DAILY PRAYER (BY SPURGEON)
Take away from us everything which might stop us from delighting in God. May we come to God this day with a supreme joy; may we speak of him as “God my exceeding joy; yes, my own God is he.” O God give us a sense of property in yourself. May we come near to you, having no doubt and nothing whatsoever that shall spoil the beautiful simplicity of a childlike faith which looks up into the great face of God and saith, “Our Father, which art in heaven.”
Amen.
VERSE OF THE DAY (COMMENTARY BY SPURGEON)
“The eye is the lamp of the body. If your eye is healthy, your whole body will be full of light. But if your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. So if the light within you is darkness, how deep is that darkness!” (Matthew 6:22–23)
If a man does not see things in a right light, he may live in sin and yet fancy that he is doing his duty. A man should live up to his light; but if that light is itself darkness, what a mistake his whole course will be! If our religion leads us to sin, it is worse than irreligion. If our faith is presumption, our zeal selfishness, our prayer formality, our hope a delusion, our experience infatuation, the darkness is so great that even our Lord holds up his hands in astonishment and says—“How great is that darkness!”
RECOMMENDED RESOURCE
Anger is deadly… And God can offer lasting change
Anger is a persistent issue for me. I encounter it every day in my home, in my church, and, most of all, in my own heart. Most of us who struggle with anger, no matter how infrequently, hate it but we don’t know how to change.
A really great book to help you is The Heart of Anger by Christopher Ash and Steve Midgley. This book is an incredible exploration of everything the Bible teaches about anger. It will help you understand your anger, what motivates it, and how to slay it. This book is practical, biblical, and deep.
Reading The Heart of Anger will really help you, because it doesn’t offer short-cuts — it offers real transformation, rooted in God’s Word and dependent on God’s grace. (And, if you’re a pastor, you should grab a copy to be equipped to confront anger in others you disciple/counsel).
This book is incredibly useful. I hope you’ll pick up a copy today.