Daily Devotionals

Devotional: April 1st

THE CRY FROM THE DEPTHS

Out of the depths have I cried unto Thee, O Lord. Lord, hear my voice: let Thine ears be attentive to the voice of my supplications. - Psalms 130:1-2

The depths are the place for us all. Every man has to go down there, if he take the place that belongs to him. Unless you have cried to God out of these depths, you have never cried to Him at all. Unless you come to Him as a penitent, sinful man, with the consciousness of transgression awakened within you, your prayers are shallow. The beginning of all true personal religion lies in the sense of my own sin and my lost condition. Why, the difference between the tepid, superficial religion, that so many have, and the true thing consists a great deal more in this than in anything else- that in the one case a sense of sin has been awakened, and in the other it has not. I believe, for my part, that as far as creed is concerned, the reason of the larger number of the misapprehensions and waterings-down of the full-toned Christian truth which we see around us comes from this, that men have not appreciated the importance, as a factor in their theology, of the doctrine of sin. And so far as practice is concerned, one main reason why the religion that prevails is such a poor, flabby, impotent thing is the same. If a man does not think much about sin, he does not think much about a Divine Saviour. Wherever you find practically men and women with a Christianity that lies very lightly upon them, that does not impel them to any acts of service and devotion, that seldom breaks out into any heroisms of self-surrender, and never rises into the heights of communion with God, depend upon it that the roots of it are to be found here, that the man has never been down there into the pit, and never sent his voice up from it as some man that had tumbled down a coal pit might fling a despairing voice up to the surface, in the hope that somebody stumbling past the mouth of it might hear the cry. "Out of the depths" he has not cried unto God.

You want nothing more than a cry to get you out of the depths. If out of the depths you cry, you will cry yourself out of the depths. Here is a man at the foot of a cliff that rises beetling like a black wall behind him; the sea in front; the bare, upright rock at his back; not a foothold for a mouse between the tide at the bottom and the grass at the top there. What is he going to do? There is only one thing - he can shout. Perchance somebody will hear him; a rope may come dangling down in front of him: and, if he has got nerve, he may shut his eyes and make a jump and catch it. There is no way for you up out of the pit but to cry to God, and that will bring a rope down; nay, rather, the rope is there, - your grasping the rope and your cry are one. "Ask, and ye shall receive." God has let down the fulness of His forgiving love in Jesus Christ, and all that we need is the call, which is likewise faith, which accepts while it desires, and desires in its acceptance; and then we are lifted up there " out of the horrible pit and the miry clay, and our feet are set upon a rock, and our goings established."

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