Charles Spurgeon - Morning - October 24

"The trees of the Lord are full of sap."

Psalm 104:16

Without sap the tree cannot flourish or even exist. Vitality is essential to a Christian. There must be life--a vital principle infused into us by God the Holy Ghost, or we cannot be trees of the Lord. The mere name of being a Christian is but a dead thing, we must be filled with the spirit of divine life. This life is mysterious. We do not understand the circulation of the sap, by what force it rises, and by what power it descends again. So the life within us is a sacred mystery. Regeneration is wrought by the Holy Ghost entering into man and becoming man's life; and this divine life in a believer afterwards feeds upon the flesh and blood of Christ and is thus sustained by divine food, but whence it cometh and whither it goeth who shall explain to us? What a secret thing the sap is! The roots go searching through the soil with their little spongioles, but we cannot see them suck out the various gases, or transmute the mineral into the vegetable; this work is done down in the dark. Our root is Christ Jesus, and our life is hid in him; this is the secret of the Lord. The radix of the Christian life is as secret as the life itself. How permanently active is the sap in the cedar! In the Christian the divine life is always full of energy--not always in fruit- bearing, but in inward operations. The believer's graces are not every one of them in constant motion, but his life never ceases to palpitate within. He is not always working for God, but his heart is always living upon him. As the sap manifests itself in producing the foliage and fruit of the tree, so with a truly healthy Christian, his grace is externally manifested in his walk and conversation. If you talk with him, he cannot help speaking about Jesus. If you notice his actions you will see that he has been with Jesus. He has so much sap within, that it must fill his conduct and conversation with life.

Their End Is God

THIS world of ours is a happy world, so that God is our end, so that we can say to Him, "Thou art my God." Then everything takes new hues of joy and love. Our daily comforts have a soul in them, for they abound in thanksgiving; our daily infirmities or crosses have a special joy in them, because they are so tenderly fitted to us by the medicinal hand of our God; the commonest acts of life are full of deep interest, because their end is God; daily duties are daily joys, because they are something which God gives us to offer unto Him, to do our very best in acknowledgement of His love. It is His earth we walk on; His air, we breathe; His sun, the emblem of his all-penetrating love, which gladdens us. Eternity! Yes, that to is present to us, and is part of our joy on earth. God has given us faith to make our future home as certain to us, as this our spot of earth; and hope, to aspire strongly to it; and love, as a foretaste of the all-surrounding, ever-unfolding, Almighty love of our own God.

E.B. Pusey