Morning, June 12

Charles Spurgeon · Morning and Evening: Daily Readings

"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."