Morning & Evening Devotional Reading–

September 12– Morning

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

“God is jealous.” 

—Nahum 1:2

If you are a Christian, then your Lord is very jealous of your love. Did he choose you? Then he can’t bear that you should choose another. Did he buy you with his own blood? Then he can’t endure that you should think you belong to yourself or that you belong to this world.

He is very jealous of your trust. He will not permit you to trust in human ability. He can’t bear that you should construct broken cisterns for yourself when his overflowing fountain is always free to you. When we lean upon him, he is glad, but when we transfer our dependence to another– worst of all, when we trust in any works of our own, he is displeased and will discipline us to bring us to himself.

He is also very jealous of our company. There should be no one with whom we talk more than Jesus. To remain with him only, this is true love; but to commune with the world, to find sufficient solace in our carnal comforts, to prefer even spending time with our fellow Christians than with him, this grieves our jealous Lord. He calls us to enjoy constant fellowship with him. Indeed, many of the trials he sends us are for the purpose of weaning our hearts from the creature and fixing them more closely upon himself.

Let this jealousy that ought to keep us near to Christ be a comfort to us, for if he loves us this much we can be sure that he won’t allow anything to harm us. Oh that we may have grace today to keep our hearts in sacred chastity for our Beloved Lord alone. [M&E]