Let us trace all the mercies we get to our God, for he has worked all our works in us. He has chosen us, he has redeemed us, he has called us, he has quickened us, he has preserved us, he has sanctified us, and he will perfect us in Christ Jesus. The glory is all the Lord's. When we read human history, we should read it to see the finger of God in it--trace through the human story the silver line of covenant working--observe how the Lord casts the horse and his rider into the sea when they come out against him or his people. Spurgeon Study Bible, Exodus 15:1
We should never let our indignation against sin prevent our prayers for sinners. Spurgeon Study Bible Exodus 32:11
Our grasp of Jesus must be the grasp of one who is consciously guilty. He only belongs to us if we are sinners. Spurgeon Study Bible, Leviticus 1:4
Without the death of Jesus, nothing remains for us but death. Forget the crucified one, and we have forgotten the only name by which we can be saved. Leviticus 1:5, Spurgeon Study Bible,
It is not sin as we see it that was laid on Christ but sin as God sees it, not sin as our conscience feebly reveals it to us but sin as God beholds it in all its unmitigated malignity and unconcealed loathsomeness. Sin, in its exceeding sinfulness, Jesus has put away. But when we perceive sin, then we are to trust the blood. Leviticus 4:3, Spurgeon Study Bible
In religion, morals, and politics, we are on the side of the despised and rejected Christ to whom we belong. In every political question we desire to be and ought to be on Christ's side. We are neither of this party nor of that but on the side of justice, peace, righteousness. In every moral question we are bound to be on Christ's side. In every religious question we are not on the side of predominant thought, nor on the side of fashionable views, nor on the side of dishonorable gain, but on the side of Christ. 1 Chronicles 12:18, Spurgeon Study Bible
Whenever we alter one word of Scripture, we get ourselves into trouble. Stand by God's Word and we stand safely. Spurgeon Study Bible, 1 Chronicles 15:13
Everything we have is sweetened with unspeakable mercy. All the good we enjoy comes from God. Remember that! Spurgeon Study Bible 1 Chronicles 16:4
Everyone is seeking happiness. If that is true, then everyone should read this psalm [1], for it directs us where happiness is to be found in its highest degree and purest form. "Happy" says David, "is such and such a man," and the word which he uses is, in the original, exceedingly expressive. It implies a sort of plurality of happiness, and it is scarcely known whether the word is an adjective or a noun, as if the happiness qualified the whole of life and was, in itself, better even than life itself. Surely this is the highest to which the human heart can aspire! This happiness is as attainable by the poor, the forgotten, and the obscure as by those whose names figure in history and are trumpeted by fame. Psalm 1:1, Spurgeon Study Bible
The godly man, however, does not consider first how the world regards a thing but how God looks at it. Psalm 1:1, Spurgeon Study Bible
People must have some delight, some supreme pleasure. A person's heart was never meant to be a vacuum. If not filled with the best things, it will be filled with the unworthy and disappointing. the true Christian has his holy delights, and chief among them is his reveling in the law of the Lord, the Word of God. David did not have a fourth of what we possess--it was a little Bible then. We therefore, should take ten times more delight in it than the psalmist did. Psalm 1:2, Spurgeon Study Bible
We must not say, "I have lost everything." We cannot lose everything. Christ is our all, and Christ cannot be lost. Spurgeon Study Bible, Psalm 11:3
For expanse, for loftiness, for brightness, for glory, the Scriptures are comparable to the heavens that declare the glory of God and to the sky that shows his handiwork. Spurgeon Study Bible, Psalm 19:7-9
Let us watch against the beginnings of backsliding. Let us take care of the little sins; let us watch against coldness of heart. No one backslides all at once. Few people who profess to be saints become outward sinners in one step; it is usually by little and by little. Hosea 2:7, Spurgeon Study Bible
It is a sad sin when we take God's mercies and use them in rebellion against him. Just think of it--the gifts Jehovah gave to these people, they presented in sacrifice to Baal. Some people in comfortable circumstances spend their wealth for sin. They have health and strength, and they use them in the service of their own evil passions. The gifts God has enriched them with become weights to sink them deeper and deeper in the gulf of transgression. God has often brought people down to poverty, to sickness, to death's door, in order to wean them from their sin. Hosea 2:8, Spurgeon Study Bible
God has severe remedies for desperate cases: he will do all that mercy and wisdom can suggest on order to prevent people from being their own destroyers. Hosea 2:8, Spurgeon Study Bible
Grace has won us when it has won our hearts. When we yield to God not with a mere external obedience but the affection of our hearts, then all is won and all is well. Hosea 2:16, Spurgeon Study Bible
We who believe in Jesus are not afraid of our Father; God forbid that we ever should be. The nearer we can get to him, the happier we are. Our highest wish is to be forever with him and to be lost in him. Hosea 3:5, Spurgeon Study Bible
To return to God is not a cruel request. He does not ask us to perform a pilgrimage and blister our weary feet or to thrust an iron in our back. He doesn't ask us to lie on a bed of spikes or starve ourselves until we can count our bones. He asks no suffering from us, for Christ has suffered for us. All he asks is that we return to him, and what is that? That we be genuinely sorry for our past sins, that we ask his grace to keep us from sin in the future, that we now believe in Christ who is set forth to be the propitiation for sin, that through faith in his blood we may see our sin forever put away and all our iniquity cancelled. That is neither a hard nor a cruel demand. It is for our good as well as for his glory. Hosea 6:1-2, Spurgeon Study Bible
Our business is to proceed to know the Lord. And that implies, first, that we begin with knowing the Lord. We cannot proceed with what we have not embarked on. Hosea 6:3, Spurgeon Study Bible
Many do not see their gray hairs because they do not look into the mirror to see them; we cannot perceive gray hairs without the use of the mirror or our sins without the mirror of the Word of God. These neglected, unread Bibles--how they cry out against us! What swift witnesses they will be against us in the last heart-searching day! Does God give us a gauge by which we may measure ourselves, and will we not use it? Hosea 7:9, Spurgeon Study Bible
We are all sowing; we cannot help it. No one goes forth in the morning without a seed-basket. As we are all sowing, the great question we have to consider is, :What will the harvest be?" Hosea 8:7; Spurgeon Study Bible
God is so happy in the love he bears to his people that he breaks the eternal silence, and sun and moon and stars with astonishment hear God chanting a hymn of joy. Zephaniah 3:16-17, Spurgeon Study Bible
Walking with God denotes an active habit, a communion in the common movements of the day. Some bow humbly before God in the hour of prayer. Other sit humbly in his presence at the time of meditation, and others work themselves up to draw near to God in seasons of religious excitement. But all this falls short of walking with God. Walking is a common pace, an ordinary rate of progress, and it does not seem to require great effort; but then it is a practical working pace, a rate at which one can continue on and on and make a day's journey by the time the sun is down. So walking with God means being with God always, being with him in common things, being with him on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday--as well as on the Sabbath. It means being with him in the shop, with him in the kitchen, with him in the field, feeling his presence in buying and selling, in weighing and measuring, in plowing and reaping--doing as for the Lord the most common acts of life. Then comes the in the qualifying word of "humbly". When our walk with God is closest and clearest, we must be overwhelmed with adoring wonder at the condescension that permits us to think of speaking with the eternal one. To this reverence must be added a constant sense of dependence--walking humbly with God in the sense of daily drawing all supplies from him and gratefully admitting that it is so. We are never to indulge a thought of independence from God, as if we were anything or could do anything apart from him. Spurgeon Study Bible, Micah 6:8
If God has broken our heart, he has broken it to give us a new one. If he has killed us by the law, he has killed us to make us alive by the gospel. If he has wounded us in our conscience, he has done it that he may have room to pour in the oil and the relief of Christ Jesus. If he has stripped us, he has only pulled off our rags that he may put on us a perfect robe of spotless righteousness. Spurgeon Study Bible, Habakkuk 1:3,
This is a hymn, is it not--the hymn of a man who saw his bread going, the meat going, the oil going, and everything going, and yet he rejoiced in the Lord. This is what living by faith meant--a faith that does without anything--a faith that can take nothing and be content with it because it finds everything in God--faith under the worst conceivable conditions. This is how the just are to live. Spurgeon Study Bible, Habakkuk 3:17-18
Any person can sing when his cup is full of delights. The believer alone has songs when waters of a bitter cup are wrung out of him. Any sparrow can chirp in the daylight, but only the nightingale can sing in the dark. As children of God, whenever the enemies seem to prevail over us, whenever the ranks of the foe appear sure of victory, then we must begin to sing. Our victory will come with our song. Zephaniah 3:16-17, Spurgeon Study Bible
Peace without grace is a dangerous possession. But a peace that comes out of the possession of grace is a gracious peace and will lead to the peace of heaven. This grace and peace are to come "from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ." There is no grace for us apart from the Lord Jesus Christ. And though the Father is full of love and will give grace and peace to his people, yet the Lord Jesus Christ must always be the channel through which these incomparable favors flow. 2 Corinthians 1:2, Spurgeon Study Bible
Walking implies the possession of life...
Walking is also a position that signifies activity. As genuine Christians we do no merely learn; we practice what we know. We are to be engaged in displaying to others the blessings we have received and are to exhibit in our daily actions the fruits we have gathered from communion with God. "We walk" is more than some can say. They can affirm, "We talk; we think; we experience; we feel:--but true Christians say, "We walk." Walking also implies progress. A person who walks makes some headway. True believers are always making advances; we are to be going from faith in its beginnings to faith in its perfections, waxing stronger and stronger. There is a progress to be made in every Christian grace...
Walking also implies perseverance. When a person only takes a step or two and then stops, we do not call that walking. The true Christian keeps on going. Further, walking is the ordinary manner of the Christian life. Running is not best for progress; it cannot be kept up for long; it fatigues and tires. But walking is that kind of progress in which a person continues hour after hour, and after a night's rest he rises again to walk on as before until reaching the goal... Walking also implies perseverance. When a person only takes a step or two and then stops, we do not call that walking. The true Christian keeps on going. Further, walking is the ordinary manner of the Christian life. Running is not best for progress; it cannot be kept up for long; it fatigues and tires. But walking is that kind of progress in which a person continues hour after hour, and after a night's rest he rises again to walk on as before until reaching the goal... Walking by sight is just this--"I believe in myself." Whereas walking by faith is this--"I believe in God." Spurgeon Study Bible, 2 Corinthians 5:7
We are traveling at express speed and will soon be beyond the reach of all the incidents and happenings that disturb and distract us. Spurgeon Study Bible 1 Corinthians 7:29
God loves us with a father's love, guides us with a father's watchfulness, instructs us with a father's wisdom, bears with us with a father's patience, and longs for us with a father's longing. Spurgeon Study Bible, 2 Corinthians 7:1
"Let us cleanse ourselves." What? Do God's blood-bought people still need cleansing? Yes, every one of us! Notice, first, this work is personal, "Let us cleanse ourselves." Finding other people's faults is easy, but we all need to look at ourselves. Christians, while acted upon by divine influence and cleansed by the Holy Spirit, are active agents in their own sanctification. Christians develop by actively seeking growth, by earnestly striving after holiness, and by resolutely endeavoring to obtain it. Nor, second, must we stop short of universality in our purgation and cleansing. "Let us cleanse ourselves from every impurity." Our eyes must not spare nor must our hearts pity one pet sin. Spurgeon Study Bible, 2 Corinthians 7:1
"The proven character of your faith." Let us not be mistaken: God never gave us faith to play with. Faith is a sword. But it was not made to exhibit upon a parade ground. It was meant to cut and wound and slay. Whoever has it may expect, between here and heaven, to learn what battle means. God has made nothing in vain; he especially makes nothing in the spiritual kingdom in vain. He made faith with the intent that it should be used to the utmost and exercised to the full. We must expect trial because trial is the element of faith. Faith without trial is like a diamond uncut, the brilliance of which has never been seen. A fish without water or a bird without air is faith without trial. We may surely expect that our faith will be tested. Spurgeon Study Bible, 1 Peter 1:7,
The way to do a great deal is to keep on doing a little. The way to do nothing at all is to be continually resolving that we will do everything. Spurgeon Study Bible, 1 Peter 4:2
We need to have the truth constantly sown in our hearts and watered by the Holy Spirit that it may grow and bring forth fruit. Spurgeon Study Bible, 2 Peter 1:12
There are narrow limits to our knowledge. There is a great breadth to our conceit, but the things we really know are few, after all. He who is wisest will be the first to confess his own ignorance. Spurgeon Study Bible, 2 Peter 2:9,
Every year that passes is meant to be a year of salvation. Let us make it so by more and more earnest efforts to bring sinners to the cross of Christ. Spurgeon Study Bible, 2 Peter 3:15
© Becky Laney of Operation Actually Read Bible
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