DAILY PRAYER (BY SPURGEON)
Bless your own people, especially, by giving us more faith. May we believe you fully. May we believe, and believe, and still believe! May we never stagger at a promise through unbelief, and may no affliction ever stagger us. If we are in the cave may we sing David’s cave-song: “O God, my heart is fixed, my heart is fixed; I will sing and give praise.”
Lord save us from unbelief, which brings misery, but a childlike trust brings happiness. Give us greater love for you, shame that we should need to pray the prayer, but we do. Inflame us with your love; may all our hearts be taken up with love to Christ; may we live love to him and so to our fellow-men.
Amen.
VERSE OF THE DAY (COMMENTARY BY SPURGEON)
“I will tend my flock and let them lie down. This is the declaration of the Lord GOD.” (Ezekiel 34:15)
A flock cannot be fed until it is in existence. It cannot be fed, as a flock, until all the scattered sheep will have been brought together. We find the Lord declaring that he will search out his sheep and seek them. One of the Lord’s sheep—a woman who had forsaken the paths of virtue—had had five husbands and was then living with one who was not her husband. Yet he must go through Samaria to meet with her. He must—such was the divine necessity that this sheep, which had wandered as far as it well could, should be brought back.
RECOMMENDED RESOURCE
Read Spurgeon’s hope-filled final message
Shortly before his death, Spurgeon delivered a message titled The Greatest Fight in the World, in which he expressed his confidence in God’s Word alone for the Christian life and the Christian ministry.
I read The Greatest Fight for the first time last year and was so encouraged by Spurgeon’s confidence in God — the kind of confidence that perseveres, even in the face of death.
Today, more than 100 years after his death, Spurgeon’s final message can encourage us to stay faithful to God’s Word as we trust in Christ alone to keep us to the end. I know that it will encourage you, so I hope you’ll grab a copy.