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\ / Charles Spurgeon's MORNING & EVENING
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Friday, January 4, 2008
MORNING:
"Grow in grace, and in the knowledge of our Lord and Saviour
Jesus Christ."
-- 2 Peter 3:18
"Grow in grace"-not in one grace only, but in all grace. Grow in that
root-grace, faith. Believe the promises more firmly than you have done.
Let faith increase in fulness, constancy, simplicity. Grow also in
love. Ask that your love may become extended, more intense, more
practical, influencing every thought, word, and deed. Grow likewise in
humility. Seek to lie very low, and know more of your own nothingness.
As you grow downward in humility, seek also to grow upward -having
nearer approaches to God in prayer and more intimate fellowship with
Jesus. May God the Holy Spirit enable you to "grow in the knowledge of
our Lord and Saviour." He who grows not in the knowledge of Jesus,
refuses to be blessed. To know him is "life eternal," and to advance in
the knowledge of him is to increase in happiness. He who does not long
to know more of Christ, knows nothing of him yet. Whoever hath sipped
this wine will thirst for more, for although Christ doth satisfy, yet
it is such a satisfaction, that the appetite is not cloyed, but
whetted. If you know the love of Jesus-as the hart panteth for the
water-brooks, so will you pant after deeper draughts of his love. If
you do not desire to know him better, then you love him not, for love
always cries, "Nearer, nearer." Absence from Christ is hell; but the
presence of Jesus is heaven. Rest not then content without an
increasing acquaintance with Jesus. Seek to know more of him in his
divine nature, in his human relationship, in his finished work, in his
death, in his resurrection, in his present glorious intercession, and
in his future royal advent. Abide hard by the Cross, and search the
mystery of his wounds. An increase of love to Jesus, and a more perfect
apprehension of his love to us is one of the best tests of growth in
grace.
EVENING:
"And Joseph knew his brethren, but they knew not him."
-- Genesis 42:8
This morning our desires went forth for growth in our acquaintance with
the Lord Jesus; it may be well to-night to consider a kindred topic,
namely, our heavenly Joseph's knowledge of us. This was most blessedly
perfect long before we had the slightest knowledge of him. "His eyes
beheld our substance, yet being imperfect, and in his book all our
members were written, when as yet there was none of them." Before we
had a being in the world we had a being in his heart. When we were
enemies to him, he knew us, our misery, our madness, and our
wickedness. When we wept bitterly in despairing repentance, and viewed
him only as a judge and a ruler, he viewed us as his brethren well
beloved, and his bowels yearned towards us. He never mistook his
chosen, but always beheld them as objects of his infinite affection.
"The Lord knoweth them that are his," is as true of the prodigals who
are feeding swine as of the children who sit at the table.
But, alas! we knew not our royal Brother, and out of this ignorance
grew a host of sins. We withheld our hearts from him, and allowed him
no entrance to our love. We mistrusted him, and gave no credit to his
words. We rebelled against him, and paid him no loving homage. The Sun
of Righteousness shone forth, and we could not see him. Heaven came
down to earth, and earth perceived it not. Let God be praised, those
days are over with us; yet even now it is but little that we know of
Jesus compared with what he knows of us. We have but begun to study
him, but he knoweth us altogether. It is a blessed circumstance that
the ignorance is not on his side, for then it would be a hopeless case
for us. He will not say to us, "I never knew you," but he will confess
our names in the day of his appearing, and meanwhile will manifest
himself to us as he doth not unto the world.
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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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