You will never glory in God till first of all God has killed your glorying in yourself.
Interpretation
True humility comes from understanding that personal pride must be surrendered to appreciate divine greatness.
This quote by Charles Spurgeon emphasizes the necessity of relinquishing personal pride and self-importance to truly experience and appreciate the glory of God. It suggests that only when one is free from self-glorification can they fully embrace and honor the divine, highlighting the contrast between human pride and spiritual humility.
In practice
During a sermon, a pastor quoted this to encourage the congregation to seek humility in their faith.
Amusement should be used to do us good “like a medicine”: it must never be used as the food of the man...Many have had all holy thoughts and gracious resolutions stamped out by perpetual trifling. Pleasure so called is the murderer of thought. This is the age of excessive amusement: everybody craves for it, like a babe for its rattle.
When you see no present advantage, walk by faith and not by sight. Do God the honor to trust Him when it comes to matters of loss for the sake of principle.
It is far easier to fight with sin in public than to pray against it in private.
After faith comes repentance, or, rather, repentance is faith's twin brother and is born at the same time.
["All the paths of the Lord are mercy and truth unto such as keep his covenant."] The original Hebrew word that has been translated "paths" means "well-worn roads' or "wheel tracks," such ruts as wagons make when they go down our green roads in wet weather and sink in up to the axles. God's ways are at times like heavy wagon tracks that cut deep into our souls, yet all of them are merciful.
Preach Christ or nothing: don't dispute or discuss except with your eye on the cross.
Intelligence is a moral category.
One isn't born one's self. One is born with a mass of expectations, a mass of other people's ideas - and you have to work through it all.
Whatever we believe about how we got to be the extraordinary creatures we are today is far less important than bringing our intellect to bear on how do we get together now around the world and get out of the mess that we've made. That's the key thing now. Never mind how we got to be who we are.
What could be the basis of our having more inherent value than animals? Their lack of reason, or autonomy, or intellect? Only if we are willing to make the same judgment in the case of humans who are similarly deficient.
Pitch-black winter nights live in my bones.
Surviving - that is the other name of a mourning whose possibility is never to be awaited.
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