Perfect example: Spurgeon, enabled to speak to the lowly

I have often said on both blogs that among the reasons I love Spurgeon so is that he is able to speak right to me, where I am. Other pastors, who can't imagine being seriously and well-nigh intractably low or despondent, can make very fine theoreticians, but they aren't so good at applying the balm.

Read Spurgeon's autobiography (or any good biography) and you'll see that a difficult course of conviction led to his conversion, and that his adult years were marked by frightful bouts of depression and despair. It hurt him but, I am convinced, it deepened and broadened his ministry.

It is the principle of 2 Corinthians 1:3-4 —

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, 4 who comforts us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction, with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God.

HSAT, today's devotion from Spurgeon is a perfect example of what I'm talking about. Another pastor might not have had the personal drive to find such comfort in the text as Spurgeon did. You don't need to be in the grips of depression (as, thank God, I'm not) to appreciate the bracing, heartening comfort in this meditation.

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"Behold, what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us, that we should be called the sons of God: therefore the world knoweth us not, because it knew Him not. Beloved, now are we the sons of God."—1 John 3:1,2.

EHOLD, what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us. Consider who we were, and what we feel ourselves to be even now when corruption is powerful in us, and you will wonder at our adoption. Yet we are called "the sons of God." What a high relationship is that of a son, and what privileges it brings! What care and tenderness the son expects from his father, and what love the father feels towards the son! But all that, and more than that, we now have through Christ. As for the temporary drawback of suffering with the elder brother, this we accept as an honour: "Therefore the world knoweth us not, because it knew Him not." We are content to be unknown with Him in His humiliation, for we are to be exalted with Him. "Beloved, now are we the sons of God." That is easy to read, but it is not so easy to feel. How is it with your heart this morning? Are you in the lowest depths of sorrow? Does corruption rise within your spirit, and grace seem like a poor spark trampled under foot? Does your faith almost fail you? Fear not, it is neither your graces nor feelings on which you are to live: you must live simply by faith on Christ. With all these things against us, now—in the very depths of our sorrow, wherever we may be—now, as much in the valley as on the mountain, "Beloved, now are we the sons of God." "Ah, but," you say, "see how I am arrayed! my graces are not bright; my righteousness does not shine with apparent glory." But read the next: "It doth not yet appear what we shall be: but we know that, when He shall appear, we shall be like Him." The Holy Spirit shall purify our minds, and divine power shall refine our bodies, then shall we see Him as He is.