The past week and half, I have been doing the 30 Day Praise Challenge as part of my devotion time. Each day, I read five Psalms and I choose a characteristic of God that I want to praise Him for that day.
Just now, I was finishing up today's Psalms and I came upon this verse...
"I shall yet praise Him, who is the health of my countenance and my God."
That was today's characteristic! He is the health of my countenance. I really loved this and Googled some more thoughts on it and up popped a
sermon from Spurgeon from March 25, 1875.
Wow. I want to share some gems from this sermon regarding health of my countenance...
God’s Countenance is our help, and He, Himself is the health of our countenance!
It may not please God to lessen the burden, but it comes to the same thing if He strengthens the back.
Give a man health in his countenance, and he laughs at that which would have crushed him had he been in another mood!
Everything depends upon the man’s personal condition! Our happiness depends more upon our own personal condition than upon our surroundings.
God is our health! But again, God is the health of our countenance because our relation to Him is the test of our health.
Alas, that our relation to man should seem to be so much more important than our connection with God!
To set man before God is unrighteous and shows the essential injustice of unrenewed hearts, for
when their hearts are set right, men feel that they would sooner a thousand times offend their fellow men than once offend their God; so that you may judge of your spiritual health by your relation to God! Do you love Him? Do you trust Him? Do you speak with Him? Do you pray to Him? Is He your Friend? Is He your delight? Is His Will your will? Do you take pleasure in that which pleases Him? Does your life run parallel with the life of God? It is well with you if things are so—it is on the way to being well with you if you desire to have them so! But if, on the contrary, God’s Will draws one way, and you the other, the Lord cannot be wrong, and you are clearly proven to be in an ill case. The Lord is Holy. “Holy, holy, holy,” say the angels, and if you are not like He is, you are unholy—that is you are not whole, you are not spiritually in health—your very nature is diseased. God is our health, then, because our relation to Him is the test of it.
The text intends to teach us that
God must be to each one of us the Restorer of our spiritual health.
Spiritual health is produced by God's coming to us, for the medicine for a sick soul is not something out of God, but God himself!
But I must pass on to the third matter, namely, that THIS HEALTH HAS VISIBLE SIGNS. “He
is the health of my countenance.” The health of a man is mainly judged of by his face. Truly, you can tell something of it by his gait, and every limb of the body, more or less, evidences his condition—but the countenance is the window of the soul—the mirror which reflects the nature. True sanity towards God, or at any rate, the beginning of it in the work of Grace, can be seen! It is not a close secret hidden from observation—it displays itself!
The Lord gives outward evidences of His inward work!
Let me tell you, though, I am afraid some Christians do not prove it, that the Lord Jesus smoothes
the wrinkles of care from the foreheads of His patients. When Christians are under the influence of Divine Grace, they know no care; they cast their care on Him who cares for them! They do the little they can do, and leave the rest with their Lord, and all goes well, and their life is peace.
If Christ has cured you, why do you conceal His work?
If God begins to heal you, He will never give up the work till He has achieved it.
Wow. This sermon and thought is exactly what I have been needing.
I hope in some way - it will be a blessing and a help to you too. (You can read the entire sermon on the link below.)
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