Spurgeon: July PM
* 07/02/PM
"Unto Thee will I cry, O Lord my rock; be not silent to me: lest, if Thou be silent to me, I become like them that go down
into the pit."
--Psalm 28:1
A cry is the natural expression of sorrow, and a suitable
utterance when all other modes of appeal fail us; but the cry
must be alone directed to the Lord, for to cry to man is to
waste our entreaties upon the air. When we consider the
readiness of the Lord to hear, and His ability to aid, we shall
see good reason for directing all our appeals at once to the God
of our salvation. It will be in vain to call to the rocks in the
day of judgment, but our Rock attends to our cries.
" Be not silent to me ." Mere formalists may be content
without answers to their prayers, but genuine suppliants 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; and
those replies they long to receive at once, 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 full of awe
to an eager suppliant. When God seems to close His ear, we must
not therefore close our mouths, but rather cry with more
earnestness; for when our note grows shrill with eagerness and
grief, He will not long deny us a hearing. What a dreadful case
should we be in if the Lord should become for ever silent to our
prayers? " Lest, if Thou be silent to me, I become like them
that go down into the pit ." Deprived of the God who answers
prayer, we should be in a more pitiable plight than the dead in
the grave, and should 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.