The Father

Be Sure That You Do Pray

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

And He spake a parable unto them to this end, that men ought always to pray, and not to faint. – Luke 18:1

Beloved, prayer has been connected with every living spiritual experience you have ever had. Will you kindly look back to the hour when you were under the fig tree and Jesus saw you. Were you not at prayer? When you first arose to go to your Father, was not your first step a prayer? When you received the assurance of salvation, was it not in answer to prayer? When His banner over you has been love, have you not felt it sweet to pray? When you have feasted at His table, and He has revealed Himself to you as He does not to the world, have you not then been in the spirit of prayer? There has been nothing grandly great or good in your spiritual life, but…where you have wrestled with God and have prevailed.

Now, beloved, we are commanded to be constant in our instancy. Is not this right? Is there any time when we can afford to slacken prayer? Would you kindly put your finger on the map of the way, and tell me where a Christian man may leave off praying? Is it when he prospers? No, for then he needs grace to carry a full cup with a steady hand. Is it when he is in distress? Doth not nature itself teach us that in time of affliction we should especially draw near to God in prayer? When should he pray, nay, when should he not pray? Where may he pray? The answer is, he may pray everywhere, for as one has well said, a man who carries his temple about with him is always in a place where he may pray; and know ye not that your bodies are the temples of the Holy Ghost? Wherever you go you carry your temples with you, and therefore be sure that you do pray. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/1480.cfm

Adoption Begets Prayer

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

Wherefore He is able also to save them to the uttermost that come unto God by Him, seeing He ever liveth to make intercession for them. – Hebrews 7:25

“Nor prayer is made on earth alone;
The Holy Spirit pleads;
And Jesus, on the eternal throne,
For sinners intercedes.”

Prayer was dear to Jesus when He was the Man of Nazareth upon the mountain’s lonely side; and prayer is dear to Him now that as the Son of God He intercedes in glory. Even to Him the covenant hath this condition of prayer appended, “Ask of Me, and I will give Thee the heathen for Thine inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the earth for Thy possession.” Prayer is the atmosphere which surrounds Emanuel’s land: as the clouds hang on the mountains, so doth prayer linger over every great mercy of God.

Prayer is connected with every covenant blessing. Why, beloved, it is to him that calleth upon the name of the Lord that the promise of salvation is given. Our heavenly Father gives the Holy Spirit to those that ask Him. Justification was given to the publican rather than to the Pharisee, because he had offered humble, believing, acceptable prayer; whereas the Pharisee asked nothing, but only glorified himself. Adoption begets prayer, for it brings us the spirit of adoption whereby we cry, Abba, Father. From election right onward to perfection in Christ there is no blessing of the covenant but what is understood, received, enjoyed, fed upon, and practically used in the way of prayer. Those who would safely navigate the sea of life must pray their passage to heaven. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/1480.cfm

Pleading the Promises

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

The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much. – James 5:16

Take down the Book, your charter and your Father’s will, and see if there be any part of the charter which promises this good thing (that you ask) to you. When you have found the promise lay your finger on it. Better still, with your spirit grasp it in your hand, and go before God with it. If your prayer be as Luther calls it, “bombarda Christianorum,” the Christian’s great gun with which he doth bombard heaven, then surely the promise is the shot which he sends forth. Plead the promise by saying, “Lord, do as Thou hast said. Fulfil this word unto Thy servant upon which Thou hast caused me to hope.” If you do not seem to prevail with one promise seek out another and plead it. This, perhaps will be more to the point: a promise which your very soul seems to suck in as though it were spoken to you newly and freshly, as if never another man had ever received it. Spread this promise before the Lord. Nothing pleases Him more than seeing His own word pleaded by His own children. Try this, and if it is manifest that you have not succeeded turn to yet another promise, and another and another and another, and then plead, “For Thy name’s sake, for Thy truth’s sake, for Thy covenant’s sake”; and then came in with the greatest plea of all, “For Jesus’ sake and in His name, for the blood’s sake, I plead with Thee, my God. O Thou that hearest prayer, wilt Thou not keep touch with Thine own word, and be true to Thine own Son?” You have prevailed there. By that sign you have conquered. Again it shall be seen that the Lord hath hearkened to the voice of a man. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/1480.cfm

He is Reality Itself

Sherry Attributes of God, Character of Jesus, Christian Life, promises, salvation, Sovereignty of God, The Father Leave a comment

For the Son of man is come to seek and to save that which was lost. – Luke 19:10

If the Christian religion were supposed to be an invention, the existence of the narrative of the life of Jesus would be more wonderful than the facts themselves. The conception of a perfect character requires a perfect mind, and a perfect mind would never have prepared a fiction and imposed it upon men as a veritable history. If the life of Jesus be a fable, then a perfect being has deceived us; and this it is not possible for us to imagine. The life of Jesus Christ is great throughout. It is so tender and so gentle that it is never little and mean: it is so unselfish that it never ceases to be majestic; it is so condescending that it is pre-eminently sublime. Above all, it is full of truth, transparent, artless, natural. No one ever thought of Jesus as acting a part yet; He is reality itself. He is so simple, so unaffected, so truly the holy child Jesus, that in this He is great above all. Never was a man so wholly seen as the Christ; and yet never was man so little understood…it is Himself that is so great-I mean His soul, His spirit, the man Himself.

Consider the Lord Jesus, and it does not matter where you view Him: in the wilderness He is grandly victorious over temptation, in the crowd He is greatly wise in answering those who would entrap Him. Behold Him in His agony in the Garden; was there ever such an Agoniser? Behold Him as the crucified; did ever a cross hold such a sufferer? When Jesus is least He is greatest, and when He is in the direst darkness His brightness is best revealed. In death He destroys death; in the grave He bursts the sepulcher. “Consider how great this Man was”: the field of His life is ample; do not be slow to investigate it. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/1835.cfm

The Lord God Omnipotent Reigneth

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

But of that day and hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels of heaven, but my Father only. – Matthew 24:36

In the olden times, when men raised cairns to the memory of departed kings, it was usual to put a heap of stones over the tomb, and every passer-by threw another stone. In course of age. those mounds grew into small hills. Now the Church of Christ in the present day is growing something in that way. Each Christian converted to Christ throws his stone; we each do our measure. By the grace of God let us each make sure of one stone being deposited there, and strive to add another by laboring to be the instruments of bringing someone else to Christ; in this way the Church will grow; and as year after year rolls on, each Christian serving his Master, the Church will increase; and it shall come to pass in the last times, that even by the efforts of Christ’s people, owned by God the Holy Spirit, this mountain shall be highly exalted in the midst of the hills.

We must fight on day-by-day and hour-by-hour; and when we think the battle is almost decided against us, we shall hear the trump of the archangel, and the voice of God, and He shall come, the Prince of the kings of the earth: at His name, with terror they shall melt, and like snow driven before the wind from the bare side of Salmon shall they fly away; and we, the Church militant, trampling over them, shall salute our Lord, shouting, “Hallelujah, hallelujah, hallelujah, the Lord God Omnipotent reigneth.” ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/0249.cfm

I Am a Child of God Next to My Maker

Sherry Attributes of God, Character of Jesus, Christian Life, promises, salvation, Sovereignty of God, The Father Leave a comment

But we see Jesus, who was made a little lower than the angels for the suffering of death, crowned with glory and honour; that He by the grace of God should taste death for every man. – Hebrews 2:9

I consider that to be a Christian man is to be the greatest thing that God has made. Little as I am, I can say of myself, if I am a child of God, I am next to my Maker. Manhood is a noble thing, for God wore manhood once; manhood is a glorious thing, for it was the robe of the eternal; “God was made flesh and dwelt among us;” therefore, flesh is dignified and glorified. As I said, it would not be so comfortable to be a man, if Christ had not been a man. For I know that I must die; now, my comfort is, that I shall rise again; but I should not have had that comfort if Christ had not been a man, and if He had not died and risen again. Oh! death, I have often seen thy dungeon, and I have thought, how can it be that any should escape therefrom; the walls thereof are thick, and against the door is a ponderous stone; it is sealed fast, and watchers guard it. But I take comfort, for there was a Man who broke the bonds of death; there was one who snapped the fetter, cut the bars of brass, unlocked the gates, and made His way triumphant through the sky; in that Man I see an instance of what I, too, shall do; when the loud trump of the archangel shall startle my sleeping atoms, I, too, shall find it easy to rise, for as the Lord my Saviour rose, so all His followers must; and therefore, death, I look upon thy dungeon as one that must be opened again, for it has been opened once; I look upon thy worm as but a little thing that must yield up its prey, and give back the flesh whereon it fed; I look upon the stone of thy sepulchre as but some pebble of oceans’ shingly beach, which I shall cast away with eager hand, when I shall burst the cerements of the grave, and mount to immortality. It is a comfortable thing to be a man, because Christ died and rose again; but had He been an angel, the resurrection would not have had that great and glorious proof, nor should we have been so content to be human, seeing there would be death, but no immortality and life. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/0090.cfm

Sanctify the Name of God in Your Lives

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

“Sanctify them by Your truth. Your Word is truth.” – John 17:17

The one point of failure to be most deeply regretted would be a failure in the holiness of our church members. If you yourselves act as others do, what witness do you bear? If your families are not graciously ordered; if your business is not conducted upon principles of the strictest integrity; if your speech is questionable as to purity or truthfulness; if your lives are open to serious rebuke-how can God accept you or send a blessing on the church to which you belong? It is all falsehood and deceit to talk about your being the people of God when even men of the world shame you. Your faith in the Lord Jesus must operate upon your lives to make you faithful and true, it must check you here, and excite you there; it must keep you back from this, and drive you on to that; it must constantly operate upon thought and speech and act, or else you know nothing of its saving power. How can I speak more distinctly and emphatically? Do not come to me with your experiences, and your convictions, and your professions, unless you sanctify the name of God in your lives. O brethren, we had better quit our professions if we do not live up to them. In the name of Him who breathed this prayer just before His face was encrimsoned with the bloody sweat, let us cry mightily unto the Father, “Sanctify us through Thy truth, Thy Word is truth.”

Nothing is truth to me but this one Book, this infallibly inspired writing of the Spirit of God. It is incumbent upon us to show the hallowed influence of this Book. The vows of God are on us, that by our godly lives we should show forth His praises who has brought us out of darkness into His marvellous light. This Bible is our treasure. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/1890.cfm