06/20/23  Good News & Bad News! Real Southern Woman
Channel: REAL SOUTHERN WOMAN, COLLARD VALLEY COOK
Date: 2023-06-20

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Charles Haddon Spurgeon : Morning and Evening
Some words have been revised for clearer meaning by Tammy Nichols
Charles Haddon Spurgeon : Morning and Evening
June 20th — Morning Reading

“For behold, I will command,
and shake the house of Israel among all the nations
as one shakes with a sieve,
but no pebble shall fall to the earth." — Amos 9:9

Every sifting comes by divine command and permission. Satan must ask before he can lay a finger upon Job. Truly, more, in some sense our siftings are directly the work of heaven, for the text says, "I will sift the house of Israel." 
Satan, like a grind, may hold the sifter, hoping to destroy the corn; but the overruling hand of the Master is accomplishing the purity of the grain by the very process which the enemy intended to be destructive. 
Precious, but much sifted corn of the Lord's floor, be comforted by the blessed fact that the Lord directs both the tools and sifter to His own glory, and to your eternal profit.

The Lord Jesus will surely divide the precious from the vile. All are not Israel that are of Israel; the heap on the barn floor is not clean food, and thus the inspecting process must be performed. In the sifter true weight alone has power. Husks and shucks devoid of substance must fly before the wind, and only solid corn will remain.

Observe the complete safety of the Lord's wheat; even the least grain has a promise of preservation. God Himself sifts, and therefore it is stern and terrible work; He sifts them in all places, "among all nations"; He sifts them in the most effectual manner, "like as corn is sifted in a sieve"; and yet for all this, not the smallest, lightest, or most shriveled grain, is permitted to fall to the ground. 
Every individual believer is precious in the sight of the Lord, a shepherd would not lose one sheep, nor a jeweler one diamond, nor a mother one child, nor a man one limb of his body, nor will the Lord lose one of His redeemed people. However, little we may be, if we are the Lord's, we may rejoice that we are preserved in Christ Jesus.