Spurgeon: June AM
* 06/12/AM
"Thou art weighed in the balances and art found wanting."
--Daniel 5:27
It is well frequently to weigh ourselves in the scale of
God's Word. You will find it a holy exercise to read some psalm
of David, and, as you meditate upon each verse, to ask yourself,
"Can I say this? Have I felt as David felt? Has my heart ever
been broken on account of sin, as his was when he penned his
penitential psalms? Has my soul been full of true confidence in
the hour of difficulty as his was when he sang of God's mercies
in the cave of Adullam, or in the holds of Engedi? Do I take the
cup of salvation and call upon the name of the Lord?" Then turn
to the life of Christ, and as you read, ask yourselves how far
you are conformed to His likeness. Endeavour to discover whether
you have the meekness, the humility, the lovely spirit which He
constantly inculcated and displayed. Take, then, the epistles,
and see whether you can go with the apostle in what he said of
his experience. Have you ever cried out as he did--"O wretched
man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this
death"? Have you ever felt his self-abasement? Have you seemed
to yourself the chief of sinners, and less than the least of all
saints? Have you known anything of his devotion? Could you join
with him and say, "For me to live is Christ, and to die is
gain"? If we thus read God's Word as a test of our spiritual
condition, we shall have good reason to stop many a time and
say, "Lord, I feel I have never yet been here, O bring me here!
give me true penitence, such as this I read of. Give me real
faith; give me warmer zeal; inflame me with more fervent love;
grant me the grace of meekness; make me more like Jesus. Let me
no longer be 'found wanting,' when weighed in the balances of
the sanctuary, lest I be found wanting in the scales of
judgment." "Judge yourselves that ye be not judged."