December 23 Daily Devotional

Bible Reading

Luke 14:7–14

Devotional

When the life of grace first begins in the soul, we do indeed draw near to God, but it’s with great fear and trembling. Our soul—conscious of guilt and therefore humbled—is overawed with the seriousness of its position. It is cast to the earth by a sense of the grandeur of Jehovah, in whose presence it stands. With unfeigned modesty it takes the lowest room.

But later, as we grow in grace—even though we will never forget the seriousness of our position and will never lose that holy awe which must encompass a gracious person who is in the presence of the God who can create or can destroy—yet our fear has all its terror taken out of it. It becomes a holy reverence and no longer an overshadowing dread. God calls us up higher, to greater access to him in Christ Jesus.

Then, walking amid the splendours of Deity and veiling our face like the glorious cherubim—with those twin wings, the blood and righteousness of Jesus Christ—we, reverent and bowed in spirit, will approach the throne. And seeing there a God of love, of goodness, and of mercy, we will realize the covenant character of God more than his absolute Deity. We will see in God more of his goodness than his greatness and more of his love than of his majesty. Then, bowing still as humbly as before, we will enjoy a more sacred liberty of intercession. For, while prostrate before the glory of the Infinite God, we will be sustained by the refreshing consciousness of being in the presence of boundless mercy and infinite love, and by the realization of acceptance “in the Beloved” (Eph. 1:6).

Thus God bids believers to come up higher, and enables them to exercise the privilege of rejoicing in God and drawing near to him in holy confidence, saying, “Abba, Father!”

“So may we go from strength to strength,
and daily grow in grace,
till in thine image raised at length,
we see thee face to face.”

[Dec 23]

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