December 13 Daily Devotional

Bible Reading

2 Peter 1:1–8

Devotional

If you would know first-hand the preciousness of God’s promises and enjoy them in your own heart, then meditate on them a great deal. Some promises are like grapes in the wine-press; if you will tread them, then the juice will flow. Thinking over the sacred words will often be the prelude to their fulfilment. While you are still musing on them, the benefit that you are seeking will imperceptibly come to you. Many a Christian who has thirsted for the promise has found the favour that it guaranteed gently seeping into his soul even while he has been considering the divine record. He has rejoiced that he was ever led to lay the promise near his heart.

But besides meditating on the promises, seek in your soul to receive them as being the very Words of the living and true God himself. Speak to your soul like this:

• “If I were dealing with a human promise, I’d carefully consider the ability and the character of the one who had promised me. So with the promise of God. I must not focus so much on the greatness of the mercy promised—that may stagger me—as on the greatness of the Promiser—that will cheer me.
• “My soul, it is God who speaks to you, even your God, the God who cannot lie. This promise of his that you are mulling over is just as true as his own existence.
• “He is an unchangeable God. He has not changed the promise that he has uttered with his own mouth. He has not revoked one single comforting sentence.
• “Nor does he lack any ability to keep his promise—it is the God who made the heavens and the earth who has spoken in this way.
• “Nor can he fail in wisdom as to the time when he will bestow the favours he has promised, for he knows when it is best to give and when it is better to withhold.
• “Therefore, seeing that this promise is the Word of a God so true, so unchangeable, so powerful, so wise, I will and must believe the promise.”

If in this way we will both meditate upon the promises and consider the Promiser, then we will both experience their sweetness and obtain their fulfilment.

[July 27]

Extracted from C. H. Spurgeon, Morning and Evening (public domain), language modernized by Larry E. Wilson.