prayer

Go to the Beloved Physician

Sherry Attributes of God, Christian Life, confession of sin, prayer, promises, repentance, The Holy Spirit Leave a comment

Oh, that I were as in months past, as in the days when God preserved me; When His candle shined upon my head, and when by His light I walked through darkness; As I was in the days of my youth, when the secret of God was upon my tabernacle… – Job 29:2-4

It is unprofitable to read these words of Job, and say, “Just so, that is how I feel,” and then continue in the same way. If a man has neglected his business, and so has lost his trade, it may mark a turn in his affairs when he says, “I wish I had been more industrious;” but if he abides in the same sloth as before, of what use is his regret? If he shall fold his arms and say, “Oh that I had dug that plot of land; oh that I had sown that field;” no harvest will come because of his lamentations. Up, man, up and labor, or you will have the sluggard’s reward, rags and poverty will still be your portion. If a man be in declining health, if drunkenness and riot have broken down his constitution, it may mark a salutary reform in his history if he confesses his former folly; but if his regrets end in mere expressions, will these heal him? I trow not. So neither will a man, affected by spiritual decline, be restored by the mere fact of his knowing himself to be so. Let him go to the beloved Physician, drink of the waters of life again, and receive the leaves of the tree which are for the healing of the nations. Inactive regrets are insincere. If a man really did lament that he had lost communion with God, he would seek to regain it. If he doth not seek to be restored he is adding to all his former sins this of lying before God, in uttering regrets that he does not feel in his soul.

Remember, many have been on Job’s dunghill, who knew nothing of Job’s God; many have imitated David in his sins, who never followed him, in his repentance. They have gone from their sin into hell by the way of presumption, whereas David went from it to heaven by the road of repentance and forgiveness. Never let us; merely because we feel some uneasiness within, conclude that this suffices…Up, men, and with all the strength that God’s Holy Spirit can give you, strive to drive out these traitors from your bosom, for they are robbing your soul of her best treasures. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/1011.cfm

What Happened to Our Zeal?

Sherry Attributes of God, Character of Jesus, Christian Life, prayer, repentance, Sovereignty of God Leave a comment

Oh, that I were as in months past, as in the days when God preserved me…As I was in the days of my youth, when the secret of God was upon my tabernacle… – Job 29:2,4

Let me enquire whether there are not many of us whose zeal is almost gone? We once loved the Savior intensely, and His cause we eagerly sought to serve, but now we take matters easily, and do not travail in birth for souls. Some rich men were wont to give most freely to the cause of God, but now covetousness has palsied the hand of generosity. Even poor Christians are not always so ready with their two mites as they were in better days. You were wont to labor, too, but that Sunday School class sees you no longer; no street preaching now; no tract distributing now; all forms of Christ’s service you have renounced, for you fancy you have done enough…Let none of us talk of finality, for we have not yet attained. Till life is over, our zeal should still glow, and our labors for Christ should multiply. Is not brotherly love, in many Christians, very questionable? Have they not forgotten, altogether, the family ties which bind all Christians to one another? And, with brotherly love, has not love to the Gospel gone too, so that now with many, one doctrine is almost as good as another? If a man can talk well, and is an orator, they enjoy his ministry whether he advocates truth or error. Once they could go to the little meeting house, where Christianity was preached faithfully though in an uncouth style, but now they must have the help of organs or they cannot praise God; and there must be millinery and genuflexions, or else they cannot pray to Him; and they must listen to oratory and elocution, or else they cannot accept God’s Word…Might not many of us blush, if we were to think how low our graces are, how weak our faith, how few our good works, and our gracious words with which we should bear testimony to His name. Yes, in thousands of cases, Christians need not be stopped if they were to commence this mournful cry, “Oh that I were as in the days of my youth, when the secret of God was upon my tabernacle.” ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/1011.cfm

Desiring His Light

Sherry Attributes of God, Character of Jesus, Christian Life, prayer, promises, The Holy Spirit Leave a comment

Oh, that I were as in months past, as in the days when God preserved me; When His candle shined upon my head, and when by His light I walked through darkness… – Job 29:2,3

The joy of the Lord is our strength, the joy of the Lord is Israel’s excellency; it is the heaven of heaven, it is heaven even upon earth; and, consequently, to lose it, is a calamity indeed. Who that has once been satisfied with favor, and full of the blessing of the Lord, will be content to go into the dry and thirsty land, and live far off from God? Will he not rather cry out with David, “My soul thirsteth for God; when shall I come and appear before God?” Surely his agonising prayer will be, “Restore unto me the joy of Thy salvation, and uphold me with Thy free Spirit.” Love to God will never be content if His face be hidden. Until the curtain be drawn aside and the King’s face be seen through the lattices, the true spouse will spend her life in sighing, mourning like a dove bereaved of its mate.

Job deplored the loss of divine illumination. “By His light,” he says, “I walked through darkness,” that is to say, perplexity ceased to be perplexity; God shed such a light upon the mysteries of providence, that where others missed their path, Job, made wise by heaven, could find it. There have been times when, to our patient faith, all things have been plain. “If any man will do His will, he shall know of the doctrine;” but, if we walk far off from God, then, straightway, even the precious truth of God is no more clear to us, and the dealings of God with us in providence appear to be like a maze. He is wise as Solomon who walks with God, but he is a very fool who trusts his own understanding. All the wit that we have gathered by observation and experience will not supply us with sufficiency of common sense if we turn away from God. Israel, without consulting God, made a league with her enemies; she thought the case most plain when she entered into hasty alliance with the Gibeonites, but she was duped by cunning because she asked not counsel of the Lord. In the simplest business we shall err, if we seek not direction from the Lord; yet, where matters are most complicated, we shall walk wisely, if we wait for a voice from the oracle, and seek the good Shepherd’s guidance. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/1011.cfm

Bitter Regrets

Sherry Attributes of God, Character of Jesus, Christian Life, prayer, promises, Sovereignty of God Leave a comment

“Oh, that I were as in months past, as in the days when God preserved me when His candle shined upon my head, and when by His light I walked through darkness; as I was in the days of my youth, when the secret of God was upon my tabernacle.”-Job 29:2,3,4

Job’s soul was depressed; he had lost the light of God’s countenance; his inward comforts were declining, his joy in the Lord was at a low ebb, this he regretted far more than anything besides. No doubt he deplored the departure of those prosperous days when, as he words it, his root was spread out by the waters, and the dew lay all night upon his branch; but, much more did he bemoan that the lamp of the Lord no more shone upon his head, and the secret of God was not upon his tabernacle…We may, without violence, appropriate Job’s words to ourselves; for I fear that many of us can with great propriety take up our wailing and mourn for the days of our espousals, the happy days of our first love…Regrets such as those expressed in the text are and ought to be very BITTER. If it be the loss of spiritual things that we regret, then may we say from the bottom of our hearts, “Oh that I were as in months past.”

There are days with Christians when they can see God’s hand all around them, checking them in the first approaches of sin, and setting a hedge about all their ways…But when they fall into laxity of spirit, and walk at a distance from God, they are not so preserved. Though kept from final and total apostasy, yet they are not kept from very grievous sin; for, like Peter who followed afar off, they may be left to deny their Master, even with oaths and cursings. If we have lost that conscious preservation of God, which once covered us from every fiery dart; if we no longer abide under the shadow of the Almighty and feel no longer that His truth is our shield and buckler, we have lost a joy worth worlds, and we may well deplore it with anguish of heart… I beseech you be not high minded, lift not up your horn on high, speak not so exceeding proudly, bow before the Christ of God, and ask Him to give you the new life; for even if that new life have declined and become sickly, it is better than the death in which you dwell. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/1011.cfm

True Christian Worship

Sherry Attributes of God, Character of Jesus, Christian Life, prayer, Sovereignty of God, The Father, The Holy Spirit Leave a comment

“But the hour cometh, and now is, when the true worshippers shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth, for the Father seeketh such to worship Him. God is a Spirit: and they that worship Him must worship Him in spirit and in truth.”-John 4:23-24.

True Christian worship addresses God, not merely as Creator and Preserver, or as the great Lord of the Universe, but as one who is very near of kin to us, our Father, beloved of our souls. Jesus likewise states that gospel worship is to be of a kind which does not result from the man himself merely, but comes from God, and is a work of grace. This is implied in the sentence, “The Father seeketh such to worship Him,” as if no true worship would come from any man unless God sought it. True devotion under the Christian dispensation is not merely human but also divine. These are very grave points, and draw a broad line of distinction between the living worship of the chosen of God and the dead formal worship of the world which lieth in the wicked one.

Furthermore, the Savior goes on to say that they who worship God are to worship Him “in spirit.” No longer with the visible sacrifice of a lamb, but inwardly trusting in Him who is the Lamb of God’s Passover; no more with the sprinkled blood of goats, but heartily relying upon the blood once shed for many; no longer worshipping God with ephod, breastplate, and mitre, but with prostrate soul, with uplifted faith, and with the faculties not of the body but of the inward spirit. We who worship God under this Christian dispensation are no longer to fancy that bodily exercise in worship profiteth anything, that genuflexions and contortions are of any value, but that acceptable worship is wholly mental, inward, and spiritual. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/0695.cfm

Pray to the King

Sherry Attributes of God, Character of Jesus, Christian Life, prayer, promises, Sovereignty of God, The Holy Spirit Leave a comment

Praying always with all prayer and supplication in the Spirit… – Ephesians 6:18

I fully believe that the darkest time of any true Christian church is just the period when it ought to have the most hope; for when the Lord has allowed us to spin ourselves out till there is no more strength in us, then it is that He will come to our rescue…Look to the Most High, and not to man, or ministers, or modes, or methods, but only to Him, and the guidance of His Spirit…In His name I ask you, can anything be too hard for the Lord? Perhaps in your sphere of service you have grown so dispirited that you are inclined to say, “I may as well give up all further effort; no good will result from my endeavors.” But what have you told the Master, and what have you sought at His hand? Have you told Him all your discouragements? Have you asked Him to speak with power, and has He refused you? If so, then give it up, but not till then, for He can even now “say to the north, Give up; and to the south, Keep not back;” and as when He said to the thick primaeval darkness, “Let there be light,” and the light leaped into being, and the darkness fled, so can He, amid the gross darkness of our huge city, or the not less dense darkness of our villages, create light to our astonishment and to His glory. It is the King’s word we want-nothing short of it, and nothing more. We must get that by prayer; we must wait upon Him with importunity. If there be only two or three whose hearts break over the desolations of the church, if we have only half a dozen that resolve to give the Lord no rest till He establish and make Jerusalem a praise in the earth, we shall see great things yet. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/1007.cfm

Come Now to Your Divine Help

Sherry Attributes of God, Character of Jesus, Christian Life, confession of sin, prayer, promises, salvation, Sovereignty of God Leave a comment

Iniquities prevail against me: as for our transgressions, Thou shalt purge them away. Blessed is the man whom Thou choosest, and causest to approach unto Thee, that he may dwell in Thy courts: we shall be satisfied with the goodness of Thy house, even of Thy holy temple. – Psalm 65:3,4

Dear brethren and sisters, there may be difficulties in your way; iniquities may hinder you, or infirmities; but there is the promise, “Thou shalt purge them away.” Infirmities may check you, but note the word of divine help, “Blessed is the man whom Thou causest to approach unto Thee.” He will come to your aid and lead you to Himself. Infirmities, therefore, are overcome by divine grace. Perhaps your emptiness hinders you: “he shall be satisfied with the goodness of Thy house.” It is not your goodness that is to satisfy either God or you, but God’s goodness is to satisfy. Come, then, with thine iniquity, come with thine infirmity; come with thy emptiness. Come, dear brethren, if you have never come to God before. Come and confess your sin to God and ask for mercy; you can do no less than ask. Come and trust His mercy, which endures for ever; it has no limit. Think not hardly of Him but come and lay yourself down at His feet. If you perish, perish there. Come and tell your grief; pour out your hearts before Him. Bottom upwards turn the vessel of your nature, and drain out the last dreg, and pray to be filled with the fullness of His grace. Come unto Jesus; He invites you; He enables you. “(I) have not prayed before,” you say. Everything must have a beginning. Oh, that that beginning might come now. It is not because you pray well that you are to come, but because the Lord hears prayer graciously, therefore, all flesh shall come. You are welcome; none can say you nay. Come! ’tis mercy’s welcome hour. May the Lord’s bands of love be cast about you; may you be drawn now to Him. Come by way of the cross; come resting in the precious atoning sacrifice, believing in Jesus; and He has said, “Him that cometh unto Me, I will in no wise cast out.” The grace of our Lord be with you. Amen. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/1023.cfm