All-Sufficient!

Octavius Winslow, "The Christian's Joint Heirship":

It is in the heart of our God to give us the chief and the best.

Had there been a greater, and a better, and a sweeter, and a more satisfying portion than Himself--then that portion would have been ours. But since there is not, nor can be, a greater than Himself--the love, the everlasting, changeless love that He bears to us, constrains Him to give Himself as our God, our Portion, our All.

And have we not experienced Him to be God all-sufficient?

Have we ever found a lack in Him?

Oh no! God is all-sufficient, and no arid wilderness, and no dreary land have we experienced Him to be.

There is in Him. . .
an all-sufficiency of love to comfort us;
an all-sufficiency of strength to uphold us;
an all-sufficiency of power to protect us;
an all-sufficiency of good to satisfy us;
an all-sufficiency of wisdom to guide us;
an all-sufficiency of glory to reward us;
an all-sufficiency of bliss to make us happy here, and happy to all eternity! 

Surpassing Glory

There is an ever fresh, ever full, sweetness in heaven's precious Lamb! Oh, this precious truth! It is gospel wine to my poor soul! We have such a Christ that we little think how far His glories and His matchless love surpass what we have every yet conceived. We do not make half enough of Him-heaven's brightest gem, and richest treasure! Oh, that the precious Comforter may reveal Him more and more-that we may count all other things but filth and dross. 

"The Marvelous Riches of Savoring Christ, the Letters of Ruth Bryan"

 

The Koh-i-noor of God's Regalia Spent For Us

"There is no help for the child of God if his heavenly Father should shut the granary door. If out of the King’s palace there came no portions of meat in due season, we might lay down and die of despair! Who could hold us up but God? Who could guide us but God? Who could keep us from falling into Perdition but God? Who could, from hour to hour, supply our desperate needs but God? Is it not, then, right well for us—abundantly well—that we have had our maintenance from the King’s palace?  

While we turn over this very sweet thought, we may remember that our maintenance from the King’s palace has cost His Majesty dearly. He has not fed us for nothing. We do not know what was the expenditure in gold of King Solomon, every day, to supply all his court with wine and oil, with meal and fine flower, with sheep and fat oxen, harts and roebucks, venison and fatted fowl. But we do know that  Solomon’s cost was nothing at all compared with the vast expense at which we are sustained by the munificence of God! It cost Him His own dear Son at the very first. We should not have begun to live if He had spared His Son and kept Him back from us!  

But the choicest treasure in Heaven, the Koh-i-noor of God’s regalia, He was pleased to spend for our sakes that we might live! And ever since then we have been fed upon Jesus Christ Himself. No other food would be adequate to our necessities. His flesh is meat, indeed! His blood is drink, indeed! This is the most royal dainty conceivable, for a soul to feed upon the Son of God! And yet we have fed upon Him these many years. Let us bless and magnify our bounteous God, whose infinite favor has thus supplied our needs."

Charles Spurgeon

The Exhaustless Ocean of Jesus

 From Solitude Sweetened, by James Meikle.

"From his fullness we have all received one gracious gift after another." (John 1:16)

All plenitude is in Christ, to answer all the needs of His people. In Christ dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily, that out of His fullness I may receive all spiritual blessings!

Have I destroyed myself by sin? I have deliverance from Him who is mighty to save from sin and wrath!

Is my foolish mind darkened? Am I a guilty, polluted, and ruined wretch? Jesus is my wisdom, righteousness, sanctification, and redemption!

Is my life fleeting—and passing away like a shadow? Jesus is the Ancient of days, and endures for evermore!

Are my days short-lived and full of trouble? Jesus is my life, the length of my days, and the joy of my heart!

Am I exposed to contempt? Jesus shall be my crown of glory, and diadem of beauty!

Am I traveling through the wilderness? Jesus is my staff, and on Him I lean all the way!

Am I on my last journey to my long home? Jesus is my leader, and my rewarder!

Am I a sheep? Jesus is my pasture, and my green pasture too!

Am I hungry and thirsty? Jesus is my heavenly manna, and gives me to drink of the water of life!

Am I weary? Jesus is my rest and refreshing!

Am I weak? Jesus is my strength!

Am I oppressed and wronged? Jesus is my judge, and my avenger!

Am I reproached? The reproach of His people, Jesus will wipe away!

Am I a soldier? Jesus is my Captain and shield!

Must I fight in the field of battle? Jesus is my armor in the day of war!

Do I sit in darkness? Jesus is my light!

Do I have doubts? Jesus is my counselor!

Am I ignorant? Jesus is my wisdom!

Am I guilty? Jesus is my justification!

Am I filthy? Jesus is my sanctification!

Am I dead in sin? Jesus is my life, and quickens those who are dead in trespasses and sins!

Am I poor? Jesus is the pearl of great price, and has immeasurable riches!

Am I blind? Jesus, and none but He can open the eyes of one born blind!

Am I naked? Jesus has white clothing to cover the shame of my nakedness!

Am I in the very utmost necessity? Jesus is a very present help in time of trouble!

Am I exposed to the hurricanes of adversity? Jesus is a refuge from the storm; a shelter from the blast; rivers of water in a desert; the shadow of a great rock in a weary land!

Am I afraid of being left alone? Jesus will never leave me, nor forsake me!

Do friends and brethren prove false? Jesus is the friend who sticks closer than a brother!

Am I in danger from diseases and death; or from sin and Satan? My life is hidden with Christ in God! When He shall appear, I shall appear with Him—immortal in my body, and glorious in my soul!

Is my case considered in the court of heaven? There Jesus is my Advocate!

Do I offend the Father? Jesus is my Intercessor!

Do I suffer in my body, and am I grieved in my mind? Jesus bore my infirmities, and carried 

my griefs!

Is my mind disquieted, and my soul debarred from peace? Jesus is my sympathetic High Priest! He was tempted in all points, and knows how to support those who are tempted!

Am I poor in my circumstances? Jesus, the heir of all things! Though He was rich, yet for my sake He became poor, that I through His poverty might be made rich!

Do I suffer in my character? Jesus was numbered with transgressors, called a Samaritan, a glutton, a drunkard, and a devil!

Am I bereaved or alone? Well, Jesus in the fatal night was left alone; all the disciples forsook Him and fled! Jesus, my only friend, can never die!

Must I undergo death and be laid in the grave? Jesus has taken away the sting of death, and robbed the grave of its victory!

Must I rot in the grave? Jesus shall be my resurrection, and raise me to immortality and bliss!

Would I go to God and to glory? Jesus is my way, and must admit me into the palace of the great King, where I shall abide forever!

In summary, Jesus is . . .
  my brother,
  my physician,
  my prophet,
  my priest,
  my king,
  my father,
  my head,
  my husband!

In eternity, when I shall dwell in the land of bliss, in the city of God—Jesus will be the light thereof! And since I am to worship there forever, He will be the temple of all the redeemed!

My needs are many, but His fullness is infinitely more!

The morning dews and fructifying showers water the fields, and refresh the parched furrows. But what are they, compared to the exhaustless ocean of Jesus?

What is all that I enjoy here below, compared to the exuberant fullness of the heavenly bliss? O! then, how shall my soul be replenished—when possessed of this infinite All, through eternity itself!

Christ to the Believer

"Because Christ is perfectly and infinitely holy above all others, I prize Christ above all.
Ordinances are sweet, but Christ is more sweet to my soul.
Saints are precious, but Christ is far more precious.
Heaven is glorious, but Christ is infinitely more glorious.
The first thing that I would ask, if I might have it, is Christ.
And the next thing that I would ask, if I might have it, is more of Christ.
And the last thing that I would ask, if I might have it, is that I might be satiated and filled with the fullness of Christ.
Let the ambitious man take the honours of the world, so that I may but have Christ.
Let the voluptuous man swim in all the pleasures of the world, so that I may have Christ.
And let the covetous man tumble up and down in all the gold and silver of the world, so I may have Christ, and it shall be enough for my soul."
Thomas Brooks, "The Unsearchable Riches of Christ"

One Ray of Christ's Light

The joy, the peace, the comfort, the confidence, the full assurance, the blissful hope which one ray of Christ’s Light gives to the heart of man cannot to be equaled! No, scarcely to be compared with anything else! It is a joy that God only gives us and, thank God, a joy which none can take away!
~Spurgeon

With Jesus!

Spurgeon tells the story of a dying boy, who, when asked why he felt so happy in the thought of going to Heaven answered the following:


“I want to go to Heaven principally because Jesus is there.” “Well,” they said, “but do you always want to be with Jesus, then, and with nobody else?” “Yes,” he said, “I only care to be where Jesus is. “But suppose Jesus were to leave Heaven?” He said, “I would go with Him.” “But suppose Jesus went to Hell, what then?” “Ah,” said the boy, “but there could not be any Hell where Jesus was! I would go with Jesus wherever He might go.” Oh, that we had that kind of spirit and that desire not to be self-seeking, nor world-seeking, nor getting our joy out of common pleasures, nor hunting after comfort where it cannot be found in these low-land joys—but let us seek to be on the wing with our Master, up aloft, dwelling in the land of communion where Jesus lets out His very heart to His people and reveals Himself to them as He does not unto the world! The Lord give to this Church many of those favored men and women, whose communion shall be with the Father, and with His Son, Jesus Christ. Oh, it is the happiest, holiest, safest, richest, most useful kind of life! God grant it to you!

Spurgeon, Following Christ