promises

Trembling Faith

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

And straightway the father of the child cried out, and said with tears, “Lord, I believe; help Thou mine unbelief.”-Mark 9:24.

When a man first lays hold upon Jesus he is very apt to be in distress if his joy be not always at its full height; he is untrained in spiritual conflict, and easily dismayed; the tremor of his former conviction is upon him, and he is prone to relapse into it. The light which he has received fills him with intense delight, but it is not very clear and abiding; he sees men as trees walking, and is ready to conjure up a thousand fears. The weakness of newborn faith, therefore, calls for the compassion of all who love the souls of men. In addition to their own weakness they are liable to special dangers, for at such times Satan is frequently very active. No king will willingly lose his subjects, and the Prince of Darkness labors to bring back those who have just escaped over the confines of his dominion. If souls are never tried afterwards, they are pretty sure to be assailed on their outset from the City of Destruction to the Celestial City. Bunyan very wisely placed the Slough of Despond at the very commencement of the spiritual journey. The cowardly fiend of hell assails the weak, because he would put an end to them before they get strong enough to do mischief to his kingdom. Like Pharaoh, he would destroy the little ones. He seeks, if possible, to beat out of them every comfortable hope, so that their trembling faith may utterly perish.

Learn from this that a measure of doubt is consistent with saving faith; that weak faith is true faith, and a trembling faith will save the soul. If thou believest, even though thou be compelled to say, “Help Thou mine unbelief,” yet that faith makes thee whole, and thou art justified before God.  ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/1033.cfm

 

Our Good Father’s Love

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

And because ye are sons, God hath sent forth the Spirit of His Son into your hearts, crying, Abba, Father. -Galatians 4:6

When I was racked some months ago with pain, to an extreme degree, so that I could no longer bear it without crying out, I asked all to go from the room, and leave me alone; and then I had nothing I could say to God but this, “Thou art my Father and I am Thy child; and Thou, as a Father, art tender and full of mercy. I could not bear to see my child suffer as Thou makest me suffer, and if I saw him tormented as I am now, I would do what I ‘could to help him, and put my arms under him to sustain him. Wilt Thou hide Thy face from me, my Father? Wilt Thou still lay on a heavy hand, and not give me a smile from Thy countenance?” I held the Lord to that. I talked to Him as Luther would have done, and pleaded His Fatherhood in right down earnest. “Like as a father pitieth his children, even so the Lord pitieth them that fear Him.” If He be a Father, let Him show Himself a Father-so I pleaded, and I ventured to say, when I was quiet, and they came back who watched me: “I shall never have such pain again from this moment, for God has heard my prayer.” I bless God that ease came and the racking pain never returned. Faith mastered the pain by laying hold upon God in His own revealed character, that character in which in our darkest hour we are best able to appreciate Him. I think that is why that prayer, “Our Father which art in heaven,” is given to us, because, when we are lowest, we can still say, “Our Father,” and when it is very dark, and we are very weak, our childlike appeal can go up, “Father, help me! Father rescue me!” ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/1021.cfm

Still, His children!

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

For ye are all the children of God by faith in Christ Jesus. -Galatians 3:26

Now, why is it that mothers take so much pains in teaching their children to walk? I suppose the reason is, because they are their own offspring. And the reason why the Lord has been so patient with us, and will be so still, is because we are His children, still His children, still, His children! Ah there is wondrous power in that-still His children! I was sitting at table once, and I heard a mother expatiating upon her son. She said a very great deal about him; and some one sitting near me said, “I wish that good woman would be quiet.” I said, “What’s the matter? May she not speak of her son?” “Why,” he said, “he’s been transported. He was as bad a fellow as ever fired, and yet she always sees something wonderful in him.” So I ventured, some little time after, when I had gained her acquaintance, to say something about this son; and I remember her remark: “If there is nobody else to speak up for him his mother always will.” Just so; she loved him so that if she could not be altogether blind to his faults, yet she would also see all that was hopeful in him, Our blessed God does not bring into the foreground what we are, so much as what He means to make us. “Their sins and their iniquities will I remember no more for ever.” He puts our blackness away; and He sees us as we shall be when we shall bear the image of the heavenly, and shall be like our Lord. For Christ’s sake, beholding our shield and looking upon the face of His anointed, He loves us and goes on to instruct us still… We are His own children. Oh! I have found it such a blessed thing, in my own experience, to plead before God that I am His child. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/1021.cfm

 

Trusting in God’s Ways

Sherry Attributes of God, Character of Jesus, Christian Life, promises 1 Comment

Trust in the LORD with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding. -Proverbs 3:5

The simple walk of faith, trusting and leaning alone upon the Invisible, how difficult it is to bring ourselves to it! We would have some favourite child to lean upon, or husband, or wife, or friend. Our abilities, or something or other that we can see and handle, shall be the golden calf which we set up and say, “These be thy gods, O Israel!” Here is a great difficulty, then, to wean us from crutches, which are promoters of spiritual lameness.

I have never met with a child that had any fear about the nurse’s power to hold it up. She puts her arms about it, and it trusts itself with her, leaning wholly upon her. But we appear to be afraid of leaning hard upon God: we cannot leave ourselves with Him: we don’t throw ourselves right back on the divine bosom. Yet is there no true rest to ourselves till we do. As long as we are trying to support ourselves in some measure or degree, we have not yet come to the rest of faith…There are souls that would fain trust themselves to the goodness of God, but they cannot be content without an earthly prop. They cannot quite cast themselves upon God and trust in the stream of His abundant faithfulness. …Oh, for grace to be willing to believe in God! Oh, for power to cut the moorings, and have done with the signs, and the evidences, and the marks, and come to look upon Christ and His finished work; upon the covenant, and upon the faithful God, who breaketh not His promise and cannot turn away from His decree. May He who teacheth us to profit make us to walk in His ways. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/1021.cfm

Enlightened Little by Little

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

“I have many things to say unto you, but ye cannot bear them now.” -John 16:12

Now, had certain reputedly wise men been there they would have said, “Lord, let us hear it all; make full proof of it all; bring it all out: we can hear it-only try us.” But our Lord knew what was in man, and, therefore, He only little by little, line upon line, precept upon precept, brought out the truth, and He does so experimentally with His children still. We do not know our own depraved hearts so well at first as we do afterwards. The disease and the remedy have both of them to be more fully revealed to us by-and-by. Did we know at the first all we shall know hereafter, we should be so overwhelmed with the abundance of the revelation that we should not be able to endure it; the Lord, therefore, lets in the light by degrees…If you have been long in the dark, and come into the light at once, your eyes smart, and you cannot bear it, you need to come to it by degrees, and thus is it with the Lord’s children. By little and by little He introduces them into the glory of His kingdom, preparing them for its fullness as children are prepared for their manhood. Have you not seen how the nurse will tempt the child to take a little longer walk, by holding out a pleasant thing to allure it? And how often has our blessed Lord tempted us to some bolder deed of service, to something that required more faith than we had before, by giving us choice signs of His presence, and ravishing our hearts with His love. Some of us know what it is to have seen such sweet results from our little faith, that we could not but desire to try what stronger faith would do. God so rewarded the weak faith we had, that we felt we must rely upon Him, and venture still further. Kindly hath the Lord conducted us onward in this respect.~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/1021.cfm

 

God’s Testimony and Abiding Spirit

Sherry Attributes of God, Character of Jesus, Christian Life, promises, The Holy Spirit 3 Comments

And as for you, the anointing which you received from Him abides in you, and you have no need for anyone to teach you; but as His anointing teaches you about all things, and is true and is not a lie, and just as it has taught you, you abide in Him. – 1 John 2:27

A truly spiritual faith does not expect any manifestation to the senses. God treats us to-day as men, compared with the way in which he nursed the Israelites. We have no pillar of glory shining over a visible tabernacle; no shekinah above a material mercy-seat. We have now no holy places whatsoever; and no symbolic worship:-

“Where’er we seek Him He is found,
And every place is hallowed ground.”

Our service of the spiritual God is spiritual; we walk by faith and not by sight; we worship God in the spirit and have no confidence in the flesh. The tribes of Israel, as being in their religious childhood, had manifestations of different kinds. They saw not God, for who shall behold the invisible? but the bright light shone between the wings of the cherubim, the glory of the Lord at times burst forth from the tabernacle, and on an ever memorable occasion they heard a voice speaking out of the thick darkness from the top of Sinai, when the Lord came from Paran with ten thousand of His holy ones. We have not heard the voice, neither have we seen the glory, nor need we wish for either since we have a sure word of testimony, and the abiding of the Holy Ghost…~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/1021.cfm

The Heights of His Blessedness

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

I was to them as they that take off the yoke on their jaws, and I laid meat unto them. -Hosea 11:4

Israel had been like oxen, with a heavy yoke upon them, and God had come and taken the yoke away; and there they stood, as we see horses stand when they are made to rest when the bearing-rein is loosened, and they stand at ease. And this God has as surely done for us as for His ancient people. He has fulfilled that word unto us, “Take My yoke upon you, and learn of Me, and ye shall find rest unto your souls.” We enjoy the peace of God, which passeth all understanding: it keeps our hearts and minds by Christ Jesus. Nor is this all for the gracious Redeemer takes care to fill His people’s mouths with good things; hence, He does not forget the feeding, and it is added, “I laid meat unto them.” The Lord refreshed His weary people with “food convenient for them.” As the oxen, after the yoke was removed, were fed, so God, when He had removed our yoke of guilty bondage, fed us with the finest of the wheat, as He made us understand the gospel of His Son. The doctrines and promises of His word are substantial meat for hungry souls. “My soul shall be satisfied with marrow and fatness, and my mouth shall praise Thee with joyful lips.” Certain under-shepherds are afraid of laying too much doctrinal food before the Lord’s people, but it is a great mistake. Truth never surfeits, though it always satisfies. The Good Shepherd does not stint His sheep, but He gives them so much, that they lie down amid the exceeding plenty of the green pastures. They cannot eat it all, and they lie down in the midst of a superabundance, which infinite mercy has provided. See, then, how God’s boundless love piles mountain upon mountain, as the old classics used to say, Pelion upon Ossa, that we, up from the depths of our distress, may climb to the heights of His blessedness, and enjoy the fullness of the glory which God has treasured up for us in the person of Christ Jesus our Lord. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/1021.cfm