DAILY PRAYER (BY SPURGEON)
O Lord our God, before we ask anything from your hands, we desire to praise and magnify your name; for you are good in yourself, and in all your thoughts, and all your acts, and in all that you do toward us. You are good when you lay us low, when the bed of sickness becomes hard, and our bones are weary. You are good when you strip us of all earthly comforts; good when we stand at the grave’s mouth and bury our dearest love.
You are in everything good. Shall we not bless the God who takes, as well as the God who gives? We would not follow you as a dog follows a stranger for a bone; but we would love you as loving children, who love even a chastising Father, and have learned to say, “Though he slay me yet will I trust in him.”
Amen.
VERSE OF THE DAY (COMMENTARY BY SPURGEON)
“The Lord… has gathered them from the lands— from the east and the west, from the north and the south.” (Psalm 107:3)
Gathering follows upon redeeming. No matter what divides, the Lord will gather his own into one body, and first on earth by “one Lord, one faith, and one baptism,” and then in heaven by one common bliss they shall be known to be the one people of the One God.
What a glorious Shepherd must he be who thus collects the blood-bought flock from the remotest regions, guides them through countless perils, and at last makes them to lie down in the green pastures of Paradise. Some have wandered one way and some another, they have all left Immanuel’s land and strayed as far as they could, and great are the grace and power by which they are all collected into one flock by the Lord Jesus. With one heart and voice let the redeemed praise the Lord who gathers them into one.
RECOMMENDED RESOURCE
A challenging call to stop living a comfortable life
Today’s verse of the day reflected on God gathering his redeemed people from “the remotest regions” of the earth.”
Unfortunately, today, we are tempted to hoard our blessings instead of laying our lives down to gather God’s redeemed people to himself. 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.
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