Saturday, November 28, 2009

SPURGEON’S PRACTICAL WISDOM - On More Spending

I suppose we all find the money goes quite fast enough, but after all is was made to circulate, and there’s no use in hoarding it. It is bad to see our money become a runaway servant, and leave us, but it would be worse to have it stop with us and become our master. We should try, as our minister says, ‘to find the golden mean’, and neither be lavish nor stingy. He has his money best spent who has the best wife. The husband may earn money, but only the wife can save it. “A wise women buildeth her house, but the foolish plucketh it down with here hands’. The wife it seems, according to Solomon, is the builder or the real puller downer. A man cannot prosper till he gets his wife’s leave. A thrifty housewife is better than a great income. A good wife and health are a man’s best wealth. Bless their hearts, what should we do without them? It is said they like to have their own way, but then the proverb says, a wife ought to have her will during life, because she cannot make one when she dies. The weather is so melting that I cannot keep up this talk any longer, and therefore I shall close with an old-fashioned rhyme-


Heaven bless the wives, they fill our hives-

With little bees and honey!

They soothe life’s shocks, they mend our socks-

But don’t they spend the money!



posted by Delores D.




Monday, November 23, 2009

SPURGEON’S PRACTICAL WISDOM On Spending

As soon as the spendthrift gets his estate it goes like a lump of butter in a greyhound’s mouth. All his days are the first of April; he would buy an elephant at a bargain, or thatch his house with pancakes, nothing is too foolish to tickle his fancy; his money burns holes in his pocket, and he must squander it, all the while boasting that his motto is, ‘Spend, and God will send.’ He will not stay till he has his sheep before he shears them; he forestalls his income, draws upon his capital, and so kills the goose which lays the golden eggs, and cries out, ‘Who would have thought it?’ He never spares at the brim, but he means, he says to save at the bottom. He borrows at high interest of Rob’em, Cheat’em, and Sell’em-up, and when gets cleaned out, he lays it all upon lawyers or else on the bad times.



posted by Delores D.


Friday, November 13, 2009

More MLJ


Regarding trials in the Christian life:

Wherein ye greatly rejoice, though now for a season, if need be, ye are in heaviness through manifold temptations: that the trial of your faith, being much more precious than of gold that perisheth, though it be tried with fire, might be found unto praise and honour and glory at the appearing of Jesus Christ.
1 Peter 1:6,7



There is a superficial view of Christianity which would regard (trials and temptations) as quite impossible, the kind of view of the Christian life which simply says that all the problems have gone and now 'I am happy all the day'. Such people cannot accept Peter's description for a moment and would say of any Christian who is 'in heaviness' that it is doubtful whether he is a Christian at all. There is that teaching concerning the Christian life which gives the impression that once one has arrived at a decision, or once one has been converted, there are no more troubles, no ripples on the sea of life. Everything is perfect and there are no problems whatsoever. Now the simple answer to that view is that it is not New Testament Christianity. That is the kind of thing which the cults have always offered and which modern psychology is also offering.

...we must look at the Christian life in this way. We are walking through this world under the eye of our heavenly Father. That is the fundamental thing, the Christian must think of himself as in a peculiar relationship to God. This is not true of anyone who is not a Christian. There is a very definite plan and purpose for the whole of my life, God has looked upon me, God has adopted me and put me into His family. What for? In order that He may bring me to perfection. That is His objective - 'that you may be made (more and more) conformable to the image of His dear Son'. That is what He is doing. The Lord Jesus Christ is bringing many sons unto God, saying: 'Behold I and the children that Thou hast given me'. If we do not start with that fundamental conception of ourselves as Christians, we are bound to go astray, and we are certain to misunderstand these things.

The doctrine of the Scriptures is, at the very lowest, that God permits these things to happen to us. I go further, God at times orders these things to happen to us for our good. He may do it sometimes in order to chastise us. He chastises us for our slackness and for our failure. We were looking in the previous chapter at the failure of the Christian to discipline himself. Peter exhorts the Christians to discipline themselves, to add to their faith, to furnish out their faith, not merely to be content with a bare minimum but to let it be a full-orbed faith. We may not pay heed to that exhortation, we may persist in our slackness and in our indolence. Well, as I understand the New Testament doctrine, if we do that we must not be surprised if things begin to happen to us. We must not be surprised if God begins to chastise us. The argument in Hebrews 12 is as strong as this: 'Whom the Lord loveth He chasteneth'. If you have not known chastisement I doubt whether you have ever been a Christian. If you can say that since you have believed you have never had any trouble at all, your experience is probably psychological and not spiritual. There is a realism about Christianity, as I said at the beginning and it goes so far as to teach that God, for our good, will chastise us if we pay no heed to the exhortations and the appeals of the Scripture. God has other methods also. He does not do these things to those who are outside the family, but if they are His children He will chastise them for their own good. So we may be experiencing manifold trials as part of our chastisement. I am not saying it is inevitable, I say it may be so.


From the book "Spiritual Depression, Its Causes and Cure" by Martin Lloyd-Jones. Published in Great Britain by Pickering Publishers, 1965 (pgs. 219-220 and 224-225).
posted by john d.