Devotional Index

February Devotional

2 Cor 12:9

Ministers around the world have marveled over the sermons of Charles Haddon Spurgeon. He didn't prepare manuscripts in advance, seldom knowing on Friday what he would speak about on Sunday. Yet when he stood to preach, audiences were entranced by his eloquence, insight, and authority.

Once Spurgeon said to his ministerial students, “there are many passages of Scripture which you will never understand until some trying or singular experience shall interpret them to you. The other evening I was riding home after a heavy day's work; I was very wearied and sore depressed; and swiftly and suddenly as a lightning flash, that text laid hold on me:

"And he said to me, My grace is sufficient for thee: for my strength is made perfect in weakness. Most gladly therefore will I rather glory in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may rest upon me." — 2 Corinthians 12:9

On reaching home, I looked it up in the original, and at last it came to me this way: MY grace is sufficient for THEE. "Why," I said to myself, "I should think it is!" and I burst out laughing. It seemed to make unbelief so absurd. It was as though some little fish, being very thirsty, was troubled about drinking the river dry; and Father Thames said: "Drink away, little fish, my stream is sufficient for thee!" Or as if a little mouse in the granaries of Egypt, after seven years of plenty, feared lest it should die of famine, and Joseph said, "Cheer up, little mouse, my granaries are sufficient for thee!" Again, I imagined a man away up yonder on the mountain saying to himself, "I fear I shall exhaust all the oxygen in the atmosphere." But the earth cries: "Breathe away, O man, and fill thy lungs; My atmosphere is sufficient for thee!"

Spurgeon was considered by many to be the last of the great Puritans…

The strength of Puritan character and life lay in the practice of prayer and meditation. I came across the following in The Valley of Vision, a collection of Puritan Prayers & Devotions:

CHRIST THE WORD

MY FATHER,

In a world of created changeable things,
Christ and his Word alone remain unshaken.

O to forsake all creatures,
to rest as a stone on him the foundation,
to abide in him, be borne up by him!

For all my mercies come through Christ,
who has designed, purchased, promised, effected them.

How sweet it is to be near him, the Lamb,
filled with holy affections!

When I sin against thee I cross thy will, love, life,
and have no comforter, no creature, to go to.

My sin is not so much this or that particular evil,
but my continual separation, disunion, distance from thee,
and having a loose spirit towards thee.

But thou has given me a present, Jesus thy Son,
as mediator between thyself and my soul,
as middle-man who in a pit holds both him below and him above,
for only he can span the chasm breached by sin,
and satisfy divine justice.

May I always lay hold upon this mediator,
as a realized object of faith,
and alone worthy by his love to bridge the gulf.

Let me know that he is dear to me by his Word;

I am one with him by the Word on his part,
and by faith on mine;

If I oppose the Word I oppose my Lord when he is most near;

If I receive the Word I receive my Lord wherein he is nigh.

O thou who hast the heart of all men in thine hand,
form my heart according to the Word,
according to the image of thy Son,

So shall Christ the Word, and his Word, be my strength and comfort.

— Mrs. Joyce Girts
Director, Assurance Women's Center, Appleton