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\ / Charles Spurgeon's MORNING & EVENING
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Tuesday, May 6, 2008
MORNING:
"We dwell in him."
-- 1 John 4:13
Do you want a house for your soul? Do you ask, "What is the purchase?"
It is something less than proud human nature will like to give. It is
without money and without price. Ah! you would like to pay a
respectable rent! You would love to do something to win Christ? Then
you cannot have the house, for it is "without price." Will you take my
Master's house on a lease for all eternity, with nothing to pay for it,
nothing but the ground-rent of loving and serving him for ever? Will
you take Jesus and "dwell in him?" See, this house is furnished with
all you want, it is filled with riches more than you will spend as long
as you live. Here you can have intimate communion with Christ and feast
on his love; here are tables well-stored with food for you to live on
for ever; in it, when weary, you can find rest with Jesus; and from it
you can look out and see heaven itself. Will you have the house? Ah! if
you are houseless, you will say, "I should like to have the house; but
may I have it?" Yes; there is the key-the key is, "Come to Jesus."
"But," you say, "I am too shabby for such a house." Never mind; there
are garments inside. If you feel guilty and condemned, come; and though
the house is too good for you, Christ will make you good enough for the
house by-and-by. He will wash you and cleanse you, and you will yet be
able to sing, "We dwell in him." Believer: thrice happy art thou to
have such a dwelling-place! Greatly privileged thou art, for thou hast
a "strong habitation" in which thou art ever safe. And "dwelling in
him," thou hast not only a perfect and secure house, but an everlasting
one. When this world shall have melted like a dream, our house shall
live, and stand more imperishable than marble, more solid than granite,
self-existent as God, for it is God himself-"We dwell in him."
EVENING:
"All the days of my appointed time will I wait."
-- Job 14:14
A little stay on earth will make heaven more heavenly. Nothing makes
rest so sweet as toil; nothing renders security so pleasant as exposure
to alarms. The bitter quassia cups of earth will give a relish to the
new wine which sparkles in the golden bowls of glory. Our battered
armour and scarred countenances will render more illustrious our
victory above, when we are welcomed to the seats of those who have
overcome the world. We should not have full fellowship with Christ if
we did not for awhile sojourn below, for he was baptized with a baptism
of suffering among men, and we must be baptized with the same if we
would share his kingdom. Fellowship with Christ is so honourable that
the sorest sorrow is a light price by which to procure it. Another
reason for our lingering here is for the good of others. We would not
wish to enter heaven till our work is done, and it may be that we are
yet ordained to minister light to souls benighted in the wilderness of
sin. Our prolonged stay here is doubtless for God's glory. A tried
saint, like a well-cut diamond, glitters much in the King's crown.
Nothing reflects so much honour on a workman as a protracted and severe
trial of his work, and its triumphant endurance of the ordeal without
giving way in any part. We are God's workmanship, in whom he will be
glorified by our afflictions. It is for the honour of Jesus that we
endure the trial of our faith with sacred joy. Let each man surrender
his own longings to the glory of Jesus, and feel, "If my lying in the
dust would elevate my Lord by so much as an inch, let me still lie
among the pots of earth. If to live on earth for ever would make my
Lord more glorious, it should be my heaven to be shut out of heaven."
Our time is fixed and settled by eternal decree. Let us not be anxious
about it, but wait with patience till the gates of pearl shall open.
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Morning & Evening is the classic devotional by 19th-century writer
and preacher Charles Spurgeon. It's part of HEARTLIGHT Magazine,
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