Let my mouth be filled with Thy praise and with Thy honour all the day. – Psalm 71:8

To live in the perpetual exercise of praise to God, is at once the Christian’s duty and delight. “Nay,” says one, “but we cannot do that, we have other things to think of.” But remember, when the praises of God are not on our lips, they should be in our hearts. The incense was in the censer even when it was not smoking—our praise should abide with us till opportunity permits the holy fire to be applied. Besides, I believe that our God is best praised in common things. He who mends a shoe with a right motive is praising God as much as the seraph who pours forth his celestial sonnet. You in your workshops, you in your families, you on your sickbeds, you anywhere according to your avocations—if you offer, through Jesus the Mediator, the love of your hearts—are paying the rent of praise unto God Most High. Oh, to be continually doing this! But brethren, I am afraid that we are in arrears. Those of us who have paid the most rent are still far behindhand. Yes, you were grumbling this morning—that was not rendering a worthy recompense for benefits received. Shall a living man complain? There are some who do little else but complain. They complain of the times, of the weather, of the government, of their families, of their trade. If, for once, they would complain of themselves they might have a more deserving subject for fault-finding. The Lord is good and does good, and let His name be blessed. Let us, as His people, avow that, though He slay us, yet we will trust in Him. And if He make us groan under His heavy hand, we will even weep out His praises, and our expiring sigh shall be but a note of our life’s psalm, which we hope to exchange full soon for the song of the celestial host above. Praising and blessing God in life, practically by obedience, and heartily with gratitude—this is the rent which is due for the house in which we dwell. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

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Thou turnest man to destruction; and sayest, Return, ye children of men. – Psalm 90:3

One would imagine, from the way in which some men talk, that we were freeholders, or at least had a lease for nine hundred and ninety-nine years. The truth is, we are but tenants at will. We may possess the tenement, in which our soul now finds a house for itself, together with its appurtenances and outhouses, for the term of seventy years, and the tenure may even be prolonged to fourscore years, or even to a longer period in rare cases. But at no one time is the tenure altered. We always occupy from moment to moment. Our lease is not for three, seven, fourteen, or twenty-one years, nor is it even from day to day, or from hour to hour—but from second to second we hold precarious possession. We are tenants at the absolute will of God. The commencement of a day never secures the ending of it to us alive, and the striking of the clock, as the commencement of the hour, is no guarantee that we shall hear it strike again. Every second, we hold our lives, and goods, and chattels upon the sole tenure of the divine will. God has but to say to us, “Return, ye children of men,” and we return to the dust. Flowers are not more frail, moths more fragile, bubbles more unsubstantial, or meteors more fleeting than man’s life. What transient things we are! I said, We are, but I made a mistake—we are not. We but begin to be, and ere we are, we are not. It is God alone who can say, “I AM.” None of the human race should dare to pronounce those words. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

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Hear, O heavens, and give ear, O earth: for the LORD hath spoken, I have nourished and brought up children, and they have rebelled against Me. – Isaiah 1:2

It is most useful for each of us to know what are the rights of God towards us. Even if we do not acknowledge them, yet candor demands that at least we hear them defined. Sad is the reflection, however, that when we learn these rights, if we resist them, we become willful robbers and so increase our guilt. If we will not have God to reign over us, if, in our spirits we say, like Pharaoh, “Who is the LORD, that we should obey His voice?” it will go harder with us at the last than if we had never heard the claims of God proclaimed. Men and women, how is it that God has made you and yet so many of you never think of Him? Shall I bring against you the accusation which the prophet of old brought against his people? “Hear, O heavens, and give ear, O earth: for the LORD hath spoken, I have nourished and brought up children, and they have rebelled against Me. The ox knoweth his owner, and the ass his master’s crib: but Israel doth not know; My people doth not consider.” Who among you would retain in your house a tool or a piece of furniture which was of no use or value to you? Who among you would keep so much as an ox or an ass if it rendered you no service? How much less would you nurture it if, instead thereof, it did you harm—if it had a spite against you and lifted up its heels against you? And yet, are there not some here who have been forgetful of their obligations to their Maker, who have never been of any service to Him, have never praised Him, have never desired to advance His glory? But who, on the contrary, have even spoken high and haughty thingy things against Him, and it may be words of profanity and blasphemy? O God, how are You ill-treated in the very world which is full of Your goodness! ~ C.H. Spurgeon

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