AMEN DEAR SISTERS!
GRACE TO ALL BRETHREN!
"Waiting for the adoption."
- Romans 8:23
Even in this world saints are God's children, but men cannot discover them
to be so, except by certain moral characteristics. The adoption is not
manifested, the children are not yet openly declared. Among the Romans a
man might adopt a child, and keep it private for a long time: but there
was a second adoption in public; when the child was brought before the
constituted authorities its former garments were taken off, and the father
who took it to be his child gave it raiment suitable to its new condition
of life. "Beloved, now are we the sons of God, and it doth not yet appear
what we shall be." We are not yet arrayed in the apparel which befits the
royal family of heaven; we are wearing in this flesh and blood just what
we wore as the sons of Adam; but we know that "when he shall appear" who
is the "first-born among many brethren," we shall be like him, we shall
see him as he is. Cannot you imagine that a child taken from the lowest
ranks of society, and adopted by a Roman senator, would say to himself, "I
long for the day when I shall be publicly adopted. Then I shall leave off
these plebeian garments, and be robed as becomes my senatorial rank"?
Happy in what he has received, for that very reason he groans to get the
fulness of what is promised him. So it is with us today. We are waiting
till we shall put on our proper garments, and shall be manifested as the
children of God. We are young nobles, and have not yet worn our coronets.
We are young brides, and the marriage day is not yet come, and by the
love our Spouse bears us, we are led to long and sigh for the bridal
morning.
Our very happiness makes us groan after more; our joy, like a swollen
spring, longs to well up like an Iceland geyser, leaping to the skies, and
it heaves and groans within our spirit for want of space and room by which
to manifest itself to men.
C.H.SPURGEON!
The Desperate Desire for Deliverance
Then Saul arose from the ground, and when his eyes were opened he saw no one.
But they led him by the hand and brought him into Damascus. And he was three days
without sight, and neither ate nor drank.
Acts 9:8,9
We must pass through dreadful darkness before we are able to enjoy what it means to live in the light. So Saul had to confront the reality of being without God and without hope before he was ready to have his sins washed away (Acts 22:16).
It is through seasons of hunger that God teaches us to relish the feast He has for us. Moses reminded Israel of this when he reviewed the difficult days of their wilderness wandering: "So He humbled you, allowed you to hunger, and fed you with manna which you did not know nor did your fathers know, that He might make you know that man shall not live by bread alone; but man lives by every word that proceeds from the mouth of the Lord" (Deuteronomy 8:3). Few in Israel, however, learned the lessons that their hunger might have taught them, and we err in just the same way when God withdraws His presence from us and we think no higher thoughts than those of complaint and self-pity.
Darkness is scary. But those who never leave the false light of self-sufficiency doom themselves to a darkness that only grows more dark as eternity stretches on. It is only to those who have learned what reverence means that God says, "The Sun of Righteousness shall arise with healing in His wings" (Malachi 4:2).
A deepened sense of our own sin is not a thing to be regretted, even though it is attended by terrible pain. The gospel means little to so many because so few have passed through any dark night of the soul that would enable them to appreciate the light. So few love God because so few have any depth of gratitude for forgiveness, and this is simply because they have never known what it is like to desperately desire deliverance. Night is, after all, that which should guide us toward the daylight, and for this night -- this awful, blessed night -- we should give humble thanks.
In that happy night, in secret, seen of none, seeing nought myself, without other light or guide save that which in my heart was burning. That light guided me more surely than the noonday sun to the place where He was waiting for me . . .
O, guiding night;
O, night more lovely than the dawn . .
GODBLESS OUR PRESIDENT,LAND AND TROOPS!
5 SOLAS!