Dear Friends,
Math was never my best subject, but I remember one algebra test that I just knew I had aced! But, when the grade came back, it was an F! Why? I was so sure I knew the answers that I made a number of careless arithmetic errors that had nothing to do with algebra. We can all make the same mistake in other areas of life, as today’s devotional shows. God bless you.

Because of Calvary,
John Janney

• I Corinthians 10:12 (ESV)

  12 Therefore let anyone who thinks that he stands take heed lest he fall.

“…Some of the saddest falls I have ever witnessed among Christian men have, been among elderly Christians, — among them who said of the young people, ‘Ah, they ought to be very watchful, for they have strong passions, and they may very easily be led astray; but as for us, we have had such a long experience that we have passed out of the range of temptation.’ The most dangerous place in the world is that which is supposed to be beyond the reach of temptation. The power of the devil is often most to be feared when he has left you alone for a while, for he has then probably left you to something or someone who will be more dangerous to you than he himself would be. That is to, say, when a man says, ‘I shall never be tempted again,’ he has already fallen into one of the devil’s most dangerous snares, for the pride of his heart has deceived him, and made him an easy prey to the great adversary. Satan delights to pluck gray beards, and to prove their owners to be fools. He has great joy in tripping up young men, in the fullness of their strength, to show that he is more than a match for the very strongest of them he is even more glad to waylay a man in middle life, and to teach him that, even when he thinks he has all his wits about him, he is not so shrewd as the old tempter is; but I think it is his chief delight to waylay those who imagine that their long experience will preserve them from the snares of Satan. Therefore I say that we are all of us, from the little child to the man who is on the very brink of heaven, — from the most timid up to the bravest of us all, — in danger from our great adversary.” [Charles Haddon Spurgeon, The Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit LI, (London: Passmore and Alabaster, 1905), p. 182-183]