Yesterday (January 11) was the anniversary of the homegoing of the Welsh Calvinistic minister William Williams Pantycelyn (1717-1791). You may be familiar with Williams' hymn "Guide Me, O Thou Great Jehovah," which was originally penned in the Welsh language. Williams also wrote hymns in English. All of his hymns meld Biblical doctrine with vibrant Christian experience.

As I was looking through Willliams' "Hosannah to the Son of David" (his first collection of English hymns, published in 1759), the hymn "Breathing after God" caught my eye. I thought the hymn was a wonderful prayer for the beginning of a new year, and that verse 2 was a fitting complement to my last post on Jonathan Edwards, spiritual dullness, and resolutions.

HYMN XL. (from "Hosannah to the Son of David")
Breathing after GOD.

1 LORD, do descend and visit me,
I cannot bear the loss;
All the creation does afford
But vanity and dross.

2 My spirit follows after Thee,
Renew'd by special grace,
And cannot, will not, thus inclin'd,
Renew its former chase.

3 LORD, why hast Thou created me?
My mind, to what employ?
Why passions planted in my soul,
But Thee I might enjoy?

4 O Holy, Holy, Holy LORD,
Be my companion still,
That so each corner or my heart,
May have its plenteous fill.

5 Then all I leave, I all resign
That flesh and blood approve,
All earthly objects of delight,
And only for Thy love.

Though we as Christians may resolve to follow the Lord Jesus Christ, Williams is right to remind us that our spirits need to be renewed by God's "special grace," because distractions, excuses, and temptations abound so we might break our resolutions and renew our former chase!

Luke 9:57  As they were going along the road, someone said to him, “I will follow you wherever you go.” 58  And Jesus said to him, “Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.” 59  To another he said, “Follow me.” But he said, “Lord, let me first go and bury my father.” 60  And Jesus said to him, “Leave the dead to bury their own dead. But as for you, go and proclaim the kingdom of God.” 61  Yet another said, “I will follow you, Lord, but let me first say farewell to those at my home.” 62  Jesus said to him, “No one who puts his hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God.”

These things are written as examples to us. Let us take heed, lest we fall. The writer to the Hebrews warns us not to be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin (see Hebrews 3). If left to our own selves, given our treacherous hearts, soon enough we will find ourselves drifting, hardening our hearts, and looking back rather than following Jesus. Isaiah reminds us that "even youths shall grow faint and be weary, and young men shall fall exhausted..." -- so, my friends, what hope is there for a 55 year old woman like myself! –– what hope is there for any one of us!?

BUT
they who wait for the LORD shall renew their strength;
they shall mount up with wings like eagles;
they shall run and not be weary;
they shall walk and not faint.

Have you not known? Have you not heard?
The LORD is the everlasting God,
the Creator of the ends of the earth.
HE does not faint or grow weary;
his understanding is unsearchable.
HE gives power to the faint,
and to HIM who has no might HE increases strength.

(~ Isaiah 40:30-31, 28-29, emphasis mine)

Gracious and merciful God, renew us by Your special grace, so we might be fit for Your Kingdom. We grow faint and weary, but You do not! As Your sheep, we are prone to wander, but as our Shepherd, Your covenant love is steadfast! Almighty and everlasting God, for the sake of Your beloved Son, grant Your children power and increase our strength through Your Holy Spirit. May we comprehend with all the saints what is the width and length and depth and height – to experientially know the love of Christ that passes knowledge, that we might be filled with all Your fullness, so Your love is not merely a theological construct to us, but serves as a constraining power, so our love and our desire for You and Your Kingdom might increase, that we might come to know and to treasure Jesus Christ as the pearl of great price and as our exceeding joy, and, in turn, see the "vanity and dross" of all else, and "leave" and "resign ... all earthly objects of delight," so our souls might freely breathe and gladly pant after You as the deer pants for the water brooks, and we might cling to, enjoy, and follow hard after the Lamb wherever You go in 2014, for Your Glory! Amen.

Related:

Pressing on in the New Year
One week into 2009: a prayer to press on & manifest Jesus (Charles Wesley)
New Year’s resolutions? … not “without God’s help” (Jonathan Edwards)
dedication 2010 (reflections on God’s Word & God’s grace)
dedication 2010 (addendum): may He temper my tongue with love
my best resolutions
Sacrifice
A New Year’s Eben-ezer (Morning by morning I do awake … O! the mystery of sovereign grace)
Amazing Grace . . . upon Grace ~ the 240th anniversary
“… since thou hast been thus gracious …” ~ Susanna Anthony and grace upon grace
Jonathan Edwards and dullness: “So that it is to no purpose to resolve, except we depend on the grace of God.”

For more on William Williams, please read Martyn Lloyd-Jones' 1968 address to the Puritan Conference: William Williams and Welsh Calvinistic Methodism.

Once again, we're at the beginning of a new year, and once again there's a lot of talk about resolutions. Some of you may be familiar with Jonathan Edwards' "Resolutions." Edwards began keeping a diary in the midst of writing those resolutions, and he wrote the following at the beginning of  a new year:

1722-23, Tuesday, Jan. 1. Have been dull for several days. Examined whether I have not been guilty of negligence to-day; and resolved, No.

Wednesday, Jan. 2. Dull. I find, by experience, that, let me make resolutions, and do what I will, with never so many inventions, it is all nothing, and to no purpose at all, without the motions of the Spirit of God; for if the Spirit of God should be as much withdrawn from me always, as for the week past, notwithstanding all I do, I should not grow, but should languish, and miserably fade away. I perceive, if God should withdraw his Spirit a little more, I should not hesitate to break my resolutions, and should soon arrive at my old state. There is no dependence on myself. Our resolutions may be at the highest one day, and yet, the next day, we may be in a miserable dead condition, not at all like the same person who resolved. So that it is to no purpose to resolve, except we depend on the grace of God. For, if it were not for his mere grace, one might be a very good man one day, and a very wicked one the next... Source:  Jonathan Edwards' Works Volume One.


Psalm 33:
12  Blessed is the nation whose God is the LORD,
the people whom he has chosen as his heritage!
13  The LORD looks down from heaven;
he sees all the children of man;
14  from where he sits enthroned he looks out
on all the inhabitants of the earth,
15  he who fashions the hearts of them all
and observes all their deeds.
16  The king is not saved by his great army;
a warrior is not delivered by his great strength.
17  The war horse is a false hope for salvation,
and by its great might it cannot rescue.
18  Behold, the eye of the LORD is on those who fear him,
on those who hope in his steadfast love,
19  that he may deliver their soul from death
and keep them alive in famine.

Psalm 147:
10  His delight is not in the strength of the horse,
nor his pleasure in the legs of a man,
11  but the LORD takes pleasure in those who fear him,
in those who hope in his steadfast love.

O LORD our God, along with Jonathan Edwards, we confess that we often find ourselves spiritually dull! Apart from the motions of Your Spirit – without the divine sap flowing from the Vine to the branches – we are nothing, and we can do nothing! Show us that if left to our own devices, we would quickly and painfully discover every thought and intent of our hearts to be only evil continually. Show us that apart from the supply of the Spirit we would irreparably and irretrievably fall.

Merciful and gracious God, in this new year of 2014, pour out grace upon grace on Your Church, that we may be a delight and a pleasure to You! Fill us with the fear of You, so that as as we seek to make resolutions according to Your will, and as we endeavor to walk in the good works You have ordained for us, we might put no confidence in our flesh, but rather hope in Your steadfast love and trust in Your Holy Spirit to equip us to do Your good pleasure through our risen and reigning Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, all to His glory alone (Heb. 13:20-21).

There is no happiness or blessing for us apart from having You as our Help. May our boasting be in You continually! May we show our profession of You to be genuine and not lip service, and may we demonstrate we are Your holy nation and Your chosen people as we depend not upon ourselves but upon Your grace. Like Your servant David, may we learn to love, embrace, and call upon You as our strength for the praise of Your name.

Psalm 18:
1  I love you, O LORD, my strength.
2  The LORD is my rock and my fortress and my deliverer,
my God, my rock, in whom I take refuge,
my shield, and the horn of my salvation, my stronghold.
3  I call upon the LORD, who is worthy to be praised,
and I am saved from my enemies.

Psalm 146:
1  Praise the LORD!
Praise the LORD, O my soul!
2  I will praise the LORD as long as I live;
I will sing praises to my God while I have my being.
3  Put not your trust in princes,
in a son of man, in whom there is no salvation.
4  When his breath departs he returns to the earth;
on that very day his plans perish.
5  Blessed is he whose help is the God of Jacob,
whose hope is in the LORD his God,
6  who made heaven and earth,
the sea, and all that is in them,
who keeps faith forever;
7  who executes justice for the oppressed,
who gives food to the hungry.
The LORD sets the prisoners free;
8  the LORD opens the eyes of the blind.
The LORD lifts up those who are bowed down;
the LORD loves the righteous.
9  The LORD watches over the sojourners;
he upholds the widow and the fatherless,
but the way of the wicked he brings to ruin.
10  The LORD will reign forever,
your God, O Zion, to all generations.
Praise the LORD!

Related:

With the New Year Come New Resolutions, but How Can We Become Entirely New? (Lloyd-Jones)
New Year’s resolutions? … not “without God’s help” (Jonathan Edwards)
my best resolutions
your resolution – “Divine Intervention” by Lecrae
Blessed dependence ~ “Leaning upon her beloved”
by my God I can leap over a wall (Psalm 18:29b)
“I cannot consider myself to have been a believer (in the full sense of the word)”

The doctrine of justification by faith –– a Biblical truth, and a blessed relief from sterile legalism and unavailing self-effort –– has in our time fallen into evil company and been interpreted by many in such manner as actually to bar men from the knowledge of God. The whole transaction of religious conversion has been made mechanical and spiritless. Faith may now be exercised without a jar to the moral life and without embarrassment to the Adamic ego. Christ may be "received" without creating any special love for Him in the soul of the receiver. The man is "saved," but he is not hungry nor thirsty after God. In fact he is specifically taught to be satisfied and encouraged to be content with little.

The modern scientist has lost God amid the wonders of His world; we Christians are in real danger of losing God amid the wonders of His Word. We have almost forgotten that God is a Person and, as such, can be cultivated as any person can. It is inherent in personality to be able to know other personalities, but full knowledge of one personality by another cannot be achieved in one encounter. It is only after long and loving mental intercourse that the full possibilities of both can be explored.

All social intercourse between human beings is a response of personality to personality, grading upward from the most casual brush between man and man to the fullest, most intimate communion of which the human soul is capable. Religion, so far as it is genuine, is in essence the response of created personalities to the Creating Personality, God. "This is life eternal, that they might know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou has sent.". . .

To have found God and still to pursue Him is the soul's paradox of love, scorned indeed by the too-easily-satisfied religionist, but justified in happy experience by the children of the burning heart. St. Bernard stated this holy paradox in a musical quatrain that will be instantly understood by every worshipping soul:

We taste Thee, O Thou Living Bread,
And long to feast upon Thee still;
We drink of Thee, the Fountainhead
And thirst our souls from Thee to fill.

. . . How tragic that we in this dark day have had our seeking done for us by our teachers. Everything is made to center upon the initial act of "accepting Christ" (a term, incidentally, which is not found in the Bible) and we are not expected thereafter to crave any further revelation of God to our souls. We have been snared in the coils of a spurious logic which insists that if we have found Him we need nor more seek Him...

. . . Complacency is a deadly foe of all spiritual growth. Acute desire must be present, or there will be no manifestation of Christ to His people. He waits to be wanted. Too bad that with many of us He waits so long, so very long, in vain.

Every age has its own characteristics. Right now we are in an age of religious complexity. The simplicity which is in Christ is rarely found among us. In its stead are programs, methods, organizations and a world of nervous activities which occupy time and attention but can never satisfy the longing of the heart. The shallowness of our inner experience, the hollowness of our worship, and that servile imitation of the world which marks our promotional methods all testify that we, in this day, know God only imperfectly, and the peace of God scarcely at all.

~ A.W. Tozer, excerpts from Chapter I, Following Hard after God in "The Pursuit of God," first published in 1948.

* * *

Psalm 63:8 My soul followeth hard after thee: thy right hand upholdeth me.

Is your soul following hard after Him – or are you ensnared by the deadly foe complacency and tangled in the web of religious complexity?

"Those who think they have grace enough give proof that they have little enough, or rather that they have none at all; because, wherever there is true grace, there is a desire of more grace, and a pressing towards the perfection of grace." ~ Matthew Henry's Complete Commentary on Philippians 3:13.

O LORD our God, incline our hearts, souls, minds, and strength to follow hard after You, to cling to You, to hold fast to You, and not to let You go. God forbid we be too-easily-satisfied religionists at ease in Zion –– but rather may we be diligent to make our calling and election sure, and show ourselves to be Your purchased possession – children of the burning heart. Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy upon us that we might be found in the company of the Shulamite woman:– zealously and jealously pursuing, panting, and pressing on for You with a holy violence!

Song of Solomon 3:1  By night on my bed I sought him whom my soul loveth: I sought him, but I found him not. 2  I will rise now, and go about the city in the streets, and in the broad ways I will seek him whom my soul loveth: I sought him, but I found him not. 3  The watchmen that go about the city found me: to whom I said, Saw ye him whom my soul loveth? 4  It was but a little that I passed from them, but I found him whom my soul loveth: I held him, and would not let him go, until I had brought him into my mother's house, and into the chamber of her that conceived me.

Matthew 11:12 And from the days of John the Baptist until now the kingdom of heaven suffereth violence, and the violent take it by force. 

"Note, They who would enter into the kingdom of heaven must strive to enter; that kingdom suffers a holy violence; self must be denied, the bent and bias, the frame and temper, of the mind must be altered; there are hard sufferings to be undergone, a force to be put upon the corrupt nature; we must run, and wrestle, and fight, and be in an agony, and all little enough to win such a prize, and to get over such opposition from without and from within. The violent take it by force. They who will have an interest in the great salvation are carried out towards it with a strong desire, will have it upon any terms, and not think them hard, nor quit their hold without a blessing, Gen. xxxii. 26. They who will make their calling and election sure must give diligence. The kingdom of heaven was never intended to indulge the ease of triflers, but to be the rest of them that labour. It is a blessed sight; Oh that we could see a greater number, not with an angry contention thrusting others out of the kingdom of heaven, but with a holy contention thrusting themselves into it!" ~ from Matthew Henry's Complete Commentary on Matthew 11.

 (Scripture quotations are taken from the KJV.)

What is a nominal Christian?
Moderation in pursuing God? An answer from Jonathan Edwards
Moderation in pursuing God? An answer from George Whitefield
How’s your spiritual appetite? (Jonathan Edwards)
consider … our ways, the great cloud of witnesses, Susanna Anthony
Amazing Grace . . . upon Grace ~ the 240th anniversary
Thank Him for a little grace, and ask Him for great grace ~ Spurgeon | letter 158 on assurance & joy