Morning & Evening Devotional Reading–

November 4– Morning

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

“My strength is made perfect in weakness.” 

—2 Corinthians 12:9

One of the first qualifications for serving God with any amount of success and for doing God’s work well and triumphantly is a sense of our own weakness. When God’s warrior marches into battle strong in his own might– when he says to himself, “I know that I will conquer; my strength and my weapons will secure the victory”— then defeat is just around the corner. God won’t fight with the man who marches in his own strength. The one who counts on the victory has counted on the wrong thing, for “it is not by might, nor by power, but by my Spirit, says the Lord of heaven’s army.”

Those who serve God must serve him in his own way and in his strength or he will never accept their service. Whatever man does unaided by divine strength God can never own. He treats the mere fruits of earth like piles of garbage. He will only reap the crop whose seed was sown from heaven, watered by grace, and ripened by the sun of divine love. God will empty you of all you have before he’ll put himself into you; he’ll first clean out your granaries before he’ll fill them with the finest wheat.

The river of God is full of water, but not one drop of it flows from earthly springs. God will have no strength used in his battles except the strength he himself gives. Are you mourning over your own weakness today? Take courage, for there must be a consciousness of weakness before the Lord will give you victory. Your emptiness is but the preparation for your being filled, and your casting down is but the preparation for your lifting up. [M&E]