I ask you who love Jesus—does religion ever make you unhappy? Does love to Jesus distress you and make you miserable? It may bring you into trouble, sometimes, and cause you to endure persecution for His name’s sake. If you are a child of God, you will have to suffer tribulation. But all the afflictions which you may be called upon to endure for Him will work for your good, and are not worthy to be compared with the glory which is to be revealed hereafter!
– Charles Spurgeon –
Some people seem to think that Christians are a very melancholy sort of folk, that they have no real happiness. I know something about religion and I will not admit that I stand second to any man in respect of being happy … I used to think that a religious man must never smile, but, on the contrary, I find that religion will make a man’s eyes bright, cover his face with smiles and impart comfort and consolation to his soul, even in the deepest of his earthly tribulations!
– Charles Spurgeon –
By Christ in you we mean Christ possessed. You see, nothing is so much a man’s own as that which is within him. Do you tell me that a certain slice of bread is not mine and that I have no right to it? But I have eaten it and you may bring a lawsuit against me about that bread if you like, but you cannot get it away from me! That question is settled—that which I have eaten is mine. In this case, possession is not only nine points of the law, but all the points. When a man gets Christ into Him, the devil himself cannot win a suit against him to recover Christ, for that matter is settled beyond question. Christ in you is yours, indeed! Men may question whether an acre of land or a house belongs to me, but the meat I ate yesterday is not a case of property which Chancery or any other court can alter. So, when the Believer has Christ in him, the Law has no more to say! The enclosure made by faith carries its own title deeds within it.
– Charles Spurgeon –
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 –
If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world.
– CS Lewis –
How is it, people often ask, that so many professing believers have so little happiness in their religion? How is it that so many know little of joy and peace in believing, and go mourning and heavy-hearted towards heaven? The answer to these questions is a sorrowful one, but it must be given. Few believers attend as strictly as they should to Christ’s practical sayings and words. There is far too much loose and careless obedience to Christ’s commandments. There is far too much forgetfulness, that while good works cannot justify us, they are not to be despised. Let these things sink down into our hearts. If we want to be eminently happy, we must strive to be eminently holy.
– JC Ryle –
Don’t let your happiness depend on something you may lose.
– CS Lewis –
As I linger on the Hill of the Cross — my sorrow is changed into song, and I go on my way with a merry heart.
– Alexander Smellie –
The worldling does not care for Christ because he has never hungered and thirsted after Him. But the Christian is athirst for Christ. He is in a dry and thirsty land where no water is and his heart and his flesh pant after God, yes, for the living God! And as the thirsty soul dying, cries out, “Water! Water! Water!” so the Christian cries out, “Christ! Christ! Christ!” This is the one thing necessary for me and if I have it not, this thirst will destroy me!
– Charles Spurgeon –