Charles Spurgeon On Scripture Reading And Meditation

Charles H. Spurgeon

Quoting Charles H. Spurgeon:

The more you read the Bible, and the more you meditate upon it, the more you will be astonished with it.

He who is but a casual reader of the Bible, does not know the height, the depth, the length and breadth of the mighty meanings contained in its pages.

There are certain times when I discover a new vein of thought, and I put my hand to my head and say in astonishment, “Oh, it is wonderful I never saw this before in the Scriptures.”

You will find the Scriptures enlarge as you enter them; the more you study them the less you will appear to know of them, for they widen out as we approach them.

Especially will you find this the case with the ‘typical’ parts of God’s Word. Most of the historical books were intended to be types either of dispensations, or experiences, or offices of Jesus Christ.

Study the Bible with this as a key: One of the most interesting points of the Scriptures is their constant tendency to display Christ. (Sermon: “Christ Our Passover”)

Robert Winthrop On The Bible Or The Bayonet

Robert Winthrop

Quoting Robert Winthrop (Former Speaker of the US House of Representatives):

Men, in a word, must necessarily be controlled either by a power within them or by a power without them; either by the Word of God or by the strong arm of man; either by the Bible or by the bayonet. (Source: Robert Winthrop, Addresses and Speeches on Various Occasions (Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1852), p. 172 from his “Either by the Bible or the Bayonet.”)

Pray For Your Children’s Welfare

Although praying for our children is clearly a biblical duty it is too frequently neglected. William Scribner reminds us to not only pray for our children’s salvation but to pray also for our children’s welfare because:

1. You may then expect, as a result of your prayers, that the power of God will counteract in some measure the evil you have done them.

Even the best of parents sometimes do their children harm. This may be as a result of undue severity in discipline, partiality or injustice, but equally by misguided tenderness and lack of conscientious in exercising authority. . . .

2. There will be critical periods in their lives when without your incessant prayers, offered with reference to such times, they may be left to act most unwisely if not disastrously. . . .

3. It will lead you to a better understanding of them. Fervent prayer, continuously offered for them, in which their special wants, as far as you know them, are spread before God, will be sure to lead to a greater watchfulness over them. . . .

4. It will increase your holy desires for them. . . .

5. No other means will be so effectual in enabling you to overcome the difficulty you experience in talking with then on religious subjects. . . .

6. You will thereby secure for then God’s aid in the efforts they may make to yield you their obedience. . . .

7. Other parents seeing your example may be led to imitate you. . . .

8. They will often, should they continue in the world, have their times of need when the power of God alone can avail to help them. . . .

In closing, never approach the throne of grace with your own wants without remembering your children’s. Let us resolve that we will give ourselves more intently to the work of interceding for our children. . . . (Based on “An Appeal to Parents to Pray Continually for the Welfare and Salvation of their Children” by William Scribner, 1873)