Morning & Evening Devotional Reading–

 February 16– Evening

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

“[God’s] good Spirit.” 

—Nehemiah 9:20

Nehemiah refers to God’s good Spirit as the one who led God’s people in the wilderness. It is all too common for us to forget the Holy Spirit. This is foolish and ungrateful. He deserves to be treated well because he is supremely good. As God, he is good in his very being. He shares in the threefold ascription of Holy, holy, holy, which ascends to the Triune Jehovah. Unmixed purity, truth, and grace is he.

He is good in his benevolence, tenderly bearing with our waywardness, striving with our rebellious wills, making us alive from our death in sin, and then training us for the skies as a loving mother nurses her child.

He is good in the way he operates. He suggests good thoughts, prompts good actions, reveals good truths, applies good promises, assists in good attainments, and leads to good results. There is no spiritual good in all the world of which he is not the author and sustainer, and heaven itself will owe the perfect character of its redeemed inhabitants to His work.

He is good in the offices and roles he fills; whether as Comforter, Instructor, Guide, Sanctifier, Resurrector, or Intercessor, he fulfills his offices well, and each work is filled with the highest good to the church of God. Those who yield to his influences become good, those who obey his impulses do good, and those who live under his power receive good.

So, let us act toward so good a person with humility and gratitude. Let us revere his person, and adore him as God over all, blessed forever. Let us own his power and our need of him by waiting upon him in all our holy enterprises. Let us hourly seek his aid and never grieve him. And let us speak to his praise whenever we have the opportunity. The church will never prosper until it more reverently believes in the Holy Spirit. [M&E]