Monday Memories, A Challenge And Encouragement

Charles Haddon Spurgeon portrait from National Portrait Gallery, London. Courtesy Wikimedia Commons

Shortly after Mr. Marvelous and I were married we found a copy of Charles Spurgeon's devotional book Morning And Evening, which was written in the mid-late 1800s.  We used this together for some years, returning to it periodically.  This past year we picked it up to start reading through again. This year I have found some particularly timely messages in the book.  On Saturday we found this.  I hope that it will challenge and encourage you as it did us.

“Only don’t go very far away.”    –Exodus 8:28

 

This is a crafty word from the lips of the arch-tyrant, Pharaoh. If the poor, enslaved Israelites have to leave Egypt to worship God, then, he tells them, they can not go very far away— at least not far enough to escape the terror of his arms and the observation of his spies. In the same way, the world doesn’t like it when we refuse to conform to its ways. It wants us to be more friendly and not become too extreme with the things of God. Death to the world and burial with Christ are ideas that fleshly minds can only ridicule. Worldly wisdom recommends the path of compromise, and it warns us of being too precise about right living; truth is, of course, to be followed, but error is not to be severely denounced. “Yes,” says the world, “be spiritually minded by all means, but do not deny yourself fun and entertainment.” 

Multitudes of professing Christians yield to this cunning advice, but by so doing they reveal their true nature. If we would follow the Lord wholly, we must go right away into the wilderness of separation and leave the Egypt of the world behind us. We must leave its goals, its pleasures, and its religion too, and go far away to the place where the Lord calls us. When the town is on fire our house can not be too far from the flames. When the plague strikes the city, germs to be avoided are everywhere. The further one can get from worldly conformity the better. 

To all true believers let the trumpet-call be sounded, “Come out from among them, and be separate.”                                  
                                                      by Charles H. Spurgeon, Revised and Edited by William C. Neff


I leave you with this thought:

“Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness' sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.  Blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account.  Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for so they persecuted the prophets who were before you.                                         Matthew 5:10-12

God's peace to your hearts and homes.