Thursday, January 19, 2012

God Alone Can Fill Your Cup






















Wealth is not true riches, neither are men’s hearts the fuller because their purses are heavy. Men have thought to fill their cups out of the foul pools of what they call “pleasure,” but all in vain, for appetite grows, passion becomes voracious, and lust, like a horse-leech, crieth, “Give, give.” Like the jaws of death and the maw of the sepulcher, the depraved heart can never be satisfied. At the polluted pool of pleasure no cup was ever yet filled though thousands have been broken; it is a corrosive liquor which eats into the pitcher, and devours the vessel into which it flows. Some have tried to fill their souls with fame: they have aspired to be great among their fellow-men, and to wear honorable titles earned in war, or gained in study. But satisfaction is not created by the highest renown; you shall turn to the biographies of the great, and perceive that in their secret hearts they never gained contentment from the grandest successes they achieved. Perhaps, if you had to look out the truly miserable, you would do better to go to the Houses of Parliament and to the palaces of those who govern nations, than to the purlieus of poverty, for awful misery is full often clothed in scarlet, and agony feasts at the table of kings. From the sparkling founts of fame no cups are filled.

Young man, you are just starting in life, you have the cup in your hand, and you want to fill it, let us warn you (those of us who have tried the world) that it cannot fill your soul, not even with such poor sickly liquor as it offers you. It will pretend to fill, but fill it never can. There is a craving of the soul which can never be satisfied, except by its Creator. In God only is the fullness of the heart, which he has made for himself.

From a sermon by Charles Haddon Spurgeon entitled "The Overflowing Cup." Image by Jay-P on Flickr under Creative Commons License.

1 comment:

Rick Morgan said...

A great reminder that the God shaped spot in us will never be adequately filled by anything else.