Read: 2 Corinthians 4:1-18
There is only one missionary, to my knowledge, who has so turned the world upside down that she has earned a place on the back of a Scottish £10 note. Whoever it is, everyone acknowledges that Mary Mitchell Slessor, was a missionary of missionaries, and a Christian of Christians.
Read: Song of Songs 5:1-16
From time to time a nation produces someone who is truly great. Scotland was never so blessed as it was in the mid-17th Century when Samuel Rutherford was in his prime. He was one of the greatest pastor-theologians Scotland has ever known, but whatever he had chosen to do, he would have excelled at it. Rutherford was such a bright star in the sky of Scottish Christianity, that after his death, many families in Scotland named their children after him. And yet, his was a martyr’s death at the hands of a changeable and deceitful King.
Read: Mark 9:14-29
The history of the Missionary endeavour of the Church of Jesus Christ is the history of the Unlisted Legion. Thousands of men and women who gave up their lives to spread the good news of a free and sovereign salvation through Jesus Christ – men and women we won’t ever hear about until we meet them in glory. Such a man was James Gilmour of Mongolia. Virtually unheard of, the first I came across him was a Victorian biography of him written by Richard Lovett. In this, Gilmour has the advantage of the vast majority of other missionaries, most of whom have no biography and whose earthly remains have been laid in far off countries where they served the Lord and sought no recognition for it.
Read: Ephesians 6:13-24
Over the next few weeks and months I want to do something completely different at the prayer meeting. We are going to briefly survey the lives of some of the greatest Scottish Christians of history. We’re going to do this not just so that we gain a deeper appreciation of our spiritual forefathers (and foremothers), but more particularly so that we can glean from each one just a couple of things which they discovered and excelled at in their prayer lives. Hopefully, as our studies go on, we will begin to get a wider and fuller picture of the historical and Biblical practice of prayer. We may also pick up one or two hints which may help us in our own private and public prayers. The great Scottish figures I want to look at over the next while are: Thomas Chalmers, Samuel Rutherford, Andrew Bonar, John G Paton, James O Fraser, Thomas Boston, Mary Slessor, and tonight, by way of a dramatic introduction, Robert Murray McCheyne - the minister of St. Peter’s Church in Dundee from 1836 until his early death in 1843. But who really was McCheyne and what can he teach us about prayer?
