“Sola fide” is therefore the best news man could ever hear. JESUS DID THE WORK FOR US! His righteousness is permanently imputed to us the moment we receive Him as Lord and Savior (see II Corinthians 5:21)! When God the Father looks at a believer, that’s what He sees: CHRIST’S righteousness, not our wretched sinfulness! No wonder Satan has opposed and perverted this fantastic truth so vigorously all these millennia!
The benefits, the possibilities and the necessity of prayer are not merely subjective but are peculiarly objective in their character. Prayer aims at a definite object. Prayer has a direct design in view. Prayer always has something specific before the mind’s eye. There may be some subjective benefits which accrue from praying, but this is altogether secondary and incidental. Prayer always drives directly at an object and seeks to secure a desired end. Prayer is asking, seeking and knocking at a door for something we have not, which we desire, and which God has promised to us. (Adapted from E.M. Bounds, The Necessity of Prayer)
Those who let God be Father always and in everything, who live their whole lives in the Father’s presence and love, who allow God in all the greatness of His love to be a Father to them, they will experience most gloriously that a life in God’s infinite Fatherliness and continual answers to prayer are inseparable. (Adapted from Andrew Murray, With Christ in the School of Prayer)
How vast are the possibilities of prayer! How wide is its reach! What great things are accomplished by this divinely appointed means of grace! It lays its hand on Almighty God and moves Him to do what He would not otherwise do if prayer was not offered. It brings things to pass which would never otherwise occur. The story of prayer is the story of great achievements. Prayer is a wonderful power placed by Almighty God in the hands of His saints, which may be used to accomplish great purposes and to achieve unusual results. (Adapted from E.M. Bounds, The Necessity of Prayer)
Many scholars view this verse as the first in Scripture to mention prayer. More accurately it is the first example of people collectively worshiping their Creator. At this early stage in human history, men and women were already divided according to their faithfulness to God. Nothing has changed in the ensuing millennia – offering up daily prayers is a witness and demonstration of devotion to the Lord.
The most serious consequence of the uprising was the effect upon Luther. It drove him back upon his natural conservatism, made him fear the effects of radicalism upon his own movement, and turned him away from the principle of individual rights. From that time Luther was more disposed to give to the State the direction of religion.
Much of the history of the Reformation depends on the ideas of Martin Luther. Because of him, the revolt was more ecclesiastical than theological, except in the fundamental difference of Protestant dependence on faith for salvation and Catholic dependence on the sacraments of the Church. The basic principle on which Luther based his reconstruction of theology was that individual salvation from sin and its punishment was to be obtained by personal faith in Christ as a sufficient Savior rather than faith in the priest, the sacraments, and the whole system of Catholicism.
Luther’s contempt for injustice and oppression and his love for God’s Word and the freedom it offered launched the Protestant Reformation. It was the simple sale of indulgences, however, that inspired him to nail his written protest in a public forum.
Martin Luther, the hero of the Reformation, was born in the village of Eisleben in 1483. He entered the University at Erfurt in 1501 and graduated with honors. In 1505 he entered an Augustinian monastery at Erfurt and was consecrated to the priesthood in 1507. He was a diligent scholar and in 1508 was called to the chair of Philosophy at the University of Wittenberg.