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\ / Charles Spurgeon's MORNING & EVENING
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Wednesday, June 11, 2008
MORNING:
"We love him because he first loved us."
-- 1 John 4:19
There is no light in the planet but that which proceedeth from the sun;
and there is no true love to Jesus in the heart but that which cometh
from the Lord Jesus himself. From this overflowing fountain of the
infinite love of God, all our love to God must spring. This must ever
be a great and certain truth, that we love him for no other reason than
because he first loved us. Our love to him is the fair offspring of his
love to us. Cold admiration, when studying the works of God, anyone may
have, but the warmth of love can only be kindled in the heart by God's
Spirit. How great the wonder that such as we should ever have been
brought to love Jesus at all! How marvellous that when we had rebelled
against him, he should, by a display of such amazing love, seek to draw
us back. No! never should we have had a grain of love towards God
unless it had been sown in us by the sweet seed of his love to us.
Love, then, has for its parent the love of God shed abroad in the
heart: but after it is thus divinely born, it must be divinely
nourished. Love is an exotic; it is not a plant which will flourish
naturally in human soil, it must be watered from above. Love to Jesus
is a flower of a delicate nature, and if it received no nourishment but
that which could be drawn from the rock of our hearts it would soon
wither. As love comes from heaven, so it must feed on heavenly bread.
It cannot exist in the wilderness unless it be fed by manna from on
high. Love must feed on love. The very soul and life of our love to God
is his love to us.
"I love thee, Lord, but with no love of mine,
For I have none to give;
I love thee, Lord; but all the love is thine,
For by thy love I live.
I am as nothing, and rejoice to be
Emptied, and lost, and swallowed up in thee."
EVENING:
"There brake he the arrows of the bow, the shield, and the
sword, and the battle."
-- Psalms 76:3
Our Redeemer's glorious cry of "It is finished," was the death-knell of
all the adversaries of his people, the breaking of "the arrows of the
bow, the shield, and the sword, and the battle." Behold the hero of
Golgotha using his cross as an anvil, and his woes as a hammer, dashing
to shivers bundle after bundle of our sins, those poisoned "arrows of
the bow;" trampling on every indictment, and destroying every
accusation. What glorious blows the mighty Breaker gives with a hammer
far more ponderous than the fabled weapon of Thor! How the diabolical
darts fly to fragments, and the infernal bucklers are broken like
potters' vessels! Behold, he draws from its sheath of hellish
workmanship the dread sword of Satanic power! He snaps it across his
knee, as a man breaks the dry wood of a fagot, and casts it into the
fire. Beloved, no sin of a believer can now be an arrow mortally to
wound him, no condemnation can now be a sword to kill him, for the
punishment of our sin was borne by Christ, a full atonement was made
for all our iniquities by our blessed Substitute and Surety. Who now
accuseth? Who now condemneth? Christ hath died, yea rather, hath risen
again. Jesus has emptied the quivers of hell, has quenched every fiery
dart, and broken off the head of every arrow of wrath; the ground is
strewn with the splinters and relics of the weapons of hell's warfare,
which are only visible to us to remind us of our former danger, and of
our great deliverance. Sin hath no more dominion over us. Jesus has
made an end of it, and put it away for ever. O thou enemy, destructions
are come to a perpetual end. Talk ye of all the wondrous works of the
Lord, ye who make mention of his name, keep not silence, neither by
day, nor when the sun goeth to his rest. Bless the Lord, O my soul.
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MORNING & EVENING from HEARTLIGHT /\/\
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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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