Even When It Doesn't Make Sense

Psalm 119:137 says, "Righteous are You, O LORD, and upright are Your judgments."

About this, Spurgeon writes:

That which comes from the righteous God is itself righteous. Jehovah both saith and doth that which is right, and that alone. This is a great stay to the soul in time of trouble. When we are most sorely afflicted, and cannot see the reason for the dispensation, we may fall back upon this most sure and certain fact, that God is righteous, and his dealings with us are righteous too. It should be our glory to sing this brave confession when all things around us appear to suggest the contrary. This is the richest adoration--this which rises from the lips of faith when carnal reason mutters about undue severity, and the like. (The Treasury of David, vol. 3, p. 390)

Debtors

From one of my favorite devotionals:

February 3 Morning & Evening, Charles Spurgeon

"Therefore, brethren, we are debtors." — Romans 8:12

As God's creatures, we are all debtors to Him: to obey Him with all our body, and soul, and strength. Having broken His commandments, as we all have, we are debtors to His justice, and we owe to Him a vast amount which we are not able to pay. But of the Christian it can be said that he does not owe God's justice anything, for Christ has paid the debt His people owed; for this reason the believer owes the more to love. I am a debtor to God's grace and forgiving mercy; but I am no debtor to His justice, for He will never accuse me of a debt already paid. Christ said, "It is finished!" and by that He meant, that whatever His people owed was wiped away for ever from the book of remembrance. Christ, to the uttermost, has satisfied divine justice; the account is settled; the handwriting is nailed to the cross; the receipt is given, and we are debtors to God's justice no longer. But then, because we are not debtors to our Lord in that sense, we become ten times more debtors to God than we should have been otherwise. Christian, pause and ponder for a moment. What a debtor thou art to divine sovereignty! How much thou owest to His disinterested love, for He gave His own Son that He might die for thee. Consider how much you owe to His forgiving grace, that after ten thousand affronts He loves you as infinitely as ever. Consider what you owe to His power; how He has raised you from your death in sin; how He has preserved your spiritual life; how He has kept you from falling; and how, though a thousand enemies have beset your path, you have been able to hold on your way. Consider what you owe to His immutability. Though you have changed a thousand times, He has not changed once. Thou art as deep in debt as thou canst be to every attribute of God. To God thou owest thyself, and all thou hast—yield thyself as a living sacrifice, it is but thy reasonable service.

See each day's Morning & Evening here.

Amazing Grace

In our Wednesday evening gathering tonight, we were looking at chapter 8 in C.J. Mahaney's Humility.

A quote of Charles Spurgeon struck me:

I believe in the doctrine of election, because I am quite certain that, if God had not chosen me, I should never have chosen Him; and I am sure He chose me before I was born, or else He never would have chosen me afterwards; and He must have elected me for reasons unknown to me, for I never could find any reason in myself why He should have looked upon me with special love.

Ahh, what a kindness, that God did not wait for us to earn His favor but put His favor on us through His Son.

"He saved us, not on the basis of deeds which we have done in righteousness, but according to His mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewing by the Holy Spirit" (Titus 3:5).

Mercy to the Prodigal People

“’Yet even now’ declares the LORD, ‘Return to Me with all your heart and with fasting, weeping, and mourning, and rend your heart and not your garments.’

“Now return to the LORD your God, for He is gracious and compassionate, slow to anger, abounding in lovingkindness, and relenting of evil. Who knows whether He will not turn and relent and leave a blessing behind Him, even a grain offering and a drink offering for the LORD your God?...

“’Then I will make up to you for the years that the swarming locust has eaten, the creeping locust, the stripping locust, and the gnawing locust’” (Joel 2:12-14, 25).

Surely we see how prodigal are our hearts (prone to wander, Lord, I feel it; prone to leave the God I love). Consider how powerful in mercy the Lord is—He not only receives back the repentant, but He is able to restore the loss we’ve suffered as a result of years of rebellion, sin, and discipline.