June 30 - Winslow and Spurgeon Devotions

MORNING THOUGHTS, or DAILY WALKING WITH GOD By Octavius Winslow "Until the clay break, and the shadows flee away."  Solomon's Song 2:17  The Divine withdrawment is a shadow, often imparting an aspect of dreariness to the path we are treading to the Zion of God. "Why do You hide Yourself?" says Job. "For a small moment," says God to the Church, "have I forsaken you. ... In a little wrath I hid my face from you for a moment." Ah! there are many who have the quenchless light of life in their souls, who yet, like Job, are constrained to take up the lamentation, "I went mourning without the sun." There are no shadows darker to some of God's saints than this. Many professing Christians dwell so perpetually in the region of shadows, they so seldom feel the sunshine of God's presence in their souls, that they scarcely can discern when the light is withdrawn. But there are others, wont to walk so near with God in the rich, personal enjoyment of their pardon, acceptance, and adoption, that if but a vapor floats between their soul and the sun, in an instant they are sensible of it. Oh, blessed are they whose walk is so close, so filial with God, whose home is so hard by the cross, who, like the Apocalyptic angel, dwell so entirely in the sun, as to feel the barometer of their soul affected by the slightest change in their spiritual atmosphere; in other words- who walk so much beneath the light of God's reconciled countenance as to be sensible of His hidings even "for a small moment." Then there comes the last of our shadows, "the valley of the shadow of death." There they terminate. This may be the focus where they all shall meet, but it is to meet only to be entirely and forever scattered. The sentiment is as true as the figure is poetic- "the shadow of death." It is but a "shadow" to the believer; the body of that shadow Jesus, the "Captain of our salvation," met on the cross, fought and overcame. By dying He so completely destroyed death, and him that had the power of death, that the substance of death in the experience of the dying Christian dwindles into a mere shadow, and that shadow melts into eternal glory.    Charles Spurgeon, Evening, June 30 “Ah Lord God, behold, thou hast made the heaven and the earth by thy great power and stretched out arm, and there is nothing too hard for thee.” Jeremiah 32:17 At the very time when the Chaldeans surrounded Jerusalem, and when the sword, famine and pestilence had desolated the land, Jeremiah was commanded by God to purchase a field, and have the deed of transfer legally sealed and witnessed. This was a strange purchase for a rational man to make. Prudence could not justify it, for it was buying with scarcely a probability that the person purchasing could ever enjoy the possession. But it was enough for Jeremiah that his God had bidden him, for well he knew that God will be justified of all his children. He reasoned thus: “Ah, Lord God! thou canst make this plot of ground of use to me; thou canst rid this land of these oppressors; thou canst make me yet sit under my vine and my fig-tree in the heritage which I have bought; for thou didst make the heavens and the earth, and there is nothing too hard for thee.” This gave a majesty to the early saints, that they dared to do at God’s command things which carnal reason would condemn. Whether it be a Noah who is to build a ship on dry land, an Abraham who is to offer up his only son, or a Moses who is to despise the treasures of Egypt, or a Joshua who is to besiege Jericho seven days, using no weapons but the blasts of rams’ horns, they all act upon God’s command, contrary to the dictates of carnal reason; and the Lord gives them a rich reward as the result of their obedient faith. Would to God we had in the religion of these modern times a more potent infusion of this heroic faith in God. If we would venture more upon the naked promise of God, we should enter a world of wonders to which as yet we are strangers. Let Jeremiah’s place of confidence be ours—nothing is too hard for the God that created the heavens and the earth.