OCTOBER 11

OUR PERSONAL PROMISES

Matthew 6:24

“No one can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or else he will be loyal to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon.”

Mark 4:19

“and the cares of this world, the deceitfulness of riches, and the desires for other things entering in choke the word, and it becomes unfruitful.”

Mark 10:23

“Then Jesus looked around and said to His disciples, “How hard it is for those who have riches to enter the kingdom of God!”

Matthew 6:33

“But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added to you.”

Psalm 40:17

“But I am poor and needy; Yet the Lord thinks upon me. You are my help and my deliverer; Do not delay, O my God”

Psalm 72:12

“For He will deliver the needy when he cries, The poor also, and him who has no helper.”

This month we will read choices from Charles Spurgeon’s (known affectionately as the “prince of preachers”)  devotional, “Beside Still Waters.”   It’s no secret that this world system is getting more evil by the day.  We have to stand strong in the Lord and look to Him more than ever to get through, and to be guided through, what is in the future……..known and allowed  by Him alone…..as well as whatever personal things we are experiencing in our lives.

PASTOR SPURGEON:

You that are lowest on the scale of visible joy, you that are broken like a shipwreck, you that are a mass of pain, you that are in poverty, will you give your Lord a good word?  Will you say, “Though He slay me, yet I will trust Him.”? (Job 13:15).

At our worst, we are better off than the would at its best.  Godly poverty is better than unhallowed riches.  Our sickness is better than the unbeliever’s health.  Our depression is better than the earth’s honor.  We consider it better to suffer pain equal to the torture of death than bathe in sin’s pleasures.  We will take God at all the discount you can put on Him. You can have the world with all the compound interest that you are able to get from such a sham.

God’s people sing.  They are children of the sun, birds of the morning, and flowers of the day.  Wisdom’s “ways are ways of pleasantness, and all her paths are peace.” (Proverbs 3:17).  We hear the full-toned, high-ascending music that never ceases.  Its soft cadences are with us when darkness thickens on darkness and the heart is heavily oppressed.

Sorrowful, yet always rejoicing. (2 Corinthians 6:10).    Do you know this paradox? Some of us have known it for many years. 

When a Christian is permitted to grow rich, what a trial of faith is hidden in that condition!  It is one of the severest of providential tests.  Where I have seen one fail through poverty, I have known fifty who failed through riches.  When our friends have a long stretch of prosperity, they should invite believers to offer special prayer that they may be preserved.

 Thick wet clay is heavy stuff to walk on, and when our feet slip into it, it adheres and makes traveling to heaven very difficult.  If we do not cling to wealth, it will not harm us.  But there is a lot of glue in money.

Even without riches, we can find a test in our daily faith.  We may be tempted to walk by sight instead of by faith, as told in 1 Corinthians 5:7.

To be in the dark, altogether in the dark, is a great thing for faith.  Then you are sure that what you see is not seen of the flesh but is in very deed a vision of spiritual faith.  To be under a cloud is a trial, but not one-half so much a trial as it is to always have the light of this world.  We are so likely to mistake the light of worldly comfort for the light of God that it is well to see how we do without it.

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