Come up in the morning.
Be ready in the morning: an address for New Year’s eve
I. Be ready for a conscious contact with God in the future.
1. As a duty.
2. As a privilege. “In Thy presence is fulness of joy.”
3. As a calamity. The hell of the guilty.
II. Be ready for a conscious isolation of your being in the future. “No man shall come up with thee.”
1. There are events which will give us a profound consciousness of isolation.
(1) Bereavements.
(2) Personal affliction.
(3) Death.
2. There are mental operations that will give us a profound consciousness of isolation. Remembranee of past sins, etc. (Homilist.)
Morning on the mount
I. God wishes me to be alone with Him. How solemn will the meeting be! Father and child; Sovereign and subject; Creator and creature! The distance between us will be infinite, unless He shorten it by His mercy! Oh, my poor broken and weary heart, think of it and be glad. He will shed His light upon thy tears, and make them shine like jewels; He will make thee young again.
II. How shall i go before God? In what robe shall I dress myself?” All the fitness He requires is to feel my need of Him.” But when I think of Him the thought of my great sin comes at the same time, and it is like a black cloud spread between me and the sun. When I think of anything else, I am happy for the moment; but when I think of God, I burn with shame and tremble with fear. This morning I must meet Him on the mount--meet Him alone! Alone! Surely He need not have said expressly so; for to be with God is to be in solitude, though the mountain be alive with countless travellers.
III. God asks me to meet Him in the top of the mount. I am called to climb as far away from the world as I can. For many a day I have not seen the top of the mount. I have stood on the plain, or I have gone to the first cleft, or have tried a short way up the steep. I have not risen above the smoke of my own house, or the noise of my daily business. Oh, that I might urge my way to the very top of the hill chosen of God! “What must it be to be there?” The wind will be music. Earth and time will be seen as they are, in their littleness and their meanness.
IV. The morning is the time fixed for my meeting the Lord. What meaning there is in the time as well as in the place! This very word morning is as a cluster of rich grapes. Let me crush them, and drink the sacred wine. In the morning--then God means me to be at my best in strength and hope; I have not to climb in my weakness; in the night I have buried yesterday’s fatigue, and in the morning I take a new lease of energy. Give God thy strength--all thy strength; He asks only what He first gave. In the morning--then He may mean to keep me long that He may make me rich! Blessed is the day whose morning is sanctified. Successful is the day whose first victory was won in prayer. Health is established in the morning. Wealth is won in the morning. (J. Parker, D. D.)
Rising early for prayer
We have a saying among us, that “the morning is a friend to the muses”; that is, the morning is a good studying time. I am sure it is as true that the morning is a great friend to the graces; the morning is the best praying time. (J. Caryl.)
Rising early for devotional exercises
It is told in Sir Henry Havelock’s “Life,” how he always secured two hours for devotion before the business of the day began, even in his busiest time, by rising at five or four, as required. .. Colonel Gardiner had the same habit. Early rising for the objects of this world is usual enough, and much to be commended; but the same industry that will advance a man’s temporal interests will make him spiritually rich, and give him great treasure in heaven, if it be used towards God. .. On the contrary, late rising in the morning, rapid dressing, curtailing even the few moments allotted to thanksgiving and prayer, before the plunge into the world’s affairs, deafens our ears and hearts to things spiritual; we exchange an interview with our God, who can give us all good, for the miserable gratification of our indolence.
Meriting prayer
Let the day have a blessed baptism by giving your first waking thoughts into the bosom of God. The first hour of the morning is the rudder of the day. (H. W. Beecher.)