Be Watchful!

Be Watchful!

Pastor Charles Haddon Spurgeon (1834-1892)

“Blessed is he that watches [remains alert]...” - Revelation 16:15b

"We are hard-pressed on every side, yet not crushed;

we are perplexed, but not in despair;

persecuted, but not forsaken;

struck down, but not destroyed—

always carrying about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus,

that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our body."

2 Corinthians 4:8-10

Note: We, too, may be "hard-pressed" in the years ahead. The world is changing fast, and Christianity is increasingly mocked, banned, and despised. History reminds us that persecution comes and goes; and now, after a long season of peace and freedom, we may again face hatred and cruelty.
But those who belong to Jesus have a place of peace and refuge. He is our hiding place, our strength and our joy. How blessed we are to belong to Him at such a time as now!

“We die daily,” said the apostle.

This was the life of the early Christians; they went everywhere with their lives in their hands. [Most of us are not yet] called to pass through the same fearful persecutions. But if we were, the Lord would give us grace to bear the test. The tests of Christian life, at the present moment, though outwardly not so terrible, are yet more likely to overcome us than even those of the fiery age.

We have to bear the sneer of the world - [but] that is little! Its soft words, its oily speeches, its fawning, and its hypocrisy are far worse. Our danger is lest we grow rich and become proud, lest we give ourselves up to the fashions of this present evil world, and lose our faith. Or if wealth be not the trial, worldly care is quite as mischievous. If we cannot be torn in pieces by the roaring lion, we may be hugged to death by the bear. The devil little cares which it is, so long as he destroys our love for Christ, and our confidence in him.

I fear that the Christian church is far more likely to lose her integrity in soft and silken days than in those rougher times. We must be awake now, for we... are most likely to fall asleep to our own undoing, unless our faith in Jesus be a reality, and our love to Jesus a vehement flame.

Many in these days of easy profession are likely to prove tares, and not wheat; hypocrites with fair masks on their faces, but not the true-born children of the living God. Christian, do not think that these are times in which you can dispense with watchfulness or with holy ardor; you need these things more than ever, and may God the eternal Spirit display his omnipotence in you, that you may be able to say, in all these softer things, as well as in the rougher,

“We are more than conquerors through him that loved us."

Source: Morning and Evening by Charles Haddon Spurgeon

"I also count all things loss for the excellence of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord.... that I may know Him and the power of His resurrection, and the fellowship of His sufferings..." Philippians 3:8, 10