Dependence

November 23, 2014

Whatever Christ is, His people are in Him. They were crucified in Him; they were dead in Him; they were buried in Him; they are risen in Him! In Him they live eternally, in Him they sit gloriously at the right hand of God, “who has raised us up together, and made us sit together in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus.” In Him we are “accepted in the Beloved,” both now and forever! And this, I say, is the essence of the whole Gospel. He that preaches Christ preaches the Gospel! He who does not preach Christ, preaches not the Gospel. It is no more possible for there to be a Gospel without Christ than a day without the sun, or a river without water, or a living man without a head, or a quickened human body without a soul! No, Christ Himself is the life, soul, substance and essence of the mystery of the Gospel of God. Christ, Himself, I say again, and no other!

– Charles Spurgeon –

November 22, 2014

As I sat, last year, under a wide-spreading beech, I was pleased to mark with prying curiosity the singular habits of that most wonderful of trees which seems to have intelligence about it, while other trees have not. I wondered and admired the beech, but I thought to myself I do not think half as much of this beech tree as yonder squirrel does! I see him leap from branch to branch and I feel sure that he dearly values the old beech tree because he has his home somewhere inside it in a hollow place. These branches are his shelter and those beechnuts are his food. He lives upon the tree! It is his world, his playground, his granary, his home—indeed, it is everything to him—but it is not so to me, for I find my rest and food elsewhere! … With God’s Word it is well for us to be like squirrels, living in it and living on it! Let us exercise our minds by leaping from branch to branch in it; find our rest and food in it and make it our all in all! We shall be the people that get the most profit out of it if we make it to be our food, our medicine, our treasury, our armory, our rest, our delight! May the Holy Spirit lead us to do this and make the Word thus precious to our souls.

– Charles Spurgeon –

November 19, 2014

So, Beloved, the Holy Spirit is with us and when we take His Book and begin to read and want to know what it means, we must ask the Holy Spirit to reveal the meaning. He will not work a miracle, but He will elevate our minds and He will suggest to us thoughts which will lead us on, by their natural relation, the one to the other, till at last we come to the pith and marrow of His Divine Instruction. Seek, then, very earnestly the guidance of the Holy Spirit, for if the very soul of reading is the understanding of what we read, then we must, in prayer, call upon the Holy Spirit to unlock the secret mysteries of the Inspired Word.

– Charles Spurgeon –

November 18, 2014

A sight of Christ, Brothers and Sisters, will keep you from despondency, and doubts, and despair. A sight of Christ! How shall I stir you to it? It will fire you to duty; it will deliver you from temptation; it will, in fact, make you like He. A man is known by his company; and if you have become acquainted with Christ, and know Him, you will be sure to reflect His light! It is because the moon has converse with the sun, that she has any light for this dark world’s night; and if you talk with Christ, the Sun, He will shine on you so gloriously, that you, like the moon, shall reflect His Light, and the dark night of this world shall be enlightened by your radiance. The Lord help us to know Him!

– Charles Spurgeon –

November 17, 2014

If you have any fears—if you seek Christ and find Him—they will be removed. You complain that you do not feel the guilt of sin, that you cannot humble yourself enough. The sight of Christ is the very best means of setting sin in its true colors. There is no repenting like that which comes from a look from Christ’s eyes— the Lord turned and looked upon Peter, and he went out and wept bitterly. So it is not a sight of the Law—it is the sight of Christ looking upon us which will break our hearts!

– Charles Spurgeon –

November 11, 2014

You have to go into the world which is like a great leper colony; but if you carry Christ with you, you will never catch the world’s diseases. A man may be worth ever so much money, he will never get worldly if he keeps Christ on his heart. A man may have to tug and toil for his livelihood, and be very poor, he will never be discontented and murmuring if he lives close to Christ. O you who have to handle the world, see to it that you handle the Master more than the world! Some of you have to work with drunk and swearing men; others are cast into the midst of frivolities—O take my Master with you—and sin’s plagues can have no influence upon your moral nature!

– Charles Spurgeon –

October 23, 2014

Should all the forms that men devise
Assault my faith with treacherous art,
I’d call them vanity and lies
And bind the gospel to my heart.

– Isaac Watts –

September 16, 2014

Unction comes to the preacher not in the study but in the closet. It is heaven’s distillation in answer to prayer. It is the sweetest exhalation of the Holy Spirit. It impregnates, suffuses, softens, percolates, cuts, and soothes. It carries the Word like dynamite, like salt, like sugar; makes the Word a soother, an arranger, a revealer, a searcher; makes the hearer a culprit or a saint, makes him weep like a child and live like a giant; opens his heart…as gently, yet as strongly as the spring opens the leaves.

– EM Bounds –

September 13, 2014

No, it is so good to know that God never makes a mistake. Once we will understand that when we are in heaven, but now already we can know very much from the Word of God. This book shows us that God has no problems with the world and with your and my life. God has no problems, only plans. There is never panic in heaven. And the thing that you and I must do is look in the right direction. Look unto Jesus.

– Corrie ten Boom –