Dear Friends,
Do you sometimes get discouraged, saying, “I’m not getting anything out of the Bible”? Today’s devotional will show you why you might say that. God bless you.

Because of Calvary,
John Janney

• Psalm 1:1-3 (ESV)

  1 Blessed is the man
  who walks not in the counsel of the wicked,
  nor stands in the way of sinners,
  nor sits in the seat of scoffers;
  2 but his delight is in the law of the Lord,
  and on his law he meditates day and night.
  3 He is like a tree
  planted by streams of water
  that yields its fruit in its season,
  and its leaf does not wither.
  In all that he does, he prospers

“When you read the Bible, do not think that you will get spiritual food out of it simply by reading. I know some people who make a point of reading two chapters of the Bible every day. They do so as a sort of mental exercise; they simply run their eyes down the page, and, after all, do not know a word they have been reading. That is not the way to feed upon God’s Word; we cannot truly feed except we understand and believe what we read. In reading the Scripture, do as Luther advised. He says, ‘When I get a promise, I treat it as if it were a tree in my garden. I know there is rich fruit on it; and if I cannot at once get it, I shake the tree backwards and forwards by prayer and meditation, until at last the fruit drops into my hand.’” [Charles Haddon Spurgeon, The Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit XLVI, (London: Passmore and Alabaster, 1900), p. 305]