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\ / Charles Spurgeon's MORNING & EVENING http://www.heartlight.org/
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Friday, June 12, 2009
MORNING:
"Thou art weighed in the balances and art found wanting."
-- Daniel 5:27
It is well frequently to weigh ourselves in the scale of God's Word.
You will find it a holy exercise to read some psalm of David, and, as
you meditate upon each verse, to ask yourself, "Can I say this? Have I
felt as David felt? Has my heart ever been broken on account of sin, as
his was when he penned his penitential psalms? Has my soul been full of
true confidence in the hour of difficulty as his was when he sang of
God's mercies in the cave of Adullam, or in the holds of Engedi? Do I
take the cup of salvation and call upon the name of the Lord?" Then
turn to the life of Christ, and as you read, ask yourselves how far you
are conformed to his likeness. Endeavour to discover whether you have
the meekness, the humility, the lovely spirit which he constantly
inculcated and displayed. Take, then, the epistles, and see whether you
can go with the apostle in what he said of his experience. Have you
ever cried out as he did-"O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver
me from the body of this death?" Have you ever felt his self-abasement?
Have you seemed to yourself the chief of sinners, and less than the
least of all saints? Have you known anything of his devotion? Could you
join with him and say, "For me to live is Christ, and to die is gain"?
If we thus read God's Word as a test of our spiritual condition, we
shall have good reason to stop many a time and say, "Lord, I feel I
have never yet been here, O bring me here! give me true penitence, such
as this I read of. Give me real faith; give me warmer zeal; inflame me
with more fervent love; grant me the grace of meekness; make me more
like Jesus. Let me no longer be 'found wanting,' when weighed in the
balances of the sanctuary, lest I be found wanting in the scales of
judgment." "Judge yourselves that ye be not judged."
EVENING:
"Who hath saved us, and called us with an holy calling."
-- 2 Timothy 1:9
The apostle uses the perfect tense and says, "Who hath saved us."
Believers in Christ Jesus are saved. They are not looked upon as
persons who are in a hopeful state, and may ultimately be saved, but
they are already saved. Salvation is not a blessing to be enjoyed upon
the dying bed, and to be sung of in a future state above, but a matter
to be obtained, received, promised, and enjoyed now. The Christian is
perfectly saved in God's purpose; God has ordained him unto salvation,
and that purpose is complete. He is saved also as to the price which
has been paid for him: "It is finished" was the cry of the Saviour ere
he died. The believer is also perfectly saved in his covenant head, for
as he fell in Adam, so he lives in Christ. This complete salvation is
accompanied by a holy calling. Those whom the Saviour saved upon the
cross are in due time effectually called by the power of God the Holy
Spirit unto holiness: they leave their sins; they endeavour to be like
Christ; they choose holiness, not out of any compulsion, but from the
stress of a new nature, which leads them to rejoice in holiness just as
naturally as aforetime they delighted in sin. God neither chose them
nor called them because they were holy, but he called them that they
might be holy, and holiness is the beauty produced by his workmanship
in them. The excellencies which we see in a believer are as much the
work of God as the atonement itself. Thus is brought out very sweetly
the fulness of the grace of God. Salvation must be of grace, because
the Lord is the author of it: and what motive but grace could move him
to save the guilty? Salvation must be of grace, because the Lord works
in such a manner that our righteousness is for ever excluded. Such is
the believer's privilege-a present salvation; such is the evidence that
he is called to it-a holy life.
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SURPRISED BY HOPE: RETHINKING HEAVEN, THE RESURRECTION, AND THE MISSION OF THE CHURCH, by N. T. Wright
Wright convincingly argues that what we believe about life after death
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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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