Morning & Evening Devotional Reading–

April 11– Evening

by C. H. Spurgeon, revised and edited by W. C. Neff

“[Lord,] look upon my affliction and pain, and forgive all my sins.” 

—Psalm 25:18

It is good for us when prayers about our sorrows are linked with pleas concerning our sins— when, being under God’s hand, we are not wholly taken up with our pain but remember our offences against God. It is good also to take both sorrow and sin to the same place. It was to God that David carried his sorrow. It was to God that David confessed his sin.

Let’s learn from this and take our sorrows to God. You can take your little sorrows to him because he numbers the very hairs of your head. And you can take your great sorrows to him because he holds the ocean in the hollow of his hand. Go to him, whatever your present trouble may be, and you will find him able and willing to relieve you. But we must take our sins to God, too. We must carry them to the cross so that the blood may fall upon them to cut away their guilt and destroy its defiling power.

The special lesson of the text is that we are to go to the Lord with sorrows and with sins in the right spirit. Note that all David asks concerning his sorrow is for the Lord to “Look upon [his] affliction and pain,” but the next petition is vastly more expressive, definite, decided, and plain. He says, “Forgive all my sins.” Many sufferers would have prayed, “Lord, remove my affliction and pain, and look at my sins.” But David prays, “Lord, as for my affliction and my pain, I will not tell you what to do in your wisdom; so, look at them, I will leave them to you. But as for my sins, Lord, I must have them forgiven; I cannot endure to lie under their curse for even a moment.”

A Christian counts sorrow lighter in the scale than sin. He can bear that his troubles should continue, but he cannot bear the burden of his transgressions. [M&E]