March 8th Morning

0:00You are listening to Morning and Evening, a daily devotional work by Reverend Charles Spurgeon. This reading is brought to you by the Spurgeon Study Bible, available in the original King James Version, or the Christian Standard Bible, at SpurgeonStudyBible.com. Good morning, today is March the 8th. We must through much tribulation enter into the Kingdom of God, Acts 14, verse 22. God's people have their trials. It was never designed by God when He chose His people that they should be an untried people. They were chosen in the furnace of affliction.

1:00They were never chosen to worldly peace and earthly joy. Freedom from sickness and the pains of mortality was never promised Him. But when their Lord drew up the charter of privileges, He included chastisements amongst the things to which they should inevitably be airs. Trials were a part of our lot. They were predestined for us in Christ's lost legacy. So surely as the stars are fashioned by His hands, and their orbits fixed by Him, so surely are our trials allotted to us. He has ordained their season and their place, their intensity, and the effect they shall have upon us. Good men must never expect to escape troubles. If they do, they will be disappointed for none of their predecessors have been without them. Not the patience of Job, remember Abraham, for he had his trials, and by his faith under them he became the father of the faithful.

2:04Note well the biographies of the patriarchs, prophets, apostles, and martyrs. Had you shall discover none of those whom God made vessels of mercy, who were not made to pass through the fire of affliction. It is ordained of old that the cross of trouble should be engraved on every vessel of mercy, as the royal mark whereby the king's vessels of honor are distinguished. But although tribulation is thus the path of God's children, they have the comfort of knowing that their master has traversed it before them. They have His presence and sympathy to cheer them. May grace to support them and its example to teach them how to endure, and when they reach the kingdom it will more than make amends for the much tribulation through which they passed to enter it. May grace and peace be multiplied to you in the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord.

3:10May He extend His favour upon you today, and make your path straight.