This is a weekly series with things I’m reading and pondering from Charles Spurgeon. You can read the original seed thought here, or type “Thursdays With Spurgeon” in the search box to read more entries.
Listen to the podcast of this post by clicking on the player below, and you can also subscribe on iTunes or Spotify.
The Assurance Of God’s Love
Tell me, O you whom I love, where you feed your flock, where you make it rest at noon. For why should I be as one who veils herself by the flocks of your companions? (Song of Solomon 1:7)
It is well to be able to call the Lord Jesus Christ by this name without an ‘if’ or a ‘but.’ A very large proportion of Christian people can only say of Christ that they hope they love Him. They trust they love Him, but this is a very poor and shallow experience to be content to stay here. It seems to me that no one ought to give any rest to his spirit till he feels quite sure about a matter of such a vital importance. We are not content to have a hope of the love of our parents, or of our spouse, or of our children! We feel we must be certain there. And we are not to be satisfied with a hope that Christ loves us and with a bare trust that we love Him. …
‘I know whom I have believed,’ says Paul (2 Timothy 1:12). ‘I know that my Redeemer lives,’ says Job (Job 19:25). ‘You whom I love,’ says Solomon in the Song as we have it here. Learn, dear friends, to get that positive knowledge of your love to Jesus, and be not satisfied till you can talk about your interest in Him as a reality that you have made infallibly sure by having received the witness of the Holy Spirit and His seal upon your soul by faith that you are born of God and belong to Christ. …
Why do we love Jesus? We have the best of answers: because He first loved us! … Why do we love Him? Because before this round earth was fashioned between the palms of the great Creator, before He had painted the rainbow or hung out the lights of the sun and moon, Christ’s delights were with us. He foresaw us through the glass of His prescience. He knew what we should be….
From The Church’s Love To Her Loving Lord
God wants you to know how much He loves you. He went first because we didn’t have any way to approach Him. But Jesus made it possible for us to come close to God through His substitutionary death on the Cross for our sins. And now the Holy Spirit is speaking clearly to your heart to trust that this is absolutely, irrevocably true: GOD LOVES YOU!
As Spurgeon said, don’t be content with merely thinking this is true, but ask the Holy Spirit to help you know this is true!
Listen to these words—This is how God showed His love among us: He sent His one and only Son into the world that we might live through Him. … This is how we know that we live in Him and He in us: He has given us of His Spirit. And we have seen and testify that the Father has sent His Son to be the Savior of the world. … We love because He first loved us. (1 John 4:9, 13-14, 19)
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Psalm 119 is a fascinating chapter of Scripture. Not only is it the longest chapter in the Bible (at 176 verses) but it is divided into twenty-two 8-verse sections, corresponding with the 22 letters of the Hebrew alphabet. Each of the verses in the different sections all begin with the same Hebrew letter of that section.
In the section called yodh, the psalmist wrote, “Your hands formed me and made me; give me understanding to learn Your commands” (v. 73). There is just one Hebrew word for “Your hands” and it also happens to be the name of this section of Psalm 119: Yodh. The psalmist sees God’s hands all over his life, and he welcomes God’s continued involvement in every aspect of his life.
This yodh section is presented to us in alternating verses: the odd-numbered verses are a declaration, and the even-numbered verses are a corresponding prayer. It looks something like this…
Declaration: You made me
Prayer: May I be a hope-filled testimony to others by my reverence of You
Declaration: You continually discipline and fashion me
Prayer: May I continually find my comfort in Your unfailing love
Declaration: Your compassion is my life and my delight
Prayer: May You deal with those who afflict me while I remain focused on You
Declaration: You bring people into my life on purpose
Prayer: May I be a blameless witness of Your love
In light of this section I declare in prayer: “God, You created me on purpose and for a purpose. What You create, You complete; and what You complete, You complete perfectly. May I remain sensitive to Your Holy Spirit and malleable to Your touch, so that You are glorified through my obedient life.”
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How many are Your works, O Lord! In wisdom You made them all; the earth is full of Your creatures. There is the sea, vast and spacious, teeming with creatures beyond number—living things both large and small. (Psalm 104:24-25)
This psalm makes me want to go on a nature walk!
The psalmist is in awe of the Creator’s handiwork—from the majestic sun and moon, to the smallest of creatures, God created them and sustains them all.
God set the earth on its foundations; it can never be moved.… He makes springs pour water into the ravines; it flows between the mountains. They give water to all the beasts of the field; the wild donkeys quench their thirst. The birds of the air nest by the waters; they sing among the branches. He waters the mountains from His upper chambers; the earth is satisfied by the fruit of His work. He makes grass grow for the cattle, and plants for man to cultivate—bringing forth food from the earth. … The moon marks off the seasons, and the sun knows when to go down. … The lions roar for their prey and seek their food from God. … These all look to You to give them their food at the proper time. When You give it to them, they gather it up; when You open Your hand, they are satisfied with good things.
Take a walk. See God’s beauty.
Listen to the wind, the birds, the lions.
Taste the food from the soil and the trees.
Feel the coolness of the water, the warmth of the sun, the invigoration of the breeze.
Smell the flowers, the soil, the sea air.
And then as you take all of these in, remind yourself: “If God cares for the fields, if He sees the smallest sparrow, how much more does He care for me!”
Jesus told us much the same thing—
Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your Heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? … See how the lilies of the field grow. They do not labor or spin. Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these. If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, will He not much more clothe you? … Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? Yet not one of them will fall to the ground apart from the will of your Father. And even the very hairs of your head are all numbered. So don’t be afraid; you are worth more than many sparrows. … Your Father knows what you need before you ask Him. (Matthew 6:8, 26, 28-30; 10:29-31)
My friend, the next time you need reassurance of God’s love for you, I invite you to take a nature walk and let the beauty of the Creator fill you with confidence of His love for you and His power to care for your every need!
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Psalm 93 opens with these powerful words: The LORD reigns.
Consider this: When we see the word LORD in all capital letters in our English translations of the Bible, we are reading God’s covenant name—Yahweh or Jehovah. This Limitless Power allows us to call Him by His personal name!
How can our finite minds even begin to fathom this? Listen to the psalmist’s words—
The LORD reigns, He is robed in majesty; the LORD is robed in majesty and is armed with strength. The world is firmly established; it cannot be moved. Your throne was established long ago; You are from all eternity. The seas have lifted up, O LORD, the seas have lifted up their voice; the seas have lifted up their pounding waves. Mightier than the thunder of the great waters, mightier than the breakers of the sea—the LORD on high is mighty. Your statutes stand firm; holiness adorns Your house for endless days, O LORD.
You can almost hear this psalmist struggling to help us comprehend the majesty of God. But how does a molecule comprehend the vastness of a planet? Creation sometimes roars and sometimes thunders, but even that only shows us a small glimpse of the Creator.
Do you see how established, orderly, firm, and secure this universe is? Even it had a starting point. Its Creator, however, has existed for all of eternity!
Have you ever been to the ocean and felt the pounding of the waves and heard the deafening roar of the breakers? That’s barely a toe-tapping of the might of Yahweh.
In the closing verse of this psalm, we read these words: “Your statutes stand firm.” Jehovah has given us a way to begin to comprehend Him. He has given us His statutes. This God who is unlimited in power has given us words we can live by. We can rely on them because they are backed by this limitless God! His promises stand firm forever. Nothing can shake God or His Word, so that means nothing can shake me when I stand on Him.
Standing on God’s Word means we are standing on Limitless Love and Limitless Strength.
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Have you ever read the children’s book Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day? Poor Alexander, his day just seemed to get worse—nothing was going right. He wakes up with gum in his hair, trips on his skateboard, and drops his favorite sweater in the sink filled with water. Breakfast doesn’t get any better, things go sideways at school, his least-favorite food is served for dinner, his nightlight burns out. And if all that’s not bad enough, the cat decides to sleep with his brother instead of with him.
Can you relate to Alexander?
Doesn’t it seem like when one thing goes wrong, everything goes wrong? And if things go wrong for too many days in a row, it seems like the bad times are lasting forever! All of us have a tendency to exaggerate during the dark days.
A psalmist named Asaph seemed to be having a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day of his own. Listen to some of his words, including the exaggerations of how bad he thought everything was:
Why have You rejected us forever, O God? … Your foes roared in the place where You met us… They said in their hearts, “We will crush them completely!” They burned everyplace where God was worshiped in the land. … How long will the enemy mock you, O God? Will the foe revile Your name forever? Why do You hold back Your hand? (Psalm 74:1, 4, 8, 10, 11)
In the middle of the storm, we tend to not only exaggerate how bad things are but we also seem to lose our bearings and we can even lose sight of God. I think that’s what was happening to Asaph in the first half of his lament. But then we come to the middle verse of this psalm and we notice the beginning of a change in perspective: “But You, O God, are my King from of old; You bring salvation upon the earth” (v. 12).
Aha! In the middle of his terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day, Asaph stopped looking at all the bad things around him and turned his gaze upward. “Look,” he tells himself, “there is God still reigning as the Supreme King!” Asaph begins to recount all that God has done, using the phrase “It was You” who did these miraculous things five times in the next five verses.
In the middle of the storm, Asaph has to remind himself…
God existed before time began
He is still the sovereign ruler in this present moment
He gets the final and decisive word at the end
He never forgets His covenant of love with His people
He defends His cause and His people
His desires can never be thwarted or even delayed a single moment
He is the only One who exists as the Eternal I AM
His love and His power are unmatched and unrivaled anywhere in the universe
He will rise up to save me
My friend, I implore you to remember these words of Asaph. Commit them to your memory now, so that when your terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day happens—when it seems like everything is going to go wrong forever—that you can spot those lying exaggerations, you can turn your gaze upward, and you can find hope in knowing your God not only has all power to save you in the storm, but He has unlimited love that wants to save you through the storm.
Look up, look up, look up and see your God reigning supremely over even the worst terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day.
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You who answer prayer … You answer us with awesome and righteous deeds, God our Savior…. Shout for joy to God, all the earth! (Psalm 65:2, 5; 66:1).
Psalms 65 and 66 tell of God’s awesome involvement in our lives. He is both globally involved and personally involved. He’s not too big to care for my needs, and He’s not so preoccupied with me that He is unaware of global events.
Look at the grandeur of our Creator—
You answer us with awesome deeds of righteousness
You are the hope of all the ends of the earth
You formed the mountains by Your power
You stilled the roaring of the seas
You care for the land and water it; You enrich it abundantly
Your carts overflow with abundance
all of creation shouts for joy and sings praise to You
all the earth says, “How awesome are Your deeds!” and bows down to You in praise
You rule forever by Your power, Your eyes watch the nations
how awesome are Your works on man’s behalf!
And yet He is not just God of global events, but He is intimately involved with each and every person. He notices me!
The psalmist says, “Come and listen, all you who fear God; let me tell you what He has done for me.” Then he tells how God…
forgave my sin
listened to my prayer
honored my prayer
has not withheld His love from me
Oh, come and see! See how awesome God is that the earth trembles before Him. See how awesomely loving He is that He stoops to listen to me. He is indeed a global God but He is also an intimately personal God.
The more we know our God in both His majesty and His intimacy, the more we will praise Him.
This is a weekly series with things I’m reading and pondering from Charles Spurgeon. You can read the original seed thought here, or type “Thursdays With Spurgeon” in the search box to read more entries.
Listen to the podcast of this post by clicking on the player below, and you can also subscribe on iTunes or Spotify.
Never Beyond God’s Love
Lost, perishing sinners, hear the voice of God, for it speaks to you.
“Where art thou? for I am come to seek thee.”
“Lord, I am in such a place that I cannot do anything for myself.”
“Then I am come to seek thee and do all for thee.”
“Lord, I am in such a place that the law threatens me and justice frowns upon me.”
“I am come to answer the threatenings of the law, and to bear all the wrath of justice.”
“But, Lord, I am in such a place that I cannot repent as I would.”
“I am come to seek thee, and I am exalted on high to give repentance and remission of sins.”
“But, Lord, I cannot believe in Thee, I cannot believe as I would.”
“A bruised reed I will not break, and a smoking flax will I not quench; I am come to give thee faith.”
“But, Lord, I am in such a state that my prayers can never be acceptable.”
“I am come to pray for thee, and then to grant thee thy desires.”
“But, Lord, Thou dost not know what a wretch I am.”
“Yes, I know thee. Though I asked thee the question, ‘Where art thou?’ it was that thou mightest know where thou art, for I know well enough.”
“But, Lord, I have been the chief of sinners; none can have so aggravated their guilt as I have.”
“But wherever thou mayest be, I have come to save thee.”
“But I am an outcast from society.”
“But I am come to gather together the outcasts of Israel.”
“O but I have sinned beyond all hope.”
“Yes, but I have come to give hope to hopeless sinners.”
“But, then I deserve to be lost.”
“Yes, but I have come to magnify the law and make it honorable, and so to give thee thy deserts in the person of Christ, and then to give thee My mercy because of His merits.” —Charles Spurgeon
My friend, there isn’t anything you can do to make God love you any less or any more—God IS Love. You are never beyond His love!
There is never a hole so deep, or a burden so heavy that God cannot rescue you—God IS All-mighty. You are never beyond His rescue!
You cannot escape the powerful love of your Heavenly Father. Jesus purchased your salvation with His blood, and the Holy Spirit is calling to your heart today. Will you come to Him in faith? O, please, my friend, receive God’s love today!
And have I, Christ, no love for Thee,
Craig T. Owens 