Dear Friends,

Do you ever feel that the world is in such a mess that there is no hope. Do you love our country and grieve over the way she seems to be heading. Do such thoughts evoke despair? Today’s devotional shows where true hope lies. Let it lift your heart. God bless you.

Because of Calvary,

John Janney

• Romans 1:16

  “For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek.”

“There is a poor wretch who has crept into this chapel tonight, and has felt that he would crawl down a mouse-hole or stay in any corner of the building if he might but hear the sermon. He felt it was too hallowed a place for him to sit down in; he was almost ashamed to stand in the company of the saints; he believed himself to be such an unworthy sinner. I tell thee, friend, if thou art a poor, stripped, law-condemned sinner, thou shalt yet be able to see thyself ‘perfect in Christ Jesus.’ Man! doth not this make thine ears tingle? Doth not thy heart leap for joy at the very thought of it? Black as thou art, thou shalt be white one day; filthy as thou art, thou shalt yet be cleansed; evil as thou art, thou shalt be made good. Yea, however enormous thy transgressions, however black thy crimes, thou mayest even have been a murderer, but Christ’s blood can wash the blood off thine hands; thou mayest have been a thief, but Jesus Christ restored that which he took not away, and he will forgive even thy sin. You may be the vilest one that ever disgraced this earth, you may be a walking nuisance in the very streets, yet I tell you, if you believe in Jesus Christ this night, you shall go away perfectly clean. Oh, it is marvelous, this salvation! Christ takes a worm, and transforms it into an angel; Christ takes a filthy thing, and makes it into a cherub; Christ takes a black and deformed thing, and makes it clean and matchless in its glory, peerless in its beauty, and fit to be the companion of seraphs.” [Charles Haddon Spurgeon, The Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit XLIV, (London: Passmore and Alabaster, 1898), p. 368]