Evening and Morning
By Charles
Haddon Spurgeon
August 31
Morning
"On mine
arm shall they trust."—Isaiah 51:5.
In seasons of
severe trial, the Christian has nothing on earth that he can trust to, and is
therefore compelled to cast himself on his God alone. When his vessel is on its
beam-ends, and no human deliverance can avail, he must simply and entirely
trust himself to the providence and care of God. Happy storm that wrecks a man
on such a rock as this! O blessed hurricane that drives the soul to God and God
alone! There is no getting at our God sometimes because of the multitude of our
friends; but when a man is so poor, so friendless, so helpless that he has
nowhere else to turn, he flies into his Father's arms, and is blessedly clasped
therein! When he is burdened with troubles so pressing and so peculiar, that he
cannot tell them to any but his God, he may be thankful for them; for he will
learn more of his Lord then than at any other time. Oh, tempest-tossed
believer, it is a happy trouble that drives thee to thy Father! Now that thou
hast only thy God to trust to, see that thou puttest
thy full confidence in Him. Dishonour not thy Lord
and Master by unworthy doubts and fears; but be strong in faith, giving glory
to God. Show the world that thy God is worth ten thousand worlds to thee. Show
rich men how rich thou art in thy poverty when the Lord God is thy helper. Show
the strong man how strong thou art in thy weakness when underneath thee are the
everlasting arms. Now is the time for feats of faith
and valiant exploits. Be strong and very courageous, and the Lord thy God shall
certainly, as surely as He built the heavens and the earth, glorify Himself in thy weakness, and magnify his might in the midst
of thy distress. The grandeur of the arch of heaven would be spoiled if the sky
were supported by a single visible column, and your faith would lose its glory
if it rested on anything discernible by the carnal eye. May the Holy Spirit
give you to rest in Jesus this closing day of the month.
Evening
"If we
walk in the light, as He is in the light."—1 John 1:7.
As He is in the
light! Can we ever attain to this? Shall we ever be able to walk as clearly in
the light as He is whom we call "Our Father," of whom it is written,
"God is light, and in Him is no darkness at all"? Certainly, this is
the model which it set before us, for the Saviour
Himself said, "Be ye perfect, even as your Father who is in heaven is
perfect"; and although we may feel that we can never rival the perfection
of God, yet we are to seek after it, and never to be satisfied until we attain
to it. The youthful artist, as he grasps his early pencil, can hardly hope to
equal Raphael or Michael Angelo, but still, if he did not have a noble beau
ideal before his mind, he would only attain to something very mean and
ordinary. But what is meant by the expression that the Christian is to walk in
light as God is in the light? We conceive it to import likeness, but not
degree. We are as truly in the light, we are as heartily in the light,
we are as sincerely in the light, as honestly in the light, though we cannot be
there in the same measure. I cannot dwell in the sun, it is too bright a place
for my residence, but I can walk in the light of the sun; and so, though
I cannot attain to that perfection of purity and truth which belongs to the
Lord of hosts by nature as the infinitely good, yet I can set the Lord always
before me, and strive, by the help of the indwelling Spirit, after conformity
to His image. That famous old commentator, John Trapp, says, "We may be in
the light as God is in the light for quality, but not for equality."
We are to have the same light, and are as truly to have it and walk in it as
God does, though, as for equality with God in His holiness and purity, that
must be left until we cross the Jordan and enter into the perfection of the
Most High. Mark that the blessings of sacred fellowship and perfect cleansing
are bound up with walking in the light.