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\ / Charles Spurgeon's MORNING & EVENING
http://www.heartlight.org/
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Tuesday, December 4, 2007
MORNING:
"I have much people in this city."
-- Acts 18:10
This should be a great encouragement to try to do good, since God has
among the vilest of the vile, the most reprobate, the most debauched
and drunken, an elect people who must be saved. When you take the Word
to them, you do so because God has ordained you to be the messenger of
life to their souls, and they must receive it, for so the decree of
predestination runs. They are as much redeemed by blood as the saints
before the eternal throne. They are Christ's property, and yet perhaps
they are lovers of the ale-house, and haters of holiness; but if Jesus
Christ purchased them he will have them. God is not unfaithful to
forget the price which his Son has paid. He will not suffer his
substitution to be in any case an ineffectual, dead thing. Tens of
thousands of redeemed ones are not regenerated yet, but regenerated
they must be; and this is our comfort when we go forth to them with the
quickening Word of God.
Nay, more, these ungodly ones are prayed for by Christ before the
throne. "Neither pray I for these alone," saith the great Intercessor,
"but for them also which shall believe on me through their word." Poor,
ignorant souls, they know nothing about prayer for themselves, but
Jesus prays for them. Their names are on his breastplate, and ere long
they must bow their stubborn knee, breathing the penitential sigh
before the throne of grace. "The time of figs is not yet." The
predestinated moment has not struck; but, when it comes, they shall
obey, for God will have his own; they must, for the Spirit is not to be
withstood when he cometh forth with fulness of power-they must become
the willing servants of the living God. "My people shall be willing in
the day of my power." "He shall justify many." "He shall see of the
travail of his soul." "I will divide him a portion with the great, and
he shall divide the spoil with the strong."
EVENING:
"Even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting for the
adoption, to wit, the redemption of our body."
-- Romans 8:23
This groaning is universal among the saints: to a greater or less
extent we all feel it. It is not the groan of murmuring or complaint:
it is rather the note of desire than of distress. Having received an
earnest, we desire the whole of our portion; we are sighing that our
entire manhood, in its trinity of spirit, soul, and body, may be set
free from the last vestige of the fall; we long to put off corruption,
weakness, and dishonour, and to wrap ourselves in incorruption, in
immortality, in glory, in the spiritual body which the Lord Jesus will
bestow upon his people. We long for the manifestation of our adoption
as the children of God. "We groan," but it is "within ourselves." It is
not the hypocrite's groan, by which he would make men believe that he
is a saint because he is wretched. Our sighs are sacred things, too
hallowed for us to tell abroad. We keep our longings to our Lord alone.
Then the apostle says we are "waiting," by which we learn that we are
not to be petulant, like Jonah or Elijah, when they said, "Let me die";
nor are we to whimper and sigh for the end of life because we are tired
of work, nor wish to escape from our present sufferings till the will
of the Lord is done. We are to groan for glorification, but we are to
wait patiently for it, knowing that what the Lord appoints is best.
Waiting implies being ready. We are to stand at the door expecting the
Beloved to open it and take us away to himself. This "groaning" is a
test. You may judge of a man by what he groans after. Some men groan
after wealth-they worship Mammon; some groan continually under the
troubles of life-they are merely impatient; but the man who sighs after
God, who is uneasy till he is made like Christ, that is the blessed
man. May God help us to groan for the coming of the Lord, and the
resurrection which he will bring to us.
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VELVET ELVIS: REPAINTING THE CHRISTIAN FAITH, by Rob Bell
In this provocative, hopeful book, Bell asks what the church might look
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MORNING & EVENING from HEARTLIGHT /\/\
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Morning & Evening is the classic devotional by 19th-century writer
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