My Year With Spurgeon: Week 47

The best of God’s saints have their nights; the dearest of his children have to walk through a weary wilderness. There is not a Christian who has enjoyed perpetual happiness, there is no believer who can always sing a song of joy. ~ Charles Spurgeon, The Desire of the Soul in Spiritual Darkness

There is a friend waiting for me to tea: I will step into the room. There is no kettle on the fire: there is not a bit for me to eat. “Sir, we have been waiting for you.” But there is nothing ready in the house! I do not believe them; they could not have been waiting for me, or else they would have been ready. And waiting for God always implies being ready. Says a man, “I am waiting for God.” But he is not ready for God at all: he still keeps on his drunkenness, the house is still unswept; he is as worldly as ever. He is waiting. Yes, but waiting implies being ready; and nobody is waiting that is not ready, You are not waiting for the coach until you have your coat and hat on ready to start, and are looking out at the door for it; and you are not waiting for God, until you are ready to go with God. No man ought to say, I am waiting for God. No, beloved, it is God who is waiting for us generally, rather than any of us waiting for him. No sinner can be beforehand with him. But the prophet waited “in the way of God’s judgments:” that is, waited in the right place—waited in the house of God—waited under the sound of the gospel. And then this desire led him to seek. “With my spirit within me will I seek thee.” It led him to seek after God. Oh! the poor pitiful desires of some of you are very little good. An old writer says, “Hell is paved with good intentions.” I was not aware that there was any pavement at all—because it has no bottom, but at the same time I believe that the sides of the pit are hung round with good intentions; and men will feel themselves pricked and goaded from side to side with good designs that they once formed but never carried out. ~ Charles Spurgeon, The Desire of the Soul in Spiritual Darkness

But every man who is a sinner, every man who lays claim to that title, has a right also to believe that Christ died for him. ~ Charles Spurgeon, The Desire of the Soul in Spiritual Darkness

God’s church is very fond of building walls which her God has not sanctioned. She is not content to trust in the arm of God, but she will add thereto some extraneous help which God utterly abhors. ~ Charles Spurgeon, Storming the Battlements

The Christians’ happiness should be in God, and God alone. ~ Charles Spurgeon, Storming the Battlements

All men by nature build battlements for themselves to hide behind. Our father Adam gave us as a portion of our inheritance when we were born, high battlements, very high ones; and we are so fond of them that it is hard to part them. There are different lines of them; multiplied walls of fortifications; and when Christ comes to storm the heart, to carry the city by storm, to take it for himself, there is an over-turning of all these different walls which protect the city. ~ Charles Spurgeon, Storming the Battlements 

In the forefront of the city of Mansoul, frowns the wall of carelessness—an erection of Satanic masonry...The first wall is surmounted, but the city is not yet taken: the Christian minister, under the hand of God, has to storm the next wall—that is the wall of self-righteousness… Thus the double rampart is passed, but another still opposes our progress—Christ’s warriors know it by the name of self-sufficiency. ~ Charles Spurgeon, Storming the Battlements

© Becky Laney of Operation Actually Read Bible