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\ / Charles Spurgeon's MORNING & EVENING
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Saturday, January 19, 2008
MORNING:
"I sought him, but I found him not."
-- Song of Solomon 3:1
Tell me where you lost the company of a Christ, and I will tell you the
most likely place to find him. Have you lost Christ in the closet by
restraining prayer? Then it is there you must seek and find him. Did
you lose Christ by sin? You will find Christ in no other way but by the
giving up of the sin, and seeking by the Holy Spirit to mortify the
member in which the lust doth dwell. Did you lose Christ by neglecting
the Scriptures? You must find Christ in the Scriptures. It is a true
proverb, "Look for a thing where you dropped it, it is there." So look
for Christ where you lost him, for he has not gone away. But it is hard
work to go back for Christ. Bunyan tells us, the pilgrim found the
piece of the road back to the Arbour of Ease, where he lost his roll,
the hardest he had ever travelled. Twenty miles onward is easier than
to go one mile back for the lost evidence.
Take care, then, when you find your Master, to cling close to him. But
how is it you have lost him? One would have thought you would never
have parted with such a precious friend, whose presence is so sweet,
whose words are so comforting, and whose company is so dear to you! How
is it that you did not watch him every moment for fear of losing sight
of him? Yet, since you have let him go, what a mercy that you are
seeking him, even though you mournfully groan, "O that I knew where I
might find him!" Go on seeking, for it is dangerous to be without thy
Lord. Without Christ you are like a sheep without its shepherd; like a
tree without water at its roots; like a sere leaf in the tempest-not
bound to the tree of life. With thine whole heart seek him, and he will
be found of thee: only give thyself thoroughly up to the search, and
verily, thou shalt yet discover him to thy joy and gladness.
EVENING:
"Then opened he their understanding, that they might
understand the Scriptures."
-- Luke 24:45
He whom we viewed last evening as opening Scripture, we here perceive
opening the understanding. In the first work he has many
fellow-labourers, but in the second he stands alone; many can bring the
Scriptures to the mind, but the Lord alone can prepare the mind to
receive the Scriptures. Our Lord Jesus differs from all other teachers;
they reach the ear, but he instructs the heart; they deal with the
outward letter, but he imparts an inward taste for the truth, by which
we perceive its savour and spirit. The most unlearned of men become
ripe scholars in the school of grace when the Lord Jesus by his Holy
Spirit unfolds the mysteries of the kingdom to them, and grants the
divine anointing by which they are enabled to behold the invisible.
Happy are we if we have had our understandings cleared and strengthened
by the Master! How many men of profound learning are ignorant of
eternal things! They know the killing letter of revelation, but its
killing spirit they cannot discern; they have a veil upon their hearts
which the eyes of carnal reason cannot penetrate. Such was our case a
little time ago; we who now see were once utterly blind; truth was to
us as beauty in the dark, a thing unnoticed and neglected. Had it not
been for the love of Jesus we should have remained to this moment in
utter ignorance, for without his gracious opening of our understanding,
we could no more have attained to spiritual knowledge than an infant
can climb the Pyramids, or an ostrich fly up to the stars. Jesus'
College is the only one in which God's truth can be really learned;
other schools may teach us what is to be believed, but Christ's alone
can show us how to believe it. Let us sit at the feet of Jesus, and by
earnest prayer call in his blessed aid that our dull wits may grow
brighter, and our feeble understandings may receive heavenly things.
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THE SECRET MESSAGE OF JESUS: UNCOVERING THE TRUTH THAT COULD CHANGE EVERYTHING, by Brian McLaren
Unafraid of controversy or the uncomfortable gray areas of life,
McLaren's quest is to find the essential message of Jesus' life - even
if it overturns our conventional ideas, priorities, and practices.
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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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