God's Spurgeons

Today I was listening to this song by Kenny Rogers and a sense of sorrowful joy came over me. Not an oxymoron again!

"All my life was a paper, once plain pure and white.
Till you move with your pen, changing moods now and then, till the balance was right.
Then you added some music, every note was in place.
And anybody could see all the changes in me by the look on my face.

And you decorated my life, created a world, where dreams are apart.
And you decorated my life, by painting your love all over my heart.
You decorated my life".

Immediately, the lyrics brought to mind what my two daughters have been doing in my life. They filled the so many blanks in my life with so much of their laughters. Their tiny voices of concern and "bear hugs" never failed to melt my ailing heart. They have so captured my heart.  And my love for them sometimes so overwhelmed me that I can almost hear my heart breaking.

This is what I meant by sorrowful joy.

Then came the thought of God's love.

If I can love my girls like that, He loves Jesus much more. Imagine I have to send my girls to die, oh how that would shatter my heart to pieces and crush it to powder! And yet God sent Jesus to die. It is like a loving spouse saying the following to the better half:





For whom? For me who did not even give a damn about Him!

"What is man that you are mindful of him, the son of man that you care for him? [Psalms 8:4]


And yes.  It does sound like a cliche. But when it sinks in.......man...it really sinks in!

At this point, I really don't want to know how much God really loves me. Because I don't think my heart can ever take in all that kind of love.

They say hymns are to create a sense of His love in us that we may genuinely worship Him. For the many times that I have not been moved by the hymns, this song had done it for me.

Father, I just wanna say.......Thank You.

Torrey was one of America's best-known evangelists and Bible teachers. He was educated at Yale and also at various German universities. During his early years he went through a time of extreme skepticism, but emerged as a staunch preacher of the faith.

In 1889, while in the pastorate, D. L. Moody invited him to become become the superintendent of his new school in Chicago (now the Moody Bible Institute.) He also served as pastor to the Chicago Avenue Church, now the Moody Church. He and Charles Alexander conducted evangelistic meetings together in many parts of the world. From the years 1912-19 R A Torrey served as dean of the Bible Institute of Los Angeles. He also served from 1914 as pastor of the Church of the Open Door. From 1924 to his death, he ministered in conferences and taught at the Moody Bible Institute
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Charles Haddon Spurgeon (1834-92) was England's best-known preacher for most of the second half of the nineteenth century. In 1854, just four years after his conversion, Spurgeon, then only 20, became pastor of London's famed New Park Street Church (formerly pastored by the famous Baptist theologian John Gill). The congregation quickly outgrew their building, moved to Exeter Hall, then to Surrey Music Hall. In these venues Spurgeon frequently preached to audiences numbering more than 10,000—all in the days before electronic amplification. In 1861 the congregation moved permanently to the new Metropolitan Tabernacle.