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\ / Charles Spurgeon's MORNING & EVENING
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Sunday, November 4, 2007
MORNING:
"For my strength is made perfect in weakness."
-- 2 Corinthians 12:9
A primary qualification for serving God with any amount of success, and
for doing God's work well and triumphantly, is a sense of our own
weakness. When God's warrior marches forth to battle, strong in his own
might, when he boasts, "I know that I shall conquer, my own right arm
and my conquering sword shall get unto me the victory," defeat is not
far distant. God will not go forth with that man who marches in his own
strength. He who reckoneth on victory thus has reckoned wrongly, for
"it is not by might, nor by power, but by my Spirit, saith the Lord of
hosts." They who go forth to fight, boasting of their prowess, shall
return with their gay banners trailed in the dust, and their armour
stained with disgrace. Those who serve God must serve him in his own
way, and in his strength, or he will never accept their service. That
which man doth, unaided by divine strength, God can never own. The mere
fruits of the earth he casteth away; he will only reap that corn, the
seed of which was sown from heaven, watered by grace, and ripened by
the sun of divine love. God will empty out all that thou hast before he
will put his own into thee; he will first clean out thy granaries
before he will fill them with the finest of the wheat. The river of God
is full of water; but not one drop of it flows from earthly springs.
God will have no strength used in his battles but the strength which he
himself imparts. Are you mourning over your own weakness? Take courage,
for there must be a consciousness of weakness before the Lord will give
thee victory. Your emptiness is but the preparation for your being
filled, and your casting down is but the making ready for your lifting
up.
"When I am weak then am I strong,
Grace is my shield and Christ my song."
EVENING:
"In thy light shall we see light."
-- Psalms 36:9
No lips can tell the love of Christ to the heart till Jesus himself
shall speak within. Descriptions all fall flat and tame unless the Holy
Ghost fills them with life and power; till our Immanuel reveals himself
within, the soul sees him not. If you would see the sun, would you
gather together the common means of illumination, and seek in that way
to behold the orb of day? No, the wise man knoweth that the sun must
reveal itself, and only by its own blaze can that mighty lamp be seen.
It is so with Christ. "Blessed art thou, Simon Bar-jona:" said he to
Peter, "for flesh and blood hath not revealed this unto thee." Purify
flesh and blood by any educational process you may select, elevate
mental faculties to the highest degree of intellectual power, yet none
of these can reveal Christ. The Spirit of God must come with power, and
overshadow the man with his wings, and then in that mystic holy of
holies the Lord Jesus must display himself to the sanctified eye, as he
doth not unto the purblind sons of men. Christ must be his own mirror.
The great mass of this blear-eyed world can see nothing of the
ineffable glories of Immanuel. He stands before them without form or
comeliness, a root out of a dry ground, rejected by the vain and
despised by the proud. Only where the Spirit has touched the eye with
eye-salve, quickened the heart with divine life, and educated the soul
to a heavenly taste, only there is he understood. "To you that believe
he is precious"; to you he is the chief corner-stone, the Rock of your
salvation, your all in all; but to others he is "a stone of stumbling
and a rock of offence." Happy are those to whom our Lord manifests
himself, for his promise to such is that he will make his abode with
them. O Jesus, our Lord, our heart is open, come in, and go out no more
for ever. Show thyself to us now! Favour us with a glimpse of thine
all-conquering charms.
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