Everyone’s had this experience. You set out to read your Bible for nourishment, yet finding yourself as cold and flat as a dead fish.
And you get nothing out of it: no light, no heat, no nothing.
What to do?
Talk to yourself.
Cajole your soul into a more attentive frame of mind.
Pray.
Here’s Spurgeon’s advice on what to say to your soul before reading your Bible:
Come, soul, wake up; thou art not now about to read the newspaper; thou art not now perusing the pages of a human poet, to be dazzled by his flashing poetry; thou art coming very near to God, who sits in the Word like a crowned monarch in his halls. Wake up, my glory; wake up all that is within me. Though just now I may not be praising and glorifying God, I am about to consider that which should lead me so to do, and therefore it is an act of devotion. So be on the stir, my soul; be on the stir, and bow not sleepily before the awful throne of the Eternal.
I never tire of reading Charles Spurgeon. Virtually everything I read of his I agree with and enjoy and find profitable.
How about this encouragement I came across this morning in his little book, Counsel to Christian Workers: Don’t be a Mrs. Splitplum!
Who, you may be wondering, is Mrs. Splitplum?
She was the wife of a grocer who always cut the plums in two for fear that there would be an ounce more plum than the buyer had paid for. She didn’t want to give a fraction more than was bought.
“Ah,” says Spurgeon, drawing a lesson from this quaint anecdote, “there are many Splitplums in religion. They do not want to do more for Jesus than may be absolutely necessary.” Just so much, but no more. Just what is fair and equitable in their service to the Lord.
Don’t be a Mrs. Splitplum is Spurgeon’s point. Instead, be like the woman with the alabaster jar of perfume who spent it not miserly or calculatingly or cautiously, but lavishly, extravagantly, indeed even wastefully in the service of her Lord (Matthew 26:6-13).
“Christ’s servants delight to give so much as to be thought wasteful, for they feel that when they have in the judgment of others done extravagantly for Christ, they have but begun to show their hearts’ love for his dear name.”