Many are the afflictions of the righteous: but the LORD delivereth him out of them all. – Psalm 34:19

Think of the child of God, who is full of doubt. He is afraid that, after all, his supposed conversion was not a true one, and that he has proved it to be false by his own misbehaviour. He is afraid, I scarcely know of what, for so many fears crowd in upon him. He is crying to God to remove his doubts, and to let him once again-

“Read his title clear
To mansions in the skies.”

His eyes are looking toward the cross, and somehow, he has a hope, if not quite a persuasion, that he will find light in Christ, where so many others have found it. I would encourage that hope till it becomes a firm conviction and a full expectation. The day will break for you, dear mourner, the shadows will yet flee away…I know that God’s children are not long without tribulation. As long as the wheat is on the threshing-floor, it must expect to feel the flail. Perhaps you have had a bereavement, or you may have had losses in business, or crosses in your family, or you have been sorely afflicted in your own body, and now you are crying to God for deliverance out of your temporal trouble. That deliverance will surely come. “Trust in the Lord, and do good; so shalt thou dwell in the land, and verily thou shalt be fed.” “I have been young,” said David, “and now am old; yet have I not seen the righteous forsaken.” The Lord will yet light your candle, and surround your path with brightness. Only patiently hope and quietly wait, and you shall yet see the salvation of the Lord. “Many are the afflictions of the righteous.” Hark that; you know that part of the verse is true, and so is the rest of it: “but the Lord delivereth him out of them all.” Clutch at that, for it is equally true. “In the world ye shall have tribulation.” You know that is true. “Be of good cheer,” says Christ, “I have overcome the world.” Therefore, expect that you also will overcome it through your conquering Lord. Yes, in the darkest of all human sorrows, there is the glad prospect that the day will break, and the shadows will flee away…Though they walk in darkness, and see no light, yet, by-and-by, the day shall break for them also. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/2477.cfm

Arise therefore, and be doing, and the LORD be with thee…Is not the LORD your God with you? – 1 Chronicles 22:16, 18

Let all true Christian people arise, and be doing, because the Lord is with them. Perhaps, I need not say much to my own people about that matter, for most of you are doing what you can for your Lord. There is a brother who is just going out to Australia; when he came to bid me farewell, he gave me a little sketch of his life during three-and-twenty years. It has been a time of incessant activity in the church; and he said to me, “Yes, sir, you drove me out to work for Christ, you would not let me be idle. You said, ‘The worst kind of lazy people are lazy Christians,’ and you also said, ‘To come here twice on a Sunday, and hear me preach, and to be doing nothing for the Master, is not at all the right thing.'” Then the good man added, “I do not often get to hear you now. I have been secretary of a Sunday-school for some time, and I often go out preaching, so I cannot come to the Tabernacle.” I do delight in so many of the members not coming to hear me because they are doing the Master’s work elsewhere! I know that in many churches the main thing is to sit down in a corner pew, and be fed. Well, of course, every creature needs to be fed, from the pig upwards; you must excuse my mentioning that unclean animal, for he is the creature whose principal business it is to food, and he is not a nice creature at all, and I do not at all admire Christian people whose one business is to feed and feed. Why, I have heard them even grumble at a sermon that was meant for the conversion of sinners, because they thought there was no food for them in it! They are great receptacles of food; but, dear Christian people, do not any of you live merely to feed, not even on heavenly food; but if God be with you, as you say He is, then get to His work…Oh, that we might all do what we can for Him who laid down His life for us, and who still continues to abide in us, to be our joy and our strength! ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/2471.cfm

Is not the LORD your God with you? and hath He not given you rest on every side? – 1 Chronicles 22:18

For what is our hope, or joy, or crown of rejoicing? Are not even ye in the presence of our Lord Jesus Christ at His coming? – 1 Thessalonians 2:19

The Lord is not far from any one of us; a cry will fetch Him, He will hear even a groan, and He will quickly come to the rescue of those who call upon Him. Do but trust Him, do but take Him to be yours, and then He cannot leave you. “Can a woman forget her sucking child, that she should not have compassion on the son of her womb? yea, they may forget, yet will I not forget thee.” There is such love in God’s heart towards the very feeblest of His people, that He cannot turn away from them. Mother, is it not so in your family, that the child who is most ill, most weak, most full of pain, is the one who is best remembered by you? While you have been sitting here, this evening, you have not thought of John and Thomas, who have grown up, and gone out into the world, and are strong and healthy, but you have thought of poor little Jane, whose spine is injured, or of the little boy who has to lie still so many hours a day, and who suffers so much. I am sure that, while I have been preaching, your thoughts have been trotting home to that dear child, and you have been thinking much of him. Well, remember that, “Like as a father pitieth his children, so the Lord pitieth them that fear Him;” and remember also how the Lord takes the mother’s part as well as the father’s, and says, “As one whom his mother comforteth, so will I comfort you; and ye shall be comforted in Jerusalem.” These are cheering truths for those who do raise the question; I wish they could enable you to get rid of that question, and to know assuredly that the Lord is with you.

“Why droop our hearts, why flow our eyes,
While such a voice we hear?
Why rise our sorrows and our fears,
While such a Friend is near?”

~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/2471.cfm

Is not the LORD your God with you? – 1 Chronicles 22:18

Thou wilt shew me the path of life: in Thy presence is fulness of joy; at Thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore. – Psalm 16:11

There have been times when we have been in the house of prayer, or when we have been alone in our chamber, ay, in the middle of the night sometimes, when pain has kept us from sleeping or when we have felt that we did not want to sleep; for we have been flooded with delight. Did you ever feel that deep calm which sometimes comes over a believer, when there seems to be no evil in the world, when we could not invent a doubt if we tried, when we could not have a dark thought concerning our Lord? After our Savior had been tempted in the wilderness, angels came and ministered unto Him. Do you know what that experience is when there seem to be angels upstairs, and downstairs, and all through the house, ministering to you, and your life seems set to a gentle psalm tune, and instead of the sound of the trumpet calling you to battle, there is only the dulcet music of an instrument of ten strings praising the God who has given you rest? So, when the question is put, “Is not the Lord your God with you?” you can answer, “Ay, that He is, and blessed be His holy name!” Oh, what a blessing it is to live with a present God! If anyone says to me that there is no God, He might as well tell me that there is no air. I cannot see it, but I know that I am living in it, and that I could not live without it; so, “in Him we live, and move, and have our being.” The Lord is life, and light, and love, and liberty, and all in all to some of us. “Is not the Lord your God with you?” is no question to us, for we know that He is with us, and we glorify His holy name that so it is.

“And art Thou with us, gracious Lord,
To dissipate our fear?
Dost thou proclaim Thyself our God,
Our God for ever near?”

~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/2471.cfm

Is not the LORD your God with you? – 1 Chronicles 22:18

The Lord has proved His presence with us by preserving us in the hour of temptation. Some of you who have been lately converted to God have had very fierce temptations since then. In this wicked city, our young people-yet I do not know that I need say our young people alone-have been exposed to a furnace of temptation which has been seven times heated. The days in which we live are grievous to the last degree; and if the Lord had not been with us, our soul would not have escaped like a bird out of the snare of the fowler. Often our feet have well nigh slipped, and we should have fallen if the Lord had not been with us to preserve us. “Is not the Lord your God with you” when you have been kept alive with death so near? Assuredly, He is.

Some of you also know that the Lord is with you because you have been so greatly comforted in time of trouble. A sister said to me, the other day, “I could not have thought that I could have lived through the bereavements I have lately endured. When I used to think of the possibility of my husband’s death, it seemed to me that I must die with him.” Yet she is not dead; and she does not despair; though she had to endure that bereavement, and another as well, she said, “Oh, how good God was to me to sustain me as He did!” “Is not the Lord your God with you?” I know some dear friends who have experienced very great temporal trouble through heavy losses in these trying times; yet they are as happy as when they had ten times as much. The little bird still sings at the window, the blue sky hovers overhead, and the heart’s-ease still grows in their garden, and they love it well. Yes, dear friends, the comforts that God gives us in times of deep trouble are a sufficient proof that He is with us. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/2471.cfm