October 16, Evening

C. H. Spurgeon · Modern retelling

"With Thee is the fountain of life." — Psalm 36:9 · KJV

There are times in our spiritual experience when human counsel or sympathy, or even religious ordinances, fail to comfort or help us. Why does our gracious God permit this? Perhaps because we have been living too much without Him, and so He takes away everything we have been used to depending on, in order to drive us to Himself. It is a blessed thing to live at the fountainhead. While our waterskins are full, we are content, like Hagar and Ishmael, to go into the wilderness; but when they are dry, nothing will satisfy us but "Thou God seest me." We are like the prodigal — we love the swine troughs and forget our Father's house. Remember, we can make swine troughs and husks even out of the forms of religion; they are blessed things, but we may put them in God's place, and then they are worth nothing. Anything becomes an idol when it keeps us from God; even the bronze serpent is to be despised as "Nehushtan" — a mere piece of bronze — if we worship it instead of God. The prodigal was never safer than when he was driven to his father's bosom, because he could find sustenance nowhere else. Our Lord favors us with a famine in the land, that it may make us seek Him the more. The best position for a Christian is to live wholly and directly on God's grace — still abiding where he stood at first, "having nothing, and yet possessing all things." Let us never for a moment think that our standing is in our sanctification, our mortification, our graces, or our feelings, but know that because Christ offered a full atonement, therefore we are saved; for we are complete in Him. Having nothing of our own to trust to, we rest on the merits of Jesus — His passion and holy life are our only sure ground of confidence. Beloved, when we are brought to a thirsting condition, we are sure to turn to the fountain of life with eagerness.