Morning & Evening Devotional Reading–

 February 1– Evening

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

“Your love to me was wonderful.” 

—2 Samuel 1:26

Come, dear readers, let each one of us speak for himself of the wonderful love, not of Jonathan, but of Jesus. We will not share what we have been told by others, but the things which we have tasted and handled ourselves of Christ’s love.

Your love to me, O Jesus, was wonderful when I was a stranger wandering far from you, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind. Your love restrained me from committing the sin which is unto death and withheld me from self-destruction. Your love held back the ax when Justice said, “Cut it down! Why should it use up the soil?”

Your love drew me into the wilderness, stripped me there, and made me feel the guilt of my sin, and the burden of my iniquity. Your love spoke to me softly when I was disheartened, saying, “Come unto me, and I will give you rest.” Oh, how matchless your love when in a moment you washed my sins away and made my polluted soul, which was crimson with blood since birth and black with the grime of my transgressions, to be white as the driven snow and pure as the finest wool.

How tenderly you entrusted your love to me when you whispered in my ears, “I am yours, and you are mine.” Kind were those accents when you said, “The Father himself loves you.” And sweet the moments when you declared to me “the love of the Spirit.” Never will my soul forget those chambers of fellowship where you unveiled yourself to me. If Moses had his cleft in the rock where he saw the train of your majestic robe– the back parts of his God—so we, too, have had our clefts in the rock where we have seen the full splendor of the Godhead in the person of Jesus Christ.

Precious Lord Jesus, give us a fresh draught of your wondrous love as we begin this month of meditations upon you. [M&E]