mighty in the Scriptures, their lives dominated by a sense of the greatness, the majesty and holiness of God, and their minds and hearts aglow with the great truths of the doctrines of grace. They will be men who have learned what it is to die to self, to human aims and personal ambitions; men who are willing to be ‘fools for Christ’s sake’, who will bear reproach and falsehood, who will labor and suffer, and whose supreme desire will be, not to gain earth’s accolades, but to win the Master’s approbation when they appear before His awesome judgment seat. They will be men who will preach with broken hearts and tear-filled eyes, and upon whose ministries God will grant an extraordinary effusion of the Holy Spirit, and who will witness ‘signs and wonders following’ in the transformation of multitudes of human lives.

Quoted in Piper's "Why Expository Preaching is Particularly Glorifying to God."

Free Will

"I know that Christ is all in all. Man is nothing; he hath a free will to go to hell, but none to go to heaven, till God worketh in him to will and to do His good pleasure."

-George Whitefield, (Dallimore, p. 407)

Experiences Like This Are Rare Today

"A sense of my actual sins and natural deformity humbled me exceedingly; and then the freeness and riches of God's everlasting love broke in with such light and power upon my soul, that I was often awed into silence and could not speak.

I underwent inexpressible agonies of soul for two or three days, at the rememberance of my sins and the bitter consequences of them. All the while I was assured that God had forgiven me, but I could not forgive myself for sinning against so much light and love. I felt something of that which Peter felt when, with oaths and curses he had thrice denied his Master. At length my Lord looked upon me, and with that look broke my rocky heart, and I wept most bitterly...Were I always to see myself such a sinner as I am, and as I did then, without seeing the Savior of sinners, I should not be able to look up.

This latter part of the week, blessed be the Lord, He has restored me to the light of His countenance, and enabled me to prasie Him with joyful lips."

-George Whitefield, (Dallimore, p. 404).

The Calvinistic Gospel!

"This, however, is my comfort, 'Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, today, and for ever.' He saw me from all eternity; He gave me being; He called me in time; He has freely justified me through faith in His blood; He has in part sanctified me by His Spirit; He will preserve me underneath His everlasting arms till time shall be no more. Oh the blessedness of these evangelical truths! These are indeed Gospel; they are glad tidings of great joy to all that have ears to hear. These, bring the creature out of himself. These, make him hang upon the promises, and cause his obedience to flow from a principle of love.
Satan will accuse me; my answer shall be, The Lord Jesus is my righteousness; how darest thou lay anything to the charge of God's elect? I stand here, not in my own, but His robes; and though I deserve nothing as a debt, yet I know He will give me a reward of grace, and recompence me for what He has done in me and by me, as though I had done it by my own power. Oh, how ought this to excite our zeal and love for the holy Jesus."

-George Whitefield, (Dallimore, p. 406)

Simple and Recollected

Early in George Whitefield's life, he used 15 questions each evening to examine himself:

Have I,

1. Been fervent in private prayer?

2. Used stated hours of prayer (1 hour in morning, 1 hour at noon, and 1 hour in the evening)?

3. Used spontaneous prayer every hour?

4. After or before every deliberate conversation or action, considered how it might tend to God's glory?

5. After any pleasure, immediately given thanks?

6. Planned business for the day?

7. Been simple and recollected (contemplative) in everything?

8. Been zealous in undertaking and active in doing what good I could?

9. Been meek, cheerful, affable in everything I said or did?

10. Been proud, vain, unchaste, or enviable of others?

11. Recollected in eating and drinking? Thankful? Temperate in sleep?

12. Taken time for giving thanks according to William Law's rules?

13. Been dilligent in studies?

14. Thought or spoken unkindly of anyone?

15. Confessed all sins?


(Dallimore, p. 80)


After pondering these, think of the kind of person these questions would tend to produce:

1. Devoted to prayer (Col. 4:2). See numbers 1, 2, and 3. He separated private prayer from the scheduled hours of prayer. Evidently, private prayer was done at a different time than the 3 scheduled hours. Add to that the spontaneous prayer every hour.

2. Thankful (1 Thess. 5:18). See numbers 5, 11, and 12.

3. God-ward focused (Col. 3:1-2). See number 4.

4. Others-focused (Gal. 6:10). See numbers 8, 10, and 14.

5. Redeeming the time (Eph. 5:15-16). See numbers 6, 11, and 13.

The Life of God in The Soul of Man

Piper's Pleasures of God was born from a powerful sentence in Henry Scougal's The Life of God in the Soul of Man.

George Whitefield wrote this after reading The Life of God in the Soul of Man:

"God showed me that I must be born again, or be damned! I learned that a man may go to church, say his prayers, receive the sacrament, and yet not be a Christian. How did my heart rise and shudder, like a poor man that is afraid to look into his account-books, lest he should find himself bankrupt.

Shall I burn this book? Shall I throw it down? Or shall I search it? I did search it; and, holding the book in my hand, thus addressed the God of heaven and earth: 'Lord, if I am not a Christian, or if I am not a real one, for Jesus Christ's sake, show me what Christianity is that I may not be damned at last!'

God soon showed me, for in reading a few lines further, that, 'true religion is a union of the soul with God, and Christ formed within us', a ray of Divine light was instantaneously darted in upon my soul, and from that moment, but not till then, did I know that I must become a new creature."

(Dallimore, p. 73)

What Manner of Men Will They Be?

Dallimore writes his biography of Whitefield with the hope of a new revival and awakening in our generation. These are the kind of men God will use for such an awakening:

"Men mighty in the Scriptures, their lives dominated by a sense of the greatness, the majesty and holiness of God, and their minds and hearts aglow with the great truths of the doctrines of grace. They will be men who have learned what it is to die to self, to human aims and personal ambitions; men who are willing to be 'fools for Christ's sake', who will bear reproach and falsehood, who will labor and suffer, and whose supreme desire will be, not to gain earth's accolades, but to win the Master's approbation when they appear before His awesome judgment seat. They will be men who will preach with broken hearts and tear-filled eyes, and upon whose ministries God will grant an extraordinary effusion of the Holy Spirit, and who will witness 'signs and wonders following' in the transformation of multitudes of human lives."

(Dallimore, p. 16)

Let my name perish

Several of Whitefield's followers begged him to begin his own denomination in order to solidify his perpetual memory. Whitefield replied, "Let the name of Whitefield perish, but Christ be glorified!"

(Dallimore, p. 7)