Food for thought     10th March 09


Spurgeon

“My Beloved is mine, and I am his: he feedeth among the lilies. Until the day break, and the shadows flee away, turn, my Beloved, and be thou like a roe or a young hart upon the mountains of Bether.”


- Songs _2:16, Son_2:17


Surely if there be a happy verse in the Bible it is this-”My Beloved is mine, and I am his.” So peaceful, so full of assurance, so overrunning with happiness and contentment is it, that it might well have been written by the same hand which penned the twenty-third Psalm. Yet though the prospect is exceeding fair and lovely-earth cannot show its superior-it is not entirely a sunlit landscape. There is a cloud in the sky which casts a shadow over the scene. Listen, “Until the day break, and the shadows flee away.”
There is a word, too, about the “mountains of Bether,” or, “the mountains of division,” and to our love, anything like division is bitterness. Beloved, this may be your present state of mind; you do not doubt your salvation; you know that Christ is yours, but you are not feasting with him. You understand your vital interest in him, so that you have no shadow of a doubt of your being his, and of his being yours, but still his left hand is not under your head, nor doth his right hand embrace you. A shade of sadness is cast over your heart, perhaps by affliction, certainly by the temporary absence of your Lord, so even while exclaiming, “I am his,” you are forced to take to your knees, and to pray, “Until the day break, and the shadows flee away, turn, my Beloved.”

 

 

Love - The greatest gift of all

1 Corinthians 13: 1-13

1 If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal.

I used to think that all you had to do was listen to God's voice, believe it and act upon it. I would have said that if everyone in the world did this we would be in a state of perfection. I'm learning a big hard lesson.... without love we are nothing. Love is the ingredient we have to add to all our recipes. Nothing tastes right without it.

Love never fails

No matter what we are doing if we add love to it we will always succeed. Faith cannot stand without love. If we have come out of love, no matter how noble our cause, we have come out of God, for He cannot be separated from love, and we will not succeed in our efforts. But If we stay in love we will never fail.

1John 4:16, God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in him. In this way, love is made complete among us so that we will have confidence on the day of judgment, because in this world we are like him.

 

email: shirleyhowitt@houseofbread.net