M&E Monday

 

 

Morning and Evening: Daily Readings
by C. H. Spurgeon
Monday Morning, March 7



Have faith in God.

Mark 11:22

Faith is the foot of the soul by which it can march along the road of the commandments. Love can make the feet move more swiftly; but faith is the foot which carries the soul. Faith is the oil enabling the wheels of holy devotion and of earnest piety to move well; and without faith the wheels are taken from the chariot, and we drag heavily. With faith I can do all things; without faith I shall neither have the inclination nor the power to do anything in the service of God. If you would find the men who serve God the best, you must look for the men of the most faith. Little faith will save a man, but little faith cannot do great things for God. Poor Little-faith could not have fought Apollyon; it needed Christian to do that. Poor Little-faith could not have slain Giant Despair; it required Great-heart's arm to knock that monster down. Little faith will go to heaven most certainly, but it often has to hide itself in a nut-shell, and it frequently loses all but its jewels. Little-faith says, It is a rough road, beset with sharp thorns, and full of dangers; I am afraid to go; but Great-faith remembers the promise, Thy shoes shall be iron and brass; as thy days, so shall thy strength be: and so she boldly ventures. Little-faith stands desponding, mingling her tears with the flood; but Great-faith sings, When thou passest through the waters, I will be with thee; and through the rivers, they shall not overflow thee: and she fords the stream at once. Would you be comfortable and happy? Would you enjoy religion? Would you have the religion of cheerfulness and not that of gloom? Then have faith in God. If you love darkness, and are satisfied to dwell in gloom and misery, then be content with little faith; but if you love the sunshine, and would sing songs of rejoicing, covet earnestly this best gift, great faith.

Evening, March 7



It is better to trust in the Lord, than to put confidence in man.

Psalm 118:8

Doubtless the reader has been tried with the temptation to rely upon the things which are seen, instead of resting alone upon the invisible God. Christians often look to man for help and counsel, and mar the noble simplicity of their reliance upon their God. Does this evening's portion meet the eye of a child of God anxious about temporals, then would we reason with him awhile. You trust in Jesus, and only in Jesus, for your salvation, then why are you troubled? Because of my great care. Is it not written, Cast thy burden upon the Lord? Be careful for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication make known your wants unto God. Cannot you trust God for temporals? Ah! I wish I could. If you cannot trust God for temporals, how dare you trust him for spirituals? Can you trust him for your soul's redemption, and not rely upon him for a few lesser mercies? Is not God enough for thy need, or is his all-sufficiency too narrow for thy wants? Dost thou want another eye beside that of him who sees every secret thing? Is his heart faint? Is his arm weary? If so, seek another God; but if he be infinite, omnipotent, faithful, true, and all-wise, why gaddest thou abroad so much to seek another confidence? Why dost thou rake the earth to find another foundation, when this is strong enough to bear all the weight which thou canst ever build thereon? Christian, mix not only thy wine with water, do not alloy thy gold of faith with the dross of human confidence. Wait thou only upon God, and let thine expectation be from him. Covet not Jonah's gourd, but rest in Jonah's God. Let the sandy foundations of terrestrial trust be the choice of fools, but do thou, like one who foresees the storm, build for thyself an abiding place upon the Rock of Ages.

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MORNING THOUGHTS, or
DAILY WALKING WITH GOD

By Octavius Winslow

"Your will be done on earth, as it is heaven." Matthew 6:10.

The holy Leighton has remarked, that to say from the heart, "your will be done," constitutes the very essence of sanctification. There is much truth in this; more, perhaps, than strikes the mind at the first view. Before conversion, the will, the governing principle of the soul, is the seat of all opposition to God. It rises against God- His government, His law, His providence, His grace, His Son; yes, all that appertains to God, the unrenewed will of man is hostile to. Here lies the depth of man's unholiness. The will is against God; and so long as it refuses to obey Him, the creature must remain unholy. Now, it needs no lengthened argument to show that the will, being renewed by the Holy Spirit, and made to submit to God, in proportion to the degree of its submission must be the holiness of the believer. There could not be perfect holiness in heaven, were there the slightest preponderance of the will of the creature towards itself. The angels and "the spirits of just men made perfect," are supremely holy, because their wills are supremely swallowed up in the will of God. "Your will be done on earth, even as it is in heaven." The will of God is supremely obeyed in heaven, and in this consists the holiness and the felicity of its glorious inhabitants.
Now, in exact proportion as God's will "is done on earth" by the believer, he drinks from the pure fountain of holiness; and as he is enabled, by the grace of Christ, in all things to look up to God with filial love, and to say, "not my will," O my Father, "but your, be done," he attains the very essence of sanctification.

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Man Killed by Armed Bird at Cockfight. . . and other illustrations of the nearness of your death

 
Author: Daryl Wingerd
You've done it a time or two yourself—that is, you've planned, or at least speculated about, the details of your own death.
 
 If you like fast cars, perhaps you'll die in a fiery crash. Or, because you're a bit overweight, you can easily imagine dying of complications from diabetes or heart disease. Because you smoke or chew tobacco, you wonder if cancer will get you. Soldiers often think about dying in combat, policemen at the hands of an armed criminal, and firefighters in a deadly blaze. And since we all spend time sleeping, most of us just hope to die peacefully while doing that. 
 
The consistent theme seems to be that we have very limited imaginations concerning our own death, and we all tend to assume that our death will occur within a reasonable range of methods and times.
 
God thinks differently. He determines the time, and mode, of every death. As He says, "It is I who put to death . . . and there is no one who can deliver from My hand" (Deut. 32:39). And when God determines that it is time to "put to death," He is not at all limited in His creativity. As the psalmist says, "[God] has prepared for Himself deadly weapons" (Ps. 7:13).
 
God sent worms to eat Herod from the inside out (Acts 12:23). He instantly killed Aaron's sons with fire in the tabernacle (Lev. 10:1-2). Korah, Dathan, and Abiram, and their families, experienced "an entirely new thing" when the Lord split the earth open and swallowed them whole (Num. 16:29-33). Hundreds of Amorites were slaughtered by the Lord when He "threw large [hail]stones on them" (Josh. 10:11). The Lord ended the life of every single firstborn of the Egyptians in one night. The Bible doesn't tell us how they died, just that "the Lord struck [i.e., killed]" them (Ex. 12:29).
 
35-year-old Jose Luis Ochoa of Lamont, California, never imagined that his death would come at the hands (or feet) of a chicken armed with a knife. But on February 7, 2011, while attending an illegal cockfight, one of the fighting chickens stabbed him in the leg with a knife that had been affixed to its foot. The blade, which was intended for the cruel purpose of maiming or killing the other combatant chicken, cut deep enough for Ochoa to bleed severely, and he was pronounced dead two hours later. "I've never seen this type of incident," said a 24 year veteran of the Kern County Sheriff's Department.
 
Apparently, God is still in the business of doing "entirely new things."
 
Think of the six people who were suddenly blasted into eternity when, without warning, two homes in Pennsylvania were completely obliterated by a natural gas explosion. Consider the young boy who was crushed by falling apples in a warehouse. Another man was killed while driving down the interstate when he ran over a metal rod left in the roadway. His front tire flipped the rod up so that it pierced the vehicle's floorboard and impaled him in the driver's seat, killing him instantly. None of these people planned to die when or how they did, and yet none of them could prevent, or even delay, their providential demise.  
 
The point is, you are going to die, and because you don't know how it will happen, you cannot know when it will happen.
 
Are you ready to die? Are you ready to stand before the Lord in judgment? If you are not a follower of Christ, you are not ready, because apart from the redemption that is only found through faith in Him, your best deeds will condemn you. Furthermore, because as an unbeliever you are God's enemy, every moment you go on living is a moment borrowed from His mercy. Every breath you take is a breath you don't deserve, and He is easily able to make your next breath your last.
 
God is a righteous judge,
And a God who has indignation every day.
If a man does not repent, He will sharpen His sword;
He has bent His bow and made it ready. (Ps. 7:11-12)
Copyright © 2011 Daryl Wingerd.
Permission granted for reproduction in exact form. All other uses require written permission.
Find more free articles at www.BulletinInserts.org, a ministry of Christian Communicators Worldwide: www.CCWtoday.org

 

 

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