Morning & Evening Devotional Reading– July 2– Evening

by Charles H. Spurgeon, Revised and Edited by William C. Neff

“Unto You will I cry, O Lord my rock; don’t be silent, or I will die.”

—Psalm 28:1

A cry is the natural expression of sorrow and a suitable utterance when all other modes of appeal fail us; but our cry must be directed to the Lord, for to cry to man is to waste our appeals upon the air. When we consider the readiness of the Lord to hear, and His ability to come to our aid, we ought to see good reason for directing all our appeals at once to the God of our salvation. In the day of judgment, calling out to the rocks will be an empty pursuit, but our Rock will attend to our cries.

“Lord, don’t be silent to me.” Those who have merely a form of religion may be content without answers to their prayers, but genuine beggars cannot. They are not satisfied with the results of prayer itself in calming the mind and subduing the will–they must go further and obtain actual replies from heaven or they cannot rest. They must receive answers immediately. They dread even a little of God’s silence. God’s voice is often so terrible that it shakes the wilderness; but his silence is equally awful to an eager beggar. So, when God seems to close his ear, we must not close our mouths; instead, we should cry more earnestly, for when our note grows shrill with eagerness and grief, His answer is not far away.

What a dreadful we would be if the Lord ever became silent to our prayers? We would become like those that die and go to the grave. Deprived of the God who answers prayer, we would be in a more pitiable situation than the dead, and we would soon sink to the same level as the lost in hell. We must have answers to prayer: ours is an urgent case of dire necessity. Surely the Lord will speak peace to our agitated minds, for he never can find it in his heart to permit his own elect to perish. .” [M&E]