Equipping Center

These comments are from me.

All Loves Excelling is John Bunyan's sermon on Ephesians 3:17-18, 'That ye ... may be able to comprehend with all saints, what is the breadth, and length, and depth, and height; and to know the love of Christ, which passeth knowledge.' It was first titled 'The Saints' Knowledge of Christ s Love' and is worthy of being ranked alongside Sibbes and deals with a much neglected subject area. The subject matter of this work which was first preached, is greatly needed today. On the one hand, experiences of the Spirit are being claimed from which the glory of the redeemer and the wonder of his love are quite absent, while on the other, an almost total attention to the understanding and practising of scripture truth is having the effect of marginalising the experiential element in true, spiritual knowledge. Bunyan's description of Christ's love to believers and how they ought to know it, cuts in both the above-mentioned directions. From some 440 Bible references he shows how knowing Christ's love is the message of Scripture and also the essence of heaven, partly possessed and expressed on earth. Those who know it are rich beyond measure and they are the people who 'sweeten the churches and bring glory to God and to religion'.

This is a short and honest account of how God demonstrated His exceeding great mercy to His unworthy servant, John Bunyan.

Two works on prayer are here brought together. In Praying in the Spirit Bunyan defines what it means to pray with the spirit and with the understanding, and deals with difficulties in prayer. In The Throne of Grace, he explains how to approach God's throne in prayer and opens up the blessings God's people receive from the high priestly ministry of Jesus Christ.

Published the year after his 'Pilgrim's Progress', in 1679, Bunyan's 'Treatise on the Fear of God' takes a widely misunderstood and neglected theme, wipes off the grime of confusion, and lets it sparkle. And sparkle really is the word: where most assume that the fear of God must be the gloomy theological equivalent of eating up your greens, Bunyan shows what a delightful and helpful subject it is. From the Foreword by Michael Reeves