DAILY PRAYER (BY SPURGEON)
Look on sinners! Oh look on sinners! When you bless your people, you make them blessings. When the church is vigorous, when the people praise you, then shall the earth yield her increase, then shall all the nations praise you too; for the joy of Zion is the joy of the whole earth.
When the Lord makes glad his people then he makes the earth sit still and rest, or even if it rages, yet still there is a time of salvation, a time of the ingathering of the hidden ones, and Christ’s name is glorious. But Lord there is a great tumult in the world just now: we pray that you would overrule it for your glory. Grant that the best ends of progress, of truth and righteousness may be subserved; and may it be seen still, that the Lord reigns.
Amen.
VERSE OF THE DAY (COMMENTARY BY SPURGEON)
“May God be gracious to us and bless us; may he make his face shine upon us so that your way may be known on earth, your salvation among all nations.” (Psalm 67:1–2)
As showers which first fall upon the hills afterwards run down in streams into the valleys, so the blessing of the Most High comes upon the world through the church. We are blessed for the sake of others as well as ourselves. God deals in a way of mercy with his saints, and then they make that way known far and wide, and the Lord’s name is made famous in the earth. Ignorance of God is the great enemy of mankind, and the testimonies of the saints, experimental and grateful, overcome this deadly foe. God has a set way and method of dealing out mercy to men, and it is the duty and privilege of a revived church to make that way to be everywhere known.
RECOMMENDED RESOURCE
We need to stop living for ourselves
Today we prayed that God would bless us so that we would be a blessing to others, including the nations. And we saw in God’s Word from Psalm 67 that this is always God’s design — we are blessed, so that all nations would be blessed and hear the good news of salvation.
Unfortunately, this isn’t always our experience today. We frequently hoard our blessings instead of pouring them out on others. This is not God’s design, so we can’t keep living that way.
That’s the point of Something Needs to Change by David Platt. This book is an incredible testimony and devotional, sharing both biblical truth about God’s heart for the nations and his plan for your life, as well as David’s own experience coming face-to-face with urgent physical and spiritual need in the Himalayas.
Warning: this book will challenge you and shake you out of your comfort zone. But the good news is that it will make you take up your call to be a blessing to all nations.