Month: November 2023

Reading 163.  New Spirit Filled Life Daily Bible (NKJV) (ODH)

What others think of us?

Proverbs 18:17

“The first in his cause seems just, but his neighbor comes and searches him.”

“His neighbor cometh and searcheth him out.”

It is easy to boast of what we are or are not, but the real question is as to what others think of us?

Would that credit us with the highest attainments in Christian living? Would they concede the reality and beauty of our characters?

After all, might not we be mistaking our ideals for our attainments, and judging ourselves by a lower standard than we apply to others?

Might not our wives and sisters, our husbands and brothers search us?

It is so much easier to plead our own cause in a meeting than to stand clear in the searching scrutiny of the home.

And if our neighbors search us, what does God think of us as the fierce light of His eyes scans us and reads our deepest secrets?

What should we do… were it’s not for the blood of Christ?

I used to hesitate once to call myself a miserable sinner, but as I know myself better, I begin to feel that it is a reasonable designation.

That is what we are by nature, though we have been made by divine grace, children, heirs, joint heirs with Christ.

Job, the righteous man confessed himself vile when God’s light revealed him.

F.B. Meyer, Our Daily Homily.

Reading 161. New Spirit Filled Life Daily Bible (NKJV)

(SOCS)

2 Kings 8 verses 12, 13

Our ignorance of the depravity of our own hearts is a startling fact.
Hazael did not believe that he was bad enough to do any of the things here anticipated.
“Is thy servant a dog that he should do this great thing.”
He might have been conscious enough that his heart was none so pure, but it might consent to do many an evil thing, yet crimes so flagrant as those the prophet had foretold of him, he thought himself quite incapable to commit…
Ah, my brethren, the ignorance of Hazael is ours to a greater or less degree.
In our natural state we are oblivious of the depravity of our own hearts…
Ay, but, my brethren, we were, to a great degree, cured of this our ignorance when the Spirit of God brought us under conviction…
Much of our ignorance was taken away; but alas! how much remained!…
None of us know, after all, much of the baseness of our hearts…
The depravity of our nature forbids… a venturing or presuming to play and toy with temptations…
He who carries gunpowder about him had better not stand where there are many sparks…
I implore thee, therefore, as thou wouldst honor thy God, and thou wouldst stand in brightness, go not I beseech thee where the temptation to sin is glaring, and flatter thyself that thou will come out guileless…
God grant that we may not… be as Hazael, the perpetrators of crimes of which we never suspected ourselves capable.

Charles H. Spurgeon, Sermons of Rev. C.H. Spurgeon

1993 by Thomas Nelson, Inc