prayer

God Has Beauties

Sherry Attributes of God, Character of Jesus, Christian Life, prayer, Sovereignty of God 2 Comments

My soul melteth for heaviness: strengthen Thou me according unto Thy word. – Psalm 119:28

If the Christian did not sometimes suffer heaviness he would begin to grow too proud, and think too much of himself, and become too great in his own esteem. Those of us who are of elastic spirit, and who in our health are full of everything that can make life happy, are too apt to forget the Most High God. Lest we should be satisfied from ourselves, and forget that all our own springs must be in Him, the Lord sometimes seems to sap the springs of life, to drain the heart of all its spirits, and to leave us without soul or strength for mirth, so that the noise of tabret and of viol would be unto us as but the funeral dirge, without joy or gladness. Then it is that we discover what we are made of, and out of the depths we cry unto God, humbled by our adversities…in heaviness we often learn lessons that we never could attain elsewhere. Do you know that God has beauties for every part of the world; and He has beauties for every place of experience? There are views to be seen from the tops of the Alps that you can never see elsewhere. Ay, but there are beauties to be seen in the depths of the dell that ye could never see on the tops of the mountains; there are glories to be seen on Pisgah, wondrous sights to be beheld when by faith we stand on Tabor; but there are also beauties to be seen in our Gethsemanes, and some marvellously sweet flowers are to be culled by the edge of the dens of the leopards. Men will never become great in divinity until they become great in suffering. “Ah!” said Luther, “affliction is the best book in my library;” and let me add, the best leaf in the book of affliction is that blackest of all the leaves, the leaf called heaviness, when the spirit sinks within us, and we cannot endure as we could wish. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/0222.cfm

Like Our Head

Sherry Attributes of God, Character of Jesus, Christian Life, prayer, promises, Sovereignty of God 2 Comments

…ye are in heaviness through manifold temptations… -1 Peter 1:6

It is a rule of the kingdom that all the members must be like the Head. They are to be like the Head in that day when He shall appear. “We shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is.” But we must be like the Head also in His humiliation, or else we cannot be like Him in His glory. Now, you will observe that our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ very often passed through much of trouble, without any heaviness. When He said, “Foxes have holes, and the birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man hath not where to lay His head,” I observe no heaviness. I do not think He sighed over that. And when athirst He sat upon the well, and said, “Give Me to drink,” there was no heaviness in all His thirst. I believe that through the first years of His ministry, although He might have suffered some heaviness, He usually passed over His troubles like a ship floating over the waves of the sea. But you will remember that at last the waves of swelling grief came into the vessel; at last the Saviour Himself, though full of patience, was obliged to say “My soul is exceeding sorrowful, even unto death;” and one of the evangelists tells us that the Saviour “began to be very heavy.”…He had no longer His wonted courage, and though He had strength to say, “Nevertheless, not My will, but Thine be done;” still the weakness did prevail, when He said, “If it be possible let this cup pass from Me.” The Saviour passed through the brook, but He “drank of the brook by the way;” and we who pass through the brook of suffering must drink of it too. He had to bear the burden, not with His shoulders omnipotent, but with shoulders that were bending to the earth beneath a load. And you and I must not always expect a giant faith that can remove mountains: sometimes even to us the grasshopper must be a burden, that we may in all things be like unto our Head.~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/0222.cfm

 

The New Song of the Christian

Sherry Attributes of God, Character of Jesus, Christian Life, prayer, promises, The Father 3 Comments

Praise ye the LORD. Sing unto the LORD a new song, and His praise in the congregation of saints. – Psalm 149:1

Solid joys and lasting pleasures make up the new song of the Christian. New mercies make the song always new. There is a freshness in it of which we never weary. Some of you have heard the gospel now for fifty years: has it got flat to you? The name of Jesus Christ was known to you as the most precious of all sounds fifty or sixty years ago: has it become stale now? Those of us who have known and loved Him twenty years can only say, “The more we know Him the more sweet He is, and the more we enjoy His gospel the more resolved we are to keep to the old-fashioned gospel as long as ever we live.” We could, indeed, sing a new song, though we have sung the self-same praises these twenty years. All the saints’ praises have this about them-that they are all harmonious. I do not say that their voices are. Here and there, there is a brother who sings very earnestly through his nose, and very often puts out the rest that are round about him; but it does not matter about the sound of the voice to the ear of man: it is the sound of the heart to the ear of God. If you were in a forest, and there were fifty sorts of birds, and they were all singing at once, you would not notice any discord. The little songsters seem to pitch their songs in keys very different from each other, but yet, somehow or other, all are in harmony. Now the saints, when they pray-it is very strange-they all pray in harmony. So also when they praise God. I have frequently attended prayer-meetings where there were brethren of all sorts of Christian denominations, and I would have defied the angel Gabriel to have told what they were when they were on their knees. So is it with praise. I may say, “The saints in praise appear as one:-

“In word, and deed, and mind,
While with the Father and the Son,
Sweet fellowship they find.”

~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/3476.cfm

Do We Sing as Much as the Birds Do?

Sherry Attributes of God, Character of Jesus, Christian Life, prayer, promises, Sovereignty of God 3 Comments

“I will sing to my Well-beloved a song.”- Isaiah 5:1

“I will bless the LORD at all times: His praise shall continually be in my mouth.” – Psalm 34:1

We don’t sing enough, my brethren. How often do I stir you up about the matter of prayer, but perhaps I might be just as earnest about the matter of praise. Do we sing as much as the birds do? Yet what have birds to sing about, compared with us? Think you, do we sing as much as the angels do? yet were they never redeemed by the blood of Christ. Birds of the air, shall ye excel me? Angels of heaven, shall ye exceed me? Ye have done so, but I do intend to emulate you henceforth, and day by day, and night by night, pour forth my soul in sacred song.

We may sometimes thank God not only by feeling thankfulness and living thankfulness, and speaking our thanks, but by that silent blessing of Him which consists in patient suffering and accepting the evil as well as the good from Jehovah’s hand. That is often better thanksgiving than the noblest psalm that the tongue could utter. To bow down before Him and say, “Not my will, but Thine be done,” is to render Him a homage equal to the Hallelujahs of cherubim and seraphim. To feel not only resigned, but acquiescent, willing to be anything or nothing, according as the Lord would have it-this is, in truth, to sing to our Well-beloved a song.

Now having put this before you, that there are some times when we cannot sing, but that, as a rule, our life should be praise, let me come to the text again by saying that sometimes on choice occasions appointed by providence and grace our soul will be compelled to say, “Now, now if never before, now beyond all other occasions, I will sing to my Well-beloved a song.” ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/3476.cfm

Now Will I Sing to My Well-Beloved

Sherry Attributes of God, Character of Jesus, Christian Life, confession of sin, prayer, promises, repentance 2 Comments

Now will I sing to my Well-beloved a song of my Beloved… – Isaiah 5:1

O Lord, open my lips, and my mouth shall show forth Your praise. – Psalm 51:15

“Now will I sing.” Does not that imply that there were times when he who spake these words could not sing? “Now,” said he, “will I sing to my Well-beloved.” There were times, then, when his voice, and his heart, and his circumstances were not in such order that he could praise God. My brethren, a little while ago we could not sing to our Well-beloved, for we did not love Him, we did not know Him, we were dead in trespasses and sins. Perhaps we joined in sacred song, but we mocked the Lord. We stood up with His people, and we uttered the same sounds as they did, but our hearts were far from Him. Let us blush for those mock psalms; let us shed many a tear of repentance that we could so insincerely have come before the Lord Most High. After that, we were led to feel our state by nature, and our guilt lay heavy upon us. We could not sing to our Well-beloved then. Our music was set to the deep bass and in the minor key. We could only bring forth sighs and groans…Brethren in Christ Jesus, it is now some years ago since we believed in Christ, but since then there have been times when we could not sing. Alas! for us, there was a time when we watched not our steps, but went astray, when the flatterer led us from the strait road that leads to heaven, and brought us into sin; and then the chastisement of God came upon us, our heart was broken, until we cried out in anguish, as David did in the 51st Psalm. Then if we did sing, we could only bring out penitential odes, but no songs. We laid aside all parts of the book of Psalms that had to do with Hallelujah, and we could only groan forth the notes of repentance. There were no songs for us then, till at last Emmanuel smiled upon us once more, and we were reconciled again, brought back from our wanderings and restored to a sense of the divine favour. It is not always summer weather with the best of us. Though for the most part:

“We can read our title clear,
To mansions in the skies,”

~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/3476.cfm

Let Me to Thy Bosom Fly

Sherry Attributes of God, Character of Jesus, Christian Life, prayer, promises, repentance, salvation, Sovereignty of God, the unbelieving life 1 Comment

And Jesus said unto him, This day is salvation come to this house… – Luke 19:9

Why do some men receive Him joyfully? The answer simply is because grace has made them to differ. Grace has subdued their stubborn will, illuminated their darkened understanding, changed their depraved affections, and made their whole mind to judge of things after a different fashion. Do not suppose that we who have received Christ were naturally any better disposed to Him than others. Oh! no. If, when the seed was sown, we were like the honest and good ground in which it took root, there had been a previous tillage upon our hearts to make them ready, we should not have been found willing had it not been the day of God’s power.

We make Christ our last resource. We try everything else; grand resolutions to do good works, or to attend gorgeous ceremonies, trivial formalities, or paltry superstitions; anything, the silliest conceit or the emptiest quackery. We go the round of folly before we discover the path of wisdom. At length I must go to Christ, or else woe is unto me if I win Him not. Helpless and hopeless, in sheer distress we cry out, “Give me Christ, or else I die.” Henceforth He is not merely our choice, but a positive necessity to us to have Him as our hourly, daily, and eternal portion. Oh! the strait unto which I was brought when I received Christ. It was Christ or death; salvation by Christ, or damnation without Him. I received Him because I could not help it. I had no alternative. How many of you are in the like dilemma? How many of you will fly to Him in similar destitution? Driven before the tempest, catching a glimpse of the lighthouse, you cry out:

“Jesus, lover of my soul,
Let me to Thy bosom fly.”

~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/3487.cfm

At the Saviour’s Feet

Sherry Character of Jesus, Christian Life, confession of sin, prayer, promises, Sovereignty of God 4 Comments

Then when Mary was come where Jesus was, and saw Him, she fell down at His feet, saying unto Him, Lord, if Thou hadst been here, my brother had not died.- John 11:32

Some of us do know what it is to be scarcely able to get together two consecutive thoughts-not to be able to master a text or lay hold of a promise; still we could say, “Though He slay me, yet will I trust in Him”; we could lie down at the feet that were pierced, and feel how sweet it is to swoon at the Saviour’s feet. Only get there. Let your will and heart be good to get at Him now, for the Master is here, and calls for you. Come, though in the coming you should utterly fail to get enjoyment, come and fall at His feet. Do I hear any of you saying, “Ah! but I have a heavy thought pressing at my heart, and if I come to Him it is not much that I can say in His honour. I feel but little love, and gratitude, and joy. I could not pour out sweet spikenard from the broken box of my heart.” Be it so, only pour out what you have; for what did Mary do? She said-and the Master did not chide her though He might have done-“Lord, if Thou hadst been here, my brother had not died.” Oh! it was half cruel, for she seemed to say, “Why wast Thou not here?” It was unbelieving in part, and yet there is a deal of faith in it-a sweet clinging to Him…Beloved, when you are at Jesus’ feet, if you have an unbelieving thought, if you have something that half chides Him, pour out your heart like water before the Lord…Tell Him the weakness; tell Him the suspicion; tell Him all the sin that has been, and all the sin that is haunting you. Tell it all to Him; and at His feet is the place to tell it. You will be eased of your burden then. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/3461.cfm